Kabbalistic Diet

Rav Avira said (sometimes he said it in the name of Rabbi Ami, and sometimes in the name of Rabbi Asi – because he heard it from both): Ministering angels said to the Holy One Blessed Is He, “Master of the World! In your own Torah you have written, 'Do not show favoritism, and do not take bribe,' but you show favoritism to Israel, as you yourself say in your Torah, 'May God show favor to you and turn His face to you.'”

God answered, “What can I do? How can I not show them favor! I told them in the Torah, 'You will eat and be satisfied and bless God.' I told them to eat their fill, and only then bless God, and they are exacting with themselves, and bless Me when they eat an olive volume, and an egg's volume. The person's body is not satisfied until he eats his fill. However, these righteous understood 'and be satisfied' as 'be a little satisfied,' and interpreted My words as in regards to the soul, not the body. Do you remember how we created the world? I was for it, and you were against, and really you, the angels, were right: I should not have created the world. However, I saw the souls of the righteous, fell in love with them, and created the world against logic. How can I not show favor to them now?”

We see from here that when a person eats little, and understands a minor satisfaction as being enough, this causes the awakening of God's favor for him.

Art: Jozef Israels - The Frugal Meal

Behaalotcha – Face to Face

“God spoke to Moses, telling him to speak to Aaron and say to him, 'When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall illuminate the menorah.'”

The subject of the Menorah was started in the portion of Tetzaveh. There we said that the Menorah represented the Cosmic Female and explained the meaning of the beating of the olives to prepare the oil. More specifically, the Menorah represents Rachel. This means that the spiritual qualities of the world embodied by the Matriarch Rachel were later found in the Menorah. Rachel is the Female companion of the Cosmic Man, who is also called Zeir Anpin (Small Face).

At earlier times, the Cosmic Man and his Female were standing face to face with each other. Then the Menorah was not needed. However, later the Cosmic Female and the Cosmic Man stood back to each other because they were afraid of the Evil Husks attacking the Female. The Menorah at the time of the Temple rectified the situation.

The seven branches of the Menorah represent the lower seven Sefirot  (God's manifestations in the world) of the Female, from Kindness to Rulership. They are arranged in groups of right (Mercy), left ( Judgment), and center (Beauty, or balance and proportionality). The branches are endowed with the five aspects of Strength, characteristic of the Female, who limits and shapes the world.

The five attributes of Kindness from the Mind of the Cosmic Man likewise descend to his seven Sefirot and are manifest in the lights of the Menorah. With their fire and flame coming from the wick, the seven lights represent the seven qualities of the Cosmic Man.

Today, when there is no Menorah, the union can still be accomplished by the Cosmic Man and his Female ascending to their supernal Mother and Father, who shade and protect them for the time of their visit. Those who know do this in the prayer, through a “unification” mediation in Shema and in the Tachanun, where they enact the actions of the spiritual entities (Partzufim) mentioned above.

Art: Joseph Ritter Von Führich - Jacob Encountering Rachel with her Father's Herds

Why One Should Not Sell His Copy Of The Zohar

Having described the chain of the printing of the Zohar, about seventy printed editions in Montoba, Livorno, Krakow, Amsterdam, and Vilna – some of them more correct and some with errors – “The Gates to the Zohar” concludes with the words of the Chida:

In one old manuscript I saw the following story. One Sage had an edition of the Zohar, which he sold. At night he was tortured by evil dreams, in which they called him an animal, “Behemah.” Next day he recounted his dream, and one Sage told him that they were reproving him for having sold the Zohar. And the word “Behemah” meant “I have removed the sacred portions from my house,” ("Biarti Hakodesh Min Habait"). He went back to the buyer, pleaded, and bought the books back. Thus far goes the story.

Of course, in the context this means good: the farmer has given all the charity presents that he was supposed to, and his house is now clean of these holy portions. However, the same verse may have a different meaning in a different situation.

Art: Louis Robert Carrier-Belleuse- Le Bouquiniste (The bookseller)

Silence

In his biography ofJoyce, Richard Ellmann describes the following scene, which took place when Joyce was fifty and Beckett twenty-six, and which could have come straight from the theatre of the No:

"Beckett was addicted to silences, and so was Joyce; they engaged in conversations which consisted often of silences directed towards each other, both suffused with sadness, Beckett mostly for the world, Joyce mostly for himself. Joyce sat in his habitual posture, legs crossed, toe of the upper leg under the instep of the lower; Beckett, also tall and slender, fell into the same gesture. Joyce suddenly asked some such question as, 'How could the idealist Hume write a history?' Beckett replied, 'A history of representation.'"

On Reading The Zohar Without Understanding

“The learning of the Zohar is higher than any other learning, even if one does not understand what he is reading, and even if he reads the words with mistakes. It is, nevertheless, very beneficial for one's soul because although all of the Torah is the Names of the Holy One, blessed be He, it is related in the form of stories, and one who reads it, understands the stories, and pays attention to the simple meaning of what he is reading. On the contrary, the Book of Zohar consists completely and openly of the secrets, and one who reads them knows that these are the secrets and the mysteries of the Torah, except that he may not completely understand them because they are related in a dense manner, and because of his limitations.”

Chida, quoted by Shaarei Zohar of Rabbi Daniel Frisch

Art: Gerard Ter Borch - The Reading Lesson

There Is No Contradiction Between Multiple Opinions

There is no place in the laws of the Torah for a contradiction; when some Sages hold one opinion, and others hold a different one, all of these explanations flow and end up on one place, called “Kingship,” or better yet, “Qeeenship,” which is another name for the Oral Torah. Not only these opinions end up in one place, but they also originate in one source – the Foundation of the Cosmic Man, also called Zeir Anpin. What, then, is the reason for the disagreements? When an opinion comes out from the Foundation, it may lean more to the right, Kindness, or to the left, Strictness, but it invariably comes back to the same Kinghsip. Thus we have the rule about the disagreements of the early Sages that “Those and these are the words of the living God.” That is the meaning of King Solomon's, “All rivers go to one sea, all go to one place.”

If the secrets of the Torah are its inner essence and if they illuminate the other areas of learning, then why is the study of them not widespread? Rabbi Shimon explained it with this phrase of the Torah: “God formed every wild beast and every bird out of the ground... every living soul... but the man did not find a helper.” The wild beasts and birds symbolize people without knowledge. Since they lack understanding, they are no help for a man. Even those who are called “living soul” and who study the Law, they, too, are of no help for man in exile if they do not investigate the reasons and are not seeking for the secrets in their learning.

Art: Eva Gonzales - Secretly

Mystical Secrets Are The Essence Of Torah

The secret meaning is the real essence of the Torah teachings. The practical parts of the laws were only necessary so that the light of the Torah could be constricted and conveyed to us, for otherwise we could not bear it, because it would be too much. In the uppermost of the four spiritual worlds, the world of Nearness to God, the Torah is called “Kabbalah”. Is it also called “Pshat.” The simple meaning of the word “Pshat” is just that, “simple meaning.” However, this word comes from the Song of Songs, “Pashat'ti at kutonti” - I have taken off my garment – because in the world of Nearness the Torah is seen as its essence, without the physical garments hiding it. That – adds Rabbi Chaim Vital, the primary student of Arizal – is the main meaning of the word “pshat.”

Adam, the first man, was “working the garden and guarding it.” Working meant doing positive commandments of the Torah, while guarding referred to the negative ones. However, how is this possible? For example, how could he observe “do not plough with an ox and a donkey put together,” if he had no need to plough? The answer is that Adam had to keep the two spiritual husks, one called “ox” and the other “donkey” separate and not allow them to unite. Adam's Torah was Kabbalah.

The Song of Songs said, “The curves of your thighs are like jewels.” The word “curves”, “chamukei” stands for the first letters of a common teaching in the Talmud, “chasurei mechasra v chachi kotani”, which means “the Mishna is missing a phrase here, and here is what it really means.” The words of the Mishnah and Talmud are essentially secret codes, and in these cases the plain meaning had to give way to the necessity of phrasing the rule according to its secret meaning. Understanding these is the goal one should strive for, and it is the meaning of the prayer we say before learning the Talmud, “Unveil my eyes, so that I can perceive wonders from Your Torah.”

Art: Pierre Auguste Renoir - The Garden In The Rue Cortot At Montmartre