Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Gedalia, how are you doing today?
[00:00:02] Speaker B: I'm doing fine. It's so nice to hear your voice.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: And it's good to hear yours. It's so good to hear yours. I feel a little bit like a kid in a candy store with what we're going to talk about today.
It's really like such a. You know, it's just like I look around in amazement and wonderment and the audience doesn't know because we haven't introduced it. But this show's theme, I think, as we discussed, was going to be about creation. No.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Mm. Yes.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: So I didn't know if you wanted to give a little, just maybe a little shorter background about yourself.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: I was a student for many years in Jerusalem and yeshivas here. I received ordination as a rabbi, as an Orthodox rabbi in 1979. My experiences. I hate being a rabbi. I don't like to be a rabbi, and I don't call myself a rabbi. I just refer to myself as being Jewish. And I love to learn Torah and I love to share Torah with all people of the world because everyone's create God.
So although I did serve as a rabbi, I used to run a synagogue up in Tzvat in the mystical city of the old city of Tzfat. And then I opened a synagogue in Sydney, Australia. I was a teacher for many years at Eisha Torah as one of the directors of their Discovery program. I was involved with Rabbi Steinsaltz. I used to work with a wonderful rabbi, Dovid Aaron from a program called Israelite and many other projects, including work with a Belzer rebbe in New York, helping once upon a time set up certain outreach.
But otherwise, basically, I've been in the business world for many years now, and I just continue to learn and teach when people like you come along and knock on my door.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's a treasured time for me because the instruction and conversation that arises out of our dynamic feels like an old connection and a good connection, and I'm so grateful for it.
So we're going to talk about creation today from really, as I understand it, Kabbalah is really. It's. It's for humankind, is it not? But it's. It's specifically through the, through the, The. The.
The venue of Torah. Is that true or no?
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, okay. Torah is a. You know, I mean, once upon a time, I thought Torah was a Japanese war movie, actually. Tora, Tora, Tora.
But when I later was introduced to it, I found out that Torah is an umbrella expression from many rivers of Jewish thought, one of which, maybe the undercurrent river is the Kabbalah. But, you know, the word Kabbalah means simply to receive. I remember once I went to a little grocery store here in Jerusalem, and I was. This was 1974, and the girl said to me in Hebrew, she says, kabbalah, which means, do you want Kabbalah? I said, my gosh, here in the supermarket in the middle of the day. And then I realized she simply said, do you want a receipt for what you bought?
So Kabbalah means simply to receive. And the reason that this particular stream of wisdom was called that is unlike, let's say, the revealed or revealed Torah, this was something that was selectively and discreetly passed down, depending on a person's qualifications to receive such wisdom. But I will tell you a quick BAAL Shem Tov, which talks about the period of time that we're in. And he uses again, a metaphor, but the analogy of a king who had only one son. And the doctors came and said that that one son was violently ill. And the only medicine that existed to save him was a gem that sat in the middle of the king's crown. And they had to grind it to create this medicine. And without hesitation, the king pulled out the gem and gave it to the doctors, who then saved the son. And the BAAL Shem Tov says as well that Kabbalah is some of the most esoteric and holy and deepest ideas that there are. But in the end of days, when we've become spiritually numb and the cholesterol has virtually created asphyxiation in our soul, this is kind of like the sort of shock therapy that can snap back the people who are still alive.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: So it makes sense because there is goodness that abounds in the world that I see everywhere. There is also just being truthful and seeing things as they are. Much difficulty that things really are in need of a kind of deeper waters to invigorate our understanding of where we are and what we are doing.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yes, I agree with that for sure.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: I am a newbie to this, but I am fascinated with the BAAL Shem Tov's teaching and his infusion and his kind of impetus to reach each Jewish soul. Each soul.
Could you speak a little about that, about that turn in Jewish history?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I think if you'll forgive me, if we roll it back a little bit, sometimes historical perspective cast a lot of light. And so what happened was pre BAAL Shem Tov, there had been a horrific event in Jewish history. Unfortunately, because the light was unable to find a vessel that could contain it, and therefore it broke. And that was the false messianic period of Shabzay Tzvi, which culminated in a horrible experience in Istanbul and in Turkey. And prior to Shabzay Zvi, there had been this incredible illumination with people like Abulafiya and the rajpah from the 10 hundreds, 1100s, 1200s, and so on, 1300s of Kabbalah. Suddenly, Kabbalah was coming out. It was schools. It culminated with the Arizal, and it went in all these different directions. But after the failure of Shabbatzai Zvi, there was a kind of a withdrawal that it was too much light. And what happened after Shavzay Zvi, there became the birth of Chasidus, which the BAAL Shem Tov, in many ways, was the father of Hasidus, but he wasn't the unique father. Because really what happens is we learn in the cre.
Watch how I parallel this. That all of a sudden, in the middle of the horrible story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Original Sin, the Torah, the Bible digresses for a few minutes to talk about four rivers that came out of the Garden of Eden, of Eden. And the question is like, huh? Why? Why is it talking about that? Why right here? Well, these four rivers represents each one of the four letters of God's holy name of Yud and hey and VAV and hey. And the idea of a river is purity. It's like the mikvah, which is the R through which one can remove impurity. And it's connected to the Hebrew word tikva, which means hope, that since a person knows they can always regenerate themselves and always begin again, no matter where they are, they can always start anew. So there's a connection of hope and purity. And the rivers, therefore, were giving a secret message as a way to go back into the Garden of Eden.
So after the idea of Kabbalah was no longer able to be necessarily received in its most exposed form, Hasidis in four different rivers. Rivers were created to now become the Lavush, the garments that could now use a new format of teaching, which had embedded inside them these Kabbalistic ideas. And those four rivers became the vilnagon, they became the Rajba, which was eventually known as Chabad, they became known as Rebbe Nachman of Breslev, and then they became known as, let's call it mainstream Hasidis, which were all the other forms of Hasidus, all of which stemmed from the BAAL Shem Tov.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Can you spe a little bit more in depth about each?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Sure. I'll just tell you an interesting thing. Before I get actually into the four rivers themselves.
It does say, I mean, the idea of the four rivers, how they are really understood today in the most practical sense are the four compartments that sit on the. In the tefillin that sit on a person's head, the tefillin that sits on the arm is one box. But if you notice, the one that sits on the head actually has four compartments.
This is the idea that really, heaven, if you will, this is just a metaphor, but heaven begins just at the top of your head, right after where your head ends. That's where heaven is. In other words, it's really just that close. And the tefillin, if you will, become some sort of like a filter or a spigot that plugs into that heavenly energy. You know, kind of like you see in churches a lot. They have those halos right above a person's head. So the tefillin comes like a little spigot right on a buffer's house, and it opens up those four rivers to pour down into the mind, like, to kind of like bring the water into the fire of the brain, if you will. That's kind of how it ties in today. But each one of the names of the rivers actually has a very deep understanding in and of itself because they reveal a lot as to what are the compartments of creation. I mean, for example, one of them is referred to as gold.
The fourth one is actually referred to as the snake.
And these, of course, are all the ideas of what the rectification of the world is all about. In other words, the number four in Hebrew is pronounced dalid, which means four. Now, dalit also, as a root, comes from the word dal, which means impoverished. And the idea is that the four directions of the world, the north, south, east, west, they are like an empty vessel. They have no real life to themselves, but they're impoverished, waiting for this water, you know, the water of life to come and to fill them. And so therefore, the further, the extremity of the four directions, which correspond to the four exiles, which correspond to the four monsters in the vision of the king Nebuchadnezzar, as described in the Book of Daniel. These are really just the darkness waiting for the light.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: So these four rivers, the correlation, the different aspects of four, there are also, are there not four worlds?
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Okay, I don't know if the word world is really the right word. I mean, the World. The word itself or world is an interesting word because the word normally used is olam, which is connected to the word alam, which means hidden or closed in a sense.
So the idea of the worlds are things which hide rather than reveal.
There are maybe you would call it the four worlds, but they really are. I would maybe use the term more four states because there are levels and layers within the one world of creation. The thing about learning Torah is it's so systematically connected. It's such like a schematic of creation that once you understand a basic algorithm, the algorithm will hold its application throughout every approach in learning that you take. Which means to say, as one understands the concept of the number four, then every time the four cups on Passover night, the four children. And the question, every time you see the number four, it will have some connotation. For example, the moral talks about that any number lifted to the power of a hundred is the extreme revelation of that number. So if 4 is that emptiness, so 400 becomes the ultimate level of that emptiness. Which is why 400 is the last letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, the tuff, because that's the furthest away from God, so to speak. It's the furthest away from creation. And that's why it says that Esav, when he approaches Yaakov, he came with 400 soldiers because it represented he had every form of negative power in his. In his ability. And Abraham, it says that his tractate of the Talmud concerning idol worship had 400 chapters. Means that he had the ultimate understanding of all of that darkness.
I think that there's a very interesting verse, if you don't mind. If you'll forgive me, I am answering your question, but I'm doing it like an end run here. Yeah, there's a verse in Isaiah. See, I'm learning the English names as opposed to Isha Yahu.
There is a verse in Isaiah which is actually used in Jewish prayer every morning.
And the verse roughly, I'm going to actually fake the translation for a minute, and it's important that I do and you'll see why. But the verse basically says that God created light, God created darkness, God created peace, and God created evil. That's the verse in Isaiah. It uses the word evil. However, the sages realize that people in their daily lives to suddenly think that God's creating evil, they won't be able to have the depth of knowledge to put that in a proper perspective, especially if a person is suffering or having a hard time or who knows what.
So they changed the word for the Prayer, they changed it from the word evil to the word everything, which if you think about it, really includes the same thing. It also includes the word evil. But here's the real key thing. When you drill down into the Hebrew, the giveaway as to what was creation is hinted at in the verbs, because the verb to create, boreh. The verb to create is only used with two of those four elements, and that is boreh, God created darkness and boreh, God created evil. We'll work with the Isaiah verse. When it comes to the word light, it doesn't say God created light. It says God Yoser, God formed light. And when it came to the word peace, it doesn't again, doesn't say God created peace. It said God Asei, he made peace. Now, the inference in this is that, and I know this sounds kind of funny, but prior to creation, right? Like, how could there be prior to creation if creation is creation?
So. But hold that thought for a minute.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: No, I'm okay. I'm okay with that. Yeah, I'm with you.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Okay, cool. So prior to creation, therefore already existed things like light and peace.
So the only hiddush, the only new thing that was created in creation was actually darkness and evil, because those things never existed outside of creation.
So that's why I wanted to roll it back. So now we understand that all that was really created was darkness and evil, then the question really to understand what is darkness, what's its purpose, and what is evil and what's its purpose?
So from that, we understand from Kabbalah that there are two trees that stood in the middle of the Garden of Eden. However, they both came out of the same root. In other words, kind of like a trunk that split into two trees. One of those trees is called the Tree of Life, and the other tree is called the Tree of Knowledge of good and bad. Now note that it doesn't say the Tree of Knowledge, rather the Tree of Knowledge of good and bad. And so here is the paradigm shift that happens when Adam and Eve are created pre sin. If you want, we can get into what the sin was later. But when they created pre sin, their bechera chavshi, their level of free will was so high that by them it was a choice between true and false.
And therefore, everything in creation has a harmony, has an order, has a kind of a power behind it. And they understood like tools where every single thing was used for. So therefore it was either used but not misused. That's true. And false post sin, all that became scrambled. And now from an objective, true False. It turned into a subjective good and bad.
Yeah, what you might call good, I might call bad and vice versa. And so now that it suddenly became subjective, that therefore converted all goodness.
That part of it became bad. As in knowledge of good and bad. It has to be bad to have knowledge of it.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: And so, if I may just interject this idea, knowledge of good and bad is really the illusion of our distance from our creator, is it not?
[00:16:21] Speaker B: That's a very astute point. In fact, I have to tell you a cartoon I once saw in the New Yorker magazine that I think actually addresses this. It was a picture of a beautiful house in the Colorado Rockies. And you had a big picture window looking out at these gorgeous mountains with snow tops. And in the living room, right in front of this picture window was a tv. And on the TV was a picture of those snow tops.
In other words, it's somehow the idea is to align the illusion to reality so that the illusion is focused on reality and it becomes one and the same with reality.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: The illusion hopefully will dissipate and then we see things as they are.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that because I know that the only one who had that dissipate was Moses who saw God face to face. But all the others, even the prophets, they still saw things like through telescopes, if you will. They were still through lenses. You know, I have to tell you, I saw a movie today and one scene, it was mind boggling. It was a big jar of this gentleman who was very old, about to die. And in the jar were like dozens of contact lenses. It was every contact lenses man wore since he was a kid.
He never threw them out in this one big jar. And it was so weird. But then the idea was he said, look, I saw life through these lenses.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: The reason why I sort of intertwined that last notion of dropping away, maybe the vowels, is from a. I think it's sort of like pure direct experience, but through some glimmers.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, completely on board with that. I agree. All I'm simply saying is, okay, I hear what you're saying. Yes, the veils definitely fall away, but I think it's more, you see, they fall away and they remain at the same time. Because what's happening is one is being exposed to truth and then one understands the truth even without the veil represented.
In other words, it's absolutely about all. It's all about all.
And so it's kind of like one discovering a higher world, but at the same time, the higher world reflects what was the value in the lower world.
So that every level of being has a permeation of holiness. It's not about negating any element of the holiness. It's actually about finding the W H O L e.
The Holy Jew is W H O L L y. It's about all of it together. And that's why the epitome of evil was represented by the snake in the Garden of Eden. Now, the snake was created erect, he stood upright, and his function was to serve Adam and Eve. Now think about this. The only animal or creation that had free will is man, meaning male, female.
So then where did the snake come off doing the whole seduction thing with Eve? I mean, the snake didn't have free will. It was programmed. So therefore, its job was kind of like a prize fighter who has somebody comes in the sparring ring with him.
The sparring partner's job is to bring the prize fighter up to his best fight, not to win. So the whole purpose of the snake's deception was not that he had free will and he was going to create some sort of, like, sub universe that was going to revolt against God, but his job was to test the mettle of Adam and Eve to resist him. And BAAL Shem Tov says, in a very beautiful way, the BAAL Shem Tov says that when a person's evil inclination, or whatever yet we call it, causes a person to sin, the evil inclination rips his clothes and he mourns. And when a person overcomes his evil inclination, the evil inclination has a party. Because his purpose in creation, like any other angel, is merely to help you grow and succeed, not to fail. So once that power was lost, the snake now slithered. And this is the. And how did the snake come back into power? By Moses. When he appears before Pharaoh, he has a staff in his hand. That's the snake. That's the erect snake. And when he lets go of that snake, it becomes a slithering snake, as the Pharaoh's magicians also made this snake. And if you read the text very carefully, you'll see it doesn't say that his snakes swallowed their snakes. It says that his staff swallowed their staffs because he was able to do it in the real world, not in the world of illusion. Because by taking hold of the snake, it returned to a staff. That's the power of evil in the holy man's hands. It converts it from the tree of knowledge to the tree of life.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: If you could talk about. Moses is an empty vessel in relation to that exchange with Pharaoh.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: You want to talk a little about Moses, I'll give you a path on Moses that I think will be of help, God willing.
There is an idea that, again, I don't want to go too much onto this track about the whole holiness of the Hebrew letters, because they're not really letters. They're Hebrew forms that are simultaneously numbers and letters. Right brain, left brain. And therefore they are not just words, but they are also algorithms. And therefore they have a kind of scientific as well as an artistic value from the two sides of the letter and the number, both two sides of the same form.
So in that idea, we have a concept that in a name, sometimes the outer letters represent the outer shell, and the inner letter represent an inner shell. So if you looked at the outer two letters of the name Moshe Moses in Hebrew, they spelled the letters mem hei, which means ma, or is the word ma, which means what? So Moses, outer world was everything he looked at. In this world, he said, what is it? To the point where he says, what am I? He and our own say, naknuma, what are we? And so therefore, he was able to destroy. And by destroying his ego, he was able to humble and humble and humble to the point where the inner letter which. The letter shin, which stands for shechina, which is the divine presence or the image of God that lurks in every one of us. He was able to allow that light to emanate. Now, Moshe fights a man called Pharaoh. Pharaoh, I'm going to use the Hebrew pronunciation. Paro is the letters which spell the word pe Ra, which means foul mouth, a person's language. The way they speak, the way they articulate, the way they understand ideas, the way, God forbid they speak negative of other people.
God forbid they ridicule people. The use of the mouth is a barometer to how spiritually evolved a human being is. That's why the human is called the medaber, the one that speaks.
So Pharaoh was the evil mouth, the foul mouth. Why? Because he was king of a land called Egypt, which in Hebrew is called mitsrayim. The root of the word mitsrayim comes from the word sar, which means narrow. Like, it's a very narrow bridge. In Yiddish, they call it suris, because when a person's in pain, they're kind of uptight. So mitzarem means I come from the world of being uptight. So the appropriate king of the uptight world is foul mouth. Now, how does Moses rebel against the ego, which is what Pharaoh represents? He creates a holiday called Pesach Passover Pesach means the mouth that speaks. And so suddenly, when a person can be able to puncture the ego shell of Pharaoh, who tried to convince the world that he was God and therefore was perfect, when in fact he wasn't at all, it happens through. When you're even able to say, ouch. A real feeling, a real emotion, words of the heart. And that's how Moses rebels. Now, the last thought on this is that the end of his life, or the culmination of his life, he goes up on a specific mountain called Har Nebo, or Mount Nebot I think they call it in English, but it means the mountain of prophecy. Now, the word prophecy is the 50th letter nun, which is the gate of eternal wisdom. And Ba means to come. So to come to wisdom of the prophetic nature means to come beyond time and space. If you take the letter nun, which Moshe received at the end of his life, the name Moshe and the letter nun spell the word in Hebrew for soul. Neshama also spells the word mishnah to learn. So Moshe's ability of freedom from the ego of Pharaoh was the ability to make himself, like you said, the empty vessel through the ma, in order to allow his image of God to grow to the point where he was able to reach the eternal wisdom of the 50th gate and become the pure soul that he was meant to be. You see, if you look carefully at the story of the tree, what is the snake's trick to Eve? It basically gets her to say by what she heard. She basically said, hmm, I could be like God.
Now, what does that mean, to be like God? I mean, none of us are that stupid, are we really? I mean, can we, like.
Can you make any. Anything that God can make? I mean, what can you. How many universes can you make? What does that really mean, to be like God? It really means that I call the shots.
I determine what's permissible and what's not permissible. And nobody's going to tell me how I'm going to live my life or what I'm going to do.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Very problematic.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: We call that, in Hebrew, theft. Yeah, because you're.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: With good reason. With good reason.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Because we're giving this. I mean, when you wake up in the morning, you look at your vascular system, your respiratory system, your eyesight, your hearing. How much money do you get a bill at the end of the month for these things?
[00:25:55] Speaker A: No, it is a gift.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: A gift. And so therefore, to misuse these things is theft. But nonetheless, that's our free will in this world. And by the way, nobody gets out of here alive, so everyone's going to have to give an accounting in the next world anyhow. But the point is, while we are alive and we are not robots, we are human beings that can discern and make right decisions. Because on the one hand, God doesn't expect us to be angels, but he does expect us not to be animals. So therefore, that capacity of knowledge, that knowledge is one or two things. It's either knowledge of understanding objectively what is the creation. In other words, I come to creation, not that creation comes to me. Creation coming to me is idolatry. That's Pharaoh. That's where the knowledge becomes the triad of good and bad. I'm really wise, therefore I call the shots. The humble person comes to creation, that becomes a tree of life, where knowledge helps bring life.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: That makes sense.
I was at a Shabbos dinner a few weeks ago.
The rabbi had us read and one of the tractates was the tractate on Shabbos with the preparation and the angel on either side.
And I learned so much. And I've been working this over again and again. Gedalia. So just a brief synopsis. Do you want to give it or.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: No, no, please.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Okay. As I understand it, and it's the first time that I really saw it, but I think an Shabbos coming from temple, you return home and if things have been prepared for Shabbos, there's a good angel and an evil angel on either side of you. And the good angel says, and this is how it always should be.
And the evil angel, against his own inclination says, amen.
And if it is not, then the evil angel says, and this is how it always should be. And the good angel, against his inclination says, amen. Amen.
So I was just wondering if we could talk a little bit about habit in relation to what we were just talking about. Coming to creation or creation coming to us.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Oh, very interesting. By the way, I would just tweak your version. One drop, if you'll forgive me. No, please. Yeah, I agree. When the let's call it the positive angel says, as it should always be. And then the negative angel says, amen. But I would differ to say that if it's not the case, the negative angels doesn't say, as it should always be, angel says, as it is now.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: And that's a big important point because that which is negative is not as it will always be, right.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Because this is all in a process of evolution and becoming right.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Exactly so. But the positive angel can. In fact, this is, by the way, a difference, if I may digress for half a second between positive and negative prophecies in the Bible.
Positive prophecies must come into being because they're rooted in reality. But a negative prophecy never need happen because one can alter the course by improving the light. And therefore the negative, which is not rooted in ultimate substance, will disappear.
So that's why the negative angels comment is merely, that's how it is right now. And to that the other one has to acquiesce. But when the positive speaks, it speaks about the way it should always be, because that's rooted in reality.
So to your question about coming to creation, you know, Shabbat is the focal point of a taste of the world to come. Now, the world to come doesn't necessarily mean in the sense of the world to come, although it also does linear in time. It also means the resolution of realization of what the world is meant to be. So somehow the world as it's supposed to be already exists.
And we only live in the temporary world until that aligns with the way the world is supposed to exist. Just like we know that the Third Temple is already fully built and exists in perfection, but in the Jerusalem above, not yet in the Jerusalem below, because we haven't prepared the world yet through which the two worlds can combine. But Yamuchu Hashem Echadu Shmoyechad. In that day, his name and His Word will be one. His name, in a sense, is the spiritual word, and he, sorry is the spiritual word, and his name is. So does the manifestation of it. Those become one and the other. So when we approach the Sabbath, it is like the middle of the Star of David. It's the point of the center. And from the center, like the idea of the Garden of Ed, one has a balance and harmony with all of creation. So therefore, at that moment of being centered, one actually has an increase in their soul. We call it the neshama Yetera, the extra soul. And through that, they have a heightened spiritual experience to be able to see more spirituality inside the physical world. So what's really happening with these two angels?
I mean, the way that we look at it, it's really, in a sense, one angel. It's a yaetzer, a yetzer. Again, it means a four.
And meaning form to create that. It's not like past, it's something which is forming forward.
And therefore, at each opportunity, if you could think of each second like an empty bottle, you know, in a bottling factory. And every thought, speech and action is like the liquid that gets dropped into the bottle. So the angel is merely the bottle. And our free will is what do we fill that bottle with?
So therefore, that it's kind of a statement of reality if one comes home. And expression of their inner and outer worlds combining that, just like the soul that lives deep inside of all of us knows that there's God. It's created in the image of God, but somehow could puncture that. Where it's manifest in the world around it, that is the home is set up, the vessel is in sync with the internal essence. When it's all aligned, that is a statement of as it should be. But when there is a confusion between what's existing inside a person and how they manifest that in the world of action on the outside, then that's the, so to speak, the negative form which is saying, well, that's how it is now. But hopefully he's even whispering, this isn't how it should be next Shabbos. Because this is the whole idea. This is the alignment of the spiritual and physical world. One's house represents this physical world. That's the whole idea. When it says Bereshet, God created. He created the letter Bet, which is the word Bayet, which is home.
So therefore, when the spirituality is manifest throughout. That's why Jews have come commandments. It's not enough to be a cerebral Jew. It's about really connecting through the synapse, the spiritual to the physical by physical performance.
Because every molecule has a godliness in it that could be revealed.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: But the other thing I want to talk about real quickly, Gedalia, is you spoke about the house bait. I was wondering if you could. I know there's a teaching that I came across, and I think it's really important to illuminate, is how the feminine plays into that daughters, its relation to Bayt and the power of the feminine.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, okay, you know what? I'll tell you a quick little thought from Yitzhak Ginsburg. He talks about this. This is that how the redemption of the world comes through the woman.
And it's hinted at. I won't take too much time because this is a long class in and of itself. But basically, if you look at the first redemption was led by Aaron and Moses. If you take the first two letters of their name, Aleph mem, it spells the word mother. The second redemption was coming back in the days of Ezra, was led by Esther Mordechai. Again, Aleph mem, the word mother. And the final redemption in the end of days will be led by the prophet Elijah or Eliyahu and Meshiach Aleph mem mother.
And this idea of femininity coming as the leadership of the world in the end of days is the concept of. Of completion. Because if you look at it, it's manifest in a miniature nature of the three families that created the Jewish people. You have first, it kind of goes like this. It goes A, B, C, B, A.
So A is actually, and this is hinted at, by the way, ABC CBA is the idea that we say in the Friday night prayer, Kabbalat Shabbat, where we say soph maseh mach shabet chila, that the last thing that we do is the first thing that we thought about. Like, right, for example, right now you say, oh, you know what? I gotta go get a cup of coffee. That's your first thought. Now you gotta get out of your chair, you gotta go find a cup, you gotta find hot water. The last thing is, you got a cup of coffee. So your first thought is connected to your last action. So Abraham and Sarah. Sarah was much higher than Abraham, as God says to Abraham, listen to Sarah, she's a greater prophetess. Then the next level of Isaac and Rivkah, they were equal. It says. Each one stood in their corner and prayed they were equal. And then the next level is Jacob, who in a sense was the classic more dominant. He had four wives, and therefore on all of them he was the higher level. So therefore, that's how the world kind of went forward. It went forward in the sense of it went forward that the world lived in the world of Jacob. And then ultimately it comes back to the level of Isaac. Isaac represents the period of time of the Messiah. And then after that becomes the culmination of. Of the world, which is symbolized by Abraham and Sarah. So that the feminine level becomes the highest manifestation.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: I always had an intuitive feeling that each human being, each soul's intuitive nature, right, I mean, that we are in talking about knowledge of good and evil is lost to us through that kind of discourse or that discursive intellect. The intuitive knowledge that resides within each of us, that is God given is hard to tune into.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is hinted at in the word for war in Hebrew, which is milhama is also connected to the word lechem, which means bread. And this struggle is part of the curse that happened in the Garden of Eden where God says, you will now work by the sweat of your. Of your. Of your forehead, excuse me, to earn your Bread. It became part of the struggle the world becomes over a world of struggle. Because unfortunately, that's the way that Adam geared the world, rather than choosing the alternative.
By the way, I must just tell you a cute joke I saw the other day, because I spent a lot of time in China. I don't know if you've seen this, but the Chinese had this great cartoon, which was that if Adam and Eve had been Chinese, we would still be in the Garden of Eden, because they would have eaten the snake anyhow. Sorry.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: So what. What other thoughts. Gedalia. Is. Is there something that arises in your mind that a new direction to take this conversation?
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I wanted to share something, if I may, because it goes back full circle to Kabbalah. You know, I mean, we're always. And it's just human nature, and therefore this Totally understandable. But, you know, the mind always wants to grow, go higher and to go higher and so on. And that's really wonderful because wisdom is associated with light, which is associated with fire, goes up and then peace and calm is associated with water, like rain and water that always flows down.
But I think that. What's an interesting point. I'll tell you a little story then. The story is about these three Hasidim. Each one are arguing with the other one about whose Rebbe was greater than the other Rebbe. And so one of them tells a story about once his Rebbe was going through a forest and he came to a river, and he took off the rope that called it a gartel that he wore around his stomach. He threw it across the water, and miraculously he was able to walk across the water.
And the other one says, that's nothing. My rabbi is so great that once he drew a circle around himself and he said, unless it rains, I'm not going to move out of the circle. And of course, it rained. And everybody saw the rabbi walking through the town the next day. And then the third one says, ah, that's nothing. My rabbi is so incredible that whatever he says, God does.
And at that moment came along a student of the Chafetz Chayyim, totally not the Hasidic world, much more the Lithuanian world.
And he said, excuse me, gentlemen, my rabbi is actually greater than all of your Rebbes combined. And they were shocked, said, what are you talking about? He said, yes, my rabbi is so great that whatever God says, He does.
And that's the power of humble. That's the power of one who chooses to approach creation. It's more about, why was I created? And how can I serve my creator? Because serving my Creator is all about building this world, building love, building life, building bridges, and somebody who's not in that space. It's more about taking and taking. And until one suddenly thinks to themselves, well, what am I anyhow? And so I think that's the thing, you know, I call God's Kabbalah, right? We have man's Kabbalah. What's God's Kabbalah? What fascinates God? I mean, we talk about what fascinates us, but let's for mention, what is God fascinated by? God is fascinated not by the ultimate high worlds of the mystical. God is fascinated by the world. When people see zero God, zero spirituality, and still in the darkest and the darkest, surrounded by the most evil and the evil, still people do acts of kindness. Still people help each other. Still people look for ways to see how can we make our lives better. How can you help me? You help me and I help you, and we form a society to God. That is fascinating because everything else in the world is basically remote control. But the apple of God's eye is that one space in the human brain that has free will where we can choose, not as robots, but as people to be decent and do acts of kindness. That's the holiest.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: So I really appreciate that.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Well, if I may just take it one last step. Thank you, first of all. But if I take it one more step, that's why you have in Judaism, again, I don't know other religions and I respect them all. So I don't speak against, say, Judaism as opposed to. But in Judaism, this is why you have this concept of holy laws that affect courtrooms, holy law that affect even agriculture, holy laws that affect, like, you know, soup kitchens. Because the truth is, is that holiness can permeate down into every single aspect of the mundane world. And what it does is it connects the finite to the infinite. And the moment that spark is released, it rises. And that's part of rebuilding the ultimate vessel of light that was destroyed in the Garden of Eden.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Does it not boil down to just simple kindness and service?
[00:41:02] Speaker B: Let's put it like this. If a person boils it down and gets to that point, that's already fine. Like, you know the song we sing on Passover, Die, Die, ain't no right. That's already halavai. It should only be that everybody has gotten it down to that level. However, it's not just that level. I mean, you don't eat pasta every meal.
So it's about the fact that the body. Even in acupuncture, you know, you have these 13 meridians. These 13 meridians in the body correlate to the 13 tribes.
And you have 613 pressure points which are the 613 commandments. And every single one of them is where the body and soul connect on different levels. And all of these 613 come out of the Ten Commandments, which come out of the Ten Utterances of Creation. So each human being is a microcosm of all of creation. And by the proper performance on every single level, from thought, speech and action and a myriad of things. What blessing do you make when you come out of the bathroom? What happens if you make a living alone with interest? What happens when you're burying somebody? I mean, every. All of these things, every single moment, in every aspect of life, there's an opportunity to connect that infinite wisdom. Of course, the platform of that must be first, you have to be what we call in Yiddish, a mensch, right? First God made Adam before God made Abraham. Because first you have to be a man before you can be a Jew. If you're a Jew without being a man, then you're a fraud.
But you first have to be a man. You have to be a child of Noah, which is what we all are. And even when we become Jewish, we never not become a child of Noah. We just have a special extra thing we have to do, extra homework. But we never not become part of the human race. And our connection to all human beings never ceases. In fact, if there's not peace everywhere in the world, then there's no peace anywhere in the world. And if there's no peace within each of us, we can't bring peace to the world because need to put all the pieces together to make that piece in every aspect of space and time.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: Could we speak a little bit about Judaism's relation to, say, other traditions or.
