Crossing  of the Red Sea, illuminated Haggadah Rothschild

Although Pesach is now behind us, we mention the miracle of the exodus from Egypt every single day in our prayers. Each year, a different aspect leaps out at me; this year, it was the Crossing of the Red Sea.

If we look at the ten plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians, they occur within the bounds of nature: Nature taken to extremes. But the Red Sea’s parting lies in entirely another dimension: beyond the domains of nature. A sea divides. The seabed becomes dry land, solid enough for 600,000 people to walk on. The ordinary borders between sea and land change for precisely the time it takes for the Children of Israel to pass through.

One imagines the miracle of the Crossing of the Red Sea to be a one-time event. But in fact, it isn’t. When Joshua led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land, the waters of the River Jordan parted, and they crossed on dry land. The Talmud records an instance when Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair, was on his way ot recscue hostages the River Ganni parted for him.

We have just celebrated Yom Haatzmaut Independence day when we celebrate the miracle of the State of Israel, for miracle it surely is.  According to all the laws of nature—the sociological laws the anthropological laws and the laws of demographics and statistics—our existence as the Jewish people isn’t explainable. Yet here we are!

What is the basis of this phenomenon, and do these events have meaning for us today?

To answer these questions, we must first consider what nature is, and discover what causes an event beyond nature’s ordinary boundaries.

What we call “nature” is the way the world usually works. The holy Ari teaches that the world has only two basic elements: the Creator and the created. These express themselves as the goodness of God and the desire to receive this goodness.

The desire to receive the Creator’s goodness is the created element and forms the primary material of all creation: All elements of reality, inanimate, plant, animal, and human, have the desire to receive goodness. In the human this desire to receive God’s goodness manifests through all aspects of ourselves, our physical being, our emotions and our desires to know and control our lives.

 Our soul however is part of the essence of God. Unlike the created aspects of ourselves, our soul desires not to receive, but to give unconditionally, just like the Creator; its Root, only gives. When we give altruistically to others, we act according to our soul’s desire. Likewise, when we place our faith and trust in the goodness of the Creator, instead of relying on external sources, we act according to our soul’s desire. When we accord with our souls’ wishes, we are no longer confined to the material of the natural world; we have gone beyond the boundaries of created nature.

At this point, the Sages teach us that a law higher than the laws of nature can now come into play.

In the last six months, we in Israel have merited witnessing the most incredible examples of deeds of ultimate selflessness, deeds that are truly beyond the boundaries of nature. So many men and women, young and not so young, selflessly gave their lives to save helpless victims on October 7 and in its aftermath.

Throughout all these months of difficulty, people from all levels of society have been volunteering: helping the wives of reservists, helping the farmers harvest the land, and helping each other stay calm, cheerful, and confident. These actions of selflessness that are above and beyond the boundaries of nature are not actions you will find portrayed in the media, but they are numerous and do change reality.

Witness what happened on the night of April 13: Iran sent an incredible number of lethal ballistic missiles to murder as many Jews as possible, indiscriminately. Yet we merited to a miracle above nature!—a modern Crossing of the Red Sea! Any scientist will tell you that no human system is as good as what happened that night. No human system is 99.9% successful. Yet that is what happened!

Today, as we watch with growing dismay and disbelief the stream of antisemitism in the streets and universities of cities all over the world, let us take heart from the realization that miracles like the Crossing of the Red Sea are not one-time miracles. They can and do happen in our time too.

How can we create the conditions that can bring such miracles about?

Acting against our created nature isn’t easy. Very often, we want to, but we need to know how. However, we are blessed that the Torah of the soul, the Kabbalah, is now available to us through the the great Kabbalist of the 20th century, Rabbi Ashlag. When we learn the Kabbalah, we can get to know what our individual soul wants and how it needs to express itself. Then, we can all contribute to the energy field in which the miraculous can happen.

Thus, the words of the prophet Micah, “Just as in the days of your coming out of Egypt, I will show you miracles” (Micah 7:27) will come true.

I bless you and all whom you love so that we may merit witnessing miracles in our lives for which we can all give thanks.

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The Torah is not a history book. The outer events of our forefathers’ lives are recorded in the Torah, but the meaning of these events and the intentions of the protagonists are recorded in the inner aspect of the Torah, the Zohar. It’s when we put the inner intentions together with the events, we can begin to understand why these stories are important for us today in living our own lives.

In this shiur  we look at one example in which Yaakov teaches us how to handle our own selfishness and egoism. We discover that before we plan to do a mitzvah, our own yetzer hara comes to us as an inner voice telling us that since our work is not perfect it’s not worth doing. This is the voice of Laban, who claimed all Yaakov’s work for his own. “The daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the animals are my animals, and all that you see is mine.”( Gen.33:43)  

What does Yaakov teach us to say to this inner voice?
He says “I dwelt with Laban yet I kept the Torah and mitzvot.” We need to ignore it. We need to raise ourselves up with pride in the fact that we are the children of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and have faith that God takes pleasure in our work, in whatever form it takes.

But then “Yaakov sent messengers to Esau.” This action of Yaakov takes us by surprise. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? But here again Yaakov is teaching us an important lesson. After we have done the mitzvah we need to go to the opposite extreme, and consider how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are really the basis of our work.

What is Esau’s response? He sas, I have plenty my brother, Keep what is yours!” In other words, here our inner voice of the yetzer hara is saying exactly the opposite! it says,”you are so righteous, you have nothing more to do!” It wants to convince us that our work is perfect, so that we rest on our laurels and don’t prgress another inch!

What does Jacob do? He entreats Esau to accept his gift and humbles himself before him. In the same way, we also need to realize how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are involved in our service to God. We need to ignore the inner voice of Esau , and separate from it going our own way into the Land of Yisrael, the consciousness that is in affinity of form with God until we merit to come to Beit El, the house of God.

This podcast is dedicated lilui nishmat my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem haLevi

Material taken from Birkat Shalom ” Al HaTorah, Parhsat Vayishlach, and the Zohar with Perush haSulam Parahst Vayishlach, beginnning

Picture by Menachem Halberstam

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Are Our Thoughts Ours?

by Yedidah November 15, 2022
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We think it is ourselves that think our thoughts, but Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag tells us that this is a delusion. In actual fact it is God who sends us our thoughts in order to communicate with us, giving, uniquely and intimately, his love to each one of us. Whether our thoughts are positive or negative they all come from him. And thus we actually have an open channel of communication with the Creator of all the universe . This should bring us to feel great joy and thanks.

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Mourning for our inner Jerusalem

by Yedidah August 4, 2022
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When travelling in Jerusalem today, we see a thriving city. The elderly sit with their staffs in their hands and the children play in the streets, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah made 2000 years ago. So why should we mourn on Tisha b Av today? The Zohar teaches us that the inner meaning of Jerusalem is the point of holiness in our heart. On Tisha BAv we need to take stock and mourn that the consciousness of God is so low on our own personal agenda and on that of the world. It is our mourning for the consciousness of God in our lives that helps us realize how much we desire and long for the rebuilding of our inner Jerusalem.

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How do we prepare to receive the Torah?

by Yedidah June 2, 2022
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The Zohar teaches us that the essence of the Torah, the essence of God, and the essence of the soul are one.
But we cannot attain the essence of God directly —even the essence of ourselves, our soul, also is hidden from us. So the one aspect of this godly essence that we are given as a gift to grasp and to attain, is the Torah. When we learn , immerse ourselves, in the Torah we are connecting directly the Holy blessed One, and with our own soul. And this is the great gift that we are given every Shavuot , to renew our connection with the Divine essence.
But we’re not just a soul, we are also made up of the body. These two components, while they need each other , also oppose each other. Our body aspect ,our egoism tells us, “whatever you do, to better yourself in the material sense, or whatever actions you take which increase your importance are good. “
Whereas the soul, says, “whatever we can do in giving unconditionally, whether to God or to our fellow human being, is good, because such actions bring us close to God.
Our body aspect is more familiar to us: it starts to grow the moment we are born , whereas our soul incarnates later. The voice of the ego is strident , fitting in with the messages we get from the society around us and the media, whereas the soul whispers and we have to strain to hear its voice. So how are we going to want to contact the soul? How are we going to decide that the yetzer hara, our evil inclination, is really our worst enemy ? How are we going to want the Torah the connection with our soul?
In this podcast we study a beautiful article of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag in which he shows us that it is God who came down on Mount Sinai to show us the reality of our own egoism , so we will want to receive the Torah again with all our heart.

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The Four Sons: An inner view of the Haggadah

by Yedidah April 12, 2022
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When we first look at the Haggadah, it seems to be a collection of somewhat disconnected paragraphs, with the overall motif being the story of the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt. But when we use knowledge gained from the Zohar and the teachings of Rabbi Ashlag we discover that the Haggadah is really a meditation on the inner meaning of exile and redemption, as the Haggadah oscillates from light to darkness and back to light again. It is not describing events of 3000 years ago, but relates to our own inner exile and the redemption by God for each one of us on this holy night. One of the most enigmatic parts of the Haggadah is the story of the four sons. We will use this part of the Haggadah to hear the voice of God calling to us and to examine our possible responses.

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