joy

Feeling Sad, Feeling Happy, in our service to God

by Yedidah on August 2, 2016

feeling sad, yet finding a cause to rejoice in our relationship with the Creator. From the Zohar and the Kabbalah of Rabbi Ashlag

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:20 — 16.0MB)

The holy Zohar says,

Rabbi Yehudah opened his discourse, “the Scripture says (Psalm 100:2), “Serve the Lord with happiness, come before him with song” and indeed we have learnt that we need to be happy in our service to God so as to serve Him with true desire. In this way our work will be whole.

The questions is: How can this requirement of being happy apply when we are talking about a situation in which a person has sinned against God by transgressing one of commandments of the Torah, and now he is repenting before God ? In this case the person comes to God with a broken and a sad spirit. How can he feel joy? (Perush HasulamVayikra 109-115)

Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag looks at this question in terms of the question: “What am I looking for? ”

It transpires that this question is the heart of the dilemma. For by analyzing deeply our connection with God we can come to see that our sorrow over our distance form him is actually a gain in awareness. The fact that it is God Himself who has enabled us to experience wanting to come closer to Him as a true desire, is in itself a cause to rejoice.

This podcast is dedicated for a Refuah Shlema for Alla Bat Rifkah. May this Torah learning bring her a true healing.

Article excerpted from Sefer haMaamarim of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag Vol 4 article 25

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Rebuilding our Inner Jerusalem

by Yedidah on July 4, 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:00 — )

The fasts and festivals of the Jewish year seemingly remember historical events. But in truth they are prisms with which to view the inner processes of our present.
This period of the three weeks of the destruction of the Temple 2000 years ago teaches us how to rebuild our inner Jerusalem today.
Rabbi Ashlag teaches that the inner meaning of Jerusalem is the point of holiness within our soul wherein we can come to love our fellow unconditionally and thus come to the love of God.

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