Zohar

Before the Mitzvah and after the Mitzvah: What we learn from Yaakov’s relationship with Laban and Esau

by Yedidah on December 21, 2022

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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

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The Four Sons: An inner view of the Haggadah

by Yedidah on April 12, 2022

We have four responses to the will to give unconditionally. These are reflected in the Haggadah by the story of the four sons.

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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.
However, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai teaches in the Zohar that the Torah is not a history book. Rather, it is a book of instruction that deals with our present day relationship with the Divine. Just as a person wears clothes, so does the Torah itself wear a garment. The garments of the Torah are the stories we find within it. But just as nobody is silly enough to mistake the garment for the person, so we need to look beneath the surface of these stories to find the real essence of the Torah. To take the stories at face value and think that they are all the Torah is, is just as silly as relating to a person only from the outer clothes that he or she wears.
So when we sit down on Seder night to read the Haggadah, our purpose is not to tell a story of what happened 3000 years ago, but to examine in what way we are in exile now from ourselves and from our Creator, and to discover what redemption from that exile comprises. Packed within the words of the Haggadah is both the soul’s experience of exile, and our joy in redemption, in the reconnection that God uniquely grants us on Seder night, the holy night of freedom. Only when we recognize our own exile we can value the freedom that God gives us the opportunity to gain.

These motifs are very well portrayed in the section of the Haggadah on the four sons. It is a section that seems baffling, even silly when regarded in an external manner, but when we explore it using our knowledge of the language of the Zohar and the insights we gain from Kabbalah as taught by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag we discover that this is a section that clearly defines what constitutes redemption and what constitutes exile, and also examines our sometimes unexpected responses to the light of redemption.

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Brotherhood — Lost and Gained: A Prerequisite for Redemption

by Yedidah December 20, 2021

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Before the story of Joseph and the brothers, brotherhood does not seem to have been an important value in family life. In the selling of Joseph as a slave to Egypt, both Joseph and his brothers discover they have lost something precious and now have to work hard to regain it. But the gain is far greater than they imagined. In discovering brotherhood they lay the foundations of discovering the common humanity that binds us all together.

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Avram and Sara go down to Egypt: Approaching the egoism within ourselves— a cautionary tale.

by Yedidah October 28, 2021

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There is a famine in the land, and Abraham decides to go down to Egypt, taking Sarai with him. The Zohar teaches that the famine was a spiritual thirst for the light of God. In which case why go down to the consciousness of Egypt, known as a source of spiritual pollution? Why does Abraham ask Sarai to say she is his sister not his wife? This most peculiar story, found in the early life of Abraham takes on a new dimension when looked though the inner dimension of the Zohar, and tells us much about how we too, need to handle the different aspects of good and evil found within ourselves.

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Cain and Abel: A Story of Ourselves

by Yedidah October 14, 2021

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Both Cain and Abel are elements within our consciousness. The Cain within us is the part that wants to use our intelligence to try to fulfill the greatest desires a person has, to know God. Although it puts on the cloak of giving, underneath it really wants to receive. Abel on the other hand is the part of us that truly wants to give from the heart. Although from we stumble into the will to receive for ourselves alone, the Abel part of ourselves offers our turning back to God in faith as its gift, and feels itself blessed to do so. This is the gift that God heeds.

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Beginning the Torah Again: The Nature of Creation

by Yedidah October 5, 2021

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The word with which the Torah opens is Bereishit. This word is one of the most discussed words in the Zohar because it contains within itself the sodot, the inner meanings of the origin of creation, the inner meanings of the nature of creation, and of creation’s ultimate destiny.
In this short piece we will consider one aspect only: the word ברא bara creation itself. What actually was created?
The holy Ari teaches us that prior to creation, reality is entirely filled with the limitless light of God, His goodness. Since this goodness contains all that is, the only new creation that can possibly be, is a state of emptiness. So the word ברא implies emptiness. It describes a state of consciousness in which we are outside of the consciousness of light. It is a state of longing, a state of being incomplete. If our natural state is one of being filled with light, then the state of creation is therefore an unnatural one. Indeed, this is how we experience it. We all experience periods in our lives of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, of alienation; episodes when we ask, “What is my life about?” Sometimes these states of consciousness are short-lived, but sometimes these feelings of emptiness and of longing seem to characterize most of our lives. We sometimes try to deny these times, to fill them up with something to distract ourselves from our unease. But this is because we do not realize their potential. By understanding the word ברא we discover that this essential emptiness is actually the essence of creation. We need to harness the power of creation that is inherent in these difficult times.

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