Enlightening the World

WITH

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The Spiritual Mission of Moses

and the Jewish People

Inspired by the Teaching of Rebbe Nachman

Na Nach Nachma Nachman From Uman

by Avraham Chaim Apatow

Copyright 2008

avrahamchaim@yahoo.com

– King Solomon (Proverbs, 10: 25)

An Invitation

The knowledge of God is the awareness of the miraculous nature of life. This awareness is the natural perception of our world that is too often constricted and silenced. My Grandma Molly shared this awareness with me. It was several years after my grandfather passed away and I was standing with Grandma Molly in the backyard of her home looking out at her beautiful roses amidst the pine trees sloping up the canyon hills towards the blue skies on one summer afternoon.

Grandma Molly turned to me and said, “I was so stupid for listening to your grandfather the atheist and giving up my religion. (My grandfather was the son of a communist and raised as an atheist, like so many Jews of his generation.) How can somebody not believe in God? Look at the sky, the birds, the flowers, the insects, the trees…where did it all come from? Every breath, every moment of life, how can there not be a God? Life is amazing, so many wonders, happenings, all the billions of stars, the people, the stones, the dirt. Where did it all come from? There must be a God. I was so stupid all these years that I gave up my religion.” Grandma Molly was filled with the awe of life and existence, everything was a marvel in her eyes at that moment, she was like a child eyes wide in astonishment at everything.

A few years later I became religious. I grew a beard and began to follow the laws of the Sabbath. I did not drive, use the phone or turn on anything electric from Friday sundown until evening Saturnday night. My grandmother’s comment was: “You are going backwards. We gave that up a long time ago all those laws and customs. Are you going to start driving a horse and buggy too.” We both laughed. “With all the pain and suffering in the world, you think that there is a God, pheh.”

There are moments for all of us when we see the miraculous, when the awareness and knowledge of God is as clear as day…and at other times the heavens are obscured by the clouds of life. I hope that this book helps clear open the heavens for you Molly and for you my reader who is now opening the pages of this book.

Avraham Chaim Apatow

Eighth Day of Chanuka

The Holy City of Jerusalem

I would like to thank first of all my friend and teacher Moshe Azizo for the inspiration and guidance in writing this book. My friend Shimon HaKohen, Simcha Pivovoz and Dov Avraham Rav Ben Shor each helped with editing and recommendations. On the physical plane, I would not have been able to type this book if it were not for the healing advice of my friend Shoshana Sarah and the work of the Sarno method that freed me of my repetitive stress syndrome, thank God. I would also like to thank my mother, may her memory be for a blessing, and grandmother Molly and my good friend Allen Dana for their generous support in this project. Chaim ben Eleazer was so generous for donating the use of his computer. I would also like to thank all those who have guided me on the path of the Torah and Breslov Chassidut, especially Shmuel Levy, Simcha Pivovoz, Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, Rav Peretz Auerbach, and all my friends in Israel from whom I learn so much. I also gained a special insight into the history of the Jewish people listening to the lectures of Rabbi Shimon Kesin. A special thanks also to Michael Kabat, Baruch Zev Olnick, and as always to Barry Goldberg. Often the most difficult challenges are revealed to be the greatest blessings. I thank the Blessed One for everything which made the writing of this book possible and all the insights I received.

This book is about God and the mission He gave Moses and the Jewish people to bring a light into the world that would lead to the perfection of creation as a place of ultimate love, peace, and laughter.

Before I began studying the Torah ten years ago I considered all religions the spiritual imaginations of ancient world mythology. However, after an intense ten year journey into the heart of the Torah and its secrets, the Torah has become the center of my existence. I would like to share briefly some of the awesome realizations that led to this transformation. The path of the Torah and its faith in God is not something of the ancient past, but a powerful reality that thousands of Jewish people are awakening to today.

I grew up in a family that was completely separated from its Jewish roots. Although both my parents are Jewish, I did not go to Hebrew school, attend a synagogue or celebrate any Jewish holiday. We were the first in our reform Jewish neighborhood to have a Christmas tree.

When I was a child I asked my father what Judaism was. I asked him, “Do we believe in God? He said no. “Do we believe in a soul or the afterlife?” He said that we didn’t. So I asked then, “What is Judaism about?” He said that it was a tradition of customs. I had no interest in traditions or customs for their own sake, and so this convesation was the first and last time I spoke about religion in my family..

My grandfather was the son of an immigrant from Russia, a communist who was exiled by the Czar before the revolution of 1917, and so he was raised as an atheist. Until the age of 31 I had never met a Jew who believed in the Jewish religion. Consequently, I had not the slightest thought in my mind that there was a God. When I was a child my entire life centered around music, movies and television. My grandfather Bob Shad was one of the most famous men in the music business; he recorded the Platters, Janis Joplin, Ted Nugent, and all the legendary figures in Jazz, such as, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughn. My brother Judd is well known today as one of the premiere comedy writer/directors in Hollywood. Entertainment and money was our family religion.

My grandfather and I were very close. He did not have any sons, and when I was born I was named after him and given a middle name after his father. My grandfather treated me like his son, but with the special bond that only a grandfather and grandson can share. He was an amazing man, full of the love of life. When I was a small boy of only five, he used to take me flying in his twin engine Cessna airplane. The flights in his airplane were like spiritual experiences for me. I remember so vividly the roar of the engine as we sped down the runway, soared into the air and flew above the clouds.

When I was nineteen, the phone rang early in the morning on the day of my birthday, March 13, 1985. It was my aunt who told me that my grandfather died of a heart attack at the young age of sixty-five. I cried so intensely and out of the depths of my tears and pain I shouted and screamed out at God for taking my grandfather away from me. For over an hour I continued to shout out loud at God in my anger.

I never thought about it until many years later how strange it was that I was shouting at God. I had no belief in God, not even a thought about Him. And yet in this moment, I spoke to God face to face — God who was present and real, the Creator and Director of all events. Hidden in my soul was the complete faith in God and this tragic shock brought it out of me. But after this initial shock, this strange, intuitive knowledge of God disappeared.

The death of my grandfather led me on a spiritual quest. I had just begun studying Greek philosophy in college and learning about the idea of the immortal soul. I had not considered these ideas seriously, but after my grandfather’s passing I concluded that the beauty and love I saw in him could not just vanish. This was the most real thing I had experienced in my life. Plato’s teaching of the immortalty of the soul and the Eternal Ideas of Truth, Beauy, and Wisdom became my religion, but I did not think about God.

I went on to devote my life to the philosophy of Plato. Plato presents a spiritual teaching that is the foundation of all Western thought and new age philosophy. I went on to study with a contemporary master named Pierre Grimes, who had revived Plato’s philosophy and developed a whole path of life around this ancient wisdom. Pierre taught me his new paradigm for psychology based on Plato and his teacher Socrates, and the art of dream interpretation. We also practiced the discipline of Zen meditation and I studied with Maezumi Roshi, the founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

The ultimate questions of philosophy are what am I? And what is reality? These deep questions are asked also in Zen as puzzles that become the focus of mediation practice. In Japanese they are called koans. In Zen, a student focuses all his meditation and energy on such a question until he exhausts every possible thought and answer. This leaves the student in a complete state of wonder and openness that awakens the mind to direct experience of existence. In life, we are usually thinking about pains and pleasures, different thoughts, fantasies and fears. All these thoughts become the object of our experience. It takes a lot of effort to purify the mind in order to just experience the world simply and really as it is without our mental interference.

After many years of intense meditation, I had my first “enlightenment experience.” In the middle of the meditation hall I burst out in laughter at the joy of the moment. Later that day one of the other students asked me why I laughed and I answered him saying, “I saw the smile of God.” This was the pure description of my experience. My answer to the Zen Koan, but oddly enough, I still had no interest or belief in God.

Despite this experience, I continued on in Buddhist practice and came close to becoming a Buddhist and a teacher of this religion. The ultimate quest of the Buddhist is to discover “your original face before your mother and father were born.” This “original face” is the realization of “nothingness” and the illusion of the soul and all individuality. The irony is that my intense journey in Zen and quest for enlightenment led me to the opposite – I discovered behind all the experience of the world and beyond “emptiness” was the “smile of God.” It was this realization that helped me to continue on my journey and discover that my original face is a Jewish one (big nose and all).

About four or five years later when I was thirty-one I began to be curious about Kabbalah. I was then a professor of philosophy and I had studied nearly every spiritual tradition of the world, but I was completely ignorant about the Jewish tradition. Many people were at that time beginning to speak about Kabbalah. It was just becoming a trend, and I was a little embarrassed that I knew nothing about it. I visited a synagogue in my town and began a class in Jewish philosophy.

All I can say is that something within me that was sleeping woke up. For thirty-one years I had no interest in anything related to God or Judaism, but suddenly from out of nowhere my soul longed for the Torah, faith, and God. I remember picking up the Torah for the first time in my life to study it. I did not know or understand what I was reading, but my soul was exulting in ecstasy. It was one of the strangest experiences in my life.

You may think that this is a natural thing because I was finally waking up to my Jewish identity, but I can tell you the experience was not so simple. You have to understand that I was perfectly content in my life and with my spiritual path. I had no feeling that anything was missing. When this passion awakened within me, I still did not have any idea what the Torah really was. In fact, everything that had I learned previously about it seemed rather simplistic and silly. I did not believe in those ancient stories, and I considered religious people to be ignorant of science, wisdom and spirituality. I had no desire whatsoever to be identified with this camp of people. In fact, my very connection to this group was deeply disturbing to me as well as my friends and family. My interest in Judaism became so disturbing to me that eventually I concluded that the religion was like a cult and that I had to separate myself from it before it took me over and destroyed my life.

I left the synagogue for many months, but during that time I felt a terrible sadness in my soul. I had a good friend at synagogue and one day I decided to go back and visit with him. As soon as I entered the door, all the deep feelings of love for God and the Torah reawakened within me. My soul was flooded with happiness. I couldn’t deny it. I then said to myself, “I don’t really care if the religion is true or not, I obviously am a Jew and need to be connected to my religion and people.”

For five years I walked around thinking I was going crazy. I was following a religion that I did not believe intellectually. How is it that I could take seriously the stories of the Bible? God, Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, all these miracles…, and yet my soul was on fire with passion for its teaching and its prayer and practices.

The Torah may seem very simplistic to those of us who are not educated in it. This is because the Torah is written in a language of simple stories. God did this for a very special reason. He wants the Torah to relate to everyone, child or adult, wise or simpleton. Every person can read the Torah and understand it on some level. However, the depths of the Torah’s wisdom are infinite. Throughout history the greatest minds of the Jewish people, minds greater than Einstein, Freud, or Marx, have devoted every moment of their lives to the detailed study of the Torah because of its profound depths.

Even though I had begun to study and practice Judaism I had no conception of these depths. I was inspired by the feelings of love and faith that I was experiencing for the first time in my life. No matter how strange the religion seemed to me, there were several teachings that did ultimately convince me of its truth.

Many people turn to Eastern philosophy because they are looking for a path to enlightenment. These paths are beautiful and many do reach the wisdom and enlightenment that they are looking for. Enlightenment is the realization that there is a greater reality than the perception of life we ordinarily experience as an individual soul observing the world. The experience of enlightenment is an experience of life in a state of freedom from all sense of self. When a person “lets go” of the sense of self he or she is able to experience the “oneness” of life where there is no sense of separation between the perceiver and what he or she is perceiving, (that is between you and the world you are experiencing). The deeper levels of enlightenment lead to experiences that are free of any mental category or description and so are called in Buddhism the experience of “emptiness.” This “emptiness” is also paradoxically called “completeness,” because when we are free of the self we are free from all desire.

There is a path of spirituality that leads to the experience of enlightenment and the transcending of self or ego – that is, the experience of “emptiness,” as it is called. But there is a problem with this enlightenment (and all practitioners of Buddhism are keenly aware of this). After a person reaches “enlightenment” he still has to live in this world of pain and suffering. The Eastern religions teach that pain and suffering are part of the illusion of existence. Maybe many people can accept this, but one who is honest and sincere cannot be satisfied with such an answer. Pain and suffering raise the biggest questions of existence. The fact that one can reach a perception of existence that penetrates to a deeper level where there is no pain, is not an answer. It is an escape. This experience reveals that pain and suffering are not the ultimate end of life, but it does not explain why there is such enormous suffering in the world or if it will ever end.

The Torah deals with the suffering of life in way that is honest and with integrity. First and foremost the Torah accepts the reality of suffering. Life is not an illusion. It is the handiwork of the Creator. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth…” This is the foundation of reality. The world and its pain is a part of the creation. The reason for suffering is a deep mystery, but also deeply meaningful (as we shall discuss later on).It is part of the process for the birth of a world that will be ultimately free of pain and suffering. The Torah teaches that the world that we all long for in our hearts, a world of love and peace, is the purpose of God’s plan, and the pain we experience is part of the process to achieving this end. I remember sitting in synagogue alone reading about this and crying tears of joy and relief when I realized that there is truly a purpose to history and an ultimate meaning of human life in this world.

Another fundamental teaching of the East is that we must free ourselves of the ego. One rabbi explained to me that this is not possible through meditation. In the practice of meditation one can experience life free from the limitations of the ego, but these experiences are always temporary and the meditator returns to his regular consciousness. Indeed, this is what my Zen teachers taught me as well. There is no permanent “enlightenment.” This is an illusion and false advertising in the Eastern religions. In fact, it is well known that many of the world’s leading teachers in the Eastern traditions suffer from various addictions and sexual problems because they are unable to deal with the conflicts between their spiritual life and their ordinary life.

This rabbi explained to me that whenever someone is seeking enlightenment no matter what they think, they are ultimately doing it for themselves. He said that the only true way to get beyond the ego is if we do something for a higher reason.

“This is one of the reasons why God gave the Jewish people commandments. It is out of love, because when one performs a commandment he can do something for God, and not for the ego. This the only way to break the power of the ego.”

I had spent over ten years of intensive experience in Zen I saw very clearly the truth of what the rabbi said. Although Zen practice brings one to experiences and feelings of “egolessness,” the only freedom from the negative aspect of the ego comes when we recognize God and dedicate our life to serving Him. This is what brings true healing and wholeness to one’s life. The Eastern philosophies cannot achieve this because they do not acknowledge the reality of the individual soul. They train people to feel egoless and to feel the oneness of life, which is a beautiful and important part of life. However, the purpose of life is not to flee from the ego, but to use it to serve God.

As I learned more about the Torah I slowly began taking on more of the commandments. During this time I was still driving to synagogue on the Sabbath until a most amazing event happened to me.

I had met a man many years ago outside a yoga class. He was wearing a colorful Jewish hat and reading a Hebrew book. I told him I was a Greek scholar and we began talking about the different ancient languages. He happened to be a religious studies scholar and his wife was very interested in Plato. We planned to get together and for many years I had his phone number on my cork board, but we never spoke. After becoming religious I began to look for someone with whom I could ask my questions about philosophy and other spiritual traditions. I remembered the man I had met briefly over five years earlier. I no longer had his phone number, but I remembered that he lived in Irvine, California. It was a Wednesday and I called a synagogue in Irvine to see if they knew who he was. No one answered the phone.

That Saturday I went to my synagogue for the Sabbath in Laguna Beach, California. After the prayers, we sat down to have lunch as we did every week. There were some guests with us and I heard one of them say that he was from Irvine. He sat directly across from me at the table and I asked him, “Do you know a man from your town who is a teacher and religious studies scholar?” He said, “Yes, that’s me.” I was in astonishment. I said, “Do you know that I made a phone call looking for you the other day.” He replied, “Yeah, I was wondering why I got the desiret this week to come visit Laguna Beach for the first time.”

That day I decided not to drive to synagogue any more. I saw clearly that God was in the world watching me and guiding me back to the Torah. I met this man for no more than a few minutes over five years earlier. I had never spoken to him since. Suddenly, I think of him and pick up the phone to search for him. A few days later he shows up at my synagogue and sits across the table from me for lunch. This was not a coincidence. It was the hand of God before my very eyes.

This is one of many such experiences I had. It is in these moments that I became aware that the events of life are not random. There is a director to the script of life. The more that I came closer to the Torah, the more I began to see these awesome moments in my life. They are awesome because in these moments we get a glimpse that God cares for us and loves us, and that He is directing the world. Although most often He is hidden from us, in these remarkable moments He shows His presence.

Jewish people feel this presence through our study of the Torah and our practice of God’s commandments. One of the things that was most surprising to me when I entered the Jewish world is how no one questions the existence of God. As a professor of philosophy, I dealt with this question with so many students and as a central part of Western philosophy. In the Jewish world it is not an issue, and this is because religious Jews feel the presence of God.

My experience is not unique. Over the past thirty years, after hundreds of years that have seen the overwhelming majority of Jews leave their religion, tens of thousands of Jews from all over the world have turned back to the Torah and the practice of the commandments. Each one of them have a unique story. But the basic experience is an awakening of the spark that is in the Jewish soul, a spark that carries the message of the purpose of the Jewish people that was given in the Torah by Moses and carried through the generations from father to son, mother to daughter.

My journey back to the Torah began with my grandfather’s death. Twelve years after he died I asked my mother for the first time if I had a Hebrew name. She told me that my Hebrew name was Abraham, after my grandfather. “But his name is Robert,” I said puzzled. “No,” she said, “his name is really Abraham. They called him Abey, and that turned into Bobby.” Thus, my grandfather Bob Shad the famous Jazz and rock music producer, like many other famous Jews, was really born with a much more Jewish sounding name — Abraham Shadrinky.

On my first night celebrating the holiday of Shavout, the day we received the Torah on Mount Sinai, the rabbi gave a talk and said that the patriarch Abraham was originally called Abram by his parents. Later God added the letter H and changed his name to Abraham. The rabbi then explained that his original name meant “lover of wisdom,” but when it was changed it meant “lover of God.” I cried when I heard this because I saw that in my very name was the story of my life. I was a philosopher, which literally means, “lover of wisdom,” and now, like my namesake, Abraham, I too was becoming a lover of God.

Just as God was hidden from me, also hidden from me was the entire story of my life. I possessed a name I didn’t know for thirty-one years of my life. No one in my family had any idea what our last name Apatow meant. (I found out later that it was a city in Poland that had a thriving Jewish community before the holocaust.) People used to hear it and think I was an American Indian. In other words, I grew up without any knowledge of my true identity. Moreover, I did not know the teachings of my people, our history, or my connection to God.

In the Jewish world there is also an entirely different calendar (one based on the moon and the sun, as opposed to the western solar calendar), so that every date in the life of a Jew has a different significance in the context of the Hebrew calendar. I was therefore curious to see if the day of my grandfather’s death also fell out on my birthday in the Hebrew calendar. The day of someone’s death is considered a very powerful and positive day in the Jewish world. It is the day when that soul reaches its completion and ascends to higher worlds. It is also a day that is celebrated every year and on which the person who has died as a special power to bring blessing into the world for the people he loves. However, it was still a difficult and painful memory for me. I looked up these days on the Hebrew calendar and saw that the day of his death did not fall on my Hebrew birthday. But I saw something that was even more remarkable. I discovered that my grandfather — who I loved so deeply and was so deeply connected to, the man I was named after and whose passing began my spiritual journey in life – that he and I were born on the very same day in the Hebrew calendar. There are no accidents. He was born to a father who was a communist and he lived in the time of the Holocaust when it was so hard to believe in God and His Torah, but somehow God had planned that he would have a grandson named after him and born on the same day who would return to the ancient faith of his fathers.

This is the story of the Jewish people today, a people slowly but steadily returning to their purpose and the fulfilling of God’s ancient promise to the world.

How this Book Began

I was traveling in Israel and my stay was unexpectedly extended. My friend Gedalia had rented a small apartment in the mountains of the north in the Holy city of Tsfat. He decided not to go to Tsfat and offered it me for a few weeks. Tsfat is an ancient city of cobblestone streets where the greatest masters of Kabbalah walked and the teaching of Kabbalah flourished.

It was a small two bedroom apartment and I could not help but think of a friend I had spoken with in Jerusalem who was also in need of accommodations. I was a little reluctant to invite him, because I knew his presence would disrupt my unique opportunity to study, pray and meditate in this holy place, but God had other plans. I was only there a few days, and my friend whose name is Moshe, showed up at my door. Our mutual friend Simcha had seen him in Tsfat and brought him to my apartment to visit, and so I invited him to stay. A month later we decided to rent an apartment in Tsfat together, which happened to be next to the site of the ancient school of wisdom where Shem and Ever taught, figures from the book of Genesis who lived in the time of Noah and Abraham; it was the very site where Jacob took refuge for fourteen years when he fled from his brother Esau.

Moshe is a Torah scholar and healer. He is an operatic tenor and when he sings and prays at the Western Wall he can be heard over hundreds of other people. Moshe was close with a sage named Yisroel Ber Odessa, or the “Saba” (the grandpa). The Saba walked upon the earth until the age of one hundred and six. Moshe said that the Saba was not of this world. He was someone who perfected himself in the service of God and to be with him was to feel like you were sitting by one of the patriarchs, Abraham, Issac or Jacob.

The Saba is a well known figure in Israel today. In 1922 when he was thirty years old he received “a letter from heaven.” This letter contained a communication from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a great figure in Torah who died in 1810.

I had never considered this story seriously, but Moshe said that this short note contained the secret of the Torah and the key to the redemption of the world. It seemed absolutely incredulous and for years I had just ignored Moshe when he spoke of this. However, when I saw him in Jerusalem his words began to have a strange effect on me.

During the many months we spent together through the cold winter and hard rains in Tsfat, we sat in our freezing cold apartment in the mountains and were warmed by the Torah secrets he shared with me. Slowly my soul opened and his words began to enter into my heart.

During this time I began to become aware that this friend of mine was a very special individual. On the outside he appears like a normal person, a jovial, warm and friendly man who didn’t seem to have any “spiritual” inclinations. But after living and speaking with him for many months, I discovered that my friend was like an angel. He selflessly traveled from place to place helping others with health issues, family and personal problems. He is a naturopath, and he has a remarkable spiritual ability to know exactly what was going on in a person’s body and what particular foods or herbs could heal him. He regularly was able to heal people when other doctors had failed and had given up hope. I watched as he healed a women over several months with a severe and life-threatening case of high blood pressure. I saw her before and after the treatment and it was a witnessing of the revival of the dead before my very eyes.

Moshe also has a spiritual gift of intuition to know how to help people in other ways, as if he was guided by heaven with just the right advice to heal personal issues or relationships. He helped me with many personal issues that were blocking me and seemed to open up the gates to help me flourish in my life. His advice did not come in soft and spiritual ways, but in short quips which I did not listen to at first, until I began to realize that he was sent like an angel to help me.

The main gate he opened for me was that of faith. He did this by explaining to me the secret of the “letter from heaven.” The message of this letter is rather simple. It says to serve God with joy and stresses our connection with the great holy man, Rebbe Nachman, and then writes the name Nachman according to a Kabbalistic formula: Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman (Uman is the city of his burial).

Shortly after meeting my friend Moshe I had a dream in which the Saba came to me and with his beaming smile told me his message personally. He told me how truly important my happiness and everyone else’s’ happiness and joy is to God. I had never experienced a dream like this before. I understood that it was not merely a dream, but in fact this great, holy man had come to speak to me. Moshe told me that it was our task to spread the Saba’s message to America. I didn’t know what he meant. But eventually this simple message he taught me from the Saba opened up the gate of my understanding. I then discovered for myself how indeed this “letter from heaven” and the Kabbalistic name Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman was the key to understanding the Torah and its secrets.

Two thousand years ago, the great Kabbalist and sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar (the primary source for the Kabbalah), prophesied that the world would be saved by a song that would be expressed in a special Kabbalistic formula in Hebrew letters (Tikune Zohar, 51). Two hundred years ago Rebbe Nachman told his followers that this song of redemption would be revealed in the future (Lekutei Morahran II, 8).

The Torah is a song and the entire history of Jewish spirituality is the unfolding of its melody. The masters of Kabbalah and the great Jewish sages explored its depths; but the ultimate purpose of this song is for its music to be heard by the entire world. Not everyone can be a sage, a scholar, or mystic, but their revelations must be revealed to all.

The song of redemption is a key that will take the entire depths of the Torah, its mysteries, and healing power and bring it to the world in a way that can inspire the simplest child. This song is Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman as revealed in “the letter from heaven.”

The Kabbalistic formula Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman expresses the essence of the entire Torah and purpose of creation. The Torah teaches that the ultimate purpose of creation is for man to reach his perfection and ascend to a level above the angels to be a partner with God. The letter from heaven expresses in a Kabbalistic language that the soul of Moses has reached this level and therefore the world has reached its completion. In other words, the letter comes to announce to imminent redemption of the world.

The key to the world’s redemption is through the perfected soul of Moses. The perfected man is called in Hebrew the True Tzaddik. The True Tzaddik is the manifestation of God’s light of love and healing in the world. God is infinite and beyond the grasp and knowledge of man. We experience God by becoming like God. And we become like God by living a life of righteousness in the way of the Tzaddik.

The Tzaddik lives in purity and holiness and this brings him into union with God. His soul becomes as it were a window for the infinite to shine through. This purity and clarity is the Tzaddik’s perfection. The soul of the Tzaddik functions as a window through which shines the light of God into the world. It is this connection that sustains creation.

Any individual is capable of achieving this same relationship. In order to come close to God we must follow the path of the Tzaddik, live in righteousness, and purify our souls. It is through this purity that we are able to receive and experience this light and unity in our individual lives. The True Tzaddik brings this light into the entire world and inspires and enlightens us to receive this light. We will explain in more detail later that the Tzaddik is not God, but he is the pure, spiritual channel through which we are able to connect to this light. This role gives the Tzaddik a unique role and responsibility within creation.

The Torah teaches that the souls of the tzaddikim have even greater power after death. Their power is to pray on behalf of man to draw down blessings from God into our individual lives to help us in all that we need: in health, protection from all harm, livelihood, marriage, children and spiritual development. There are thousands of tzaddikim who have lived and they continue to help radiate God’s goodness into the world. There are also many tzaddikim living today. However, there is one called the True Tzaddik who is the greatest of all, and this is Moses, for he had the merit to bring God’s Torah into the world.

According to the tradition we shall share with you, Rebbe Nachman was the fifth and final incarnation of Moses in the world (Biur Halekotim, at the end of Torah 22). The name Nachman means “consolation” and “healing” in Hebrew, and so the name of this great holy man is our consolation for the long pain of exile and suffering in this world and the source of healing that will bring the perfection of man. For Rebbe Nachman in his lifetime brought into the world the hidden aspects of the Torah that reveal openly to all mankind the path to God and human perfection, that is, the keys to redemption.

The essence of this book is that we need the soul of Moses as a connecting point between humanity and God. The soul of Moses is the power of love and revelation in the world, it connects heaven and earth. Although humanity needs a human being, a leader to connect us to God, this does not separate us from God in any way. The ultimate teaching of Rebbe Nachman is that the highest form of spirituality is the simple act of secluding oneself and speaking one’s heart directly to God. In other words, each person is supposed to follow in the path of Moses and speak directly to God. By cultivating this relationship with the Creator we have the opportunity to participate in the work of the tzaddikim to bring the light of God into the world and receive inspiration and wisdom to guide our personal lives.

The Kabbalistic formula and song Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman is the key that opens the gate to genuine healing, true joy, and closeness to God and the ancient holy sages. We will explain its meaning in more detail, but this introduction to the song will serve as a gateway to the wisdom of Moses and Rebbe Nachman and all the great sages of Israel, and to the secrets of the Torah that we wish to share with you in this book.

The Hidden Message

Three thousand two hundred and fifty-three years ago God gave the Torah to Moses to give to the Jewish people. The Torah is a message for humanity, and the Jewish people are its guardians. Nonetheless, this message has been hidden and obscured through the course of history. The Knowledge of God will begin to reveal the keys to understanding the message of the Torah and how it is bringing humanity across the storm tossed ocean of troubles to its promised redemption.

The message is simply:

God is the Creator of the world. He created the world for man, and all the events of history are directed towards a purpose to bring creation to its completion and perfection.

This completion is characterized by one thing — wisdom — the consciousness of God and the clear recognition of His love and goodness and the goodness of His creation.

God is creating a world where there will be no evil and where His absolute love for all life is fully revealed and felt by every being. There will be no wars, no hunger, no disease. Humanity will live in perfect harmony with itself, and with all creatures and the environment. Human beings will rejoice in the wonder and joy of existence, and this joy will steadily increase in its fullness and satisfaction. We will all grow in our living knowledge and closeness with the Creator, and we will spend our lives deepening this wisdom and thanking and blessing God for these awesome gifts He is bestowing upon us and for the simple miracle of being alive.

Although many traditions hint or speak of such an end of time, the Jewish tradition has received a detailed explanation of the stages and steps necessary in this process, the reasons for each stage, and the time and nature for the world to reach its final completion.

God created the world in such a way that His love and goodness is often hidden by the painful nature of our experience. God hid himself so that there could be a world of life and death, good and evil. This allows for freedom. The purpose of freedom is for man to choose life and goodness and thereby bring greater God consciousness back into creation. This process of choosing life over death and good over evil transforms physical existence from a place where God is hidden into a realm of revelation until ultimately the knowledge of God will fill the earth like water covers the sea (Isaiah, 11:9).

This is the purpose of creation and history. This time is called the redemption. It is the time when God will reveal that although He has appeared to have turned His face away from His world, He has been ever present guiding the creation through a process of birth into the magnificent image we have described.

All the terror and chaos and pain and suffering that we see is called the birth pangs of this process (Ketubot). Just as a woman must go through a most painful labor, so the entire creation is also going through such a process. Today we are living in the end of history we the very destructive power of humanity has reached a point where man lives in constant danger of destroying his entire world and the natural environment. The fear and terror we all feel at the constant sight of this is the screams of our world in the final moments of its labor.

The ultimate birth will be the revelation of the miraculous and Godly nature of our existence. The danger we experience is the result of the lowest aspects of human nature dominating our existence, the desire for consumption and greed and ambition to dominate our brother. These are the instincts of nature that stem from our animal-like desire.

The birth will be a revelation of Godliness in the world. We will perceive directly that we are not subject to the complete domination of nature and animal-like forces. Mankind will directly perceive that there is a Creator and that He is fully in control of every aspect and event of existence, and that there is no escape from this reality. We will see that none of the problems that we have created through our animalistic desires can be solved through human reason. They can only be solved when human beings begin to transform their nature and begin to openly accept their role as being channels for the miraculous power of the Creator. In other words, in the very near future, God will begin to reveal His direct control over nature, and He will do this as He promised to do thousands of years ago, through the children of Israel and their King.

This revelation of God and the way to it is called the Revelation at Mount Sinai. The revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai was experienced by all the children of Israel, but it was Moses alone who ascended Mount Sinai and spent two periods of 40 days without sleep or food or water learning the Torah of God.

The written Torah is called the revealed Torah. The Torah captures the complete revelation, but the full expression of this revelation and teaching to Moses was concealed. In other words, the spiritual revelation of Moses was not written down. It has been passed down from teacher to student throughout history as commentary on the written Torah. It also has been transmitted to holy and righteous men through prophecy, that is, spiritual revelation and communications from angels and the souls of holy teachers who come to maintain and advance the spiritual life of the Torah in the world.

The central figure in this revelation is Moses. This is equally true both in the past and in the future to come. Whatever was or will be revealed to anyone was first revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is the foundation of the Torah and Jewish Law.

Moses is not simply a historical figure. Moses is revelation. He is the living spiritual power of God consciousness at the center of creation. This is the essence of the teaching of the Jewish spiritual tradition called Kabbalah.

Few people throughout history have known this secret teaching and its significance. This is true both in the Jewish and world. Today we live in an era of revelation and it is fitting for this knowledge to spread throughout the world in order to truly understand the Torah, to clarify the world’s religions and the purpose of life.

The Jewish people and their observance of the Torah present an exemplary role of morality and dedication to community and family and religious piety. However, few today look to the Jewish people as the spiritual light inspiring the world. The world looks to Jews as leaders in banking, science, law, medicine, entertainment, comedy but when it comes to wisdom it generally looks elsewhere.

This fact is the consequence of exile. The Jewish people have not only been in exile physically, we have been in exile spiritually, which means that we are separated from who we are and our mission in the world. That mission is as the prophet Isaiah says to be a light to the nations.

After over two thousand years of physical exile, the Jewish people have not chosen to actively spread their wisdom in a revealed form, either to themselves or to the world. The non-Jewish world has been perceived as the threat to our survival, and little has been done to influence our surroundings. Instead, we have tried to shelter and protect ourselves from being influenced by our surroundings.

Secondly, the deepest secrets and greatest wisdom has historically been reserved for select few. Because of this even the average religious and learned Jew knows very little of the deeper vision of the Torah and the purpose of creation, except for the general principles.

Those who study the Jewish tradition, Jew and Gentile can easily miss the deeper meaning of the Torah because the Torah is written in a way that conceals its secrets. Consequently, many who read the Torah conclude that it is uninterested with spirituality and presents a picture of an unmerciful God. The Torah also de-emphasizes our connection and dependence on others in our spiritual relationship to God. And so, unlike other religions, the emphasis in Jewish life has not been on a leader, but the actual practice and knowledge of the Torah. The truth is that the Torah contains the light and wisdom of God to heal the world and provide for all its needs. The exile of the Jewish people and the destruction of its Temple has hidden its light.

In the last several hundred years a new light has emerged that is reigniting the Jewish people and transforming the Jewish soul. This is the light of remarkable spiritually advanced leaders who have declared that the time of redemption has begun, and these teachers have begun to reveal the deeper meaning of the Torah to the mass of Jewish people. This caused a revolution within the Jewish world that has gone through several periods of resistance from the conservative voices that seek to maintain the vision of exile, and have not awoken to this new light (which is the original light of the Torah that has been hidden through our exile).

Nonetheless, this light has gained a foundation within the Torah observant world, and it is consistently being revived and reinvigorated. It is the light that is slowly transforming and preparing the Jewish people for its ultimate role in history. When the Jewish people finally receive this light they will be able to rise to the occasion and truly be a light to the nations spreading the living knowledge of God to the world and the purpose of creation.

The essence of this teaching is the revelation of the role of the Perfected Righteous Man in the world, that is, the role of Moses. King Solomon’s says that, The Righteous Man is the foundation of the world. The Torah teaches that there will never arise in history a prophet as great as Moses. He is this truly perfected human being. Moses is not merely a historical figure in the Jewish religion, but in fact his soul is the connecting point between humanity and God.

According to the deeper meaning of this teaching the soul of Moses is literally the power of spiritual revelation in the world. This revelation manifests itself in history through the incarnations of the great visionaries in Jewish history who have each contributed to the spiritual evolution that is leading to the perfection of humanity. The goal of this evolution is to enlighten the world with the knowledge of God. The importance of this idea illuminates the deeper meaning and significance of the Jewish Bible in a way that brings clarity, coherence, and contemporary relevance to Moses’ revelation at Mount Sinai.

It is through the soul of Moses that the secret and deeper meaning of the Torah and the purpose of history has been preserved. It is the aim of this book to reveal the basic message of this tradition. In order to do this we will need to clarify several important aspects of the Torah that are not widely known or well understood

The Role of Moses

The nature of the Righteous sage (the Tzaddik)

The Secret Kabbalistic tradition

The Merciful Nature of God

Reincarnation

The process of Redemption

This will provide both the Jew and Gentile a deeper and richer more understanding of the Torah, its spiritual depth, the meaning and precision of its understanding of history, its spiritual vitality, its role for helping us understanding history and the purpose of life, and give us the power and knowledge to participate more actively in the perfection of ourselves and the world.

In the first part we will give an overview of the spiritual principles that explain the deeper meaning of the Torah and the life of Moses. In the second part, we will give an introduction to both the hidden and revealed teachings that are taught by the Kabbalah that allow us to become more active participants in Moses’ mission to enlighten the world with the knowledge of God.

The Torah teaches that there are thirty-six unique individuals hidden in every generation who are entrusted with leading humanity to its spiritual destiny. In Hebrew these thirty-six people are called the Lamed Vav Tzaddikim. Among these thirty-six tzaddikim there is one individual who is known as the True Tzaddik (or the Tzaddik with a capital T). The True Tzaddik is not necessarily revealed and known. He may be a simple craftsman whose wisdom and greatness remains hidden. However, this Tzaddik is the spiritual leader of the world. Let us explain.

The Torah begins with the words, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The “heavens” are not only the sky above us; they are also the spiritual realms above the earth from which flows the creative life-force that sustains the earth below. In this way of understanding the heavens are above the earth in a metaphorical sense meaning more spiritual. Between the spiritual heavens and the physical earth there is a special kind of being that partakes of both the spiritual nature of the heavens and the physical nature of earth – this is man.

The center point of creation and the meeting place of heaven and earth is the soul of man. Man unites heaven and earth and completes the creation. This is why he was created on the sixth and final day of God’s creating. Man completes creation because it is through the soul of man that the creative life-force flows from heaven to earth and sustains the entire physical world.

In the physical world each of us is part of a family; this family is part of a greater group of families called a tribe; tribes are part of a greater whole called a nation; all the nations of the world are part of the whole called humanity.

On each of these levels there are individual souls that lead the families and tribes and nations of souls. It is very similar to ordinary life. For example, we all are shaped by our mother and father in our likes and dislikes and our general way of looking at life. On a larger scale, there are individuals who have great vision and power and influence larger groups of people. Art and music is a good example of this. There are figures in music like Duke Ellington in jazz or Bob Dylan and the Beatles in rock who shaped entire generations of musicians. In history, there are people like Abraham and Moses who have influenced nearly every person who ever lived after them.

A similar structure exists on a spiritual level. Each of us has his or her own particular individual soul, but each of our souls is part of a family of souls (these are not necessarily people in our physical family; they are other souls that are similar to us in our way of looking at life). Each of those families of souls is connected to a tribe. The tribes of souls come together to form a nation; and each of those nations of souls is connected in a special way we will describe.

On a physical level a person is part of a family. That family is a unit. The families and tribes are part of a nation, and the nation is a greater unit. The leader is one separate individual that unites the separate units. On a spiritual level a soul that is part of a family has a more intimate spiritual unity with the other members of its family. On the level of tribe and nation there are again higher levels of spiritual unity. On each of these levels of family, tribe and nation there are souls that are the leaders that channel life and inspiration to their group. On the highest level all souls of all nations join together to form a perfect unity under the spiritual influence of one spiritual nation of souls and one particular individual soul. On this level all humanity becomes a perfect unity that has a different kind of life and function in the higher worlds of spirituality – a life as one living being.

In other words, our individual souls are connected to higher worlds and function in the spiritual life of the creation in ways that we are not necessarily aware of. Those individuals who train themselves in spiritual disciplines become more aware of the greater unity of life, their connection with other human beings and creation, and the connection between the soul and God. The more one is aware of this knowledge, the more one can become an active participant in the workings of creation and the purpose of life.

The souls that lead and unite people on higher spiritual worlds are called tzaddikim. A tzaddik is a holy and righteous man who devotes his life to God, the Torah, and prayer. The individual soul that unites all souls is called the True Tzaddik. This soul has come into the world in the lives of remarkable men such as Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and King David and King Solomon (as well as many others, some who are known and others who are unknown). The True Tzaddik, because he unites all souls, possesses knowledge of the purpose every particular soul who has ever lived. All the tzaddikim in general also share in this knowledge (but in a less perfect way), since their job is to help guide people in their lives to their particular destiny.

The Tzaddik and the Miraculous

The tzaddik is a spiritual leader of the world and is able not only to channel the creative life-force of the world, but because of his devotion and attachment to God he brings Godliness into the world. The quality of Godliness is an expression of the presence and light of God, which is above nature. Consequently, the life of the tzaddik is characterized by miracles.

There are thousands of stories of the miracles of the tzaddikim in Jewish history from every place the Jews have lived and visited. One of the first stories ever told was that of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. Abraham’s father Terach had a shop that sold statues of idols. Abraham stood alone in Babylon and sought out the truth of existence that had been forgotten in his day — that there is a Creator and that He is one and there is no other god that we should worship. Abraham spoke out against idolatry and sought to awaken his generation to the One God. He went and smashed all the idols in his father’s store. Nimrod, the first tyrant and dictator of Babylonia imprisoned Abraham and threw him in a furnace filled with flames. God protected Abraham with angels who protected him for three days within the furnace in the sight of Nimrod and his soldiers.

One may think that such stories are just legends, but such miracle stories exist to this day. I will share a story from modern times that reveals the power and importance of the tzaddikim. During World War II, the Germans under the direction of their brilliant general Rommel led a division that fought their way through North Africa and against the British in Egypt. Their destination was to conquer the Holy Land of Israel in order to carry out Hitler’s, may his name be erased, evil plans against the Jewish people. The Germans were seemingly unstoppable.

The Germans began to advance into Palestine to attack the British. At this time the people of Israel were in a state of terror and fear. Two Kabbalists by the name of Rabbi Yehuda Fataya and Rabbi Salman Mutzafi went to the grave of Rachel the wife of Jacob and performed special prayers, prayers that were immediately answered. The Germans advanced and the British withdrew from their camp in the desert of Israel (then called Palestine). The Germans took over their camp and discovered a reserve of water. The Germans during this time had weak supply lines that were restricting their army. Their soldiers who were filled with thirst from their marches through the desert heat found the British water reserve and began to drink. The water turned out not to be drinking water and the entire army became terribly sick. This vastly weakened the Axis campaign and consequently their plan to attack Israel was thwarted. This was a genuine miracle.

In ancient times, another army sought to approach the Holy Land. Alexander the Great was leading his army in the conquest of the entire ancient world. When he reached the walls of the city of Jerusalem, the High Priest of the Temple, Shimon the Tzaddik came out of the walls to greet Alexander. To the surprise of his army, Alexander the Great, the ruler of the world, dismounted from his horse and bowed before Shimon the Tzaddik. His generals turned to him and asked him why he gave such honor to the priest. Alexander responded by saying that before every one of his successful battles he had a dream in which Shimon the Tzaddik had appeared to him.

Later in history after Alexander’s empire was divided, the Syrian Greek King sought to destroy the Temple and the Jewish way of life. However, in the miraculous wars commemorated by the holiday of Chanukah, a small band of Jewish rebels led by the Kohen Matisyahu, were able to overthrow one of the most powerful armies in the Mediterranean. The miracles against the Nazis and the Greeks are no different than the miracles that have assisted the Jews to survive throughout history against every empire that has sought its annihilation. The ultimate weapon of the Jewish people has been its prayers and the prayers of its tzaddikim.

The same is true today as witnessed by the entire world on television in recent years as Saddam Hussein in 1991 launched 40 scud missiles over a six week period at strategic targets in Israel without any serious damage and causing the direct death of one Israeli citizen. This war ended on the eve of Purim, the holiday commemorating the foiled plan of the Persian leader Haman to destroy the entire Jewish people. According to the BBC, in the most recent war between Israel and Hezbolla, 3700 Hezbolla missiles were launched into Israel killing 43 civilians. Nothing “supernatural” occurred. However, it was a “miracle” that in these recent wars casualties remained relatively few.

There are two kinds of miracles, the revealed and the hidden. A revealed miracle is one like the splitting of the Red Sea. In this miracle God overthrew the laws of nature in a way that was clear to the eyes of the entire world. However, the Torah teaches us that the greatest miracle is nature itself. Every act of nature is an expression of the work of the hand of God. The second kind of miracle is one hidden within the framework of nature. One therefore has to look and think more carefully to perceive these hidden miracles.

Someone told me a story that describes this phenomenon. This individual went to a bar in Israel and saw an old friend of his. The friend told him of a story that occurred to him on patrol in the border in Lebanon. “You know I am an accountant and I was never good at anything in the army. During the war I was on patrol one night in Lebanon with two other soldiers and out of nowhere I turned my rifle and shot into the dark. Out of the darkness an entire squad of Lebanese soldiers comes out towards us with their hands in the air. It turns out I had shot their commander right between the eyes.”

The most interesting thing about the story is that the man who told it was not religious and did not perceive anything “miraculous” about the event. If we look at the story carefully, we see that it is not natural for someone who has not talent as a soldier to be able to shoot someone in the dark between the eyes, no less in the dark and without even looking at his target. And it is not natural for an entire squad of soldiers to then immediately surrender to three soldiers. Clearly this was the hand of God, however, the hand of God working within the guise of natural events.

King David writes:

They have lyre and harp, timbrel and flute and wine at their feasts, and they do not notice God’s works, they do not see His handiwork.

King David teaches us here that we live in a world where all our needs are cared for and in which we enjoy the pleasures of this world, but this often blinds us from seeing the hand of God in the world.

Rebbe Nachman teaches that miracles, faith, tzaddikim, the Jewish people, and the land of Israel are all connected. This is because they all reveal God’s miraculous light within the world of nature. It is in the land of Israel with the Jewish people and their tzaddikim that we see open miracles that reveal this power that is greater than nature – the hand of the Creator of nature. The ability to see the miraculous is faith. We gain this power of faith by learning about and seeing the lives of truly Godly men.

The tzaddikim live a life of tremendous holiness that sanctifies their very physical bodies. So much so, that there are tzaddikim whose bodies are not affected by decay after their death. There are many well-known stories that tell of families that had to move the grave of a relative and discovered that the body of the tzaddik had not decayed. One of the greatest tzaddikim of the last few hundred years is called the Gra, an acronym for Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna. In modern times, the communists in Lithuania were building a highway over a Jewish cemetary. When the tractor came to the grave of the Gra, it could not move forward. After several attempts and accidents that occurred, the communists gave up and agreed to allow seven graves to be relocated. The ArtScroll biography of the Gaon of Vilna relates the following:

The three members of the chevrah kadisha charged with moving the bodies of these Torah giants approached their task with great trepidation. On the appointed day for digging up the graves, they fasted and beseeched those about to be moved for forgiveness for disturbing their resting place. They first had to dig up the graves and then place the bodies, which had been wrapped only in the traditional burial shrouds, in coffins for transfer to the new cemetery. When the three finished opening the Gaon’s grave and lifted him into a coffin, they were astounded to find that his body had not degenerated nor rotted at all in nearly two centuries. They were able to discern that even the hairs on his beard remained unchanged from the day of his petirah. [death]

In contemporary times, the leader of the Chabad Chassidim, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was a well-known tzaddik and miracle worker. In the 1980s the Rebbe, as he was known, received more mail than anyone in the United States besides the President. Thousands of Jews around the world consulted him about practical affairs, health and business issues. There were hospitals in Israel where doctors would not perform an operation on a member of the Chabad group without having them first speak to the Rebbe because they knew of his remarkable spiritual gift.

One of the followers of the Rebbe is named Joseph Isaac Gutnick. He is an Australian businessman and the head of the Western Mining Company. One day Mr. Gutnick brought the Lubavitcher Rebbe a map to look at to get advice regarding a diamond mining business. The Rebbe looked at the map and told him exactly where to do the mining. For almost ten years they continued to mine this area without any success. Gutnick and his business venture was at the edge of bankruptcy. The Rebbe spoke up and told his students, “If anyone wants to be rich invest in this company.” Shortly after they succeeding in finding the diamond mine and Mr. Gutnick became one of the richest men in Australia and is today one of the foremost philanthropists in the Jewish world.

The greatest miracle of a tzaddik, however, is his ability to bring a person closer to God. My teacher Shmuel Levy was raised in Morocco and later in Israel. Like many young Israelis he was distracted from his tradition by the lure of the contemporary world. Shmuel was an avid guitarist and was more interested in his ambitions to succeed in the world of rock music than learning the Torah. When he was in his young twenties he visited Brooklyn and a relative who was a student of the Chabad Rebbe. Shmuel went to see him teach Torah before thousands of listeners. The very sight of the tzaddik brought Shmuel to thoughts of returning to God. Looking at a tzaddik is looking into the living presence of the Torah and God’s light. Shmuel was on his way to Europe where he was developing a career as a professional guitarist. In Europe shortly after leaving Brooklyn he found himself in a room with a friend who was showing him a video. Suddenly in this video was a short clip of the Chabad Rebbe.

“There were those eyes of wisdom looking directly at me through the video, through the television in a small apartment in Europe. And my friend wasn’t even Jewish. I felt that the Rebbe had followed me to Europe and reached out to me through this television to touch me.”

Just the sight of those eyes reminded Shmuel of the holiness and truth he saw in the tzaddik’s presence and he booked himself a ticket and returned to Brooklyn where he stayed for five years praying everyday with the Rebbe and attending his Torah lectures. The lectures were mostly in Yiddish which Shmuel did not understand. Nonetheless, he attended nearly every weekly public lecture for five years in order to behold the eyes and be in the presence of a true man of God.

God literally gives the world to the Tzaddik. The Torah teaches us that when he speaks, God must listen. In other words, God is obligated to heed the prayers of the Tzaddik. The Tzaddik is part of the system of higher worlds and the purpose of creation, and his prayers have a kind of power in this system that we cannot always comprehend.

The main work of the tzaddik is prayer. In prayer we ask God to change nature. If someone is sick, we request that he become healthy. If someone is poor, we request that he become wealthy. The change does not have to take place in a miraculous way, and most often the change seems “natural.” However, the prayer is above nature. It is a request to recreate a natural condition. Prayer has this power because it is the belief, the faith in a power that is higher and greater than nature.

A tzaddik is a special being who possesses an extraordinary connection to God, and through this connection is able to utter blessings and prayers that have remarkable power. The tzaddik is a being who reveals that there is a God in the world that controls nature. The tzaddik lives according to God’s will as expressed in the laws of the Torah. He lives in holiness and righteousness, connecting his thoughts and his will to the Creator. Through his purity of heart and intention, his prayers and blessings are received favorably in the eyes of the Creator.

The tzaddik has the deep faith and vision to see that this world is but a mask for the divine plan. He sees the hand of God in all events. It is not that the tzaddik does not suffer at the pain of this world. The tzaddik suffers all the pain of the world and it is this pain that fills his prayers with such power. But at the same time, the tzaddik has the faith and wisdom to see that God is also present in the suffering of the world, and so he maintains his perfect faith even when the God’s goodness is hidden from view. Despite the hiddenness, the tzaddik sees the hand of God always and remains connected to the Creator. This is because the tzaddik is a special being that connects heaven and earth.

Creation consists of various levels. There is the inanimate level of earth and rocks. Above this is the level of plants and then the animals. Above the animals is humans. Above humans is the realm of the angels, who carry out the will of God to bring sustenance to the world. Between humans and the angels are the tzaddikim. The tzaddikim are the highest beings in the earthly world and through their spiritual attainments they can raise up to the world of the angels and even surpass them. The angels have no freedom. A man who is able to overcome his animal nature and perform the will of God is able to stand above the angels in the scale of heaven. According to the Torah, this is the ultimate destiny of man.

The fulfillment of God’s plan of Creation depends upon the work of the tzaddikim and ultimately the True Tzaddik. The work of the tzaddikim ultimately depends on humanity connecting itself to its spiritual leader — the True Tzaddik. The Tzaddik’s job is to lift all the prayers of the world to the Creator and thus to draw down the greatest blessing into the world.

Each individual can connect to the power of the Tzaddik. In this way we gain greater power in our own prayers and come closer to a relationship with the Creator. By studying what a tzaddik is, we gain the vision of a life of faith, blessings, and miracles. We have the opportunity to look to the Tzaddik as a model of a perfected soul, one who has transformed his nature from animalistic drives to one of beneficent and holy intention. Through this connection, the light of his refinement penetrates our own life and helps to transform and refine our nature of its stubborn habits, cravings and bad character traits to a life of greater harmony and health.

The Day in the Life of a Tzaddik

The tzaddik grows in his holiness and closeness to God because he devotes his life to Torah and serving God. The day of a tzaddik begins at midnight. The point of midnight is when the gates of heaven open and God and all the tzaddikim of all time join together in the Garden of Eden to study the deepest mysteries of the Torah’s wisdom. The tzaddik rises out of bed in the midst of the night after a few hours sleep to participate in this spiritual light that is opening in the world. As he opens his eyes he thanks God for returning his soul to him from the world of sleep. He ritually washes his hands to start his day in purity and rises from bed. He recites his prayers upon awakening preparing for his day and thanking God for all that He has provided to give him life. and blesses Him for the opportunity to study His Torah. The tzaddik then goes to a natural spring where he performs a ritual immersion. A natural body of water is a place where we purify the body and reconnect to the spiritual through the element of water. By entering into the water we reenter the womb of life and renew our purity and connection to the source of all life.

As the rest of the world sleeps the tzaddik uses the peace and stillness of the night, to give his full concentration to the study of God’s laws and wisdom and the mysteries of creation. He goes into the dark night and looks up towards heaven and pours out his soul to His Creator, thanking God for the gifts of life, crying for all the pain and suffering that we must experience, and begging and pleading with God to overlook the wrongs we have done and to shine His light of mercy on His creatures.

An hour before dawn as the first rays of light come over the horizon, the tzaddik dons his prayer shawl and binds his phylacteries (tefilin) on his arm and on his head, as God commands every Jewish man to do. The phylacteries are special boxes that contain parchments written by the hand of a scribe that express the basic faith of the Jewish people, Hear Israel, the Infinite is our God, the Infinite is One. By binding them to our arms and our head, we literally connect the Torah to our hearts and mind physically. The Torah commands that its spiritual ideas be expressed in a physical way.

The tzaddik goes through the order of prayers established two thousand years ago and recited by every observant Jew. These prayers are structured according to the service that was done in the times of the Temple. The prayers of our mouth have become in the time of exile the substitute for the various sacrifices and songs performed by the priests and Leviim in the Temple.

These prayers are recited in the rhythm of the sunrise and culminate in the highest spiritual point in a silent prayer with the breaking of dawn. At the point of dawn, after the journey through the darkness of night, the light of the sun spreads out over the horizon and the world is renewed. This is the moment of the greatest expression of love during each day; it is this moment we silently face the Creator in the most intimate unity and bless Him and recite our most important prayers for the redemption of the world, as well as for our personal needs. After one or two hours of prayers in the morning the tzaddik begins his Torah study. The rest of his day is dedicated to immersing himself in the study of the Torah and whatever daily obligations he has to work, family or community.

Some tzaddikim remain hidden their entire lives. They appear as simple people, no different than other ordinary religious Jews, but their prayers sustain the world. Others are known to the community and devote their lives to teaching and giving advice to others on both practical and spiritual affairs, as well as making special prayers and blessings for those in need. During the day, King David decreed that we should say one hundred blessings. These blessings on food and various other aspects of life, as well as the afternoon, evening and bedtime prayers keep a Jew connected to the Torah in the midst of worldly life. King David wrote, I place God before me at all times. This is the foundation of the life of a tzaddik. Although he lives in the physical world, he looks upon every moment of his life as an intimate dialogue with God.

The Torah: Why God Tells Stories

In this section I would like to provide an introduction to what Torah is and how it connects us to God.

The first thing that one may wonder is: why the Torah begins with stories? Compared to other ancient books of wisdom or to modern books on science and physics, the Torah may seem rather simple. You might wonder how someone could devote their lives to studying such simple stories.

God tells stories because it is only through stories that we can grasp the infinite. Human reason can only grasp what is defined or finite. But where reason ends, the imagination begins, and it is through the power of the imagination in its purest form that we have some capacity to reach out to the infinite. God communicates prophecy through the imagination. The great prophets trained their minds to free their power of imagination from the desires of this world so that they could become pure receptacles for the visions communicated to them by God. The Torah presents stories that were communicated through prophecy to be shared with the entire world. These stories are simple so that every person can relate to them, from the smallest child to the wisest sage. Each letter and each word of each story contains infinite levels of communication and the person who studies the Torah, depending upon his sincerity and preparation, is able to connect in some way directly to the Creator.

The Torah presents the history of humanity and the Jewish people. It contains 613 commandments to the Jewish people and seven commandments to the nations of the world. These 613 commandments form the basis of Jewish life. This structure of law also allowed the Jewish nation to flourish under its Kings and Prophets. The laws include the foundation of spiritual life and practice, and also instruction in the details of practical life: in marriage, farming, business, and human relations. This aspect of the Torah is called its revealed meaning, in contrast to its hidden mystcal knowledge.

The Torah is not a regular book. It is a revelation of God’s presence in the world. God is infinite. He gave the Torah so that finite man could connect to Him. The Torah is God’s wisdom and infinite goodness compacted in a way that man can experience.

So how does this work? Let me present a metaphorical example. When I was nineteen my grandfather passed away. I missed him so terribly. As I explained in the earlier chapter, my grandfather was a famous jazz record producer. After his death, I became a jazz affectionado and a saxophonist. The saxophone was his favorite instrument. Though my grandfather was no longer in this world (even though I didn’t do it consciously) every time I listened to his jazz records or played my saxophone I was connecting to his soul.

The Torah works in a similar way. We connect to God by studying His words and performing the actions that express the essence of the Creator. God gave us the Torah so His infinite Being can be experienced within the finite world. The Torah is therefore a window to the infinite. God asks all people to live with kindness and justice. Therefore, when we do acts of kindness and justice, we are fulfilling the will of God – we are connecting to the Creator.

When we listen to music we can do so on many levels. We can just listen, or we can open our heart and soul to the deeper feelings and emotions of the composer and musician. In the same way the words, stories, and laws in the Torah, and the deeds that God commands us to do, are filled with infinite depths of meaning and spiritual emotion that reveal to us the awesome wonders and wisdom of higher spiritual worlds.

There are many books that can be read and experienced on deep levels. However, the person who devotes his life to the study and love of the Torah discovers a wisdom and awesomeness that is beyond the human. Looking into the Torah is looking into heaven.

The Torah literally contains hints of the entire history of creation. Every single human being, who they are, what their purpose is, every single event, your entire life, is hinted at in the letters of the Torah. Each letter in the Torah is a part of a code from which all of creation is manifested. Like a cell that contains a genetic code the information that sustains the life of an human being, the letters of the Torah are Creative forces that contain in unfathomable ways all of existence.

When one senses this creative power and sees that the wisdom of the Torah is unfathomable, that is truly beyond the comprehension of man, one is filled with awe. The awe is the experience of God.

When one studies the Torah they are looking at the power of life, and this power purifies and nurtures the soul, so that it becomes holy or Godly. This Godly quality gives a person closeness to God so that he can sense much more finely the presence of God in the world. His prayers are more powerful and he is able to draw down blessing into the world; he has knowledge of what God wants of us and what the future will bring is revealed to him.

Moses received the Torah and because of this he is unique. The Torah teaches us that no prophet who will ever live will ever equal the prophecy of Moses. This is because Moses received the Torah and all of its wisdom was taught to him directly by God. Everything we have described above is just a miniscule glimpse of the level of revelation and wisdom that was given to Moses.

In most English translations, Genesis begins with the sentence: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. However, a more accurate rendering is,

When God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was chaos and void and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God hovered above the waters, and God said, “Let there be light, and there was light…

Although it is not as dramatic, our more accurate translation emphasizes that the main point is not the creation of heaven and earth; the main point the Torah is emphasizing is the creation of light. The reason is because this light is the purpose of creation.

The Torah can be read on many levels. On the one hand it is a story of the creation of the world. However, the careful reader realizes that the sun, the stars, and the planets are not created until day four. God said “Let there be light” on the first day. Why is light created on the first day and the sun and stars created on the fourth day?

The reason is that the light of the first day is not ordinary light; it is the Light of God. (We will capitalize Light temporarily to distinguish spiritual light from physical light.) The revelation of God’s Light is the very purpose of creation.

A purpose is the end reason why you do something. The Torah begins with the creation of light because the Kabbalah teaches us that the end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning wedged in the end. In other words, God’s Light is the first thought at the beginning of creation, and the revelation of God’s Light is the completion and purpose of creation.

God’s Light is different than physical light. Physical light is something in nature that is most similar to God’s light and can help us to understand this spiritual reality. Physical light is a part of the natural world, but at the same time it has properties that seem to transcend nature. Light provides the power for life and growth on earth. In this way, it “seems” to be a power greater than nature. Light is unlike all the other physical things we experience. It is not a solid, liquid or gas. It cannot be grasped. Instead, it is the medium through which we perceive the world with the eyes (as we shall explain in a moment). Light is a remarkable unity of seven colors. Scientists tell us that light is mysteriously both a wave and a particle. It is by definition the fastest thing in the universe. And most astonishingly, Einstein taught us that everything that seems material is really energy. In other words, everything is in a way just light.

But the physical light that we see is only a lower manifestation of the spiritual Light of God. The physical light we talk about in science gives us hints to what true Light is. The True Light is the power behind creation, a remarkable unity, a spiritual reality that is ungraspable through the physical senses and is at the same time the reality of the physical world.

God’s Light is the ultimate power in the world. It is the actual source of life. It cannot be perceived directly, and yet the entirety of creation is nothing but this Light.

Here is an analogy that is essential for understanding the deepest aspects of God and spirituality. God is like the sun. The Sun is the ultimate source of all light in our world. However, the sun itself is not seen. We only see the light of the sun. In the same way, God is the Infinite Power of Creation, and mysteriously He gives His Light to His Creation. Creation is nothing more than the manifestation of God’s Light. We can experience God’s Light, but God Himself is ultimately unknowable.

God’s presence is revealed in the world as the manifestation of this spiritual Light. This Light is an expression of God’s goodness, wisdom, and love. It is a holy Light because it transcends nature. The more something in the world shares in these qualities of goodness, wisdom, love, and holiness, the more it reveals God’s Light, that is, God’s presence. God’s presence, however, is not God Himself. Just like the light of the sun is not the sun itself. The highest expression of God’s presence in the world is the perfected righteous man – the Tzaddik.

The second commandment within the Ten Commandments is not to worship idols. Idolatry is worshiping an image of God’s presence. The Torah teaches us that even when we see God’s light in the world we must remember that this is a reflection and not the true source. Therefore, we are forbidden from worshiping men, nature, or statues of man or nature. We must acknowledge the light of God that is in nature, but we use it to remember the Creator who is the only object of worship.

Since man himself has the greatest form and reality to express God’s light in the world, man is most tempted to worship other men or statues of them. This is most true when the man is a tzaddik and expresses such powerful light. But we are commanded to remember that anything in nature is a vessel for God’s light and not God Himself. The objects found within creation, inanimate, plants, animals, and man, are all vessels for God’s light.

Here there is a close analogy with physical light. Physical light itself cannot be seen by the human eye. What the eye perceives is the reflected light from a physical object. When we look at a green leaves of a tree, the color appears because that is the only one of the seven colors within light that is not absorbed by the leaves. In other words, the eye perceives the reflected light that is not absorbed by the leaves. We cannot see pure light. In order for light to be perceived it has to be perceived as a certain color. This occurs only when the full spectrum of light is reflected off an object and then reduced in some way.

In the same way, any person or object in the world functions as a vessel for God’s light. God is infinite and the finite object becomes the means by which that finite light is expressed in the finite world. In other words, in order for us to relate to God’s light, that light has to be reduced, just like physical light is reduced.

Religions such as Buddhism and Christianity contain truth, but they err in this very important way in that they use the images of man to be objects of worship. They are powerful religions because the images of great men are powerful channels of spiritual light. However, that light cannot be holy if it is done in a way that contradicts the laws that God gave us for His worship. In other words, people can receive inspiration and spirituality through these religions, but they cannot bring a person or the world to perfection and completion because they do not express the pure will of God. This is not to say there is no truth in them. There is truth in them, but that truth has to be purified from the aspect of the religion that violates the Torah.

The laws of the Torah teache the ways in which God wants us to relate to His light in the world. These laws create the conditions of holiness that allow God’s light its fullest expression in the world. The greatest expression of this light is through God’s Prophet and chosen leader. The greatest leader we have ever known is Moses. He was chosen to be the recipient (that is, the vessel) to bring the full revelation of God’s wisdom to humanity. Moses not only received that revelation, but he became that revelation. His life of holiness and complete dedication to God was the perfect expression of God’s qualities of goodness, wisdom, love, and holiness in physical reality. God teaches us to have faith in His prophets, but never to worship them.

There is a second secret in the creation of light that we discussed above. We saw that when God said, Let there be light, He was revealing the very purpose of Creation. After the Creation of light the Torah says,

God saw that the light, that it was good.

When Moses was born, the same phrase is used. His mother Jocheved “saw Moses that he was good” (in the Hebrew it is the same exact phrase). The commentators note that this is because when he was born light filled the room. We know also that when Moses descended from Mount Sinai his face radiated with light. This light is the presence of God in the world. In Hebrew it is called the Shechinah.

The Torah therefore, begins with the creation of light (that is the light of the Tzaddik Moses), and the Torah ends with the death of Moses. In other words, the entire Torah from beginning to end is the story of Moses. This is because the Tzaddik is the fulfillment of God’s desire to bring His Light into creation. Moses is the greatest tzaddik who ever lived, and therefore he is the most powerful vessel for expressing the Light of God within creation.

Every tzaddik is an expression or manifestation of this Godly light in the world. Moses is the tzaddik of all tzaddikim; his life is the expression of the highest and purest essence of this light. This light is the light above nature, the light of the miraculous. The tzaddik lives above nature. He is truly connected to God, and through him all the prayers of the world are lifted and fulfilled. The tzaddik has the power to change nature through his prayers and blessings. He commands and God listens. But only to a point. The entire world is sustained by the existence of the Tzaddik in the world. This is because he is the manifestation of God’s purpose in the world, the revelation of God’s light and truth. If God’s purpose was not being fulfilled, then there would be no need for a world. Therefore, there always exist a Tzaddik and according to the Rabbis, thirty-six tzaddikim through whose merit the world continues to exist.

This is why humans seek religion and spirituality through the image of man, because men do manifest the light of God. However, the Torah comes to refine this so that we recognize the difference between man and God. At the same time, there is an essential role for the truly righteous to help us connect to God. The source of this power in the world is through Moses, but as this power comes into the world it often falls into darkness and idolatry.

The Light of the Messiah

Two thousand years ago, after the destruction of the Second Temple, there lived a rabbi named Akiva. Rabbi Akiva was an astonishing man. He did not start studying Torah formally until forty years old. Through the great sacrifice of his wife, Rabbi Akiva devoted himself to learning, beginning with small children learning the Hebrew alphabet. He went on to become the greatest sage of his generation and is one of the links in history that preserve the Torah’s oral tradition before the writing of the Mishna and Talmud.

Rabbi Akiva believed that a great Jewish warrior named bar Cochba was the messiah. He encouraged his fellow Jews to join in bar Cochba’s rebellion against the Roman occupation, but the rebellion failed. The question then is how could Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest sages of Jewish history have erred in believing that bar Cochba was the Messiah? The answer is that bar Cochba did possess the light of the messiah. However, Jewish law tells us that the messiah must reunite the Jewish people and rebuild the Temple. Before he completes these tasks, one can only be considered a potential messiah.

The sages teach us that there is a potential messiah in every generation. This potential leader can only fulfill his mission if it is decreed by God. There are certain generations when a greater light comes into the world. This was true in the generation of Rabbi Akiva. When this light comes into the world, it must find a place to express itself. It is a kind of spiritual law of conservation. If the generation of Jewish people are not worthy to bring this light into the world then this light is expressed through the Gentile nations.

This does not mean that God chooses another nation. God promises numerous times in the Torah that he will not abandon His chosen people.

I will remember My covenant with Jacob; also My covenant with Itzach and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember, and the land will I remember… Despite even this, when they will be in the land of their enemies, I will not have despised them nor will I have loathed them to destroy them, nor to nullify My covenant with them, for I am the Lord, their God. And I will remember for their sake the covenant of the ancients whom I brought out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, so as to be a God to them; I am Hashem…(Leviticus 26, 44-5))

Hashem, your God, will return your captivity and show you mercy; He will return you and gather you from all the nations that Hashem, your God, dispersed you there. If your displaced will be at the end of the heavens even from there will the Lord, your God, gather you; and even from there will He take you. And the Lord, your God, will bring you to the land that your forefathers inherited, and you shall inherit it (Deuteronomy 30, 3-5)

The times that the light of the Torah cannot be fully realized by the Jewish people is a consequence of exile, and this exile is also a part of God’s plan for history. When this light is received by the nations it is expressed in an indirect way. For example, when the first Temple was destroyed 422 B.C.E., it was the very time of the great flourishing of wisdom in the world, and the peak of the Classical era of Greece. The philosopher Plato was born in 427 B.C.E., which is five years after the Temple’s destruction. Plato lived until 347 B.C.E., which is five years after the beginning of the construction of the Second Temple in 352 B.C.E. His life therefore overlaps completely the time of the Babylonian Exile, and this is not an accident. Plato was the recipient of the wisdom that was sent out from Israel with the destruction of the Temple into the nations.

Plato is the greatest exponent of ancient wisdom. In the ancient world it was Aristotle who was known as The Philosopher; Plato was known as The Theologian. This is because in addition to his philosophical ideas, Plato’s works expounded the ancient world’s religion. Plato was the first person in the Greek world to write an extensive body of wisdom literature. Prior to his works the philosophers wrote in short poems. Plato gave the world an entire body of dialogues that portrayed his teacher Socrates in philosophical discussion with the famous teachers of Greece and preserved the wisdom of the ancients on nearly every aspect of human life.

Plato’s final work was called the Laws. In this book, he sought to show a practical way to build a nation, as opposed to his Republic which was merely a theoretical work whose purpose was the discussion of the nature of the soul. In other words, in the Laws Plato sought to do through human reason and spiritual wisdom what the Torah had taught the Jewish people through revelation.

Plato’s philosophy as expressed in his Dialogues became the basis of all Western spirituality until today. Plato did not replace the Torah. However when Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people sent into exile, so also was the light of the Torah and its wisdom. This light of Torah that goes into exile it is expressed imperfectly. The genuine expression of God’s wisdom and truth is through the revelation of the Torah in prophecy.

The attempts of man to reach truth and wisdom through reason separate from the revelation of the Torah are imperfect approximations of God’s wisdom, but nonetheless profound. The sages teach us, “If one says that there is truth among the nations believe him; if one says there is Torah, do not.” The revelation of the Torah through prophecy is God’s gift to the Jewish people. God chose the Jewish people to make them a nation of his holy people to teach the world. In the future, all the different forms of expression of wisdom and religion among the nations will be reunited and clarified in the light of the Torah.

The light that came down into the world in the time of Rabbi Akiva is the light of the messiah. The potential messiah of that time bar Chochba was unable to fulfill his job. After the destruction of the Second Temple and the failure of the bar Chochba rebellion (132-135 C.E.), the light and opportunity to bring the messiah was lost. But the energy of this light had to find expression in the world. This gave Christianit the opportunity to gain influence. Christianity is therefore a reflection and imperfect image of the Torah’s messianic vision, just as Greek philosophy is an imperfect expression of the revelation of the Torah wisdom. Nonetheless, Greek philosophy became the foundation of Western Civilization and the Christian religion has effectively spread the idea of the One God and the concept of messiah, albeit a corrupted understanding of the Jewish concept. In other words, the light that came into the world to bring the true messiah and redemption of the world through the Jewish people was not realized and the energy of this light became reflected in the development of the West in knowledge and technology, and has provided the power that has fueled the development of Christianity.

During the time of exile Christianity has temporarily usurped the role of the Jewish people. However, now at this point in history, Christians are being forced to examine the truth of their past as discovered in Biblical scholarship. According to the impressive scholarship of Hyam Maccoby in Paul the Mythmaker, the historical Jesus never considered himself the founder of a new religion. He is a traditional Jew who believed he was the messiah and failed. This is supported by an analysis of the Gospels, which are all based on Mark the earliest Gospel. Maccoby illustrates how Mark portrays Jesus as a Pharisee (that is, a traditional Orthodox Jew), and it is only in later Gospels that these same accounts are changed to portray Jesus in opposition to the Pharisees. In other words, Maccoby shows that as Christianity developed into a new religion in opposition to Judaism, so also did its presentation of Jesus.

Jesus and the original followers of him were Jews who did not reject the Torah. In fact, the original Gospel of Mark does not even include the story of Jesus’ supposed resurrection. This was added in later times by those who sought to create a new religion. Maccoby demonstrates that Paul is this mythmaker who created the new religion of Christianity.

The Christian religion is a religion that confuses the Jewish idea of God and the Tzaddik and therefore violates the first two commandments: that God is one and not to place an idol before God. Paul used a false interpretation of the Torah as a foundation to build a new religion around the idea of the messiah. Christianity claims that the Jews are no longer the chosen people and that the messiah is God. These two claims are direct contradictions to the Torah.

Noneheless, Christians have been the most successful movement in the history of man promoting the idea of the One God and the messiah, even though in a corrupted form. This is because the teachings of the Christians is a distorted image of the Torah, like that of Plato, and needs to be clarified in light of the Torah.

However, as we shall see in the course of this book, that the light and power of the Jewish tradition is in the messiah. Since the founding of Christianity, the rabbis have downplayed the idea of the messiah in Judaism to distinguish the religion from Christianity. In other words, as Christianity rose in power and influence in the world, the rabbis assisted this by letting the Christians promote the primary mission of the Torah and the Jewish people. This reached its climax after the Sixteenth Century when a false messiah arose in the Jewish world named Shabbtai Tzvi.

Shabbtai Tzvi (1626-1676) was a unique individual who had deep understanding of the secret Kabbalistic tradition and amazing charisma and was able to convince the majority of the Jewish world that he indeed was the messiah. This reached such remarkable proportions that many in the European world began to buy homes and arrange transportation to bring the Jewish people to Israel. In the end, Shabbtai Tzvi became a great embarrassment to the Jewish people. He was arrested by the Turkish Sultan and chose to convert to Islam to save his life.

After this great embarrassment, rabbis began to restrict even further the discussion of the secrets of the Torah and the emphasis on the role of the messiah and the tzaddik in Jewish life. Many great spiritual leaders, men of remarkable character were persecuted because of the fear that they were another false messiah. Consequently, the genuine light of the messiah that was revealed in the world through our great spiritual leaders of the past few hundred years has not been able to flourish until very recently. For it is also a principle of Kabbalah that God not only creates light, but He also restricts that light as part of the process of creation and redemption.

The Hidden Light

The world is spectacular – filled with beauty, wisdom, harmony, intelligence and design, infinite variety and astonishing precision. We know today that particles of matter here are directly connected to particles galaxies away; every motion in the universe affects everything else. The whole universe is one great symphony of life where everything is connected, like the life of one ecosystem. Every breath we take, every flap of a butterfly’s wings influences the whole universe and everything must exist with perfection precision: from the distance of the sun, the temperature of the atmosphere, the motion of the moon, the waves of the ocean, the falling of the rain gravity of planets the variety of species of animals, plants, micro-organism – all must be in harmony to sustain life.

In the midst of this is man. His desires and ignorance often go against nature, and this has resulted in our present state of imbalance with our environment and our conflict-ridden world.

My mentor in philosophy Dr. Pierre Grimes was a soldier in World War II. He told me that often he was on the battlefield against the Germans in the midst of a bloody and difficult fighting and he would turn and notice a meadow of beautiful, spring flowers. He said that this was the most astonishing aspect of war, no matter how terrible things, he could turn his head and behold the beauty of nature.

The world of man as we know it today often seems to fit the description of creation before God created light. “And the earth was chaos and void, and darkness hovered on the face of the deep…”

There is truth to this perception. The Torah teaches that the first thing that God did after He Created this light is hide it away.

And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.

The sages tell us that this is because God did not think it was appropriate for wicked people to experience the light of His goodness. This light is the reward of the righteous.

But there is another reason: creation is a process. God’s purpose is for all of creation to behold His awesome light and goodness. But He wanted to make man a partner in creation so that man would have a work and function in bringing out the revelation of God’s light and goodness and the perfection of the world. In other words, God wanted man to earn his reward. God knew that if He gave man this revelation without having to work, man would feel ashamed. He would not feel worthy of such a remarkable gift. Therefore, God made the revelation of His light a process that would take place within time, within the process of creation and the history of man.

The Return to God

Before the creation of the world, God foresaw all the tragedies of man, how far he would fall into the darkness and into the disease of sin. The existence of the world depends upon righteousness. God therefore knew that if man were to fall completely the world would not continue to exist. Therefore, before creating the world, God created the antidote for this problem, the ultimate cure to the entire world’s ills — this is the power called “the return to God.”

No matter how far a person has fallen, no matter how great the sin, there is no place from which where God will not welcome a person’s desire to return to Him. “The return to God” is a power that insures that now matter how far the world enters into darkness, that from any place man can discover meaning and love, and the opportunity to improve one’s ways. In other words, God insured that man would return to Him, and this preserves the world’s ability always to continue to exist.

A person I know in Israel is the son of Holocaust survivors. Although he went to religious schools as a child, when he became a teenage he went into a life of drugs, music, and bars. One day when he was about thirty years old he was sitting in his apartment in the midst of dealing drugs when a knock came at the door. He went to the door and saw a Chasidic man who was giving out books of Rebbe Nachman. My friend began to speak Yiddish with the rabbi. He told the rabbi that he hadn’t spoken Yiddish in twenty years. He went and cleared the table of all the drugs and kicked everyone out of his apartment. He invited the rabbi in and he began to speak.

This man told the rabbi that he didn’t doubt that there was a God. He was in awe of the Torah and the power of the Hebrew letters as they are written in the sacred scroll by a scribe; each one written like a flame with the light of God lifting the reader’s soul towards heaven. However, he said, “There’s no hope for me. I’m already too far gone. I have lived a life of crime. I’ve broken most of the commandments.” That’s when the rabbi handed him a special book called “The Return to God.” This book explained the teaching of Rebbe Nachman that there was no place to which a person could fall and be completely separated from God. From any place, no matter how far, God was there and waiting for him to express even the slightest desire to return. Rebbe Nachman taught that the prayers of someone returning were the most precious words to God and had the power to bring the greatest light into creation. My friend was startled. “I didn’t know this. I thought I was completely lost. I had no idea that there was a chance for me.” He went and shouted to his wife in joy sharing this revelation that there was still a chance for him to fix his life, and there still is.

The tzaddik’s primary job in the world is to spread the light to inspire people to return to God. God’s willingness to accept us even when we are not worthy is called His mercy. The tzaddik reveals this quality of mercy in the world, which is God’s highest quality. God does not love His creatures because they deserve love or kindness. God’s love is so powerful and pure that it flows to all whether they deserve it or not. It is a love above nature.

The Tzaddik is the expression of this love in the world. His entire being is seeking to bring the entire world back to God. He looks on every person with compassion and kindness, and his only desire is to help people return to a place where they can receive God’s love and blessing. The tzaddik is given a special power to bring light into the darkest places, to shine the love of God there to draw all back to the ultimate good of life.

The power of the return to God is the most powerful thing in the universe. It is a door that is never closed and through which the worst circumstances can be turned into the highest good. The Torah teaches that even the Tzaddik cannot stand in the place of one who has returned to God. The one who returns to God goes from the deepest darkness immediately to a light and closeness to the Creator that is supreme. Nothing brings greater joy to the Creator than this transformation.

The power of this transformation is the purpose of the world. All the tests and trials of life, all the pain and suffering, all the failures and darkness that man reaches is for this — to discover that God is with us in every moment. There is no place devoid of God. No matter how far away it may seem that we have turned away from God or how greatly the light and love of God seems hidden, this gate of return stands always present to allow us to immediately lift all our pain and darkness immediately to the most immediate knowledge and connection with the Creator.

Why is there Suffering?

Why did God create a world where there is suffering and darkness? Why did He create a world where man could sin and become separate from Him?

The answer is that this world is a place of freedom where man has the power to choose good or evil. When man chooses good over evil, he participates in fixing and completing creation and earns reward for his eternal soul. This freedom is a gift that gives man’s life true meaning.

However, no answer is completely satisfying in the face of the pain and tragedy that we experience in the world. Perhaps it is a consolation to know that when Moses ascended Sinai and received the Torah, he too asked this very question. On Sinai Moses spent forty days and forty nights with God. He did not sleep and he did not eat or drink. During this time, Moses ascended through 49 gates of wisdom where all the knowledge of the mysteries of God and creation were revealed to him. However, the 50th and final gate remained closed. This is the gate of complete wisdom that explains why there is suffering. This was the only one of the questions that God would not answer.

The only thing that God revealed is that somehow through suffering in this world, we come closer to Him. As we explained above, the return to God from the darkness brings us into the most intimate connection with the Creator, for we discover there is no place where He is not present.

The return to God comes through the Tzaddik — through Moses, because Moses is the receiver of the Torah, and the very purpose of the Torah is this return to God. So perhaps this is why God did not answer Moses’ question and why Moses did not enter the 50th gate, because he himself is the 50th gate! He is the purpose of creation. Moses is a man who perfected himself and ascended to the highest light and wisdom of the Creator. He merited to receive the gift of the Torah that is the pathway and power to perfect the world and all humanity.

Solomon, said The Tzaddik is the foundation of the world. The Tzaddik unites heaven and earth. His righteousness insures the existence of the world. He is the gate of return to God for all people no matter how far they have turned. The Tzaddik through his teaching and prayers extends the light of the Creator to the darkest corners of the world so that the whole of life is united and completed. “Complete” in Hebrew means peace — Shalom. When the light of the Creator is extended to the entire world, the world is complete and this creates true peace.

The tzaddikim teach us that the purpose of every fall or descent in life is for a greater ascent. Although a sin is forbidden, King Solomon teaches us that there is no man who is born that doe

s not sin. Sin (a descent) is a part of creation. Therefore, even sin has a purpose in God’s plan. A sin is an action that is forbidden by God. One must not knowingly sin. Nonetheless, if a person sins, (God forbid), through the teaching of the tzaddikim we can learn how to transform that fall into an opportunity for a greater spiritual ascent. Indeed, this is the ultimate secret of the fall of Adam.

Adam and Eve existed on a spiritual and Godly level in the Garden of Eden. Their task was to be a channel to bring blessing into the world. Man bridges the gap between the infinite good and the finite world of creation.

This infinite good is like an ocean and the ocean flows into rivers, streams, channels, brooks, to water every plant and creature. The way of drawing this good and blessing into the world is through prayer. Prayer is the means of connecting heaven and earth.

No shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground…

Before God created man nothing grew and the earth was barren, because there was no prayer. Rain or blessing cannot come to the world without man and his prayers. This is how God created the structure of life.

but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground

Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul

The mist that went up from the earth is prayer. Prayer is the energy that brings the rain (blessing) into the world. Before man was created, God himself had to utter the prayer to bring the initial blessing into the world, and afterwards He created man to fulfill this function. Adam was able to pray and bring blessing into the world because he was one being who brought all creation into a unity. Each man is a microcosm of the entire universe consisting of elements from every aspect of creation, from the mineral, plant, animal, and the rational and spiritual. Adam was therefore the perfection of this unity of all aspects of life.

Just as God created the world through speech, God gave Adam the power to name each animal, (that is, to give each animal its power in the world) because the name is its power and reality. Adam’s power of speech — his prayer — contains a power of creation and manifestation that is not the same as God’s but like it. Adam is God’s co-creator. Moses and all the tzaddikim are special souls that possess some of this power of Adam’s original essence.

The Garden of Eden

At the beginning of the story of the Garden of Eden God commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, God does not forbid Adam from eating from the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is only forbidden after Adam eats from the forbidden Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Let us explain why.

From the Tree of the Knoweldge of Good and Evil man received the desires related to the enjoyment of the world both physically, mentally, and spiritually. The entire world of life that we experience through the physical senses, emotions, mind, and spirit can be used for good or evil and can lead to pleasure or pain.

The Tree of Life is the essence of God’s love and wisdom. The fruit of this tree is the power to know how to live and direct the mind and body in the world so that it can traverse the world of pleasure and pain turn away from evil and do good. This wisdom to guide man through life is called the Torah. The Tree of Life is the essence of the Love and wisdom of the Torah.

When man lives without this wisdom he gets ensnared by his desires for pleasure and uses the power of his intellect to justify his selfish desires.

God does not want us to eat from the Tree of Knowledge before eating from the tree of life. This is because knowledge without the heart of wisdom is dangerous and destructive. We have to be connected above to the source of all love and wisdom before entering into the world of life below. However, Adam did it backwards, and that is why the world became is as it is, a place of strife and contention.

God, therefore, blocked the way to the Tree of Life after Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge because he feared that Adam would gain immortality in the imperfect state he had created by his eating from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. However, God did not deny Adam access to the wisdom he needed. Now that Adam and Eve had entered into the world of physicality, God had to communicate the love and wisdom of the Tree of Life to Adam in a way that would be appropriate to their new condition. God did this by giving man the Laws of the Torah.

The Laws of the Torah are the love and wisdom of the Tree of Life. The power of the Tree of Life is contracted and contained within the Torah so as to give man the ability to fix his soul and the world. The Laws and the Wisdom of the Torah are the medicine to repair the soul of man and to restore the world to its perfect state without the risk of damage. The history of man is this process of healing.

There is a story of the giving of the Torah that relates this point.

Moses went up in a cloud which entirely enveloped him. As he could not penetrate the cloud, God took hold of him and placed him within it. When he reached heaven the angels asked God: “What does this man, born of woman, desire among us?” God replied that Moses had come to receive the Torah, whereupon the angels claimed that God ought to give the Torah to them and not to men. Then God told Moses to answer them. Moses asked, “Do the angels have homes, and possessions and physical needs that they need the Torah and its laws? It is man who lives in the physical world who can carry out God’s commandments.”

All the Tzaddikim from Adam until Moses were given the essence of the Torah. However, the essence of the Torah and this love and wisdom of God was communicated in seven basic laws, called the Noahide Laws, which are the basis for the entire world’s system of law. These laws were given to Noah in the book of Genesis to communicate to humanity.

The Tree of Life is the wisdom of the heart, the heart that is filled with compassion, love, genuine care.This is the circumcised heart, the heart of flesh that is is pure, connected to God and possesses the wisdom to know how to use the mind and body for the sake of heaven.

The purpose of the Laws of the Torah are to give man the ability to control and restrict his desires and to be mindful of the higher will of the Creator who rules all the world. In order to do this one must submit one’s will to the authority of the will of the Creator. In other words, one must submit the powers of his mind and body and its desires to laws. In this way one aligns one’s life with the will of the Creator, and this allows one’s physical life to become a vessel or medium for the power of God to work through. The power of God is His love and wisdom. This love and wisdom is blocked by man’s personal desires and thoughts, which are ruled by the physical world. (By the way, even the desires for the pleasure of art and philosophy and other sophisticated pleasures are also considered aspects of the physical world.)

When man submits to God’s law his life can become a vessel through which God’s love and wisdom can flow. This is experienced within the life of a man by the opening of the love and wisdom that resides and flows through the heart. By following the laws of the Torah, we immediately become in alignment with God’s will. This gives the individual the potential to awaken to the love and wisdom of the Creator in his or her life. If one does not follow the laws of the Torah, this is impossible until one seeks to return to God and His Law. As we said earlier, this gate of return is always open.

In the future the light of God will be revealed in a wisdom that opens the heart of all humanity so that the power of love can truly flourish and mankind can end its destructive behavior. The path of the Torah and the teaching of Moses give all of us the ability to connect to this wisdom right now in our own lives so that we can experience an aspect of the future and hasten the coming of the time of the redemption.

According to Rebbe Nachman, when one goes through the gate of the return to God and awakens the power of the heart, he will truly begin to live. Prior to this point he says that we do not really have a true existence in the world. This is because our lives are being dominated by personal desires for pleasure through our bodies and minds, including desires for spiritual pleasure. True existence comes when we discover our connection to the Tree of Life through the openness of the heart to God’s love and wisdom.

The Torah does not deny the role of the body and intellect. It teaches that all our experience must be connected to the purpose of Creation. For example, knowledge itself is not good or bad. However, knowledge separated from the wisdom of the heart is dangerous. The knowledge of physics can be used to build airplanes or jet bombers, space ships or nuclear bombs. Our knowledge today has developed technology that threatens our very existence. This is why the Kabbalah teaches that all knowledge must be brought into the heart. We have to connect our thinking and intellect back to the source of all love and wisdom, otherwise it will take on a dangerous life of its own as we have witnessed over the last century.

In the Garden of Eden story this desire for knowledge separated from wisdom occurred because of the tempting of the serpent. In the book of Genesis, the serpent is called the cleverest beast in the field. In Hebrew the gematria or numerical value of the word for serpent is equal to the word messiah. This means that the serpent, which is the power of desire and knowledge, has in potential when connected to the will of God to be the power of the messiah, who brings the perfection of life.

The Tzaddik, who is the power of the Messiah in every generation, is the heart of the world and his main task is to open the hearts of all humanity to the love of God.

The Fall

The Kabbalah is the tradition of the secret wisdom of the Torah. According to the Kabbalah, Adam was not merely a man — he is Man. Adam is the collective soul of all humanity both masculine and feminine. The Torah teaches that humanity is one being. This being is the image and likeness of God. The word Adam in Hebrew is related to the Hebrew word “likeness and also the word “earth.” So Adam is the earthly image of God.

God is infinite light and Adam is the first expression or manifestation of this infinite light. He therefore is an entirely new kind of existence and in this sense Adam is an entire world.

Each individual human being is a part of Adam’s collective soul. Adam’s “fall” was the breaking up of his soul into the spiritual sparks of all the souls that would ever live. The fall also resulted in the descent of the spiritual state of the world.

From all that we have said in previous sections we can see that the story of the Garden of Eden is much more profound that it is usually explained. The stories of the Torah sound very simple, but they express deep, metaphysical truths about existence, hidden secrets of creation. The ultimate meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden is beyond our comprehension because it encapsulates the mystery of why there is evil, the question that God told Moses that even he could not know. Nonetheless, the intention of the story is to explain the nature of man and the way to fix his world.

It is true that Adam did sin. He did not listen to God’s command, but in a certain way Adam also did this to complete creation. Before there was sin, the world was mostly spiritual. Adam and Eve’s intention was to bring about the fall and the emergence of materiality so that God’s light could reach even the darkest places. If they had never sinned creation would never have extended into the physical world of history as we know it, so in some sense creation would have been incomplete.

Was it really a sin? Did Adam have free will? Why did there have to be evil? These are questions we can’t answer completely. The Torah is unique in its outlook on the world. It recognizes the complexity of life. It does not avoid the dilemmas. Man is free, but in another respect we do not seem free. Adam did sin, but his action brought about something that perhaps God wanted to accomplish — the emergence of the physical world and its history as we know it. God is all good and does not directly cause evil, and yet evil exists and has a purpose in creation.

The eating from the tree of knowledge of good an evil brought about the manifestation of opposition in the world. Before the eating there was only good. God wished man to eat from the Tree of Life and receive the completion and perfection of the spiritual world He had created. When Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil entered into them. After this, God could no longer allow them to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever, because now they were in need of a repair and purification from the consequences of their descent into physicality.

From this descent a world of opposites emerged and opposition to the spiritual flow of blessings in the world. This “block” is the power of the angel called Satan. In the Hebrew language Satan literally means “to block.” The angel Satan is not a power separate from God, as taught in other Zoroastrian based religions like Christianity. An angel is literally a messenger. Angels do not have free will. They are created to do the will of God. The angel Satan is no different. His job is to bring this idea of opposition into the world as part of God’s purpose. This opposition creates the need for man to fix himself and the world. In other words, opposition was sent into the world in order to give man a job to do as part of the creation process.

Every being gets its life force from God. Before the Garden of Eden story, the Satan like every angel, got his life-force directly from God. As a consequence of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God took the Satan and connected him directly to Adam and Eve, so that the Satan would now live off of man like a parasite. When Adam would choose good, the Satan would get no life-force, but when man chooses evil, the Satan would be able to suck off man’s life. Adam’s task was now to rectify the wrong that he had done and to rid the world and himself of the energy of the Satan.

The Adversary

God created the world with cosmic law and justice. There are laws that govern the order of the world and its creatures. Just as we see the laws of nature, there are laws that govern what happens to human beings. These laws and the principles of justice determine reward and punishment for our actions. This reward and punishment is calculated both for this world and the after life. The principles of these laws are presented in the Torah. However, their application is quite complex and beyond human comprehension.

There is a story of one who wanted to follow an angel on his mission. He watched as this wall fell and this person got killed, and so forth, but it was too hard to bear, but then it was explained.

If a person kills another, that killer receives death. This is strict justice. Human beings have free choice, and when justice is meted out, the punishment occurs in this world or the next.

As part of this system there are also heavenly courts, spiritual forces and systems that carry out justice in the world. Based on this information, the Satan gains the right to test another or to cause harm in the world. The Satan is called the prosecutor because he is not allowed to come to a human being unless he has cause. In other words, the Satan, like a regular prosecutor, must show that a person has done wrong in order to gain the right to test him or to punish him. This test or punishment is always the result of an expression of strict justice.

However, the Satan and strict justice are not the ultimate power governing the universe. The ultimate power is the Creator. And God can at any time override the whole system and extend undeserved merit and reward to whoever He likes. (He never sends out unearned punishment.) The expression of this power is called His mercy.

The great majority of our experience — the conflict, pain and suffering that we witness — is the consequences of judgments against humanity for not following the will of God. We are all interconnected and we all suffer the consequences of each other’s wrong actions, and the actions of our ancestors. All the tests and trials of life are a consequence of this justice.

However, in each test and trial, within each block, there is an opportunity to achieve a greater good and to rise out of the level of justice and to experience God’s mercy. Within the world of justice simultaneously God’s mercy is present (though we may not perceive it).

The difference between the world of justice and the world of mercy is the difference between the world as we know it today, and they way it will be in the future in the time of redemption. In the world today we do not see God’s mercy and kindness always present. God’s love and mercy is very often concealed by the pain and suffering we experience and witness. In the time of redemption, we will never be separated from the perception of God’s mercy and love. We will always see that in each moment God is extending His infinite goodness to us.

The job of the Satan is to help man earn this greatest reward. He is called an adversary because he prosecutes man according to strict justice. But he is an adversary in another more profound way. An adversary is someone who challenges us, and because of that challenge we are forced to discover and bring out greater strengths and powers in life.

The tzaddik’s job is to stand opposite the Satan and through prayer to awaken God’s mercy. Just as there is a power that fills the world and strives to test and block us by constantly appealing to strict justice, the tzaddik is reminding us and the world of God’s mercy. The more we connect to the tzaddik, the more we can connect to the power of prayer to overcome strict justice and bring greater mercy and blessing into our lives.

Tzaddik is the Foundation of the World

Based on what we said above we can now understand why King Solomon said that The Tzaddik is the foundation of the world. If there were no tzaddik with the power to awaken God’s mercy, the Satan would have every justification to destroy the world.

This explains the stories of Genesis. Though Adam was a great spiritual being who was an entire world, he was also a real person. After his sin and the descent of the world into this material existence that we know, Adam had to go through a period of repentance. He had to go through the gate of the return to God. His sin literally separated him from God and he intimately felt the pain he caused in the world and the separation from the profound closeness he shared to God prior to his sin.

Even though he did a true and complete repentance, Adam’s actions had an effect on Creation. He drew down into the world tremendous potential for evil. The world is real and there are real effects from our actions. Even though there is great mercy in the world, God has given man’s life and creation tremendous integrity. It’s not like a child who spilt his milk and his parent just cleans up the mess. The universe has rules and Adam had to witness the consequence of his actions. The immediate consequences were the generations that took place until Noah and Abraham. These generations were dominated by violence and immorality. Although there was always the possibility for these generations to return to God, it was extremely difficult because of the power of evil that was unleashed. The world at that time was very separated from the presence of God and the light of His goodness in the world.

The culmination of this evil was in the time of Noah when God finally decided to end this stage in history. Noah, however, was the tzaddik and it was through his merit that the world continued to exist. This is one of the main lessons of the entire Torah. This is revealed so clearly by the fact that God destroyed the entire world and saved Noah and his family.

Although Noah was a great Tzaddik and the world was sustained on his account, he was unable to begin the repair of the world. This process began with Abraham.

Abraham was chosen by God to do a special mission in this world. Up until this time it was the work of all humanity to repair the sin of Adam and the spiritual descent of creation. In Abraham’s lifetime this changed. Abraham alone stood up in his generation against the forces of idolatry and brought people back to the knowledge of God. In order to understand who Abraham was we also need to understand the world in which he lived.

Idolatry is based on the wisdom of the ancient world. This wisdom teaches that creation has a structure. There are the heavens above and the earth below. This picture of the universe was the foundation of all knowledge until Copernicus. According to the ancient view, the universe is pictured with the earth at the center and surrounding the earth are different circles or spheres that carry the different planets and stars in their motion around the Earth. First there is the sphere of the Moon, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and finally the sphere in which all the twelve constellations reside. The ancient astronomical model explains the phenomenon of the heavens as they appear to us from the Earth. This view is not false. It is a practical picture which is still used today for navigation upon the seas.

This ancient model carries with it a beautiful world view that describes the motion of the spheres as a heavenly symphony. The ancient sages had knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and the mathematics of music that brought all of knowledge into a beautiful harmony. The system also included a spiritual understanding of the heavens in which beyond the sphere of the stars was the sphere of the Hyperion through which God sends the life-force of the universe through realms of angels that carry this power through the heavens and then it descends through the different spheres.

The source of life and blessing for the world comes from God. God sends this power into the world through a system of forces, from the most spiritual through a chain that becomes more related to the physical world until it actually enters the physical dimension. This metaphysical system is called the higher worlds of angels. Angels are not simply spiritual beings; they are messengers and energy links that deliver the life-force from the Infinite God to the finite world.

It is this system that accounts for the astrology and its ability to explain different personality types according to the time of a person’s birth in relationship to the constellations and the seven planets. Each planet is carrying an influence and power depending upon their relative locations.

Modern science rejected this ancient model because Copernicus was able to explain certain astronomical phenomena with greater simplicity. He did not do it more accurately. Both the geocentric and heliocentric theories of the universe describe the phenomena of the heavens. God created the universe as it is and also as it appears to us from the Earth. Both perspectives are important. The ancient model explains the simple way things appear to the eye of an observer much more simply, and it also provides a metaphysical model that explains the spiritual relationship between heaven and earth. Modern science dismisses spiritual ideas out of hand. However, this model was and remains today the basis for a spiritual understanding of life and is the ancient basis of idolatry and magic.

Cham, the son of Noah, was the first to practice idolatry and magic. The basic goal of these practices is to use metaphysical knowledge, the knowledge of the workings of angels and higher worlds, in order to control the flow of life-force in the world.

Cham and his son Cush did the horrific act of castrating Noah. They did this so that Noah would not have any other children and therefore diminish the spiritual and physical inheritance of his three sons. There is also tradition that Noah possessed the tunic of animal skins of Adam. On this were pictured all the different animals and many Kabbalistic formulas in Hebrew letters. The one who wore this cloak possessed tremendous power over all animals and nature. Cush stole this cloak and then passed it on to his son Nimrod.

Nimrod is the founder of the empire of Babel (Babylonia or contemporary Iraq). After the flood, Nimrod led his tribe of people to the flattest area they could discover, because they wanted protection from God bringing upon them another catastrophe.

Nimrod was the first tyrant in human history. He was learned in the knowledge of magic and idolatry, he inherited the cloak of Adam, and he used this power to wage war on his fellow man and build an empire. Nimrod’s great plan was to build the tower of Babel. The tower of Babel was constructed in order to gain control over the flow of life-force from heaven to earth.

And it came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another: ‘Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and lime had they for mortar. And they said: ‘Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

“Name” is the power of God in the world. The entire spiritual tradition of the Kabbalah is the study of names, the names of God and the names of angels. This is because God creates the world through speech and the power of the Hebrew letters. He created it this way so that man can use his understanding (which is based on language) to comprehend the workings and power of creation. God wants man to become a partner in the process of creation. However, He wants us to do that through the power of prayer and through our connection with the Tzaddik.

Nimrod was not a Tzaddik. He was an evil, power hungry man who sought to use the knowledge of the heavens for his own glorification, and not in the service of God. He sought power for its own sake instead of power to bring love, mercy and justice into the world. Like the Pharaohs in Egypt (the other children of Cush) who built their pyramids, Nimrod enslaved humanity in order to build his tower. This tower was based on the most advanced understanding of mathematics, astronomy, astrology and magic. This knowledge was received through connection with spiritual powers.

The tower was built using mathematical harmonies as well as the magical use of angelic names. Its architecture incorporated this astronomical and metaphysical knowledge to draw down the life-force from the spiritual worlds through the stars, and into the hands of Nimrod, who then promised his people that he would save them from the wrath of God and future floods.

Nimrod created a society where humans believed they could gain control over their destiny, very much like people today believe they have done through science and technology. However, this society based its knowledge on spiritual forces and powers in nature. Therefore, Nimrod gave honor to the angels and spiritual powers that guided him in his conquest of this world and helped him establish his empire. These angels and spiritual powers are called “gods” in the idolatrous religions. These “gods” are really intermediate messengers who have been hijacked through techniques in magic and divination.

Nimrod created an entire religion and way of worshiping these powers. The center of this practice was the making of images of these powers and bringing them sacrifice. The offering of animals and wine and different incenses upon idolatrous altars is a way of giving life and honor to these spiritual powers. It is a way to spiritually “feed” them. The worshipper is not merely worshipping physical statues. When a human being brings his mind and intention to these acts of worship, he elevates certain forces within man and the physical world back to these “gods” and gives them greater power and influence in the world. Although idolatry seems a strange practice to us today, it is not for no reason that such temples and altars that first began in Babel were spread throughout the ancient world – in Mexico, South America, India and Tibet. This is because they have power.

God allows this because it is part of the structure of creation. He gave humans power and knowledge. This power and knowledge can be used for good or for evil, just like we can use plants for medicine or for harmful drugs. God allows us to use spiritual power for our benefit or our harm. Although one who practices idolatry in this way can gain certain power and rewards, in the end, just like the drug addict, this practice will destroy him.

This is the world that Abraham was born into. During this time people still believed in a supreme God, but they believed that worship and the way of life had to be conducted through idolatry and the connection to the “spiritual forces.”

Abraham was alone in his world. His father Terach was one of the leading makers of idols in Babel, and a close advisor to Nimrod. As a young man, Abraham used the clarity of his mind and the deep longings of his heart to seek out the truth of life. He was educated in the idolatry of his day and its profound knowledge of mathematics and astrology. However, Abraham’s deep longing for truth pushed him to seek what is the source of all the power of the stars and even the higher worlds. He recognized that all the worship of idolatrous gods was for one purpose – self-interest. People practiced their religion of their idols in order to gain favor and personal benefit.

Through his intellectual integrity and deep sincerity, he broke the power of the spell of idolatry, and connected back to the One God who is the Creator of all. Abraham discovered for himself that it is only to the One True God that we should serve and give honor.

Abraham had the courage to stand up for the truth he discovered, and he went into his father’s store and smashed all the idols. This caused an outrage in Babel. Word of Abraham’s rebelliousness reached Nimrod who then threw Abraham into an oven filled with a raging fire. God then did a miracle for Abraham and allowed him to live for three days in the middle of the fire. This showed to all Babel that there was a greater power in the world. Abraham then was released from the oven and was exiled. With his wife Sarah and Lot he followed God’s command for him to go to the Land of Canaan.

In the Land of Canaan God gave Abraham the command to circumcise his foreskin and to become a father of nations. The circumcision is an act that signifies the power above nature, the power of God. The sexual organ is the ultimate symbol of the power of nature. The act of circumcision establishes a mark on the organ that there is something higher and greater than nature. The circumcision shows man that he must use the power that has been given to him, not for self-indulgence and mere pleasure but to serve the Creator. The circumcision is done on the eighth day after a child’s birth because the number eight signifies that which is above nature. Whereas seven is the number seen throughout the patterns in nature — the days of the week, the waves of light, and the notes in the musical scale — the number eight marks the transcending nature.

God also added the letter H to Abraham and Sara’s names. Before this they were Abram and Sarai, and with the letter H they were called Abraham and Sara. The letter H stands for the name of God that we do not pronounce today, YHVH. Whereas Nimrod wanted to create a name, to take the name for himself, God now gave the power of His name as a gift to Abraham.

God blessed Abraham to become a father of nations. Many of those nations would be through his son Ishmael, whose mother was the Egyptian Hagar. The children of Abraham and Sarah would have a special mission; they would take upon themselves the task of performing the spiritual repair of the world. The primary role in this work would be given to the children of Abraham and Sarah and their descendents through Isaac and Jacob.

When Abraham was ninety-nine years old, his wife Sarah at the age of eighty-nine miraculously gave birth to Isaac. Through Isaac would be born the progeny who would take on this task. However, when Isaac was thirty-seven, before he was married and had children, God spoke to Abraham and told him to take his son Isaac and bound him upon an altar as a sacrifice in a special place that God would direct him to. Abraham, who had been speaking out to the whole world about the evils of idolatry and child sacrifice, was now being commanded by God to perform that very act. This was the ultimate test of Abraham’s faith and self-sacrifice to God. The Torah tells us that Abraham woke early in the morning. He did not delay one moment, but set out immediately to do the will of God.

God led Abraham to the holiest place in the world, the rock from which the entire creation was formed. This is Mount Moriah. Abraham bound his son, placed him upon the altar which he had built and began to reach for his knife to perform the sacrifice, when suddenly an angel called out to him, “Abraham, Abraham, …now I know that you are God fearing.” Abraham looked up and a ram appeared caught in a thicket. He then went and sacrificed the ram in place of Isaac.

Isaac then married Rivka and gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was an ambitions man with great power. Both Esau and Jacob had the opportunity to build the holy nation. Isaac had hoped that Esau would use his great power to serve God. Esau instead went out to follow in the ways of Nimrod. He sought Nimrod’s power for himself and killed Nimrod in battle and stole the cloak of Adam. Rivka understood that Jacob would have to take Esau’s power from him, and so she told Jacob to fool his old and blind father before he died, and to ask for Esau’s blessing. It is through this blessing that Jacob received the mission and the power to give birth to his twelve sons from which comes the nation of Israel (the other name of Jacob).

After the Torah was given to Moses, the nature of this service is defined. The heart of this service is the establishment of a family of priests, the children of Levy, who would perform the service of God in His chosen place. The chosen place is Mount Moriah. The temple that eventually was built by King David sits on the very place where Abraham bound Isaac. In the areas surrounding this place, the Kohanim performed sacrifices of animals and offerings of wine and flour to God. The Torah teaches that this is the only place in the world where sacrifices are now permitted.

At the center of the Temple is the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant rests. It is the very point where the spiritual chain of life force comes into the physical world. In other words, the Temple is the interface between the physical and spiritual world. From this place all blessing flows to the world. The Torah teaches that if the nations understood this they would send all the armies of the world to protect the Temple and the work of its priests. We shall speak more about this in detail later on. For now, we can see that the Temple is the opposite of the Tower of Babel. In Babel, Nimrod declared himself king and sought to take the power of God’s name for his own purpose. The Temple mount was chosen by God to be the place where God would place His name. God chose one man to give birth to a nation of priests who would use their quality of self-sacrifice to do the holy acts that would draw down the blessings and life force for the world. The Temple is the world’s House of prayer whose ultimate function is to bring the light of eternal peace to the world. Today in the era when the Temple is destroyed we see that the opposite exists, the conflicts over the land of Israel and Jerusalem are the pretense for war.

Abraham’s willingness to obey God’s voice without question and to sacrifice his own son (something even more precious than one’s own life) is the defining quality of the true servant of God. This quality is the root of Abraham’s soul and it is the source of the nation that he and Sarah would give birth to, a nation whose task would be to serve God. Whereas Nimrod sought to steal the power of God’s name, God gave Abraham the power of His name as a gift for him and his descendents. The power of the name of God is the foundation of the blessing that Abraham received. Abraham was now to become a father of nations, and all the world would be blessed through him. God literally changed, or shall we say, completed the structure of existence.

And the angel of God called to Abraham a second time from heaven. And he said, I swear by my Being, is the pronouncement of God, since you have done this act, and did not withhold your son, your only one, I will bless you and I will increase your offspring like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore. And your offspring will inherit the gates of its enemies. All the nations of the earth will bless themselves by your offspring because you have obeyed my voice.

Abraham himself became the tower that Nimrod sought to build. Abraham the Tzaddik, was established by God as the true foundation of the world. He and the children of Israel were given the responsibility for the repair of the world and through them all the life-force and blessing of the world would come. In other words, Abraham and his children became the final link in the spiritual chain that brings blessings from the Infinite God to the earth through levels of angels and through the angels that are behind all the planets and stars, and finally into the souls of the Children of Israel.

And it came to pass, that, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, behold, a dread, even a great darkness, fell upon him. 13 And He said to Abram: ‘Know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

There is a principle in the Torah that the greatest Godliness is hidden in the darkest places. The Kabbalah teaches that this is because the darkness also protects the Godly light. If this light was not hidden in the darkness its power would be used by the side of evil, and then evil would have unstoppable power in the world. In other words, this Godly light remains in certain dark and hidden places as potential to be awakened to Godly purpose. This light is hidden in souls and physical objects. When the souls and physical objects are trapped within a world that is dedicated to purposes opposite to God, its power remains trapped. This light and power is freed when it enters the service of God and the purpose of Creation, as we shall see in detail in the story of the Exodus.

After the defeat of Nimrod the power of idolatry gained its greatest expression in Egypt. There the pharaohs possessed tremendous knowledge of the secrets of the universe. Like Nimrod, they built the pyramids to draw down the power of the heavens for their personal glorification, power and tyranny over their fellow men.

The great pyramid of Giza, for example, remains to this day the largest man-made structure on earth. Despite its immense size it is situated so perfectly in alignment with true north that compasses are set in accordance with it, rather than the other way around. Every detail of the pyramid is designed as a mathematical model of the northern hemisphere, as well as the geometrical ratios of pi and the golden mean. In a documentary about the pyramid, an engineer responsible for moving large freight was asked what it would take to move a single stone from which the pyramid is built. The engineer said that to move a stone of such size and weight would take the largest crane in the world and a month preparation. This is what it would take to move one stone today with all our modern technology. And yet somehow, these ancient people had technology and power to build the largest structure on earth composed of thousands of such stones.

Egypt possessed also the deepest wisdom about the heavens and idolatry. Herodotus the father of Greek history writes that all Greek knowledge of the gods comes from Egypt. In other words, all the life force and wisdom of Greece was first in Egypt. But with all this great wisdom, Egypt was also a place of tremendous sexual immorality and cruelty. The Pharaoh’s created a civilization where all kinds of pleasure were permitted, and this pursuit of selfish pleasure in its various forms turned mankind away from the holy purpose of Creation. Yet it is precisely in this place where the power of the light of God was hidden and waiting to be released.

Joseph

The decent of the Children of Israel to Egypt began when the sons of Jacob sold their brother into slavery. Jacob had two wives Leah and Rebecca, and two handmaidens, Bilah and Zilpah, who gave him his twelve sons. Joseph was the first son of Rebecca, Jacob’s true love.

Joseph was very special in Jacob’s eyes because he saw that he would fulfill the mission of his own twin brother Esau who had failed to accept the service of God. The Kabbalah teaches that there were supposed to be four patriarchs, not only three. Esau was supposed to be the fourth and to marry Leah. Because he did not do his job, Jacob had to take on both tasks. The task of Esau was to go out and bring the teaching of God into the world, unlike Jacob who would remain in the tents of study in the land of Israel. Jacob saw that his son Joseph would fulfill the mission of Esau, and he gave him special attention and teachings that the other sons did not receive.

Joseph shared with his brothers and father his dream that the sun and moon and all the stars would bow down to him.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours. 4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. 5 And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren; and they hated him yet the more. 6 And he said to them: ‘Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: 7 for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and bowed down to my sheaf.’ 8 And his brethren said to him: ‘Shall you indeed reign over us? or shall you indeed have dominion over us?’ And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. 9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said: ‘Behold, I have dreamed yet a dream: and, behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.

Joseph’s brothers were unable to acknowledge that their younger brother was the true Tzaddik of the generation. They were jealous of him, and the fact that Jacob had chosen him over them to receive his teaching, symbolized in his multi-colored coat. The brothers were each great and merited to be the father of the tribes of the children of Israel. However, they were not on the spiritual level of their brother Joseph. Joseph who possessed the divine gift of dream interpretation understood what his dream symbolized. The dream told him that his brothers must bow to him and his level of spiritual purity and righteousness in order for them to reach their own great levels. He also knew that if they would, it would bring the redemption.

The brothers were each struggling with their own particular temptations from their lower natures. They had yet to reach the level to overcome and acknowledge Joseph. Instead, the brothers justified their own failings and jealousy by their belief that Joseph was another Esau, a killer and megalomaniac who was a threat to the holy mission of their family. Consequently they decided to rid themselves of him. Initially they decided to kill him, but their brother Yeudah convinced them to sell him into slavery.

Joseph was taken down to Egypt by Arab traders who then sold him to the house of Potiphar, a minister of the Pharaoh. Joseph was blessed by Hashem and the works of his hands prospered and Potiphar gave him control of all his belongings, except his wife. His wife, however, desired Joseph and sought to seduce him. Although Potiphar’s wife was one of the most beautiful women, in the world, Joseph resisted this tremendous temptation time after time.

What kind of man could be given so much power and resist taking it all for himself? It is the way of men of power to only want more. The path of the Torah is one of restraint and boundaries — to do what is righteous. Joseph maintained his self-control in the face of the temptation to take Potiphar’s entire house and his wife for himself. It is because of this remarkable self-control over the forces of sexuality separated from his land and his people that earned Joseph the title of Tzaddik. In fact, he is the only person in the entire Five Books of Moses called Tzaddik.

Potiphar’s wife, however, stole Joseph’s clothes and feigned that he tried to rape her. Consequently, Joseph was thrown into jail for twenty-two years. Joseph was finally released by the Pharaoh who had heard from his ministers of his ability to interpret dreams. The Pharaoh told Joseph of his dreams, and Joseph explained how they portend of seven years of rich harvest and seven of famine. He also advised Pharaoh to prepare for the famine buy setting up storehouses. The Pharaoh recognized Joseph’s wisdom and immediately made him second in power to himself over all of Egypt.

The famine finally came and forced the brothers to come to Egypt. We cannot imagine the awful suffering that Joseph must have experienced, sold buy his very brothers as a slave at the age of seventeen, exiled from his land, suffering decades in prisons. And yet Joseph did not seek revenge. He saw the hand of God in all the suffering that he experienced. He saw that all that happened to him was for the ultimate good of his family, even though it had appeared to be the exact opposite.

The famine had occurred as God had revealed to Joseph, and the entire Mediterranean world was now dependent upon the storehouses of grain that Joseph had built for survival. All of Egypt sold themselves into slavery for bread. Through Joseph, the Tzaddik, the entire world was saved from starvation. If he had not come to bring this advice to Pharaoh, his family would have all died from hunger.

When the famine reached the Land of Canaan, Jacob sent his children to Egypt to buy the food they needed for their survival. He sent all his sons except for the second son from his wife Rachel, Benjamin, Joseph’s only other full brother. The brothers came before Joseph in order to purchase grain and other supplies. The brothers did not recognize that Zaphenaeth-Panea (Joseph’s Egyptian name), with his magnificent clothes and servants, the grand Viceroy of all Egypt, was in fact their brother Joseph. However, Joseph did recognize them.

Joseph questioned them to find out if his father and brother were still alive. The ordinary man would have sought out revenge for the terrible suffering he had endured, the time bound in slavery and in prison. But Joseph saw the hand of God in all that had happened to him. Instead of revenge, he designed a drama to force his brothers to see the wrong they had done, and to give them the opportunity to do true repentance – to return to God.

Joseph charged them with being spies. The brothers protested and told him that they were simple shepherds from the Land of Canaan. In order to prove this Joseph commanded them to leave one brother in his custody and to return with their youngest brother Benjamin. When they returned, they explained all that had happed to Jacob. Jacob refused to let them return with Benjamin for fear of losing another son. However, as the famine continued he was forced to allow him to go. In return, Judah vowed before his father that he would give his own sons if he did not return with Benjamin.

When the brothers returned to Egypt, they bought their provisions and they packed up their mules and headed out to return home. However, Joseph had one of his servants plant his goblet in the bags of Benjamin. The brothers then were confronted by Joseph’s guards but the brothers denied that they took the goblet, which Joseph was said to divine from. The brothers vowed that if one of them were found with the goblet that he could be put to death. The guards found the goblet in Benjamin’s pack and took him away to jail. Judah could not bare it and risked his life to come before Zaphenaeth-Panea and beg for mercy for his father. Judah explained how precious Benjamin was to his father and the vow that he himself took to protect his brother. He begged Zaphenaeth-Panea to take him for his prisoner and slave in exchange for his brother. Joseph saw now that his brothers had done true repentance.

As Judah said these words, Joseph could not restrain his emotions. He cleared the room of all his servants, turned to his brothers and cried:

I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?

Whereas they were willing to sell him into slavery so many years before, now Judah, the leader of the brothers was willing to give himself into slavery to save his brother Benjamin, who now stood in the place of Joseph in the house of Jacob. True repentance means that when we are faced with the same circumstances as when we did wrong, in this second time, we choose the right path. Joseph designed a drama that would allow his brothers this opportunity to do true repentance. He did this for the benefit of their souls and also so that the brothers could reunite with him in peace free of guilt from the past.

The entire book of Genesis begins with Adam and his sin. The consequence of this sin was the envy and rivalry that led to Cain’s murder of Abel, an event that reflects the evil of strife that had entered into mankind as a consequence of Adam’s sin. This theme is continued with the rivalry of Isaac’s children Jacob and Esau, and then between Jacob’s sons. However, the book of Genesis ends with Joseph overcoming his anger and seeing the hand of God, and bringing peace into his family. Consequently, Joseph brings his father and all his children to Egypt to protect them from the long famine. The Pharaoh gave them the land of Goshen where they tended their flocks and lived in prosperity under Joseph’s protection.

Joseph became the Tzaddik who is the foundation of the world, as his dream prophesied. He controlled the food supply of the entire Mediterranean region, and amassed all the wealth. In the end, not only did his family have to bow down to him, but the entire world had to bow to him. The entire world was created for Adam, and the entire world saved on account of Noah; and then all blessings were given to the world in the merit of Abraham. In the story we see that the entire world is saved in the merit of the righteousness of Joseph, who was able to go down into the darkness of Egypt and remain true to the path of life taught to him by his holy father Jacob.

Moses

The astrologers of Pharaoh prophesied that a child would be born among the Jews that would destroy the house of Pharaoh. In order to protect themselves the Pharaoh decreed that every male child born to the Hebrews must be drowned in the Nile. Jethro, the High Priest of Midian together with the Prophet and magician Balaam and Job were consulted by Pharaoh as to the means for exterminating the children of Israel.

Moses was born to Amram and Yocheved. Amram was the grandson of Levi, the family of priests among the children of Jacob. When Moses was born the entire house was filled with light. Tradition also tells us that Moses was born fully circumcised, a sign of the remarkable purity and Godliness of his life that was of miracles transcending nature.

When the family could no longer hide Moses from the Egyptians, they decided to place him in a basket and relied on the Divine protection that the child had hoping that he would be saved. His sister Miriam followed the basket down the Nile and watched as a daughter of Pharaoh rescued the child and decided to raise him in the house of Pharaoh. Miriam then offered to have her mother come nurse the child for her.

Pharaoh’s daughter named the baby Moses because she drew him out of the water. (In Hebrew the name is Moshe, which is based on the root word meaning “to draw forth.”) Torah is said to be like water, in that it is the source of life and the only thing which can quench the thirst of the soul. Moses, therefore, is that child who is drawn forth from the true water, which is the infinite ocean of Torah Wisdom.

A midrash relates that

Moses was a very large child at the age of three; and it was at this time that, sitting at the king’s table in the presence of several princes and counselors, he took the crown from Pharaoh’s head and placed it on his own. The princes were horrified at the boy’s act; and the soothsayer said that this was the boy who they had predicted would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and liberate Israel. Balaam and Jethro were at that time also among the king’s counselors. Balaam advised the king to kill the boy at once; but Jethro (other sources say it was Gabriel in the guise of one of the king’s counselors) said that the boy should first be examined, to see whether he had sense enough to have done such an act intentionally. All agreed with this advice. A shining piece of gold together with a hot coal was placed on a plate before the boy, to see which of the two he would choose. The angel Gabriel then guided his hand to the coal, which he took up and put into his mouth. This burned his tongue, causing him to stutter; but it saved his life.

Moses was raised a royal prince in the house of Pharaoh. He was thus unique among all his fellow Hebrews. He was given a complete Egyptian education in the arts of geometry, astronomy and astrology, the secret sciences of nature, and the metaphysical secrets of the Egyptian idolatrous priests.

Moses was caught between two worlds. Unlike all the other children of Israel, Moses had the freedom to choose the life of an Egyptian or a Hebrew, that is, a royal Egyptian prince or a Hebrew slave. The pivotal moment in his life when this choice is made is presented in the Torah.

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out to his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12 And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he smote the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. 13 And he went out the second day, and, behold, two men of the Hebrews were striving together; and he said to him that did the wrong: ‘Wherefore smitest you your fellow?’ 14 And he said: ‘Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? thinkest you to kill me, as you didst kill the Egyptian?’ And Moses feared, and said: ‘Surely the thing is known.’ 15 Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian;

Moses chose to not only identify with his people and their suffering, but he took action to defend them. He killed the Egyptian taskmaster and defended “one of his brethren.” The Torah does not name the Hebrew in order to show that it did not matter who was being attacked. Moses sought to defend all of his people, the trait of a true leader.

A similar theme is told in a famous story about Moses after he fled to Midian and married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro.

One day while watching his flock Moses noticed that a small lamb had gone astray. Moses spent many days looking for the lamb and traveled a great distance when he finally found the lamb and carried it back to the flock. God looked upon this action and saw that Moses had the soul of a true leader, because a true leader has the care of not just the great and important ones among his people, but for all his people equally. This is how God looks upon the world. He directs the world with love and care for the greatest good of every single creature equally.

All the great leaders of the Jewish people were shepherds, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David. A shepherd spends his time out in nature alone, patiently guiding and protecting his flock. He travels for weeks or months alone seeking pasture to feed the flock. All this time he is alone in nature underneath the stars. It was during this time that these great men sat in contemplation of life and spoke their heart out to God. In these times they forged through intimate conversation a powerful bond with the Creator. We shall discuss later on that it is this secluded meditation and intimate speech of the heart with God is the most important spiritual practice and teaching of the Jewish people.

It was one day while shepherding when one of the most famous stories of the Torah (Exodus, Ch. 3) occurred (Exodus, Ch. 3):

Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the farthest end of the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. 3 And Moses said: ‘I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.’ 4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said: ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said: ‘Here I am.’ 5 And He said: ‘Do not come close to here; remove your shoes from your feet, for the place upon which you stand is holy ground.’ 6 Moreover He said: ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. 7 And the LORD said: ‘I have surely seen the affliction of My people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; for I know their pains; 8 and I shall descend and deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and bring them up out of that land to a good land and a large, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me; moreover I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring forth My people the children of Israel out of Egypt.’

11 And Moses said to God: ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ 12 And He said: ‘Certainly I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.’ 13 And Moses said to God: ‘Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me: What is His name? what shall I say to them?’ 14 And God said to Moses: ‘I AM THAT I AM’; and He said: ‘Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’ 15 And God said moreover to Moses: ‘Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you; this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial to all generations. 16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say to them: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have surely remembered you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have said: I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey. 18 And they shall listen to your voice. And you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and you shall say to him: The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. And now please let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God. 19 And I know that the king of Egypt will not give you leave to go, except by a mighty hand. 20 And I will put forth My hand, and smite Egypt with all My wonders which I will do in the midst thereof. And after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. And it shall come to pass, that, when you go, you shall not go empty; 22 but every woman shall ask of her neighbour, and of her that sojourns in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and clothing; and you shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and you shall spoil the Egyptians.’

According to tradition, the meeting at the burning bush was one of the three periods of forty days and forty nights that Moses ascended to be with God and learn the depths of God’s wisdom – the Torah.

One of the most peculiar things about Moses’ encounter with God is Moses’ resistance to take on the mission.

10 And Moses said to the LORD: ‘Oh Lord, I am not a man of words, not yesterday, nor the day before yesterday, nor since You first spoke to Your servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.’ 11 And the LORD said to him: ‘Who made man’s mouth? or who makes a man dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? is it not I the LORD? 12 Now, therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak.’ 13 And he said: ‘Oh Lord, please send by the hand of him whom You will send.’ (Exodus, 4:10)

Rashi, the great Jewish commentator, explains the deep reason. Moses was not refusing to go. He wanted to receive a commitment from God that he would not only lead the Jewish people out of the exile in Egypt, but that he would be able to lead the Jewish people into Israel and complete the ultimate redemption of the world. Moses knew that if he took the people out of Egypt that they were likely to turn from God and sin and that this would create the need for future exiles to atone again. Moses wanted God to assure him that he would lead the people into the land and build the temple that would last forever and begin the era of blessing and eternal love for humanity.

God could not give Moses this guarantee. And eventually Moses acquiesced and accepted his mission, knowing at least that there was a chance to complete the mission. Moses also learned that whether or not he would be successful, the mission he would take on would be the ultimate model for the final redemption.

In other words, the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt is a preview of what the future has in store. Every single detail of the story of the Exodus will have a parallel in the future redemption. In the future the Jews will be led out of their exile by a great leader amidst miracles and wonders that will leave the world in awe. There will be leaders who will resist, like Pharaoh, and there may also be Jews who will not accept the leadership of the Jewish Messiah who will stand in Moses’ place.

In order to truly understand the significance of the Exodus from Egypt we must first try to better understand what the religion of Egypt is. Egypt is a continuation of the tradition of Ham and Nimrod. Egypt became the repository of all the ancient world’s wisdom and spiritual practices. From a modern perspective the belief in many deities and powers that rule over nature seems “supernatural.” However, the opposite is true. The essence of pagan belief is a worship of nature and its powers. We must keep in mind that included in the pagan understanding of nature is the power of the spiritual forces that rule nature. These forces are based primarily on the twelve constellations. This is a common theme in nearly all ancient religions, namely that the stars are powers (that is, “gods”) that rule over nature.

A simple example of this is the power of the moon that has tremendous power over the tides, agriculture, as well as women’s menstrual cycles and peoples’ feelings. In modern thinking, this is because of natural laws of science. However, in the ancient world there is a picture of the heavens that includes the flow of life into the world. This flow of life is distributed through the motions of the planets. Each planet has a soul with intelligence and with a certain power that manifests in the world. The soul of the planet or constellation and its influence on earthly life is the source for the descriptions of ancient mythologies. These mythologies are found in civilizations all over the globe.

This structure is the basis of all astrology. Astrology is a very ancient understanding of the world that says that a person’s character is determined by the placement of the planets in the constellations at the time of birth. This is based on the idea that the soul of a person comes into the physical world from the highest part of the heavens and then travels down through various spheres. These spheres then influence the energies of the soul and body that the person is born into, and it is on this basis that s in astrology provides its remarkably accurate descriptions of character types and personalities.

Paganism is not a simplistic theory of nature as many history books say. In the watered down view of history, mythology is presented as ancient peoples’ naive attempt to explain the phenomena of the natural world in the absence of science. When science emerged then there was no need for mythology. This is not true. Pagan tradition is not focused on simply describing nature as we know it. It is describing a system of the influence of the flow of nature’s life force from heaven to earth through the system of the stars and heavenly spheres. Moreover, it included practices of magic and divination which sought to influence the flow of this life force through the contact with spiritual forces that ancient people called gods, but are really better described as angels. Angels are the powers that oversee the flow of life into the world. “Angel” literally means a “messenger”. God allows these angels to speak to man and to offer ways of communicating with them and gaining power over the flow of life force and blessing. These angels teach mankind various forms of religious practice that are known throughout the world.

Egypt reached the peak of man’s communication with angels and knowledge of the heavens and divination. The greatest marks of this understanding are recorded in the pyramids. This is the very reason the pyramids exist today, to remind us of the past and the greatness of these civilizations, their remarkable knowledge of the heavens, science, and their remarkable ability to build these structures that remain beyond our knowledge and capacity today.

The Egyptian religion was not a supernatural religion; it was a system of knowledge of nature which included the spiritual forces and powers within nature. These angels or gods are not separate from nature; they are the system of nature. It is with this wisdom that the Pharaohs were able to build their powerful civilizations.

One of God’s purposes in the Exodus and Moses’ mission was to announce to the Egyptians and the rest of the world the existence of the true Creator of Heaven and Earth. This could only be done in contrast to the religion of the day. Pharaoh and Egypt with all its knowledge of the gods and heavens does not know the God of the Hebrews. “Who is this God?” Pharaoh asks Moses. The story of the Exodus is God’s answer to Pharaoh’s question. The awesome miracles and wonders are God’s demonstration of His superiority to all the wisdom and pagan divination of the great Pharaoh and his priests.

The Exodus Story

The entire story of the Exodus and its miracles is hard to comprehend for the modern mind. When we see it being portrayed in movies, these ancient accounts are transformed into fantastic legends. The very story is fantastic and truly supernatural, because the very point of the event is to bring into physical reality the knowledge that there exists the power of God which is above all nature and all other spiritual powers.

The Jewish people have been entrusted to preserve the Torah through history.carry through thousands of years of history the message of the Torah: the purpose of Creation, the Laws of God, the development of the family and tribes of Israel, and the remarkable and miraculous acts God performed for the Jewish people in the eyes of the world.

The Torah is unlike any other book in history. Each Torah scroll must be hand written by a sincere Jew who observes Jewish Law. The Torah must be written with special ink, on the skin of a kosher animal, and in a specific script. The details of these laws of writing a Torah scroll fill an entire book. When a Torah scroll is completed it is not considered kosher or acceptable for use in a public reading unless it has been examined letter by letter by an authority. If there is any ambiguity in the reading even of a single letter, the Torah scroll is not kosher. Consequently every kosher Torah scroll in use by the Jewish people is identical after thousands of years of history of the Jewish people being spread out throughout the globe. If you compare this with the textual tradition of any other ancient text you will see how astounding this is.

On every single page of the works of Homer, Plato, or the Gospels, for example, there are ten to fifty textual variations. In other words, every ancient copy of nearly every page of ancient texts generally has many different versions based on the errors of scribes or interpretation. In more simple language, imagine the game of telephone when people pass a message around a room. At the end it comes out very different than when it started. The same is true for ancient books. Books are passed down and copied through history and they inevitably become different. The Torah established laws for its preservation so that its message could travel through time and space unchanged.

The preservation of the story of the Exodus is one of the central pillars of the Jewish people. The Torah established another law in order to preserve this message, and that is the holiday of Passover. One of the most primary commandments in the holiday of Passover today is the telling of the story of the Exodus. Each year on the first night of Passover, Jewish families hold a special meal and during the meal we are commanded to recount the story of Passover.

Raise the tray with the matzot and say:

This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves; next year we will be free people.

The tray with the matzot is moved aside, and the second cup is POURED.(Do not drink it yet).

Now the child asks “What makes this night different from all [other] nights?”

On all nights we need not dip even once, on this night we do so twice!

On all nights we eat bread or matzah, and on this night only matzah.

On all nights we eat any kind of vegetables, and on this night bitter herbs!

On all nights we eat sitting upright or reclining, and on this night we all recline!

The tray is restored to its place with the matzah partly uncovered. Now we say “We were slaves. . .”

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd, our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing the Torah, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt; and everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy…

In the beginning our fathers served idols; but now the Omnipresent One has brought us close to His service, as it is said: “Joshua said to all the people: Thus said the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, `Your fathers used to live on the other side of the river – Terach, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, and they served other gods.

“And I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and I led him throughout the whole land of Canaan. I increased his seed and gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave Mount Seir to possess it, and Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.”

Blessed is He who keeps His promise to Israel, blessed be He! For the Holy One, blessed be He, calculated the end [of the bondage], in order to do as He had said to our father Abraham at the “Covenant between the Portions,” as it is said: “And He said to Abraham, `You shall know that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and make them suffer, for four hundred years. But I shall also judge the nation whom they shall serve, and after that they will come out with great wealth.’”

This is what has stood by our fathers and us! For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!

Go forth and learn what Laban the Aramean wanted to do to our father Jacob. Pharaoh had issued a decree against the male children only, but Laban wanted to uproot everyone – as it is said: “The Aramean wished to destroy my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation – great and mighty and numerous.”

“And he went down to Egypt” forced by Divine decree. “And he sojourned there” – this teaches that our father Jacob did not go down to Egypt to settle, but only to live there temporarily. Thus it is said, “They said to Pharaoh, We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks because the hunger is severe in the land of Canaan; and now, please, let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.”

“Few in number” as it is said: “Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now, the L-rd, your G-d, has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

“And he became there a nation” this teaches that Israel was distinctive there.

“Great, mighty,” as it is said: “And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied and became very, very mighty, and the land became filled with them.”

“And numerous,” as it is said: “I passed over you and saw you wallowing in your bloods, and I said to you `By your blood you shall live,’ and I said to you `By your blood you shall live!’ I caused you to thrive like the plants of the field, and you increased and grew and became very beautiful your bosom fashioned and your hair grown long, but you were naked and bare.”

“The Egyptians treated us badly and they made us suffer, and they put hard work upon us.”

“The Egyptians treated us badly,” as it is said: Come, let us act cunningly with [the people] lest they multiply and, if there should be a war against us, they will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the land.”

“And they made us suffer,” as it is said: “They set taskmasters over [the people of Israel] to make them suffer with their burdens, and they built storage cities for Pharaoh, Pitom and Ramses.”

“And they put hard work upon us,” as it is said: “The Egyptians made the children of Israel work with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard work, with mortar and with bricks and all manner of service in the field, all their work which they made them work with rigor.” And we cried out to the L-rd, the G-d of our fathers, and the L-rd heard our voice and saw our suffering, our labor and our oppression.

“And we cried out to the L-rd, the G-d of our fathers,” as it is said: “During that long period, the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel groaned because of the servitude, and they cried out. And their cry for help from their servitude rose up to G-d.”

“And the L-rd heard our voice” as it said: “And G-d heard their groaning, and G-d remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

“And he saw our suffering,” this refers to the separation of husband and wife, as it is said: “G-d saw the children of Israel and G-d took note.”

“Our labor,” this refers to the “children,” as it is said: “Every boy that is born, you shall throw into the river and every girl you shall keep alive.”

“And our oppression,” this refers to the pressure, as it is said: “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.”

“The L-rd took as out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders.”

“The Lord took us out of Egypt,” not through an angel, not through a seraph and not through a messenger. The Holy One, blessed be He, did it in His glory by Himself!

Thus it is said: “In that night I will pass through the land of Egypt, and I will smite every first-born in the land of Egypt, from man to beast, and I will carry out judgments against all the gods of Egypt, I the L-rd.”

“I will pass through the land of Egypt,” I and not an angel;

“And I will smite every first-born in the land of Egypt,” I and not a seraph;

“And I will carry out judgments against all the gods of Egypt,” I and not a messenger;

“I- the L-rd,” it is I, and none other!

“With a strong hand,” this refers to the dever (pestilence) as it is said: “Behold, the hand of the L-rd will be upon your livestock in the field, upon the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds and the flocks, a very severe pestilence.”

“And with an outstretched arm,” this refers to the sword, as it is said: “His sword was drawn, in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem.”

“And with a great manifestation,” this refers to the revelation of the Shechinah (Divine Presence), as it is said: “Has any G-d ever tried to take for himself a nation from the midst of another nation, with trials, signs and wonders, with war and with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great manifestations, like all that the L-rd your G-d, did for you in Egypt before your eyes!”

“And with signs,” this refers to the staff, as it is said: “Take into your hand this staff with which you shall perform the signs.”

“And wonders,” this refers to the blood, as it is said: “And I shall show wonders in heaven and on earth.

When saying the following words “blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke,” spill three times from the wine in the cup.

These are the Ten Plagues which the Holy One, blessed be He, brought upon the Egyptians, namely as follows:

Blood.

Frogs.

Lice.

Wild Beasts.

Pestilence.

Boils.

Hail.

Locust.

Darkness.

Slaying

…Thus it is our duty to thank, to laud, to praise, to glorify, to exalt, to adore, to bless, to elevate and to honor the One who did all these miracles for our fathers and for us. He took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity, and from deep darkness to great light and from bondage to redemption. Let us therefore recite before Him Halleluyah, Praise G-d!

What is most remarkable about the Haggadah that we read on Passover is that it does not mention Moses. The reason is that the essence of the event was the act of God Himself. The Passover account focuses on the relationship between God and the Jewish people

The story of the Exodus in the Torah focuses on the relationship between Moses and Pharaoh. This is because the Torah is about the development of the Jewish people and their message to the world. Therefore, the Torah tells the story of the dramatic change in history when the people of Israel receive their mission and how the idolatrous tradition and powers they have to confront in order to bring the knowledge of God to the world.

One should also keep in mind that the period of the ten plagues lasted an entire year. As each plague occurred Moses confronted Pharaoh, and each time Pharaoh’s priests and magicians were able to replicate the wonders and signs of God and Moses His messenger.

Moses had a staff that turned into a serpent, and so did Pharaoh’s priests and magicians. Moses turned the water into blood and so did Pharaoh’s priests and magicians. In other words, the Pharaoh and his people were not easily persuaded that the religion of the Jews was anything new or different. At this time, each of the peoples’ of the world had their various Gods and their own particular magic that they were able to do. The people with the greatest understanding of magic and divination were able to control others. Pharaoh was not going to give up his authority in the world so quickly. In other words, Pharaoh perceived the conflict as one pagan magician against another.

However, as the power of the plagues increased, it became more and more clear to the Egyptians that Moses and his God were clearly more powerful than the Pharaoh. At times, even the Pharaoh began to perceive this, and as each plague begins the Pharaoh summons Moses and asks him to pray to his God on the Pharaoh’s behalf in order to end the plague. The Pharaoh promises to heed to Moses’ request to let him lead his people into the desert to serve their God for a three day festival. However, once the plague subsides, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and the Pharaoh retracts his promise.

Finally, with the plague of the lice, the magicians acknowledge that they are unable to replicate the plague, and they say “surely this is the finger of God.” They begin to acknowledge the power of the God of the Jewish people. The plagues continue until the magicians say to Pharaoh, “surely Egypt is lost.” Pharaoh finally gives in at the plague of the death of the first born, and during this night the Jews actually slaughter and sacrifice the sacred animal god of Egypt, the lamb.

God has Moses lead the Jewish people the route of the See of Reeds so they cannot turn around. Pharaoh recants one last time and gathers his army to bring the Jews back to Egypt. He drives the Jewish people up against the Sea of Reeds, and here the greatest miracle of all occurs. Moses lifts his arms and a great wind comes and splits the sea before their eyes. The children of Israel cross. The Egyptians follow, and then the walls of the sea fall back and drown the entire Egyptian army as the children of Israel walk onto the dry land.

The entire story of the Exodus was heard throughout the entire ancient Mediterranean world. When Moses’ father-in-law Jethro comes to meet him, he tells Moses “Now I know that God is greater than all the gods, for in the very matter in which (the Egyptians) had planned against them…” to drown the male children in the Nile, God has done to the Egyptians by drowning them in the Red Sea. Jethro was the highest priest of the ancient world and had been initiated into every form of pagan worship. But now he turns his life away from everything he had learned before to acknowledge the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

Now Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel His people, how that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt…And Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and bowed down and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent. 8 And Moses told his father-in-law all that the LORD had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them. 9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done to Israel, in that He had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. 10 And Jethro said: ‘Blessed be the LORD, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh; who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. 11 Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods; yea, for in the very matter in which the Egyptians plotted against them. (Exodus, 18:5)

The Pharaoh had tried to destroy the Jewish people by drowning all the male babies in the Nile. What is most amazing to Jethro is that God in his revenge takes Pharaoh and his entire army and does to them what they wished to do to the Jews. God overturns nature to enforce ultimate justice.

There is a tradition that when the Red Sea split, all the water in the entire world also split. In Jewish thought, water is related to wisdom. In order for God to be revealed, the entire “wisdom” of the entire world had to be broken open. The word for Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim, which means “a narrow, constricted space.” The Exodus from Egypt was literally the birth of the children of Israel into a holy people. Egypt was the womb, the narrow birth canal, and the splitting of the sea was the breaking of the water in the womb and the opening of the cervix through which this people were born into the world. God is the father who chose the Jewish people to be His holy nation to receive the Torah for humanity.

Through the dramatic story of the Exodus, God reveals Himself to the entire world that He is the Creator of all nature, of the system of the heavens (and its angels) and the earth. He therefore can choose a people to represent His will in the world to stand above the forces of nature. Unlike all the other nations of the world who worship the spiritual forces of nature, the Jewish people were chosen to bring to humanity the worship of the One True God.

When God is revealed, the Egyptians see that all the gods of Egypt are nothing in comparison to the True God. The revelation of God is also the revelation that there is something above nature, that is, the God who created all nature and the system of the heavens and His spiritual messengers.

Today secular society has much in common with the Egyptians. Instead of pagan wisdom, we worship modern science and believe in its knowledge and technology. Today we look at the world through the eyes of science. We see scientific knowledge as the true understanding and knowledge of what reality is. We look to science and its technology to control nature. So much so, that many have declared that there is no God. We believe that because of our knowledge and power to control nature, that we have truth. However, in the future just as God revealed Himself to the Egyptians, He will again reveal Himself to the modern world and the truths that we believe in today will be revealed to be as shallow and powerless as the ancient pagan idols in the presence of the One God and Creator of heaven and earth. It is not to say that there is no meaning and significance to science. It is just that the revelation of God shows that there are no real laws of nature; everything is the will of God. The same was true for the Egyptians. They believed they understood life perfectly, but were shocked to discover that their knowledge and power was nothing in comparison to the knowledge of God.

God comes to Egypt in an act of vengeance. God gives man freedom and the opportunity to worship other gods and powers. These acts are detestable to God and a violation of God’s original covenant with mankind. The civilization of Pharaoh’s Egypt was based on the pagan wisdom and magic of Ham, the son of Noah and the evil Nimrod. It was a civilization that did not recognize the Creator and sought to dominate nature and other humans for Pharaoh’s personal power. Its wisdom and achievements were not for the glory of the Creator, but for the glory of one man and his kingdom. The entire civilization was developed from a foundation that was against the will of the Creator and purpose of Creation. It was ruled by the spirit of the side of life that is opposed to holiness and the purpose of Creation to be a place of love and Godly wisdom. God is merciful, and all human actions have their purpose in the ultimate plan of existence. Nonetheless, God does judge the world and at times individuals or even nations are destroyed because of their rebellion against God. Every Passover the Jewish people celebrate the Exodus by singing special Psalms of praise to God. However, we recite a shortened version of them because our sages teach us that it is wrong to fully rejoice over the destruction of even our enemies because they are also God’s creation.

Mount Sinai

The Torah expresses the culmination of the Exodus with the following words:

And God saved Israel on that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea. And they saw the great hand (that is, “the mighty power”) with which He used on the Egyptians, and the people believed in God and Moses His servant. (Exodus, 14:30)

This passage expresses a fundamental principle of Jewish faith. The faith that God taught us was not only to believe in God, but also to believe in Moses His servant.

Moses is the greatest prophet. He communicates the word of God to man. This is most clearly expressed in the story of the Revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

There is a law in the Torah that says the messenger of the king is like the king. Moses was appointed by God to lead the Jewish people. He is the messenger of the King of the world. Therefore, Moses stands to the Jewish people and the rest of humanity in the place of the King of the world.

Moses and every true prophet is a finite vessel through which the infinite wisdom and love of the Creator is communicated to man. A prophet is like an angel among men. An angel is a Greek word that literally means a messenger. In Hebrew the word is malach, which means an officer of the king through which the king expresses his rulership.

God is the King of the world. All the worldly kings are examples in the world of what the True King is. It is not the other way around. The Kabbalah teaches that the very purpose of the world is for God to be King. God cannot be King without a people. God gives us life, but in this one thing we are able to give back to Him. We have the power to establish Him as king. It is through our existence and our acceptance of God’s kingship, that His very kingship has power and reality.

The foundation of God’s kingship is His rulership over the world. His rulership is expressed through the giving of His Law — that is, the Torah (and Torah literally means “The Law”).

When we think of kings and kingship today, we think of human beings and their hereditary claims to power. Since we have been educated in the era of democracy, which is a rejection of the idea of kingship and the power of an individual over the many, it is hard for us to conceive how this metaphor illuminates the nature of God’s relationship to the world. Moreover, the entire concept of law in our world has been reduced to an arbitrary convention that makes society work, and is often an expression of the abuse of power.

In order to understand what the Torah expresses, we need to completely transform our idea of Kingship and Law. God’s Kingship is marked by one supreme quality. In Hebrew the word is kvod. Kvod means “honor” or “glory,” but it is a term that we need to explain. God is infinite love and goodness. He is the source of a majestic and splendid infinite light of love and goodness. This is the expression of His Kingdom. God wants to be King because He is filled with the desire to share His blessed goodness with His creation. To be King means that He spreads His superabundant wealth of infinite goodness with every creature. He provides all their needs, gives them life, and provides all their needs. God gives humanity the awesome opportunity to freely choose to become part of His blessed Kingdom and to live in the presence and experience of His glory. The role of creation is to sing with joy in immense gratitude and thankfulness for such a blessed existence. This is to give honor and to sing praise to God.

This is the true nature of God’s Kingdom. When we look upon the world today, this is difficult to perceive because of the pain, suffering, and confusion we see. However, this is because God has hidden His presence from the world. The truth is that in each moment and in the deepest darkness of existence, God’s infinite light is present. The course of history is the process of revealing this, and when it is revealed we shall all see that God was always with us, and everything that looked bad was in truth perfectly orchestrated to create the ultimate perfection of existence.

Faith is the work that God asks us to do, to believe in Him and to praise Him as King even when He is hidden. It is work and there is a reward for this faith. God hides His presence in order to give us the opportunity to do this work of faith and to earn its reward, because it is only work to serve God when He is hidden. When his blessed goodness is revealed, faith is effortless.

Although God is hidden, His presence is not completely absent. When we behold creation we see the marks of His amazing wisdom and intelligence. The wisdom and intelligence of the natural world fills us with awe. No one can look at the heavens and the stars and galaxies above us and not be filled with this awe: behold the smile of children and the blooming of flowers, the infinite variety of animals and plants, the abundant food and sustenance we are provided with; the incredible precision with which nature is designed in every detail to provide us all that we need from air to breath, water to drink and food to eat, the perfect atmosphere to live — every detail of nature is a miracle. But the greatest miracle of all is existence itself, the fact that there is something which arises from nothing and continues each moment to exist.

The sages teach us that creation did not become fully established in existence as an eternal world until the giving of the Torah. This is because the very purpose of the world is to establish God’s kingship upon the earth. This kingship was not established until God chose a people to receive His Law and the yoke of His rulership. This is the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people.

The Torah is God’s plan for creation. The Jewish people were chosen to be God’s nation of priests, a nation that would perform the holy service of God and through that way of life be drawn close to God and His wisdom and become the teachers who would spread God’s plan and teach God’s law to all of humanity. The Torah is presented in simple stories and basic laws for human functioning and God’s worship. However, encoded within the Torah is the deeper teaching of God’s purpose and the path to transform the world as we know it where God’s presence is hidden into a world where God’s infinite light will be fully revealed.

The revelation begins with Moses ascending Mount Sinai to spend another forty day period with God. God tells Moses that he should now declare to the Jewish people how he brought them from slavery and the house of Pharaoh to serve him, not as slaves, but as the holy nation with the purpose we have just explained above.

In the third month after the children of Israel had gone forth out of the land of Egypt, on this day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 And when they journeyed from Rephidim, and came to the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount. 3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying: ‘Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will hearken to My voice, and keep My covenant, then you shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine; 6 and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.’ (Exodus, 19:1)

Moses spoke God’s message to the people who accept in unison the mission and the covenant.

And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD commanded him. 8 And all the people answered together, and said: ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do.’ And Moses reported the words of the people to the LORD. (Exodus, 19:7)

God then tells Moses that He will come and speak with him so that they shall see for themselves the special status of Moses, and that the words he speaks are truly directly from God. God says that the people will believe in Moses forever. This can be understood in two ways. One is the simple meaning that people will believe in Moses as he expresses God’s commandments in the Torah. The other meaning is that people will always believe in the Moses that is born in every generation.

And the LORD said to Moses: ‘Behold, I come to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you for ever.’ (Exodus, 19:9)

The people are then prepared for the Revelation:

And Moses told the words of the people to the LORD. 10 And the LORD said to Moses: ‘Go to the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their garments, 11 and be ready for the third day; for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai. 12 And you shall set boundaries to the people round about, saying: Take heed to yourselves, that you go not up into the mounaint, or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mounaint shall be surely put to death; 13 no hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live; when the ram’s horn sounds long, they shall come up to the mountain.’ 14 And Moses went down from the mountain to the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their garments. 15 And he said to the people: ‘Be ready for the third day; do not come near a woman.’ (Exodus, 19:10)

The Revelation

16 And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and the voice of a horn exceedingly loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the bottom of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. 19 And when the voice of the horn sounded louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice. 20 And the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mount; and the LORD called Moses to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. 21 And the LORD said to Moses: ‘Go down, charge the people, lest they break through to the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish. 22 And let the priests also, that come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them.’ 23 And Moses said to the LORD: ‘The people cannot come up to mount Sinai; for you commanded us, saying: Set boundaries around the mountain, and sanctify it.’ 24 And the LORD said to him: ‘Go, descend, and then you shall ascend, you, and Aaron with you; but let not the priests and the people break through to come up to the LORD, lest He break forth upon them.’ 25 So Moses went down to the people, and told them.

The Ten Commandments

And God spoke all these words, saying: 2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. 3 You shall not make to you a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth; 4 you shall not bow down to them, nor serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; 5 and showing mercy to the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments. 6 You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain.

7 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 8 Six days shall you labour, and do all your work; 9 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, in it you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; 10 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and sanctified it. 11 Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God has given you. 12 You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. 13 You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is your neighbour’s. 14 And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. 15 And they said to Moses: ‘Speak you with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’ 16 And Moses said to the people: ‘Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before you, that you sin not.’ 17 And the people stood afar off; but Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. 18 And the LORD said to Moses: Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: You yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. 19 You shall not make with Me–gods of silver, or gods of gold, you shall not make to you. 20 An altar of earth you shall make to Me, and shall sacrifice thereon your burnt-offerings, and your peace-offerings, your sheep, and your oxen; in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you. 21 And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones; for if you lift up your tool upon it, you have profaned it. 22 Neither shall you go up by steps to Mine altar, that your nakedness be not uncovered thereon.

And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off.

And they said to Moses: ‘Speak you with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’ And Moses said to the people: ‘Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before you, that you sin not.’ (Exodus, 19:1)

God spoke the first two commandments directly to the people, but then the people beg Moses to intervene because they are unable to continue in the overwhelming of awe of hearing the voice of God. And so the rest of the Ten Commandments are spoken by Moses to the people.

So we see that Moses is the very connection between the people and God. Moses has devoted his life to perfecting and purifying himself. Moses is the humblest man of all. He has given his will to completely perform the will of God in the world. He has ascended Mount Sinai and spent another forty days and forty nights being taught directly by God and living above nature without food or sleep, a man living like an angel and among the angels.

The Golden Calf

After the revelation at Sinai, the sages teach us that the world was fully repaired from the sin of Adam. The redemption of the Children of Israel from Egypt and the receiving of the Torah had now brought the entire world in a state of perfection. However, another test would occur and the world would once again descend into its state of darkness.

Moses was ascended Mount Sinai for the second period of forty days and forty nights. During this time there is a tradition that the Satan came and made a vision appear to the Jewish people showing them that Moses had died. Another tradition said that they made them count the forty days wrong. The people then feared that their leader and connection to God had died. They did not know how they could continue on.

When the Children of Israel left Egypt many Egyptians also begged Moses to join them saying that they had given up their gods and now wanted to follow the God of Israel. This group is called the “mixed multitude.” Tradition teaches us that it is the leaders of this group that approached Aaron, Moses’ brother and threatened to kill him if he did not make an idol for them. The mixed multitude still clung to the pagan worship of Egypt and believed that they could make an idol to stand in Moses’ place.

Aaron was a man of peace and always sought to resolve situations with peace. He knew that Moses would come soon and wanted to delay the people. Therefore he told them to collect gold for the idol. The mixed multitude brought him the gold and Aaron threw it into the fire and to Aaron’s surprise a golden calf emerged (Exodus 32:24).

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him: ‘Rise up, make us a god who shall go before us; for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.’ 2 And Aaron said to them: ‘Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them to me.’ 3 And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he took it at from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf; and they said: ‘This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’ 5 And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said: ‘To-morrow shall be a feast to the LORD.’ 6 And they rose up early on the next day, and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to make merry.

7 And the LORD spoke to Moses: ‘Go, descend; for your people, that you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have become corrupt; 8 they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said: This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt…

15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mountain, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand; tablets that were inscribed on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they inscribed. 16 And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraven upon the tablets. 17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses: ‘There is a noise of war in the camp.’ 18 And he said: ‘It is not the voice of them that shout for control, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome, but the voice that I hear.’ 19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came near to the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger flared up, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mountain. 20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder. (Exodus, 32:1)

The episode of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the tablets with the Ten Commandments seems like a great failure. However, it reveals a deeper lesson about life. Although the first tablets are broken, Moses ascends Mount Sinai for the third period of forty days and receives second tablets. Moses is commanded to give these tablets to Aaron to place in the sacred Ark, and also to place the broken tablets next to them. This is a consistent theme in Torah, uniting the broken and the whole.

Earlier in this book we discussed the Gate of the Return to God. When someone commits a sin, God forbid, and they return to God, he returns as someone broken, remorseful for what he had done. Through the process of return a person reaches a higher level because it is only when we are broken that we can reach a state of true humility and openness. As Tzvi Freeman puts it, “How can we find a place to put the infinite?” The infinite cannot be put in a finite place, that is a place of wholeness. Somehow when our wholeness is shattered, we reach a mysterious place of openness with the state of brokenness. King David writes in his Psalms,

God desires are a broken spirit and a broken and humbled heart. These sacrifices God does not turn away.

The highest state is then to return to our life, to our wholeness, but not to forget our brokenness. In the sacred part of our lives we must contain the broken tablets and the whole tablets. We have to maintain our wholeness and our brokenness. Our wholeness gives us the power and strength to live in the world through our individual will. Our brokenness is our acknowledgement that we are nothing but frail creatures formed by God. It is through this brokenness that we humbly recognize that all our strength comes from God and that we must have mercy and kindness to others who are also broken.

We need to keep both our wholeness and brokenness in mind. A famous rabbi once said that he has two pockets and in one pocket he keeps a note with a line of Torah that says that “each person must look upon the world as if it were created for him alone (to remember the specialness of our individual life and our responsibility for the whole world), and in the other pocket he had a note that says, “I am a worm and not a man” (in order to remember we are a creature completely dependent upon God and with no merit of our own).

From the creation to the story of Adam and Eve to the story of the giving of the Torah at mount Sinai The Five Books of Moses is primarily a narrative of the history of man and the children of Jacob. After the Revelation at Mount Sinai, the Torah continues the story of Moses’ attempts to lead the people to the land of Israel, but the majority of pages of the rest of the Torah explain the construction of the sanctuary of God and the various offerings and requirements of the priests, Levis, and the people of Israel to support the sanctuary. In fact, the construction of the sanctuary is presented at the center of the Five Books of Moses, because it is the very purpose of the Torah. Let us explain why.

God says that He desires a place to dwell below, that is, in the world. How can we possible understand such a statement? God is infinite, and the physical world is finite. So how can the infinite dwell in the finite?

Infinite means beyond all limitations and boundaries. However, limitations and boundaries are what define the physical world. The physical world is governed by the dimensions of time and space. These are the finite limits that define objects in the physical world. A person exists in the physical world because he has a size and occupies a location in time.

We can then ask, Can God exist within the physical world? Can God exist within a limited space in a specific location and in a specific time? In simple logic we would say, “No, God can’t exist within the finite because He is infinite, and infinite is the opposite of the finite.”

However, if we say that God can’t exist within the finite, are we then putting a limit or restriction upon God’s existence?

The truth is that God is not really infinite, nor is He finite. God is beyond anything we can conceive including the categories of infinite and finite. God tells us that My thoughts are not your thoughts. God’s desire to dwell in the physical world is His way of revealing the ultimate truth of existence that is beyond heaven and earth, beyond the infinite and finite, but at the same time unites them. God desires to dwell in the world to reveal the ultimate unity of all existence and the ultimate wonder and mystery of life.

On a more simple level, God tells the Jewish people, make me a sanctuary and I will dwell within them. The sages tell us that God says “within them” instead of “within it” because when we build a sanctuary then He can dwell within the heart of all the people who serve Him. God wants to dwell in the world in the most intimate way to reveal His love and kindness to all His creatures. The building of the sanctuary is the means that God choose to bring His infinite light and love most perfectly into the physical world.

After the giving of the Torah as the Jews traveled through the desert, God commanded Moses to arrange the twelve tribes into four separate parts corresponding to the four directions. Each of these four camps corresponded to one letter in the holy name of God, the Tetragrammaton, YKVK. (The Tetragrammaton is the name of God that is not pronounced today, and is represented by the four English letters Y K and V K, which stand for the Hebrew letters ה י and ה ו.) In the center of the camps were the Priests and Levis and at their center was the Ark of the Covenant that carried the Ten Commandments and the broken tablets. At this point, God’s presence was dwelling with the Jewish people and the destination of their travels was to enter the Holy land of Israel.

God did not let Moses bring the people into the land, but instead his student Joshua did. It was not until generations later that King David finally conquered Jerusalem and was commanded to build the Temple of God there where God would place His Name.

A “name” in the ancient world is the power of something. God’s name is the manifestation of His power and presence. God chose Mount Moriah as the place where He would make the final dwelling place of His power and presence in the world.

This site is for many special reasons. The sages teach us that:

As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,

so is the land of Israel the navel of the world…

situated in the centre of the world,

and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,

and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,

and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,

and the ark in the centre of the holy place,

and the Foundation Stone before the holy place,

because from it the world was founded.

Israel is a land that rests on Asia and Africa and borders Europe on the Mediterranean. It is literally the meeting place of these three continents, the center of the world as it was known in ancient times. The Jewish tradition literally is a meeting place between East and West. It is neither Oriental nor Occidental, but something that unites the two extremes.

The holiest part of the Temple is called the Holy of the Holies. It is the place where the Ark of the Covenant rests. In this special place only the High Priest of the Kohanim is allowed to enter, and he is only allowed to enter once a year on the holiest day of the year — the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

The Holy of Holies is built upon the stone called the Even haShetiya. According to the sages, it was from this rock that the world was created.

In the words of the Zohar [16]: The world was not created until God took a stone called Even haShetiya and threw it into the depths where it was fixed from above till below, and from it the world expanded. It is the centre point of the world and on this spot stood the Holy of Holies.

It was from this same spot that God formed Adam. It was upon this rock that Adam, Cain, Abel, and Noah all offered sacrifices to God. It was this at this place that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice at the place I will direct you to.

Isaac’s son Jacob came here as he was fleeing from his brother Esau, and it was upon this place that Jacob placed twelve stones around him and slept and dreamt of the angels climbing up a ladder ascending and descending.

Jacob departed from Beer-Sheba and went toward Haran. He encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set; he took from the stones of the place which he arranged around his head, and lay down in that place. And he dreamt, and behold! A ladder was set earthward and its top reached heavenward; and behold! angels of God were ascending and descending on it…Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely God is present in this place and I did not know!” And he became frightened and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God and this is the gate of the heavens!” (Genesis, 28:10)

This place is literally the meeting place of the finite and the infinite within our three dimensional world. This is the reason the world needs a temple on this spot, because at this point the life force flows from heaven into the physical world. The angels ascending the ladder take our prayers and sacrifices to God, and the angels descending bring all the blessing and life energy for all existence.

In the spiritual geography of the universe, Jerusalem is the top of the Earth. The heavens and the twelve constellations surround the earth in 360 degrees. From Jerusalem upwards there are different levels of the heavens. God’s blessing and life-force must descend from outside the heavens and descend through various spheres of the heavens until they come into the Holy of the Holies, the Even haShetiya and then this blessing and lifeforce travels through spiritual pathways throughout all of Israel and then throughout the entire earth.

Israel is a tiny country, but in this tiny area there are hundreds of different geographical places, from snow capped mountains to Sahara desert, to tropical beaches and lush green vineyards and valleys. Nearly every kind of plant can grow in the land of Israel. King Solomon was said to have grown every kind of plant that was upon the earth in Israel. He was able to do this because he knew precisely in Israel where the channel of life force to the different regions of the earth flowed. Therefore, if wanted to grow an African fruit tree he would plant it in a spot in Israel where the blessing to Africa flowed to support that particular tree.

God commanded King David and his son King Solomon to build the Temple in Jerusalem for a very practical spiritual reason. This is the very place where heaven meets the earth, and therefore this is the place where we must do the work of prayer to bring and sustain blessing into the world — as we mentioned earlier, this is the fundamental task and purpose of Adam. This job was assigned to the Jewish people, and within the Jewish people it is the responsibility of the tribe of Levis and the sub-group of Levis called Cohens.

The work of the temple, its priests, songs, offerings, prayers, all are arranged to correspond to what is required in the spiritual system of the flow of prayer and blessing that God established. We pray only to God Himself, but these prayers have an effect in spiritual worlds that fulfills God’s Will. We never pray to angels, but angels function to assist in the communication of prayers. In the higher worlds of angels there is a spiritual network that delivers prayers and blessings back and forth in the world; there are also rules that must be followed, and when things do not follow these rules there are other angels who have the job to block the flow. The system of the Temple is organized to keep this flow unblocked and to keep the network running smoothly. In order for this to occur sacrifices and prayers must be done to satisfy the angels who seek to block the flow, and also to give strength and life to the angels that maintain the flow.

The Torah teaches us that every thought and deed creates angels. Good thoughts create good angels and bad thoughts bad angels. In other words, the spiritual network corresponds to human actions. When we do right, things flow; when we do wrong the network is blocked. God knows that humans err and there will be blocks so He created rituals and mechanisms to deal with this. For example, if a person does a sin, God forbid, this creates a major block in the flow of blessings in his or her life, and therefore for the world. In order to fix this block, God created a system of sacrifices and prayers that make atonement. This atonement is effected when the person acknowledges the sin, and then takes his money or property and buys an offering of mineral, plant, or animal, depending on the person’s economic situation and the sin, and then brings it to a priest who takes this offering and puts it upon the holy altar.

The priest is a person who devotes his life to serving God and is given the responsibility to help the people atone. He has to lay his hand upon the offering and with the proper intention offer this to God. An animal is offered because when we sin we are letting our animal nature dominate our lives. An offering of an animal upon the alter is a way of expressing that we are willing to give up this part of ourselves in order to serve the higher purpose of life. The energy of that animal is then transformed to a holy purpose and through the prayers and intentions of the person and the priest, this energy clears the spiritual block and is then eaten by the priest and his family, so the animal part of the person is now regenerated into an energy that is given to the spiritual world of angels and also to the human priest who uses it to serve God.

Because the Temple is the place where the infinite and finite meet, it was a place of constant miracles. Although the courtyards of the Temple were places of hundreds and thousands of animals sacrifices, there were no flies present. During the time of the Temple, no woman in Jerusalem ever miscarried. The flame on the altar always burned in a straight line heavenward, no matter what the weather conditions.

And during the time of the holidays when all of the men of Israel would come to the Temple, miraculously there was always room for every person to pray.

The sages say that if the nations of the world knew of the importance of the Temple, they would all send the armies of the world to protect it and ensure its constant functioning.

The Holy People and its Holy Land

Now that we have discussed the Temple, we have a much better context to truly understand holiness. Holiness is the quality of things that are associated most intimately with the flow of Godliness in the world. There is a holiness associated with persons, time, and place, and all of this is established in relationship to the Torah and the Temple.

The root meaning of the word holy (kodesh in Hebrew) is “separation.” The holy is that which is separated from its ordinary use in order to serve God. God chose Abraham and his descendents. He separated the Jewish people from the other nations to serve Him.

What does it mean that He separated them? The Torah teaches that there are seventy nations in the world. These are the seventy primary descendents of Noah’s children. These nations were each given a different language and spread around the world as a punishment for the Tower of Babel. Each of these nations is presided over by a certain angel. This angel guides each nation in its particular gifts and strengths, and directs its leaders in its political goals and religious expression. The main purpose of the seventy nations is to build and develop civilization. This means the development of knowledge and skills to care for the needs of man, whether it is in agriculture, building, the art of medicine, mathematics, art, etc. Throughout history each nation has its special gifts which they used to contribute to the overall development of human life and civilization. This is the task of humanity in general.

God separated the children of Jacob to be a nation that has a different task. Instead of directing its efforts towards human needs, God asked the Jewish people to serve His needs in the world.

The nations think about growth and power and knowledge. The purpose of the Jewish people is to focus on what God wants in the world and to teach this to the rest of humanity. God desires that the world be transformed into a place where His love and wisdom can shine. This love and wisdom is God’s presence. The more love and wisdom that humanity receives and expresses, the more God can be said to live in the world. This preparation is for the time when God will fully reveal His presence to all humanity. In this time, the existence of God and the purpose of life will no longer be hidden, and the knowledge of God will fill the earth like water covers the ocean. However, in order to reach this time, God required that certain spiritual work be done. The nature of that work is the extensive 613 commandments given to the Jewish people and the 7 commandments given to all of humanity.

God calls the Jewish people a holy people and His segula. Segula literally means that the Jewish people are the special mark of God in the world. They perform this by doing God’s will. The Torah and its 613 commandments are the expression of God’s infinite will and wisdom. God brings His infinite being into the world by placing them in a way that can be physically expressed in the world. The 613 commandments are actions that in secret and awesome ways reveal the being of God in the physical world.

The commandments teach us how to build the Temple, who God’s servants are in the Temple, what service He requires, how His servants must live, how they should dress, what they can and cannot eat, who they may marry, and every other detail of life. God’s priests are the chosen tribe from among the chosen people. The rest of the people of Israel must work to support the priests and the workings of the Temple.

In order for God to dwell among the Jewish people He requires that the Jewish people live in a way that preserves a greater state of purity and makes their bodies proper to receive His light. Therefore God explains which animals can be eaten and elevate the body spiritually and which have energies that draw the body into physicality and its animal nature. Everything in the physical world has these two potential powers, to elevate him towards God or to draw him down away from God. The Torah and its commandments show the Jewish people how to navigate through life in a way that preserves the conditions for God to dwell. This includes what fabrics a Jew can wear, when to conduct marital relations, who one can marry, what to eat, how to work and transact business, how to pray and what to wear and do while praying, how to create a government and make war, how to raise animals and farm, as well as every other detail of life.

The commandments teach us how to build the Temple, who are God’s servants there, what service He requires, how His servants must live, who they may marry. God’s priests are the chosen from among the chosen people. The rest of the nation must work to support the priests and the workings of the Temple.

God created the world by commanding the world into existence through speech. God continues this process with His commandments to the Jewish people and humanity. These commandments are expressed in words and these words are written in letters. These letters and words are from the holy language of Hebrew, which is a cosmic code of Creation and is a link to the light and power of higher spiritual worlds. When a Jew studies these laws he is connecting in profound ways to this heavenly and Godly light and power. When the Jew follows the commandment he literally brings this heavenly light and Godly power into the physical world. Hundreds of millions of Jews have lived through history and have devoted their lives to studying the Torah and following its commandments. These actions have continued the process of Creation transforming and preparing the world for the complete revelation of Godliness.

Even though the world may look the same, and perhaps may even look worse through the process of history, on a spiritual level the complete opposite is true. The world and the souls of humanity have been undergoing a process of transformation and perfection. The Torah teaches that this process oddly enough continues in a way until humanity and the Jewish people reach its lowest level. The Torah teaches that the revelation of God and the redemption of humanity will occur not from the highest place, but when we reach the lowest place. This is parallel to the story of the Exodus. The Jewish people were redeemed from a state of slavery after many had given up hope and turned to the religion of the Egyptians.

There is a simple and profound truth in the statement that says that it is darkest before the dawn. A metaphor is given that the relationship between man and God is like the two angels called the Cherubim that stand on the Ark of the Covenant. At times these angels are facing one another. At other times they are back to back. In order for the two cherubim to go from back to back and move face to face, they must first separate completely from one another and then begin the motion towards one another. The same is with God and man. Right before we become face to face with God, we must first appear at the furthest place from Him. This entire process is the completion and perfection of what we described earlier called “the return to God”. The return to God is the purpose of creation, and it is most complete when the world returns from the lowest place immediately to the highest place. When that occurs the highest heavens are united with the lowest earthly places, the brightest light, with the deepest darkness. Then the entire creation becomes truly unified and complete and God is revealed to be One. The movements towards this perfect goal have remained hidden from most of humanity except for a few holy and hidden Tzaddikim who have helped guide the world through this process.

The entire process of the uniting of heaven and earth depends primarily upon the work of the Jewish people. This process has been taking place for the last two thousand years in a state of exile. Since the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people have been scattered and dispersed through every corner of the world. God warns the Jewish people that this will be their punishment if they disobey, but he also promises that at the end of days He will return them from their exile.

…then the LORD your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the peoples, from where the LORD your God has scattered you. 4 If any of you that are dispersed be in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will fetch you. 5 And the LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will do good for you, and multiply you above your fathers. (Deuteronomy, 30)

The exile was a punishment to the Jewish people for its failure to follow God’s commandments, but it also served a spiritual purpose. Since the Jewish people did not fulfill its mission in the easy way by doing its holy work properly in the land of Israel, the entire world went through a spiritual descent. Therefore, God sent the Jewish people throughout the world to help fix the world and bring the redemption through a more difficult path. But now that work is finished and God is miraculously fulfilling His ancient promise before the eyes of the world.

The Jewish people are returning to its promised land now in order to complete their work, to fulfill the 613 commandments of the Torah. These commandments can only be fulfilled completely in the land of Israel. We said above that the commandments unite heaven and earth. This process of bringing the heavenly light into the world is done by a holy people, and must also take place within a holy land. Just as the Jewish people are separated and holy to bring God’s light into the world, so too God established Israel as a holy place where this light can enter the physical world. As we described in the previous chapter, this is because the site of the Temple is the very place where the infinite meets the finite world, the origin of creation.

The Torah includes a total of 613 commandments. Seven of these commandments were given to all humanity. They are known as the 7 Noahide Laws because they are given to all the children of Noah (Sanhedrin 56).

1. Prohibition of Idolatry: – You shall not make for yourself an idol.

2. Prohibition Murder: – You shall not murder.

3. Prohibition of Theft: – You shall not steal.

4. Prohibition of Sexual Promiscuity: – You shall not commit adultery.

5. Prohibition of Blasphemy: – You shall not blaspheme.

6. Prohibition of Cruelty to Animals: – Do not eat the flesh of a living animal.

7. Requirement to have just Laws: – You shall set up an effective government to police the preceding six laws.

Perhaps the primary commandment in the entire Torah is the dedication of Shabbat – the one day a week when a Jew rests from work and acknowledges that God is the Creator of the universe. This day of rest is also a day of rest for the holy land of Israel, and for the animals a Jew possesses. Moreover, every seven years the land is also given an entire year of rest during which it is not cultivated. (This commandment is only required in the land of Israel.)

The entire system of the Torah and its purpose to bring Godliness into the world is dependent upon the 613 commandments being fulfilled by the majority of Jewish people in the holy land, the land designated for this process. The land of Israel is a part of the system of holiness that is perfecting Creation. In a way it is the final completion of the process, which is culminated by the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of God’s holy service. Then the complete efforts of the people of Israel on its land can be dedicated to the service of God.

When this happens, the entire world will see its true purpose. All the efforts in building civilization have appeared to be a human-centered endeavor. Its true purpose has also been hidden. When the Temple is rebuilt, all the work of humanity will be seen in its true light as part of one great process to bring Godliness into the world, and then the genius of humanity can be used in a revealed way to serve the will of God in the world.

Today the entire political fate of the world seems to be centered on the conflict over the state of Israel. If one thinks about this objectively you can see how strange this phenomenon is. Israel possesses no significant natural resources, like oil or uranium, or gold or diamonds; it also is a tiny piece of land with no special strategic value. No one needs military bases in Israel for any special purpose. The plight of the Arabs who have lived and suffered because of these conflicts is of no greater importance than the suffering of any other people. In fact, there are many more groups around the world who suffer much more hardship. There are groups in Africa that have faced genocide and not even received 1% of the interest of the world’s attention as Arabs. The truth is that Arabs live in Israel better lives than many Arabs in a majority of Arab countries.

The only reason that the world pays so much attention to Israel is because intuitively humanity knows that Israel is the center of the world and the destiny of humanity depends upon this holy land. This is also the reason why there is so much opposition to the building of the state of Israel. It is the expression of the resistance that we must overcome for humanity to achieve its destiny.

This is God’s vision – a perfect system of holiness and the flow of blessing and bounty in the world. It is rooted in the giving of the Torah, the work of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, the building of the Temple, the fulfilling of the 613 commandments, thus bringing God’s presence into the world and making the flow of abundance and peace fill the world.

We are all obligated to participate to bring God’s vision into reality, but it does not have to wait for the completion of political and social change in the Middle East. Each individual Jew and Gentile can participate in this reality in his or her own life. The sages teach us that one who has true knowledge of God it is as if the Temple was built in his day, but this is only through the connection with the Tzaddik.

The Arizal, the greatest Kabbalist explained that the source of the Torah is the soul of the Tzaddik. When Moses was given the full revelation of the Torah the world reached its perfection once again (before the rebellion of the Golden Calf), and Moses reached the 50th gate of wisdom. 50 is written with the letter N in Hebrew. When this letter is added to the letters of Moses’s name, it spells neshama which is the Hebrew word for soul. In other words, the highest achievement of the Tzaddik in the world is to become the Soul of the world, to reach the level where he is the very source of Torah — the light of God. He is not God Himself, but he is the expression and light of God in the creation. The Tzaddik is the true perfection and the heart of the world.

God desires to dwell within the heart of each of His creatures. Our heart therefore is supposed to be a temple for God, just like the Temple in Jerusalem. Our hearts become a place for God when we follow paths of holiness and seek to become like the True Tzaddik. When we make our heart like the heart of the world, the heart of the True Tzaddik, then we begin to become holy and make our lives a fitting dwelling place for God.

Therefore, each one of us can make our heart like the Holy of the Holies. The Kotsker Rebbe asks, Where does God dwell? His answer, Wherever we let him in.

The Nations

When the Temple is reestablished and the holy work performed, then not only will the Jewish people achieve their destiny, but all the nations of the world will also. No people can truly achieve its destiny if it is not integrated in the purpose of humanity as a whole.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach says that a Jew is chosen and the nature of his chosenness is to desire that …the whole world to be chosen also. We are not chosen to be distant. We are chosen to bring God’s light to the world…Every nation is chosen for something. Every person is chosen…We have to bring down to the world the realization that everything is chosen. We are here to let everyone know that they too are chosen.” This is the mission of the “chosen people.”

The genius and power of each nation has a hidden purpose in the plan of God. This cannot be revealed until all the nations begin to participate in this holy plan. Each nation has a specific vision and way of expressing its vision of life and God, and each has specific gifts and talents. Some nations are gifted in aesthetics, others in commerce, others in design and engineering, and others in arts. Each of the nations is a part in the whole of humanity, just as each limb and organ is part of an individual, each with its specific role and task. Today we have only a small conception of what humanity is as a whole, what it is supposed to be and what it can achieve. Nonetheless, there is a simple truth that we must remember, that, no part can reach its true excellence separate from the whole. A part gains its particular excellence and completion only when it functions in harmony with the other parts.

We live in a time where nations and people are no longer separate from one another. We live in a global community where transportation and modern communication bring us all together. We therefore have the means to work together and build our world together, to share our gifts, and to learn from one another.

However, there is a disease that possesses humanity and the nations. This disease is the desire for power and domination. This disease prevents nations from participating in their appropriate place in the plan of the world. This is the disease that leads to conflict and war. Consequently because of this disease the greater part of the world’s economy is wasted on armies and war, an economic segment that gives temporary boosts to the economies, but prevents true economic health and the flourishing of prosperity. The trillions of dollars that have been spent on weapons and military purposes in the last hundred years could have solved all the world’s problems, hunger, crime, education, health, and environment.

The prophets tell of the time of redemption when there will be no more need for armies and war:

And they shall beat their swords in to plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:4)

The force that maintains this destructive desire for power in the world is called evil. This evil possesses individuals in different nations that rise to positions of power and maintain the desire for conflict and domination in governments and corporations. We see this over and over again. People want peace but leaders maintain conflict and war. This is of course supported by the media that promotes the world’s conflicts and shapes the way people conceive reality. The true reason is the desire for wealth and power.

Individuals who cultivate this disease in their nations very often host another disease — the desire to annihilate the Jewish people. This phenomenon is not new. Throughout history there have been many nations and leaders who have sought to eliminate the Jewish people. This is because the Jewish people represent God and the true purpose of humanity — the creation of a world where there is no war, no domination, and the cultivation of love and wisdom. These individuals who are filled with desire for power and wealth are consumed by a disease. Like drug addicts they are willing to lie and sacrifice the good of all humanity in order to fulfill their personal desires and fantasies. The Jewish people and the Torah stand for a higher purpose and higher values that these leaders cannot tolerate.

Human beings are all brothers and sisters descended from the same parents. Our conflict is a conflict within a family. When Adam and Eve broke God’s command and the world descended from its spiritual and divine place, the consequence was the conflict between the first two brothers, Cain and Abel. The descent of the world meant that for the first time God’s presence became hidden and humans felt separation from God. When one feels separate from God, one feels lacking and this lack is the birthplace for desire, envy, and anger. This is what happened to Cain. He envied the fact that God received his brother’s sacrifice in front of his own. This led to anger and a tremendous spiritual test. God came to Cain and admonished him and encouraged him to overcome his evil inclination.

and the LORD turned to Abel and to his offering; 5 but to Cain and to his offering He did not turn. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 And the LORD said to Cain: ‘Why are you angered? and why is your countenance fallen? 7 If you improve, shall it not be lifted up? and if you don’t improve, sin waits at the door; and it desires you, but you can rule over it.’ (Genesis, 4:3)

Cain did not return to God and went on to murder his brother.

This conflict between brothers continues throughout the story of Genesis. Issac’s wife Rebecca receives a prophecy that this very conflict will be manifested between the children within her womb:

And the LORD said to her: Two nations are in your womb; two regimes from your insides shall be separated; the might shall pass from the one regime to the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. (Genesis,25:32)

Esau is the elder, and like Cain, is confronted with a tremendous spiritual test. The Sages tell us that Esau was greater in power than Jacob and that Isaac loved him more than Jacob because he hoped that he would be able to turn his great power to good. His mother Rebecca knew that this would not happen and so helped Jacob devise a means to impersonate his brother. Before Isaac died Jacob came to his father in the guise of his brother and Isaac gave him the blessing intended for his older brother. This blessing is the spiritual inheritance that God gave to Abraham that through him the world would be blessed.

This is the Torah’s description of the scene:

34 When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father: ‘Bless me, even me also, O my father.’ 35 And he said: ‘Your brother came with guile, and has taken away your blessing.’ 36 And he said: ‘Is he not rightly named Jacob? for he has supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he has taken away my blessing.’ And he said: ‘Have you not reserved a blessing for me?’ 37 And Isaac answered and said to Esau: ‘Behold, I have made him your lord, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants; and with corn and wine I have sustained him; and what then shall I do for you, my son?’ 38 And Esau said to his father: ‘Have you but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father.’ And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept. 39 And Isaac his father answered and said to him: Behold, of the fat places of the earth shall be your dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; 40 And by your sword shall you live, and you shall serve your brother; and it shall come to pass when you shall be aggrieved, that you shall shake his yoke from off your neck. 41 And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. And Esau said in his heart: ‘Let the days of mourning for my father be at hand; then I will slay my brother Jacob.’ (Genesis 27:34)

In other words, the very spiritual descent of the world, the idea of lack, where one can be blessed another lacking, that there is one side that is good and another that is evil, became manifested in the children of Isaac. This conflict is the source of nearly all the conflict that has occurred through history. It is not a consequence of an error in judgment by Isaac, Rebecca or Jacob; it is something that is the drama of the history of man that has been played out in the life of the patriarchs.

Esau had a grandson named Amelek. Amelek embodied this anger and hatred towards the children of Jacob. When the children of Jacob left Egypt, the nation of Amelek was the first to attack the children of Israel when they were weak and could hardly defend themselves. The world had heard the story of the Exodus, and unlike Jethro who saw this as the work of God and Creator of the universe, the Amelekites went against God and His chosen people, and their descendents became the sworn enemies of the Jews as we shall discuss in a moment.

Moses reached the land outside of Canaan, and there the nations of Canaan were filled with fear. They called the prophet Bilaam to come curse the people. Bilaam was truly a prophet who spoke to God. However, he too hated the children of Jacob. Bilaam along with Jethro and Job were the three advisors to Pharaoh who advised him to kill all the young Hebrew male infants. Jethro of course fled the Pharaoh, repented and some say converted to Judaism. Job suffered terribly and this led him also to repentance. Bilaam remained an enemy to the children of Jacob and never repented and was killed eventually in war.

The Kabbalah teaches that God creates one side opposite the other — there is a side of good and a side of evil. Moses was the chosen prophet of God to bring God’s will into the world. However, Bilaam was a prophet equal to the power of Moses who was opposite him. Therefore, he was called upon to try to use his power to destroy the Jewish people. Bilaam tried to resist this request because he knew that God had chosen Moses and the Jewish people. He also knew that he could not go against anything God commanded him to do. The King offered him tremendous wealth and sent numerous missions to persuade him to come, and eventually Bilaam got permission from God to go. Bilaam tried to use his sorcery to destroy the Jewish people, but every time Bilaam sought to curse the Jewish people, God turned his words into blessings.

God commanded the first King of the Jews, Shaul to destroy the nation of Amelek in war. However, Shaul had pity on their king and imprisoned him. During his imprisonment he was visited by a wife and fathered a son and continued the race of Amelek.

Over a thousand years later a descendent of the King of Amelek named Haman became the closest advisor to the King of the Persian Empire. During this time, the Jews were living in exile spread out in Babylon and the rest of the King’s empire. Haman convinced the King to issue a decree to have the Jews killed on a single day and their money and property taken by whoever wished. This is an historical event that is documented in the Megilah Esther (the last historical book in the Jewish Bible) and the victory of the Jews is celebrated in the holiday of Purim annually to this day.

The Megilah Esther documents the hanging of Haman and his ten sons. When the book documents this fact it lists the names of the ten sons in a peculiar way and writes three Hebrew letters in a small script. These letters add up in gematria to the number 707 (each Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent). This is a hint to the year 5707 on the Hebrew calendar which is the year 1946-7. In Megilah Esther (9:13), Queen Esther says, “If it pleases the king give the Jews in Shushan permission to carry out this day’s edict tomorrow also, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged on gallows.” However, at this point the ten sons of Haman had already been killed. Therefore, why is Queen Esther asking the king permission to hang them again? On the word “tomorrow,” in Esther’s request, the Sages comment: “There is a tomorrow that is now, and a tomorrow which is later.” In other words, it is a hint to a later generation and reincarnation of these same enemies of the Jewish people. (Tanchuma Bo 13 and Rashi on Exodus 13:14).

In Nuremberg on October 16, 1946 (21 Tishrei, 5707 on the Hebrew calendar) ten convicted Nazi war criminals were hanged. The last one was Julius Streicher, and his very last word as printed in Newsweek, October 28, 1946, were, “Purimfest 1946.”

The connection is presented in the Megilah Esther to reveal to us that these Nazis are the souls of Haman and his sons; the war of the Nazis against the Jews is the same war of Haman in ancient Persia against the Jews, and the same war that Amelek fought against the Jews leaving Egypt. All these historical wars are the expression of the hatred of Esau toward his brother Jacob, which is an expression of the very conflict of good and evil in our world. This conflict is not only a conflict of physical force, but a spiritual conflict. Esau stole the cloak of Nimrod, which originally came from Ham the first practioner of sorcery. Amelek and Haman both sought the use of sorcery and the black side of Pagan magic to fight the Jewish people. In the modern era it is also well documented that the founders of the Nazi movement were all initiates in cults of ancient black magic and that they chose Adolf Hitler for his role in their movement and initiated him into their practices. There is no doubt that Hitler had a demonic power of speech and there is good reason to believe that this power was achieved through these initiations into pagan cults. It is also documented that Hitler was not against the Jews until joining these groups.

This is the essence of idolatry, the expression of spiritual powers that lead humans into goals against the purpose of God. The deepest darkness of idolatry is the outward expression of hate and desire for destruction of God’s holy people. However, there are more subtle forms of idolatry that now dominate the world — the overwhelming avarice and materialism that dominates the leading nations today. This greed and desire for money and power is leading the world to environmental destruction; it is an economy dominated by the need for oil and the production of weapons of war and the preservation of international conflicts – especially the conflict between Arabs and Israel.

Evil thoughts create evil power physically and spiritually in the world. The primary work of the Jewish people in exile is to counteract this through thoughts, prayers and deeds of goodness and kindness. The Torah teaches that we can see good in every detail in life. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked, “What good can there possibly be in men like Hitler and Stalin?” His answer in a paraphrase: “There are men capable of doing such evil in order to teach us that there are men capapable of doing even greater good.” For we know, as the Chassidic saying goes, even a little light can dispel the greatest darkness.

Rebbe Nachman in the 1800s foresaw all the darkness that would descend of Europe and the Jews in the years after his death through World War II. He prayed and beseeched his generation to listen to him in order to annul these harsh decrees that were prepared in heaven, but his generation did not listen. This is because ultimately, Rebbe Nachman realized that his teachings were not for his generation. His teachings were for the future, for our generation, the generation of the coming of the messiah.

The Messiah, The Ultimate King of Comedy

My sister wrote an essay a long time ago about my brother Judd and me. It described her two brothers, one a philosopher and the other a comedian. Even though on the outside they seem so different, they are remarkably similar. They both are obsessed with their vision and have dedicated their lives to it. But there is a deeper similarity, in the end the search for truth is a search for the highest form of laughter.

The world has been waiting for thousands of years for the Messiah, a man who will lead the world back to God, end all wars, and teach humanity love and peace. What is generally not known is that his highest mission is to bring the world to laughter.

The Messiah is the son of King David and will follow in the footsteps of his father. Before David became king and before he was a warrior, his first job was as a musician and court jester for King Shaul. In other words, King David, the Messiah, is first and foremost a comedian.

King David writes in his Psalms (126):

When God returns the captivity of the Jewish people, our former life will have seemed like a dream and our mouths will be filled with laughter…

My brother cannot bare the pain of the world and so he has become a genius in comedy, creating movies and TV shows that help people free themselves from their pain and bring laughter in the midst of their suffering. Comedy saves people from pain through laughter.

There is another kind of comedy, and it is the comedy of the messiah. The messiah will help to reveal to the world that within all the pain and suffering we have experienced in history and in the events of our personal lives, there was nothing but God.

Suffering exists because the light of God and His love and goodness is hidden from us. In the midst of pain we do not see the meaning of life. We do not see a purpose. We do not feel love and kindness. This is the source of all suffering.

The Messiah will usher in an era when we will all see before our very eyes even though it seemed that God was hidden and that our experience was filled with suffering and pain, in truth, God was present the whole time, and every event no matter how painful and tragic. Each moment in all of history was perfectly orchestrated to bring about the highest good for ourselves individually and humanity as a whole.

Such a revelation is hardly conceivable, and that is why it will fill our mouths with laughter, because like all great comedy, the joke is unexpected. And indeed the Torah teaches that this is how the messiah will come, when we are least expecting him.

Central to the Torah and the history of the Jewish people is a remarkable sense of the absurd. God’s joke begins when He blesses Abraham’s eighty-nine year old wife Sarah to have a baby. Sarah laughs at it, and when their son is born they name him Isaac, which in Hebrew means “laughter.”

The joke continues. Abraham stood up against his world to assert the existence of God in a time dominated by idolatry and pagan magic. Abraham spoke out against the ritual slaughter of children practiced in his day. And so what did God do? He spoke to Abraham and asked him to slaughter his own son — an ultimate test of faith, and the ultimate absurdity.

The Torah is the story of the Jewish people, the people chosen by God to be His treasure, His holy nation of priests. And yet through history the Jewish people have suffered more than any other people, culminating in the Twentieth Century with the Holocaust.

In order to achieve the true laughter and complete perfection of life, the Jewish people along with the rest of humanity have had to descend to the deepest darkness. From this place of the absurd how can we find meaning? The meaning is that through this descent we are helping to complete the creation so that there will be no more evil. It is precisely by descending into the deepest darkness, and there revealing even the smallest glimpses of God’s light that we are able to completely rid evil from existence.

When this light and meaning is discovered, evil can be completely eliminated and then we can have true laughter. The Torah of Moses is the key to unfolding this grand comedy. It is the key to the faith that will give us the strength to find joy and happiness within the pain and struggles we experience in life. Through this joyful faith we bring more quickly into reality the time when God reveals Himself to the world and our mouths will all be filled with laughter, and even now, each moment of joy and laughter is a small taste of this time to come.

The Messiah will reunite the Jewish people, build the Temple and lead humanity in its mission. He will spread the light of the secrets of the Torah. This Torah was revealed over a hundred years ago by Rebbe Nachman, who said “the only difference between the messiah and me is that the world will listen to the Messiah.

In the second part of The Knowledge of God we shall give an overview of the history of the development of the Kabbalistic spiritual tradition and show how the culmination of Jewish spirituality and the light of the Torah of Moses is expressed in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman.