בס״ד
Video Transcript:
“We’ll talk a little bit more about what we mentioned before about the creation of the world, when I mentioned that we create the world. I said something that we have to be able to oppose all kinds of ideas that we have, we have to be able to oppose this thing too: about this world, about who created who, and maybe we created G-d? Everything is true, we just have to have the vessel to understand how everything can be true. If you don’t have the vessel to understand, this thing, which we don’t have a vessel to understand, becomes a bad thing in this world. Everything we don’t understand becomes an evil thing, a curse, an ‘accident.’ Something that is wrong in this world is only because we don’t have the possibility to understand, to achieve this very high light, like the Snake. The Snake is the worst thing, but the more that we think something’s worse, the more high a thing is hiding behind the concept.
About the creation of the world and the Snake, we have to think that the Snake is the Mashiach (Messiah), as well. He’s not only the Satan, but he’s the Mashiach. He came to Eve and told her, “This is a good fruit.” And what is the fruit? The fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What’s the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? It’s the Torah. It’s the ‘revealed’ side of the Torah. “This is good, and that’s evil.” This is the ‘revealed’ side of the Torah. The ‘inner’ side of the Torah is the Tree of Life. It’s not really two different Trees. About these two trees, it is written, “betokh HaGan” (“inside the garden,” Genesis 2:9). ‘Betokh,’ in Hebrew is not, ‘in,’ but it means, ‘in the middle.’ They are both ‘in the middle’ of the Garden, which means they are both really the same tree. One is the inner side (Life), and the other one is the outer side (Knowledge of Good and Evil). The only problem is the separation between the two Trees. In the moment we eat from the Tree of Life, we are not going to die by eating the Tree of Knowledge.
G-D in the beginning said that, “from all the fruits in the Garden you may eat.” It means, you eat from the Tree of Knowledge as well, but if you eat from the Tree of Knowledge, you are going to die. It means that He said two opposite things. He said, “you can eat from all the trees in the Garden.” If you are ever ordered in the Torah a positive thing to do and a negative thing to do, if G-d says to do this and don’t do this and there is a contradiction (Heb. s’tirah) between these two things, the thing to do (positive commandment) is stronger than the thing not to do (negative commandment). It means that we have to do what G-D says. What’s the problem? If he was a little bit more smart, from the order of G-d he should have understood that you have to eat first of all the Tree of Life, which means, first of all, you will learn Kabbalah and Chassidut (Chassidic Judaism), the ‘inner’ side of the Torah, then you will learn all the rules and all the details. It’s like what we’re doing here, teaching Kabbalah and we don’t teach right now, “you have to do this, and you don’t do this.” We start with the Tree of Life and after we go to the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Knowledge without the Tree of Life is like learning something that is not connected with life.
Let’s say I take an atlas, a book about all the countries, and I see all kinds of things that are written there. One line like this and one line like this. I really don’t know anything about this place, if I don’t visit there. Even more, if it’s not connected to life, it’s bad knowledge, because it’s knowledge which separates me from life. It’s just called, ‘intellect.’ It means I make a separation between my head and my heart, so it’s bad. We are going to die if we are only doing this kind of knowledge. It’s like learning science without learning the deep meaning behind the science, which is all Kabbalah. Science is part of Kabbalah, but it’s just the revealed side of what people learn, but if they don’t connect the knowledge to life, it’s a problem and makes a separation between the head and the heart (decapitation), causing death. This was by the way, to understand what was the sin.
So the Snake came to Eve and told her, “you know why G-d doesn’t want you to eat the tree (this is from Rashi’s explanation), because he eats the fruit of the tree and he created the world. He doesn’t want competition, he doesn’t want you to be a creator of the world like him. That’s why he didn’t give you permission to eat.” This is what the Snake said to Eve. It means that really in the moment you learn Torah, you will be able to create a new world. In the moment we think, everything that we think about and learn about is the potentiality of the world to come. It’s like a dream that becomes real. We think about something and this finally becomes the reality. Everything that we think about finally becomes a reality. The thinking is like the possibility of reality, it’s not yet the reality, but it’s one of infinite possibilities about how will be the reality.
The problem is written that if they would’ve waited 3 more hours until Shabbat, they would’ve receive permission to eat from the Tree. It means they would already be enough grown up with a big mind to understand the paradox, and then there would be no damage of eating the fruit, but because they ate the fruit too quick, they could not understand the paradox. “How could it be that there is a good and an evil? If G-d told me to not do this, it means that there is something wrong with me. Why can’t I know by myself not to do this? Why do you have to tell me? There is something not right with myself and it means that there is evil, so I have to be careful with evil.” It starts a fight between me and the other one who is ‘evil.’ We start to live in a consciousness of separation. It’s not that everything is one, with the evil, with the good, with the Snake, with everything. We are not anymore there, but we are going out of Paradise and to this world, which represents our understanding of the Torah and the Tree. We didn’t learn what it means deeply in life. We didn’t eat from the Etz Chayim (Tree of Life), so we created a world of separation and here we are, so we are fighting against the ‘evil,’ making a fight, and everybody fights against the other one. What is the correction? Really, it’s to give a good interpretation to what is written in the Torah.
In the Torah of G-D, what is the plan of creation, it is written that the Snake gave the fruit to Eve, which means that this is what’s supposed to be done, so we are not going to change the Torah! This is the plan from the beginning that we have a sin. Maybe it’s not so wrong to have a sin. It depends which sin we are talking about. If G-d tells me not to learn Torah, what will I say to G-D, if I am a grown-up person? There is an expression in Hebrew: “Everything that the proprietor of the house tells me to do, I will do, except go out of the house.” Sometimes if your lover tells you to do something that is against the love between you, you refuse. If really you are a grown-up person. If you are a baby, everything that the father says, you have to listen. “No, no, no, it’s not good.” When you are a grown-up, you can take responsibility. If you have a good reason, you go on with it, doing something that might be against the order of your father, and it’s fine. We are talking about different steps of how to understand everything. It is for sure the first step that we have to do everything in the Torah, but even in the Torah, we must go more and more deep…
For example, Esau received a very funny blessing from his father, “ve’al Charbcha tichiyeh.” He gave him a blessing that, “you will be a killer.” What kind of blessing is this? But it’s eternal. He gave him another blessing that has to do with what I’m talking about. “V’hayah kha’asher tarid” (“when you will be sorry”) from the work that Yaakov is giving to you, “you will break his yoke” (Genesis 27:40). Yaakov (Jacob) is keeping ‘taryag’ mitzvot (commandments), which is 613 in Gematria. Here we have another mitzvah (commandment), which together equals 614 on top of all of the other mitzvot and equals, ‘cherut’ (‘freedom’). Yaakov represents the ‘good inclination’ (‘yetzer haTov’). Esau represents the ‘bad inclination’ (‘yetzer haRa’). In everyone, we need both of them in balance. Yaakov said that “I lived with Laban” (“im Lavan garti”). ‘Garti’ (גרתי) has the same letters as ‘taryag’ (תרי״ג), so the Sages said he kept 613 mitzvot. That’s why the mitzvot are ‘Ramach’ (number of positive commandments) and ‘Shesah’ (number of negative commandments). The Gematria of these in ordinal numbers are 41 plus 41, which equals 82, ‘Lavan.’ It’s a connection between ‘Lavan’ (‘white’) and the 613 mitzvot we do. Yaakov keeps 613 mitzvot. Now, Yitzhak tells Esau (it’s like G-D telling him), “If Yaakov, with his interpretations, gives you too much of a hard time about these 613 mitzvot, you tell him, “No, I’m not going to do it.”” ‘Cherut’ (‘freedom’) equals ‘tarid’ (614).
It’s a different way of what it means to go out of Egypt. To be in Egypt, it means that we are keeping the 613 mitzvot in the Torah, we are working very hard with Torah, but there is a state of going out of Egypt that has to do with the resurrection of the dead, when the dead will come to life and they don’t have to do anymore the mitzvot. It is written about the Luchot (tablets of the Ten Commandments), “Charut al haLuchot.” ‘Charut’ means, ‘engraved,’ on the stone tablets. ‘Cherut al’ means, ‘on top of’ all of the Torah you have the mitzvah of Esau (who was born Jewish and has a rectification as a Jew). His mitzvah is ‘freedom’ (same letters as, ‘engraved’). It means ‘on top of’ all of the Torah, you are a free man. You cannot be a free man, if all that you think and all that you know, you must do everything that you are told to do.
In the moment that G-d gives you the possibility to say no, even if you are never going to perform this mitzvah of ‘tarid,’ you are a free man. It doesn’t mean we have to do a sin and we don’t have to do the mitzvot, because the mitzvot are good advice from our fathers, from G-d. It means, we want to perform all the mitzvot, but sometimes, when it comes from Ya’akov, he makes it sometimes too hard for him (the bad inclination), he gives him too hard of a time. The religious makes it too hard of a time for the non-religious sometimes. They ask too many things that are too difficult to perform, like Yeshua said too, complaining to some Perushim (Pharisees), that they give heavy stones that not everyone can carry. In the moment, you have Yaakov giving him a hard time with the mitzvot, too much (‘Tarid,’ means you are ‘sorry’ from it), then you break his yoke. It means you can say to Yaakov, “I’m sorry I’m not going to do it,” and when you receive this mitzvah, it means that you are really out of Egypt (free), you are not only out of the ‘Egypt of unholiness,’ but I’m talking about going out of the ‘Egypt of holiness,’ as well.
It is written in Chassidut that you even have to go out of the ‘Egypt of holiness.’ Usually, the explanation to go out of the ‘Egypt of holiness’ is to work even more hard. You work so much that you go out of all of your ‘limitations’ because Egypt (‘Mitzrayim,’ like ‘Metzarim’) means and represents your ‘limitations.’ This is the idea of Pharaoh, to work harder, but there is another interpretation for this. What it means, from my opinion, to go out of the ‘Egypt of holiness’ is the possibility to say, “no.” It’s like a better possibility. All the non-religious in Am Yisrael (the People of Israel) will not be anymore afraid to receive the Torah, because they can always say, “no.” We don’t put them against the wall and say, “you must do this and this and this and this, and if not, you are going to Hell!” No, you take responsibility and if there is good advice, you should do it. If you are not going to do something and you are a grown-up person, then you take responsibility.
“You are willing to die for this?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you are willing to die for this, then probably you are right.”
Thank you.”
Facing Each Other Blog 