Speaker 1I'd like to try to look at a subject or work out a subject together which is perhaps a bit more difficult than we usually do. A bit more abstract maybe, reaching a bit more into the deeper zone in connection with Chanukah. So let's try to put our heads into that effort. You know that the Torah conception is that the world is built on certain energies, emanations, levels, layers of spiritual I don't exactly know what you call them in English. Let's call them midas. Seven midas. The world is built on seven layers, if you like, of spiritual. energy. No real words are accurate here in English, but something like that. The truth is that there are ten of them, really. Only three are never revealed in the world. Three are always in the higher world. Three are in the head, as it's called. The three upper ones, the three higher ones, those live in the head, and they are never being revealed in the world. But the seven that are in the body, as it were, those have revelation. The higher three are in thought. And the lowest seven are the ones that we're familiar with. This is the reason that the world has seven. The reason that the world has seven layers of physicality is because it is built on, predicated on, built on, produced by seven layers of spiritual. these seven spiritual qualities, or midas. Right? It's no accident that the spectrum of light has seven distinct colors. On the contrary, light is always the root. Right? The first of the sayings of creation is, let there be light, according to the Zohar. It's the second, according to the Talmud. But light is always the root of creation, and therefore it forms the deepest level of. not only metaphor, it forms the deepest level of the vessel or the vehicle on which the world is formed. And light, the light that we experience, has seven uniquely defined and separate colors. It's also no accident that in the West, our ear is tuned particularly to seven. seven-note scale in music. And the mathematics that govern the frequencies of sound in that scale are similar to the mathematics that govern the wavelengths of light, in that they are seven. It's also no accident that the seven colors in the spectrum of light have three primary colors from which the others can be constructed. In the semitone scale that we. a lot of our music is based on, you have three primary notes, the tonic dominant, the subdominant, the rest are. derivatives, as it were, very many interesting correlations. And of course that's why we have a seven-day week and the seven fruits of Eretz Israel and there are many, many elements that reflect the seven basic issues in the whole pattern. The body is built on seven areas that underlie its structure and so forth. Now, I mean, that's a basic idea and I presume we're all familiar, right, with that. But if you're not familiar with that notion, then you really. it's almost no hope for you because the. the whole of. the whole of spirituality, the whole of Torah really manifests itself in this way. Very, very basic issue. We always say seven Akophos, we go around seven times, we. this is always. there's a root here, there's something fundamental here. Now, all of Jewish life fits into these things. Everything. There's not a single. I can quite safely say there's not a single word in the Torah, there's not a single human experience, there's nothing in the world that is not based on a combination of these things See, the deep reason is the deep reason is that these are the energies that underlie creation and exactly in the same sense as the elements of the chemical. chemical elements are the underlying reality of all physical structure by virtue of the. the cleverness, if you like, with which they are constructed such that when you put elements together you get compounds and the compounds are as. they have as multiple expressions. There are enough compounds possible out of very few elements that you can have the complexity of the world that we live in. You know, the world that we live in is composed of very few elements. The world that we're familiar with, right, is composed of very few elements. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, a little bit of sulfur, a couple of other very small handful of elements combined in such a way that they have the. the multiplex options, capabilities of those elements are to produce compounds as diverse as they are. And therefore it would be safe to say that nothing in the physical world is built on anything other than these elements. Similarly, in the spiritual world in a much bigger sense, nothing in the world that we're familiar with and in the world that we're not familiar with also, nothing exists but that it's built on these seven dimensions. Of course, it would take a long time to go through them and to explain all of them and to. In fact, there would never be enough time. But since these things are fundamental, it pays to put effort into understanding them. Now, there's a statement of the Arizal, the great Kabbalistic teacher, master, who lived in Sfas in the 1500s. He says an interesting thing. He says that Hanukkah is the fifth of these seven qualities. Midas Hoid, what's called Hoid. Hod. Hod is the name given to this this layer of reality, this energy, if you like. Purim, he says, is Netzach and Hanukkah is Hoid. The fourth and fifth of these two characteristics. Pesach, if you want to know, Pesach happens to be Chesed, that's the first one. Shvus, which follows Pesach, is Chesed. It's called Din. Kvura, the opposite quality. Sukkot is the time that combines them. You bring it all home. The crop is brought in. That reaching of a climax or an end point, that is called Sukkot. That's called whatever it's named. That's the third element that combines the first two. And then you move into a completely new phase. Then you move into those elements that are not part of the essential body. They are part of the external body. In technical terms, they are below the external body. They are below the diaphragm. Those elements that are below the diaphragm as opposed to the heart and lungs which are the immediately life-sustaining organs. The organs below the diaphragm are all parts of the body that are given to maintenance or reproduction. They are not immediately life-sustaining. They sustain and maintain life in the longer term. And they project life. Long-term maintenance of life means the ability to be here tomorrow, not just today. The production of children is also the ability to be here tomorrow in a deep sense. And therefore those organs those organs that live in that section of the body below the diaphragm are always considered to be external to intrinsic life. Again, there's a lot to talk about here. But that's what it is. The kidneys. The kidneys, as it's called, are the organs that produce seed which is the beginning of production of the next generation. Those are called the right and left component. Let's call them the kidneys. Those are the beginning of the generation of future. In the external world, you know, all of these forces have an internal and an external component. The internal component is this one. The external is called the legs. The legs, the right and left legs, externally are called Netzach and Hoyt. Netzach means, also very hard to translate, the root meaning of that word has something to do with eternity. Netzchius means, Netzach means the beginning of this quality. As soon as you move out of the essence, you move into that which gives the essence the ability to continue forever. Seed, children, the legs which carry the body to another place and project it through the world in a much simpler sense. And then that's the fourth. The fifth of them is called Hoyt which is the completion of that thing where that ability to project or maintain or move on through the world, to walk in the world, whether it's walking on the legs that carry the body or whether it's walking in a deeper sense on one's children as it were, that's called Netzach and Hoyt. You know, it's no accident that a child, a son, is called a foot of his father. The Talmudic expression is A son is a foot of his father. That sounds a little strange in English translation. But why is a son referred to as a foot of his father? And the deep meaning is because that's how the father walks through the world when he's no longer able to walk himself. And he walks eternally because his son has the ability to have a son. And that's how he walks through the world. And that's the connection. That's one of the levels. That is the first level of Purim, is Netzach. And then you come to the fifth one, which is called Hod, which is hard to translate, very hard to translate. Hod is the concept of, again, the word literally means some sort of glow or beauty, but the root of the word means to admit or to thank. To admit or to thank. In English, you don't have that connotation. In English, thanking and admitting are two separate concepts. In Torah, they're rooted in the same word. Because thanking and admitting have a common root. When I thank you, what I essentially do is acknowledge or admit that it was not me. admission is hoida, admission means that when I have a legal problem, when I admit to the other side it means I sacrifice I fold my position and admit that the truth is on that side when I thank you, what I do is I admit that I am not capable here and you are the one, it came from you there is a submission here thanking in English simply means thanking, in Torah thanking means a submission of my own independence to you because there is an acknowledgement and admission that it came from you and not from me thanking is nothing other than a recognition of the fact that I was not capable here or did not achieve this thing but that you gave it to me and therefore I thank you in hoida we have the custom of bowing we are trying to explain all these things amazing, amazing things, all of this you can learn all of the deeper wisdom from the body from the body itself, the motions of the body the anatomy of the body the they didn't teach us this as they should have the first effects, the plumbing but within the plumbing is a much deeper, something much deeper of course so let's see if we can try to analyse what this is why do we stand vertically for example why are humans vertical creatures animals aren't, animals are horizontal creatures plants are vertical creatures also, there is a remarkable thing, slowly, slowly one thing at a time, slowly, slowly what has that got to do with Hanukkah, right? let's see, let's see how confused we can make ourselves you have a taste for going a little bit deeper, yes? you don't want, you want you can do the easy stuff if you prefer let's see if we can try and tap slightly beneath the surface what does he mean to teach us when he says that Hanukkah is hoid what does he mean, what does it mean that it represents the fifth of these? so let's try to understand what is the quality, let's try and discuss a little bit before we apply to Hanukkah let's try to share together a bit of a deeper understanding of what may seem very abstract and disconnected from practicality but that's the way to do it is to study it in it's root and gain an understanding of the of the essence of the concept and then we try to mirror it together to bring it down into practical application there are, the practical application is no limit to those and the more you become aware of the subject the more you will find your own practical application, in fact the deeper you become aware, more deeply you become aware of this the more you'll see that there isn't anything else this is the unifying theory this is the grand unifying theory that holds all of physical and human reality together, it's worth understanding the middah of hoid is as follows let's try and do it like this what's the difference between above the diaphragm and below, the parsa, you know the diaphragm is that which is spread between the organs of the upper section and the organs of the lower section in hebrew that's called, lefros means to spread to spread something, like to spread a sheet but it has the connotation in the deeper wisdom of being a division between layers parsa in hebrew also has another meaning, in aramaic a parsa is a measure of distance a measure of distance, a certain number of furlongs, a certain measure of distance you have to know that coding because the deeper wisdom always hides give you an example, the gemara says that in the messianic age in the final revelation of the messianic age Jerusalem will go up three parses in the air Yerushalayim will be lifted three parses so the novice who doesn't understand thinks it means that there will be a geographical, some sort of physical elevation three parses, Yerushalayim will be lifted that distance in the air but of course what the deep teachers are saying here Yerushalayim will go up three parses from the world that's called Asir, which is the physical world to the world called Yetzirah, which is a higher world from Yetzirah to Bria and thirdly from Bria to the world above that, which is the source world, it means an investing here of spiritual energy above three parses, that's what it means to the novice it means a distance, but to the initiate it means above layers what those layers are, why there are three external worlds also needs discussion but one thing at a time this is the sheet that divides the organs, as I said, of essence, of immediate life from their counterparts which are the organs of maintenance and reproduction there's a commonality between them of course, the lungs for example heart and lungs system what they do is they absorb an external element namely air or gas and they they absorb what's necessary and expel what's what's to be rejected but in a very refined sense, it's the ethereal element of air and what's rejected, what's ejected is hardly offensive but on the diaphragm you have the absorption of food material that needs to be absorbed and the excretion, rejection of that which must be but it's much coarser and much more offensive of course in the third world, we didn't speak about this in the third world, the three that are not revealed, you have the same process too in the world of the head, what's absorbed is the mixed material of the world the intellect, the dais, the function of the dais is to separate out that material which should be absorbed as pure and to put out that material which is not the function of dais is to make Havdalah to discern between the pure, the Kedusha that needs to be absorbed and that which must be distinguished as being rejected in a much more ethereal sense then and that is the function, the liver which is the main organ of the abdomen according to Kabbalistic system that's why the liver in Hebrew is called Kaved it means heavy because you now move into the world of total physicality incidentally that's why in English it's called the liver because the basis of life here is that the liver's function is exactly that its function is to absorb products of digestion and to transform them into blood elements the lungs do exactly the same in the medium of air they take in the gas, separate out what needs to be and move into the blood, that which is absorbed actually in the higher world it's also the same because blood is the place the blood is the place of the life energy but that also needs separate discussion so below the diaphragm you have the organs that are doing this thing in the coarse world of physicality and of course externally they represent the legs the body really ends before the legs begin according to the deeper system the body ends with the breasts what's called the Usoid that's the end of the body the Arizal explains that when a woman gives birth for example the legs are inactivated it means when one life becomes another again it needs a detailed description a detailed study but the legs are called kabbalistically they are outside the body they are the vehicles that carry the body they are not the body itself and it's very interesting that in man the legs are attached to the lowest element of the body in other creatures, for example angels the organs of locomotion, namely the wings are attached to the body itself and there the reason is because an angel is only an emissary that's all he is, is an agency that he sent and therefore from the intrinsic part of his body locomotion develops a human is not sent to do something a human is sent to be intrinsically complete and therefore attached to the externality of his body is his method of locomotion I have a lot to talk about here let's study a little bit further this concept of how we are doing so far Natzaq and Hoyt these two midas these two qualities that are outside the body first of all have this quality that they are outside now listen carefully stay with me well in the spiritual system when you are inside when you are inside the essence things are represented the way they should be they are perfectly represented there is no distortion what a thing is, is how it presents itself when you get into the world of revelation things get complicated de Gaulle de Villeneuve puts it like this again, he says this you see, let's try to say the principle the mida of Hoyt this quality of Hoyt which is beginning of revelation at the exterior is where all the glory of man begins and all the problems begin the possibility of free will is because there is something on the outside if the inner world were revealed you would have no free will if the essential world, the inner world, the world of spirit were revealed in the world of physicality then you would immediately perceive that doing that which is morally wrong, spiritually wrong would be a moving out of existence and in effect you would never do that the reason you have free will is because the inner world is darkly revealed in the outer world it is hidden in the outer world the fact that it is not revealed free will is a much more the more revelation there is of the inner world de Gaulle says for example when the Messiah comes in the messianic age there will be no free will there will be a very dry and small technical element of free will but it will be as small as the option you now have of walking into a fire technically you have the option of walking into a fire but in realistic terms you don't and the reason is because if you see the consequences that clearly to that extent your free will is diminished in the messianic age when the spiritual world is fully and clearly revealed the earth would walk into the fire of immoral or unspiritual activity you would see yourself disappear the greatness of man is that we live in a world of darkness which at one and the same time gives you the freedom to act and at exactly the same moment causes all your trouble because when the world is dark and you don't see the consequences you do things wrong, you get it wrong your greatness is that you can get things wrong so you can overcome those things you put into a playing field, you put into a situation that is dark in the darkness you have to work things out for yourself that's your greatness, that's where you gain your freedom you gain your independence that's where our teaching is that you are a reflection of the divine that's the divine image is that you have free will but your free will cuts two ways on the one hand it enables you to manifest your greatness and on the other it's where you get into trouble Angels don't have free will, they don't get into trouble. Malachim are too high, they see things too clearly. Technically speaking, they have free will. They could do that which is wrong. But they are aware that doing that which is wrong is immediate cessation of their existence. So although technically they could, they don't. We have meaningful free will because we live in a world dark enough. And of course, the real darkness of our world is the Greeks. That's where we're heading. There's Greek philosophy that cuts off all spirituality. It does not allow that light to shine. So now, when you move out of essence, you move out of Pesach, Shurah, Sukkot, let's say, for purposes of tonight's discussion. You move out of the level of essence of perception of self. You move into the external world. Then you enter the glory, the glow, of the potential of achieving human greatness. And you enter the world of complication and mess and potential disaster. The Gond puts it like this. Amazing, amazing thing. The Gond says, that Netzach and Hoed, these two qualities that are outside of the essential body, are reversed. They're reversed. This incidentally is the deep reason why the one side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body. You know, the spiritual axiom is that when you devolve from one layer to another, you have a crossover in the system. Again, think about it for a moment. Why does the right side of the brain largely control the left side of the body? Why? Why did that happen? Because after a few million years of bumping into each other in the trees, that's what you're thinking, right? After a few million years of bumping, there was some sort of reason that the wiring got a little crossed. No doubt you test some survival value, probably. A Jew doesn't think that way. The concept is that in the higher world, a thing manifests on one side. In the lower world, it manifests the other way around. Netzach and Hoed are completely reversed. The way the Gond puts it is like this. The example is as follows. There's a much bigger subject than this, of course. The right-hand side, in general, all the qualities of the right are called chesed. That means a pure giving of kindness with no limitation. All the qualities of the left-hand side are called din. Din means severe limitation, complete withholding. That's always. All human interaction fits into these two polarities. In all of your inner life, in all of your relationships, you are either manifesting a giving and a love, and a moving beyond yourself, and a connecting, or you're manifesting a withholding, a withdrawal, a discipline, a control. Chesed is the side of giving, and kiburah is the side of holding back and not giving. As it's put in the sources that deal with it this way, love and fear. Love and fear. Those two are the first two of the Ten Commandments. All human activity fits into a combination of. And, of course, the difficulty is getting the harmony right. The difficulty is the harmony. When you deal with a child, for example, you want to give love, but you also have to give discipline. Of course, the primary one is the love. The discipline should be given for the sake of the love. The difficulty is getting the balance right. If you give too much, you ruin the child. When the rain falls, it's a chesed. But too much rain is a flood. Too little rain is a cruelty. Not enough to give the child too little. The balance is that you have to give with the correct measure of limitation so that the giving remains a full giving. But for that, it needs to be modified by the left-hand side. Always like that. That's why the expression of being a parent, or a spiritual teacher, is always let your left hand push away and your right hand draw near. Let the left push away, but in that order, let the right pull near. Always. It's that harmony of those two opposites. The right is always the side of kindliness and giving. The left is always the side of discipline and withholding for the sake of the love. But its manifestation is limitation. It says the God of Ilna, the external qualities, the way the world is built in apparent, it's apparent, the vision of the world that we see, these two qualities are reversed. And the way to grasp it is like this. A person who deserves good gets good. A person who deserves discipline and gets called punishment, or being limited gets that. There's a conduct in the world that is the opposite. Which means, there's a process in the world, one of the deepest spiritual mysteries, that people who are good sometimes suffer, and people who are bad sometimes, what we call sadik verayloi, a sadik, a righteous individual who has a difficult time, and a rosh avatogloi, an evil person who has a tremendously wonderful life. That is one of the oldest spiritual mysteries. Moshe Rabbein himself asked Hashem about that mystery. It's one of the things that bothers people most. Where's the system of justice? You see immediately that free will could not operate. There could be no free will unless this was the system. Unless this were the system. If everybody who did what we should do was given the beneficial consequences, and everybody who behaved negatively was immediately given the negative consequences, you'd very soon give up doing anything that was wrong. The only reason you have free will is because the lines are crossed. Because you can sometimes do that which is right and suffer, and sometimes do that which is wrong and be, apparently, rewarded. So you have free will in the world because of this confusion. Underlying the confusion has to be justice too, because there's no possibility of the wires being crossed in the spiritual world. They must always be correct. So the challenge is, stay carefully with me, how do you cross the wires and have them uncrossed at the same time? How do you cross the wires that a person who deserves goodness suffers, and a person who deserves to suffer has benefit, and at the same time as that's happening in the world, it's actually correct? How does that work? So the explanation is, again, it's a much, much broader subject, but I just want to bring an illustration of this point in one thin dimension. The resolution is like this. This world is only part of the structure. This world is only the place where the control zones have been crossed. There's another world beyond this. After you leave this world, you go to another place where the world is a world of essence, where there's no crossing of the wires. In that world, there's only pure essence. A person who generates goodness and is good, can only be good there, because that world is nothing other than the world to come, the world after this, is nothing other than a situation of essence expressed. We have childlike descriptions of a system of justice and judgment, and you get judged and punished, but the real notion is you simply exist as you are. The ecstasy of that world is perceiving what you've become, and of course the fact that you became it. And the pain of that level of existence is feeling what you should have and could have been, and you didn't. Nothing other than being exposed to your own essence. There, there can be no crossing. There's no crossing of control of wires. Their things must be as they are. Now, in order to generate that, what happens is, when a person does in this world what he should do, but he has a minority of his conduct, a minority of what he's done is negative, he needs to be punished. And such a righteous individual suffers in this world. Why? Because what's happening is he's being paid here for the minority of his actions that are negative, so that when he leaves this world and goes to a world of pure, clarified essence, he's totally what his majority is. Again, I don't know if I'm making myself clear. The Mishnah says a person's like a tree. Okay? A tree. A tree can be planted in a good place, with some branches hanging over into air that is bad, over bad ground. A tree can be planted in a bad place, with some branches hanging over into the good. What does it mean? That if you want to clarify what this tree is, you simply prune off the branches that are the ancillary or secondary things in the wrong place, and then the tree's clarified as what it is. The axiom, incidentally, is that people are born exactly midway. You're not born good or bad. Your tree's exactly in the middle. The first work in life is not to trim, prances is to move the trunk of your tree. Most of us forget that. Most of us spend our whole life dealing with which twigs, which is it in today, and forget the essential definition of what you're here for. And that's also another subject. Enough trouble this evening without that. But that's the concept. The concept is a person can be a righteous individual, means his tree's planted in a good place, but he needs to suffer for correction of those things, those details that are not correct. So he can have an enormously difficult time in this world, so that he's clarified in the next world. Purely good. On the other hand, a person can be an evil individual, thoroughly black and evil, but he has a few good things that he's done, he has to be paid out for his misfits. So he has a life of incredible pleasure, luxury and wealth and privilege in this world, so that he's paid out what he deserves for what he's done that is good, so that in the next world he disappears entirely, or rather lives as an essence of the pain of a life that was not developed. Ultimately that pain is its own correction. Again, that's another subject. That's the system, okay? Do you understand what's happening? It means, you understand the beauty of this? It means that a person can be righteous in this world and suffer. What's the consequence? He appears to be getting an injustice. He's a righteous individual, he's suffering terribly. The wires have got crossed. But in essence what's happening is, it's perfect justice. This is what's being paid out to him in the best possible way to refine the details that were imperfect to leave him pure. A negative individual, who's got no spiritual life at all, is completely deserving of, has put himself into the category of unspirituality, of non-existing spiritually, has done some good deeds, he has to be paid out for them. Hashem doesn't withhold the reward of any creature. So Hashem pays him out, he gives him a life of luxury. It appears to be an injustice. Here's the black and evil individual causing immense suffering, and he's having a life of luxury and reward, so to speak. But underlying it is no injustice. Underlying it is being paid what is his due. So that he clarifies in the next world, which is the world of essence and eternity. You understand what's happening? You have here, ostensibly, to the naked eye, you have here the wires are hopelessly crossed. So crossed that people lose faith when they see this. And what's happening is an assertion of exact spiritual justice. Yeah? In fact the. I mean, right down to the details, I mean, for example, I mean, think it through for a moment. Here's an individual who's entirely negative, completely negative. He's being paid out to him, in this world for His mitzvahs. But there's a principle that there is. There's no payment for mitzvahs in this world. There's a principle that you can get no reward for mitzvahs in this world. Why? Because a mitzvah is of infinite value. A mitzvah is of infinite value. There's not enough currency in this world to pay you for a mitzvah. A mitzvah is a kind of currency where you can't cash that check here. There's just no bank that has the currency. One penny's worth of mitzvah, one kind word, one mitzvah, here, no matter how, is worth an infinity compared, something beyond all the limits of this world. And therefore, a person does a mitzvah here, the reward is reserved for another world. The main reason is because this world isn't big enough to pay you for a mitzvah. A mitzvah is an attachment to a cosmic root. Mitzvah in Hebrew means, see, we mistranslate. We think mitzvah means commandment. There's only one connotation of the word. Mitzvah means to join or be bonded. Tzevet in Hebrew means a crew, people who connect in a function. But tzav t'chada means in one bond. Mitzvah means you here become the external manifestation of a mitzvah. Mitzvah means you here become an infinite root. That's what a mitzvah is. You connect. And therefore, if you connect yourself to infinity, the consequence is an experience of infinity. You can't be paid here. The question becomes, how can an evil person be paid for his mitzvahs in this world if by definition a mitzvah can't be paid out in this world? I mean, that's terribly unfair. After all, he did a genuine mitzvah. But the answer is like this. The tactical answer is, the person can't be paid out in that world because he's not there. He's not there. What does it mean to be an evil person by definition? A person who's invested in this world only. He doesn't live for it. He's not connected to a higher source. There's no assertion of a higher value. Therefore, the person gets paid out in this world because it's perfectly fair. He isn't. Hashem would love to give him an infinite reward. But again, we'll put it this way. Any mitzvahs that he's done, by definition, are worth only a finite amount. Because he's already defined himself as a person who lives only in the finite world. So the deepest expression of his essence can only be that which is finite because he's defined himself as not having any connection to a higher world. So it's exact justice, even though. So what happens? Again, you have on the right-hand side a person who's righteous, completely deserving, having a terrible time. That's called netzach. Not netzach, but eternity. This person is having his eternity generated and perfected here. He looks like he's suffering terribly, but the name of that quality, yes, in effect what's happening here is it is on the right-hand side. Meaning, he's building his eternity and it's called netzach. The person who's evil and is having a wonderful time is called hoyt. Hod. Know what that means? Admission. It means, says the Goan, as if Hashem is admitting that the evil run the show. That he doesn't interfere, that you can get away with it. He's submitting, as it were, admitting. The hoyt means a submission of my case to yours. Hashem submits, as it were. He folds his case. The world is run by the evil forces, in case you hadn't noticed lately. That is where the conduct of the world, in their hands, until the Messianic age, unfortunately, in their hands, is the conduct of the world's historical progression. And therefore, hoyt is the left-hand side, where the evil run amok and they destroy the world, they cause chaos, mayhem, those brutal terms. And Hashem is silent. Mika mocha ba'elim Hashem, who is like you, among the mighty ones, Hashem. The Gemara says, read it, mika mocha ba'ilmim, those who say nothing, those who are unable to say. Hashem, God itself, as it were, silent, in the face of the evil. That's called midas hoyt. What's happening is, they're generating their own destruction, they're eradicating evil from the world, the hard way, the painful way, but that's what's happening, and it's called hoyt, because it's external, the vision of that externally is as if to say, the forces of good are in submission, they admit, as it were, that this is the way to go, that you can get away with it, that there's no justice, that is what happens. So far, so good? When we, what is the correction of hoyt? What is the correction? How correctly do you handle that quality? Submission of your own, the forces of evil are vested in the power of free will. When you assert yourself, the central fault of free will is assertion of ego. There's the assertion of self in your, the location, the locus of your greatness is in your ability to assert yourself and do for yourself, as opposed to be a puppet. And of course, that is where your difficulty begins. The correction of the quality of free will, the tikkun of free will, that means to bring it to its highest spiritual level is to give it up. Is to give it up. To destroy ego so entirely that you become a person, as it were, capable only of goodness. You don't become a robot, believe me, because in the work that it takes to achieve that, yes, to become a person who's so sensitive to the good that you could not bring yourself to do anything bad. The cosmic power needed to do that bears an eternal reward forever. Every action of goodness that's done thereafter harks back, of course, to the work that was done to build that, to build that purity. But the correction of free will is not to use it in assertion of self. Think about the first act of free will that ever took place in the world. Hashem said to Adam, God said to Adam, He didn't ask him to do something. He didn't ask him to prove something. He didn't ask him to use his greatness and conquer worlds. He asked him not to do something. That's all. He asked him, just don't do it. That's all. Sit there and let me run the show. So Adam said, he said, you gave me all this power, cosmic power, to not use? Hashem said, yeah. What I want is the sacrifice of your ability to be independent. I want you to give away your potential independence and melt back into me. Because by definition, I am reality. To the extent that you assert your free will and you move ahead and do your own thing in the world, to that extent, you tear yourself away and divorce yourself from the reality of me. I'm the definition of that which is real. In the paradox of giving up your free will, giving up all your degrees of freedom, is where you melt back into the definition of reality itself and you achieve the greatest personal reality. But that's the paradox. And therefore, his commandment was not to do and to conquer worlds. His commandment was not to do. Simply sit there. Yeah? So you said, you mean you want me to be a passive passenger, that's all? Hashem said, yeah. But he couldn't do that. He could not do that. You understand? What conquered him, what conquered him was the essence of man, which is the independence to be able to function on your own. And that is your Kedusha. That's your sanctity. The Kedusha, the sanctity of the human being, is that you are divine. You represent the divine pattern in that you are the only agency in all of creation that is genuinely free. Yeah? And the, the, the correct use of that free will is to harness it and discipline it and give it back where it came from and live in total control so that you live in absolute consonance with the spiritual reality. Right? The paradox is the appearance is one of giving away freedom. The reality is that's achieving total, by definition, cosmic freedom. When we say Moedim, when we say Moedim, when we say thank you, we say thank you. In the Tefillah, we say Moedim. Al-Anissim, when we mention Hanukkah, we mention it in the Barakah in the Shemoneh Esrei of Moedim. Thank you. Thanking is an admission, a submission admission, and it's a thanks. The root is common as we explained before. The custom is to bow when we do that. Moedim anach nalach when we bow. You bend the spine. Right? Let's look at that for a moment. The Gemara says, let's put it as brutally as possible. The Gemara says, one who does not bow at Moedim becomes a serpent in the next world. You want to have a flexible spine? There's two ways to do it. You either force it into submission now or you become that snaky thing in the next world. That's what it is. Those are the two options. What it means, of course, is the serpent represent that original power of breaking away from reality. Don't do what he tells you. Assert yourself. That's what the serpent said. You break that by bending the spine in submission. Right? The spine is always so to understand this. You know, the vertical posture of man is a unique thing. The sources say that there are two things in which your humanity is revealed. Ziv haponim, the glow on the face, and skif ha-sakoma, your vertical stature. The animal world doesn't have that. The animal world does not have a glow on the face. Technically speaking, there's no difference in the face of a dog before death or after death. But the human being does a palpable difference. It's not much of a difference. To see a person who's alive, it's called chokhmas adon tari ponov. The wisdom of a person lights his face. To the extent that a person is spiritually constructed, spiritually developed, a person has built self-control and human sensitivity into himself. To that extent, there's a glow on the face. It's very faint. You could easily ignore it. But there is that, and that's why the face is not clothed. That's why the body needs to be clothed because the body does not rise above its animal, the transition that it's undertaken into an animal status. The face is, you see, you can't cope without Hebrew. In Hebrew, the word for a face is panim. The same word in Hebrew is plim, means the internality. In Hebrew, you have an amazing davah v'hipuchah in the same word. Pan in Hebrew, pan and panim means the external face or facet, that which faces outward. And plim in Hebrew means that which is deeply buried and hidden within. Those two facets are the same interface. The other, that we need to speak about another time is the other facet, the other reflection in the body of humanity is being vertical. That's what's unique about us. If you ever had the privilege of studying the anatomy, the neurology that goes into remaining, retaining a vertical posture, it's absolutely stupendous. Stupendous feat. The components in the body that are harnessed into being vertical, to maintaining balance vertically, that's not the engineering solution, you know, of choice. If you had to build a creature, you'd certainly put it on all fours or make it slide on its stomach. You want a person poised on two legs in exquisite balance, a remarkable thing. It has to do with the ears. You know, in Hebrew, the word Ozen means ear and balance. You know that? Izun. What's izun in Hebrew? The word tells you that that's where the organ of balance is. The word. In English, you can't do that. What the ears have to do with balance, we also have to talk about. This is related to the subject. Amazing thing. What does hearing have to do with balance? Amazing thing. Very deeply connected. But, one of the deepest assertions of our humanity is that we stand vertical. I once saw, I don't know if this is appropriate to even allow it to mention. I'm going to risk it anyway. I once saw, in a book of occultist wisdom, unorthodox occult wisdom, nothing to do with Judaism at all. A completely different place. What I was doing reading a book like that, we can discuss some other time. The point is that, in this book, which, let's say I was forced to read, I came across a very interesting, it happened to be a medical, it happened to be a person who spoke about medicine from an occult point of view. A person who lived in the last century. Obviously a very enlightened individual. I saw there a fundamental question which should fascinate any doctor. I subsequently saw an exact replica of his analysis in one of the Kabbalistic works. Let me share with you, the medical component was not, he comes at it from a medical point of view. He asks an interesting question, let me share it with you. To illustrate our point. He asks this question, the name is not important for now, the reference is not significant, but the question he asks is like this. Anyone who is exposed to medicine will know that virtually all the drugs we use in human medicine are plant derived. Today, of course, they're synthesized, but classically, virtually every drug known to man comes from plants. Almost no drugs are derived from animals, virtually none. There are one or two substances, you can probably count them on one hand, where a substance is taken directly from an animal, which has a crossover function, insulin, things like that, which are used in human medicine. But virtually all of the drugs that are immensely potent in the human body are derived from plants. And that is very strange. That is very strange. Plants have nothing to do with us physiologically and chemically. Virtually nothing. You couldn't be further away. Again, if you knew nothing about chemistry, about medicine, and I said to you, you have here the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and humans. Where would you expect the substances that are active in the human organism to derive from? Plants or animals? You would have to be raving to suggest that they come from plants. The chemistry, the chemical processes, what plants are, is so far divorced from what we are. Animals are so close. The physiology of animals, you know, pigs, for example, I hate to tell you this, but pigs are so closely related to us physiologically. First of all, we use pig valves. You know, we transplant them directly into the human heart. Pigs are. Much physiological research is done on pigs because they function so close. You know, if you make a pig nervous, it gets an ulcer. You know that? You know that? If you make a pig nervous for a few hours, it gets an ulcer. A lot of ulcer research is done on pigs. You know what they do? They swing them in a hammock. It's terribly cruel. That's what they do. A pig doesn't like to be. They swing them in a hammock, and within four or five hours, they get ulcers. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that animals are very close to us physiologically. Plants are extremely distant from us physiologically. Do you hear the question? It's remarkable, isn't it? It's a remarkable question. Any doctor should be ashamed for not having asked himself, right, why is it that all those compounds, those chemicals, that are so potently active in the human body, are derived from plants? Now, it gives an amazing answer, which I subsequently saw in one of the deepest Kabbalistic sources. It says this. We don't have time now to explore the answer, okay? I'm just going to suggest it to you, but I want to draw out one point from it. It says like this. Plants are a vertical kingdom. Their roots are in the earth, and their generative forces are upward. The axis of a plant is that it draws from the earth, and it projects itself and reproduces itself upward. Humans, are a vertical axis, too. Our roots are in a higher world, and our generative energy goes down. Animals are halfway between the two, at variance by 90 degrees. The plant kingdom is one kingdom, vertical in one sense. The animal kingdom is half-rotated, and the human kingdom is a full rotation. That's what he says. This is the real meaning of evolution, okay? Not what they think. That's what it is. And therefore, we share an axis in opposite polarity with the plant world. That's why substances can have such potent effects on our bodies, and animals not really. The Kabbalists teach that animals are a horizontal kingdom, because the assertion of ego, the assertion of free will, that is human, draws you into a vertical axis. The way of controlling this is bowing. Bowing down. When we say Moedim, when we break ego, we bend the spine, the full mitzvah of bowing is to prostrate yourself entirely. That's called the Pishudria Radha, Yadai Barak Lain. To lay down completely, the complete act of prostration, right? For example, when you visit the Besamikdash. Yeah, the temple itself, which is what the Greeks were against. Let's not forget to connect this to Fanucca. But the Greeks wanted to assert themselves over what was the Besamikdash, the point of connection to a higher world, in subservience and submission to that world. That's what the Greeks attacked. The work of the Besamikdash is to bow. To bow down. To bow. Some of the time we'll talk about sitting. It's also an amazing subject. Sometimes we sit. Amazing thing. But bowing down. Bowing down. You think they made it up? Is the act of making yourself horizontal with the ground in complete dominance, complete submission of that ego that puts you into vertical posture. When the Besamikdash is first mentioned in the Torah, when Avraham Avinu says, let us go to that place and bow down there. That's what he said, yeah. That's the act of, you sleep horizontal also, you sleep lying down, also a deep subject. It also needs to be analyzed. You can think it through yourself. Elements that are also not appropriate to discuss. But that's the point. You know, when the Greeks attacked the temple, so the Mishnah says, that they made 13 breaches in the Soireg. There was a fence that went around the Harabais. The sanctum, yeah, the inner zone of Kedusha around the temple, they made 13 breaches. So, that wall or fence, whatever it was, was a place that non-Jews were not allowed to enter. Only Jews could go beyond that point. The Greeks, in the antipathy to this thing, this distinction between Jew and non-Jew, which is the assertion that our work is to connect with the spiritual world, and the Greek assertion that we are an empirical, scientific, experiential world, and we can deal with the world with our intellect and with what we can test and taste and experience. We do not submit our consciousness and our intellect to a higher realm. That was what offended them, and that's what they broke. So, they attacked 13, they made 13 breaches, holes in this fence, in this Soireg. Why 13, of course, it's obvious. Why they broke 13 is because all of Judaism is based on 13 principles. 13 always being the number that brings harmony and oneness out of disparate elements, right? The word Echad in Hebrew has 13 elements. The word Echad, meaning one, adds up to 13. Aleph, Chet, and Dalet is 13. Always. Yeah, that's why our Jewish number, 13, is so close to us. That's why the non-Jews are so antipathetic. They have such an antipathy to 13. To them, it's because they live in a world of multiplicity, and more power, more multiplicity. Our world is uniting all the details into oneness. The word Ahava, which means love, adds up to 13. Where two become one, the number is 13. That's it. It needs to be discussed. All that we are is bringing things into oneness, right? The 13 elements of the world, the way the Marat puts it, is the 13 axes, the 12 lines that surround a cube. The Yudbet Kaveh Alechson, together with the unifying 13th that makes them into one cube, the axes of three-dimensional space. They broke 13 of those to state that this oneness is not, you detach from that oneness, which is Hashem, in a world of multiplicity. That was the Greek ideology. The Chashmonaim, when they conquered the Greeks, when they conquered the Greek empire, they made a rabbinic edict, rabbinic law, that anybody walking around the Harabais had to bow down when he passed any of those places where there had been a breach in the wall. For hundreds of years later, about 200 years, this law was in effect, and could well be in effect again when the Rezimah Yitzchak was rebuilt. Maybe, could be. But for 200 years, two centuries after the Greeks were defeated by the Chashmonaim, and they repaired the wall, the custom was anybody walking past one of those places where the Greeks said, you had to not just bow, you had to lie down, completely shtachavo, which means hands and feet spread out on the ground. You see the symbolism here. Is that the Greeks were asserting the greatness of man in terms of his independent essence, not connected or subservient to a higher world, and the Chashmonaim re-established that connection in terms of the Besamikdash, which is the point of connection with the higher world, and therefore where the Greeks had broken through this thing, the tickle against it was the act of of moidim, of hoidah, to hand it back, as it were. And that's why Hanukkah is classified in the Aries writings as being the middle of Hoyt. Chanukah is the time when The world moves into its external manifestation. There's no longer prophecy. We've discussed this in detail before. Prophecy has ended. There's no voice speaking from our higher world. There's no more revealed miracles of the old type. Now you have to make your own decisions. You have to make your own decisions. For the first time a sage gets up, for the first time in Jewish history, and he says, we make our own decisions. He gets up and he says, from now it's not in heaven anymore. There's no prophet to tell us what to do. We make our own decisions. And what was the first decision? To declare war on the Greek Empire. You have to understand what this means. This is not a small decision we're going to make. This custom, that custom is said extra to heal him, you know, between Mechon and Mary. The example that he enacted, when he got up, Yochanan the Chashmonaim, he got up and he said, the decision now is we're going to go out and attack the Greek military machine. We're going to attack the Greek Empire. Who told you this? The Jews must have said to him. There's no prophet to ask. There's no Urimbutum. There's no temple where you can go and get this formation. So now, this is what the Rambam calls Ruach HaKodesh Asher BeKirbam. The sanctity of Kedusha, of prophetic insight, as it were, that lived in their own minds and hearts. Can you imagine that? Imagine, put yourself in the place of the Greek commander, the Greek governor, yes, of the whole Syrian Greek force, that occupied the whole of Middle East at the time. They must have come and said to him, the Greeks, the Jews have declared war on you. So he said, the who? They said, the Greeks. He said, the Jews. Exactly which Jews? Well, a certain elderly Jew and his five sons and a couple others. There are 13 of them all together. They've declared war on you. And he said, are these highly trained warriors? Actually, no. They're from the Jewish priestly caste. They've never held a weapon before. They serve in the temple and they sing songs and offer sacrifices, but they've declared. Can you imagine? The man must have had a. They must have treated him medically for the danger of the laughter. Must have. Do you understand it? And the Jews made that decision. They declared war on the Greek Empire and won! And won the war! It was a hard war. It took years, 13 years, and that handful died doing it. But that's the real miracle of Ghaniqa. Then they lit the oil which burned Miraculous. It does nothing compared to the. That was the first time in history that they stood on their own feet, as it were, and they made their own decisions. There's no longer living in the upper world of the essence of life itself, where prophets tell you what to do and you can't go wrong! There's no halakhic dispute. There's no darkness. You have a direct message. The ordeals in that generation were not ordeals of faith. The temptations then were completely different. There was no darkness of where. Is there a higher world? Isn't the most ridiculous question. You witnessed it directly. You experienced prophecy. You went to the temple. You saw ten miracles in constant operation. And then the world went dark. And now the ordeal becomes. Is there anything else? Am I even human? Maybe I'm an animal. Maybe. Complete and out of doubt. And in that world, it's the sages of the oral law who assert clarity no longer with prophecy. They move into the world of externality. They're no longer in the world of essence. You know, that's the most beautiful way to express this. Maybe we'll finish with this. I mean, we could do so much more to say, but. You know, a beautiful way to express this is. You know, the classic piece in the Talmud that deals with this is called Tanush al-Akhina. Again, we can't go into all the details. But very, very briefly, very briefly, there was an incident shortly, again, not that long after prophecy ended in the history of the Sanhedrin where there was a debate about the status of a certain vessel. A certain item was being debated and the majority held a certain position and Rabbi Eliezer Hagodl held differently. He was the greatest among them. He was the teacher of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer the Great, as he's known. He held different than the majority. Now, you know, the Torah says, "Akha rabim lahatos." You vote according to majority. So he told them, "Look, you may vote, but you're wrong." So they said, "Well, we may be wrong, but the majority holds a different way according to Torah." You see, the real debate was, he held there's an interesting debate in Torah. What has high authority? A majority of competent opinion or a minority of superior opinion? They held that a majority of competent opinion wins. He held that it doesn't. Now, you can't vote on that, can you? You see the problem? So when they voted, and he didn't accept the notion of a vote, there was only one thing left for him to do. To prove that they were wrong. That's always an option. So he began to prove it. He said like this, "If I'm right, halakhically in this case, I want that carob tree outside to get up and walk." So the Gemara says, "The carob tree uprooted itself and it walked a hundred amas." So they said, "We do not bring proofs from carob trees." Quite impressed at all. They must have been complete Lithuanians, there's no question about it. They said, "We don't bring proofs from carob trees." So then he said, "If I'm right, I want that river outside to flow backwards." And then the trench, the channel of water, reversed itself, the water flowed uphill. He said, "We don't bring proofs from streams of water." He said, "If I'm right, I want the walls of the base marriage to cave in." And the walls began to cave in. The Gemara says, "Out of respect to him, they collapsed. Out of respect to Ebishur, the leader of the majority, they remained suspended." They said, "We don't bring proofs from the walls of the base marriage." He said, "If I'm right, I want a voice to be heard." I want his voice. And a voice came out. A voice came out! They heard it! The voice said, "What are you dealing with, Reb Eliezer, for?" That halachically he's right in everything that he says. That's what the voice said. Listen carefully. Reb Yeshua got up and stood on his feet, got onto his feet and he said, "The Torah is not in heaven. We don't listen to those voices." And they outvoted the voice. Talk about the power of the sages. Of course they did it. They did it only because the Torah tells you to accept a majority vote and not voices from another world. Not where there's no prophecy anymore. The Gemara says that one of them subsequently saw Elijah the prophet and said to him, "What was Hashem doing? What was God doing at the time when we took that vote?" And the Gemara says, "He was smiling and saying, 'Nitzchoni banai, nitzchoni banai. My children have defeated me. My children have defeated me." Now out of this whole saga of this Gemara, which needs thorough analysis, it's an amazing section in the Talmud, it's a remarkable expression of the transition of Torah from prophetic revelation to human intelligence and human application of the laws of Torah. There's one statement in that whole saga that the Arizal, the great Kabbalistic master, picks on. Of all that whole. If you wanted to give an analysis of this piece, which of the statements. I've told you the whole story in the Gemara, virtually. Which of the elements would you focus on? Look what you could focus on. You could focus on a voice coming out of heaven and. Picture the scene. There's a lucky debate going on in the base matters. The walls are hanging suspended over them. Outside is a tree walking up and down, for pity's sake. There's a river flowing. Picture the scene. What does he pick up to give commentary? He asks the following question. Why does it say, "Ammad Reb Yishua al Raglav"? "Reb Yishua got to his feet and said, 'It's not in heaven.'" He wants to know, why does it say he got to his feet? There's no extraneous expressions in the Talmud. The legs are netzach and hoed. This was the time when the sages began the generations of standing on our feet, not his. This was the time when Torah moved into the external world, outside the body itself into those vessels, vehicles that carry us through the world. That's called the oral law. The manifestation of Torah in the world that is now the opinions of the sages as opposed to a received clarity that obtained before. That was Chanukah, the watershed time in the introduction of the process of the oral law where Torah becomes vested in nothing other than the opinion of the sage who against the Greeks who taught that all human wisdom is all the wisdom that there is. The sages come along to say the human wisdom you're quite right about is our wisdom, but it is done in complete loyalty and subservience to our higher wisdom. It's that delicate balance of the assertion of human intellect which is the process of the oral law in complete loyalty and subservience to the rules of Torah itself which are received. That's the concept of the oral law. And therefore they fixed this practice of moedim, of bending of making the body as it is. As it were prostrate and subservient. That is the that is an introduction to the subject of Hoyt. The festivals that are so-called biblical festivals they are the intrinsic ones Pesach, Shura, Sukkot, they're inside the essence of the body and then you move to the generation where there's no longer a revelation of that. No longer any you know in Al-Anissim it says that it says they fixed these days That's what it says. It says after they rededicated the temple and they lit the lights it says the Chashmonayim they then fixed these days as a days of festival. Right? Chanukah. There's never a time before when any Rabbis, any sages came along and fixed any days. Fixing days of Yom Tov come from a higher world. That the day is a special quality is a manifestation of a higher world. It comes from the upper world. Now we move into a time when the sages can enact a day with special quality in recognition of certain things that have been revealed. That is what they did and therefore they fixed them as days within their power there was within their power to do that and they fixed them as days days of halal v'hoido, days of acknowledging and giving thanks, meaning the bending of ego as a response to the Greek assertion of ego, that our intellect and our philosophy and our scientific method is all that there is, we assert that in the world, we detach ourselves from our high authority the question of the what they did was in that beginning of the celebration of the historic process of the oral law that will take us to the final day when the light shines again from our higher world, is the dual function of taking hoid and correcting it, taking hoid which is the place where the trouble begins, where the world goes dark, where freedom is obtained and where freedom can lead you in the wrong direction, they took that and they corrected it they brought us to a situation where we now spend eight days, and what we do now is we say moedim, we say thank you in act of submission of ego, in acknowledgement of what? The process of the oral law where a human being now makes the greatest assertion of his own intellect and his own opinion and he finds that when he does that it is in consonance with the wisdom that comes from our higher world, that's what Hanukkah teaches, it's the time together with Purim again that also needs discussion how Purim is the transition from the biblical to post-biblical age, prophetic to the post-prophetic age and Hanukkah was completely in the world of darkness, Purim at least there's a Megillah written there were prophets around at the time, Hanukkah is a time where there's no Megillah at all, it's not even mentioned in the Mishnah, Hanukkah it's a time when all that we had was the wisdom of the sages and they began to assert this phase of the world's history which is the phase of the oral law that is what's inherent every time you say Moedim and you bow, you bend and you curve that spine that is that willful tendency to put its back up if you like and say that I'm all that there is and my judgment is all that there is, it's that Jewish schizoid work of both submitting the ego at the same time as using intellect in the most powerful fashion we don't submit intelligence, we don't submit character uniqueness of personality, we assert those powerfully but what we take out is that vested interest of ego that thing that is me and I in fact am the divine reality that's what we kill this is what we learn on Hanukkah and therefore the last couple of days that are left to us here when you light the lights the Rambam holds that lighting the lights is actually the revelation of this quality of Huidah when you say Moedim and you bow slightly and you submit that ego, you break that sense of I am all that there is you are asserting this victory over the Greeks and when you move out of Hanukkah move into the rest of the year you still have this Moedim and every time you do that there's a curving of that spine that is the the human symbol if you like of assertion of ego in a childish sense and at the same time as learning how to assert intellect and intelligence correctly is also that conquest of ego © transcript Emily Beynon
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