Speaker 1All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Kabbalah and the Hidden, Architecture of You. This course, the Kabbalah is as good as the title is long. That's my new tagline. The Kabbalah is as good as the title is long. So they tell a story about a kindergarten teacher who tells her class, it's time to draw. And you can draw whatever you want. And the kids are drawing. And the teacher's going around the classroom and she sees a girl that's drawing something. And she says, what are you drawing? The girl says, I'm drawing a picture of God. And the teacher says, but no one knows what God looks like. And the girl says, yes, that's because I haven't finished drawing God. All right. Next, next attempt at a joke. So this an elderly woman goes on the bus and she offers the bus driver a little bag, a little baggie of peanuts. So would you like some peanuts? And the driver says, yes, thank you. And it happens day in, day out. She's giving peanuts to the bus driver. And one day the bus driver is curious and says, I appreciate the peanuts. I love peanuts. But but tell me. Why don't you eat the peanuts? She says, I can't. My teeth. I can't. I can't eat the peanuts. I can't chew the peanuts. So he says, so then why do you buy the peanuts? She's like, I just like to lick off the chocolate. Listen, I don't make the jokes. I just report them. That is the deal. All right. So raise of hands. Who who wants to learn Kabbalah tonight? Yeah. You're here for Kabbalah. OK. My friends tonight, this is serious Kabbalah. This is not what I would call pop Kabbalah. You know what I mean by pop Kabbalah, like or K-pop Kabbalah. I'm kidding. This is not pop Kabbalah. This is legit Yeshiva Kabbalah. This is the stuff that I learned in Yeshiva that I learned, you know, from the books that are in the shelves behind you all. This is like this is legit. Tonight is legit. I know it's a night class and, you know, comes along with, you know, end of day fatigue, maybe, but I'm telling you, it's worth it. It's worth it to just buckle up, grab some coffee if you need, because tonight the Kabbalah will blow your mind. So here's the deal. Last week, here was the theme last week. I'm just we did it last week. Just want to reiterate the theme. The theme was yours. Soul is way more active than you might think. You might think you and I might think, my soul, do I have a soul? Maybe I was told to have a soul. Where is it? Never seen it. Our souls are way more active than we might think. Love for music, the way we sleep, how we dream, right? The soul shows up in so many interesting places. That was last week. Today, instead of looking inside, we look above. And the core. Conversation tonight is this, how do the spiritual cosmic forces of the universe affect me, affect you in both body and soul? So whereas last week was focused on my soul influencing my body today, it's how do the cosmic spiritual forces influence both body and soul of me? Tonight, we're going to look at some of the biggest concepts in Kabbalah. Creation, Sefirot, God's name. The ideas are incredible, the discussion magical, and the application practical. We have so much to get to, let's jump right in. So, to talk about the spiritual cosmic forces, one second, to talk about the spiritual cosmic forces that shape our reality, we're going to start from the beginning. And when I say the beginning, literally the beginning, i.e. Genesis. So here's something you might have noticed when reading the story of creation. Actually, you know what? Let me formulate this as a question. What does the Torah tell us vis-a-vis the story of creation? What does it tell us? I don't mean specifically, like in general. What's. What's it about? Seven days. Good. What else? Good. There was an initial creation, and then a separation. Excellent. What else? What is the objective of the narrative of creation in the Torah? It's telling us? Good. Also, good. It's telling us at the core what God did. What did God do? Well, He created. What did He create? He created heaven and earth. He created light. He created darkness. He created the oceans and the sky. And He created dry land and vegetation and trees and plants and fish and birds and animals and the human being. And you know what? He probably, after seeing Adam and Eve and the sin of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, He probably thought to Himself, "Man, I should have stopped with the elephants." He might have thought that because it got complicated once He spun off human beings. But what the Torah does a really good job at is describing what God created. But you know what it does a pretty, well, I don't want to say lousy, but you know what it doesn't do a great job explaining? How God created. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Oh, what? It talks about how?" It says that God said, "Let there be light, there was light." I don't know. That doesn't count. I'm going to say that doesn't count. It doesn't talk about the mechanism. It doesn't talk about the construction, how it works, how it unfolds. What are the elements? What are the tools? kabbalistic books explaining the process of creation again the torah says that god created kabbalah will tell us and tells us how god creates what that architecture looks like so here's where the Kabbalists come in we begin with a question because the Jewish and Kabbalistic understanding of God Almighty is that God is pure and transcendent and infinite and perfect undefinable and just amazing The problem with that is, the problem is, how do you go from infinity to this? Right? How do you go from an infinite being that is unfathomable, pashut betachlit hapshitut, in the language of the mystics, undefined, to the epitome of being undefined. I'm sure there's better English words, but that's just the translation that came to mind. Completely non-descriptible. It's not just that we can't describe God. God can't be described beyond definition, beyond description. So how do you go from that to this? And I know what you're thinking. Perhaps, well, God can do anything, including create the impossible. From an infinite being to finite reality. And although that's true, Kabbalah describes the steps that God took to unfold our reality. Everyone with me so far? And again, the core conversation is how do you go from infinity to something finite? What we're going to study right at the top is the Zohar. The Zohar is the primary book of Kabbalah. Several volumes written about 2,000 years ago by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Rabbi Shum Bar Yochai was one of the sages who lived at the times of the second temple's destruction. He was a man who defied Roman decrees not to teach Torah publicly. He eventually had to hide in a cave for 13 years with his son because they wanted to kill him. He was a wanted man. And when he came out of the cave, he had a lot of Kabbalah to teach. The Zohar describes exactly what we are talking about now. How do you go from an infinite being to finite reality? Let's go. We're going to begin with text 1A. Text 1A is found on page number 37. Dr. Doman, Alex, please read text 1A on page 37. I'm going to ask you to do 1A, 1B, and 1C, but we'll do one at a time because there's a lot of stuff that we need to talk about in between. Please read text 1A.
Speaker 2You are one and beyond enumeration. You are elevated from all things hidden and all hidden things. No thought can rescue what's so close.
Speaker 1Thank you. Let's pause and let's stay on this text because I'm going to be asking some questions. We're going to be analyzing it and breaking this down because it's very important to understand what it's saying here. Let's begin with the opening sentence. Tell me in your own words. This is open to everybody. What does that mean? What does that mean? God. I should clarify. Text 1A is talking about God. God, you are one and beyond enumeration. But what does it mean, one and beyond enumeration? What do you think that means? Okay. Good. Give me more. Can't be divided. Okay. Give me more. Okay. Good. When we say one, what might that imply?
Speaker 3That's what it might imply.
Speaker 1What Yaakov said. Good. That's what I was going for. In other words, when you say one, that implies it's part of maybe a larger collective. Meaning, well, that's one. Okay. Foam finger, anybody? We're number one? No one's been to a college football game here? Come on. You know what I'm talking about. We're number one. Foam finger, college, alma mater. Whatever, right? Woo! We're number one. Okay. Hold on. Pause for a moment. You know what that means? That means you're part of a system and a ranking and you believe that you're number one. But that implies there's a number two and a number three and a number four. When we call God one, Echad, and we say that, it's from Deuteronomy, it's in the Shema, God is one, Kabbalah further clarifies, the Zohar is clarifying, when we say that God is one, it's not the one, of the two and the three and the four, implying that God is still in that same grouping as everything and everyone else. This is one and it's beyond this. God is one and beyond enumeration, meaning this one of God is not the one of the counting. It's beyond numbers themselves. And I know what you're thinking, which is, well, if that's the case, then why are you saying one in the first place? The answer is, because what are you going to say? Yeah. Remember singular? Wireless? Wireless, kind of like that with an S, right? God is not just, God is not one of two. God is the only one. Not Echad, but maybe Yachid. Singular and alone and unique. Beyond enumeration means God is beyond numbers, beyond definition. Again, the text continues, you are elevated above all elevated things, hidden from all hidden things, transcendence. And no thought can grasp you whatsoever. That last line is also powerful. I want to focus on it for a moment. And what that means, is it's not just that you and I cannot fathom God. It's that no thought can fathom God. It's not like if we were a little smarter. Remember Scooby-Doo? And I would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids. It's like, if not, if we were a little bit smarter, we would have gotten, that's not what it means. That's not what's happening here. No thought can grasp you whatsoever means, very simply, God is not, definable by rationale. God is not examinable. I'm making up words perhaps in the English language. Cannot be examined by intelligence. It's not, you know, certain things. Imagine someone opens up the window and they hold a spoon, silver spoon, and they're looking out the window. And you say to them, what are you doing? Because that looks strange. And I might want to do it also if it's cool. And they're like, well, I'm trying to find the Milky Way. I'm using, I'm looking to find the Milky Way. To spot the stars and the planets. And you say to yourself, what is happening? You say, well, wait a second. Why wouldn't you use a telescope? Why are you using a spoon? And they say, well, because I think the spoon is going to work. And you say, well, I hate to tell you this. You're not going to see the stars with a spoon. Using the human mind to try to discover God, it's not going to work. The mind is not the right tool for the job. It's like the spoon to try to see the stars is the mind to try to see God. It ain't going to work. It's not going to work today. It's not going to work tomorrow. God is beyond intelligence. God is beyond apprehension. No thought can grasp you whatsoever. Text 1A makes sense? Yes? So what are we doing collectively here with text 1A? What are we saying about God? God is? Indescribable, unknowable, good. Undefinable, excellent. Ineffable. Beyond? Inscrutable. Inscrutable. This is great. Break out the thesaurus. Right? Yeah. God is completely above and beyond anything we can relate to, which begs the question, as I mentioned before, the question then becomes, well, then how does all this unfold? If God cannot be fathomed, then it's beyond everything. So then how does this happen? So the Zohar continues. Don't worry. The Zohar doesn't leave us hanging. The Rashbi, Rabbi Shun, Bar Yachay, wouldn't do that to us. So text 1B, the Tikkuni Zohar continues. Take it away.
Speaker 2You are the one who brought forth ten ornaments, which we call ten sparrows, through which to guide worlds, both in and beyond.
Speaker 1Thank you. Says the Zohar that the same God, who is infinite and beyond and indescribable and uncountable, all that stuff, the very same God brought forth, summoned, issued, manifested ten ornaments, the Hebrew is Tikkunin, like Tikkun, Tikkun Olam, right? Ornaments, i.e., says the Zohar, ten sefirot. And if you're wondering what a sefir is, you're literally in the right place, because that's what the whole class is tonight. Ten ornaments, the ten sefirot, with which to guide worlds, both hidden and revealed. You know what it's saying? God didn't do it without tools for the job. And what are the tools? The ten sefirot. So if we're wondering, well, how does it go from infinite to infinite creator, infinite being, to finite creation? The answer is, well, there's a step in between. And that's the ten sefirot. The ten sefirot were emanated, manifested, projected into existence to create the tapestry of existence, the fabric of reality that we inhabit. These are. Okay, so one second. Pause for a moment. What do we know about these sefirot? What's the first thing we know? What's the adjective, as it were, for the sefirot? What's the word right before sefirot? Ten. Guess what? That's the contrast. What do we say about God? One. And it's not even a number. We say God is one and it's not even beyond numbers. And the sefirot? Guess what? Limited, finite, ten, not nine, ten, not eleven. You got ten. What does that mean? God is projecting the tools to create finite reality. I'm going to give you an example. Imagine an artist. Anybody an artist here? Do we have any? Any artists? Any artists? Okay. Paint? Paint? Okay. So if you were painting a painting, you would need a few things. What would you need? You would need paint. You would need canvas or some sort of. Right? And you need a brush. You would need things. Let's talk about the paint for a second. When you have the paint, you can create a masterpiece. Now, you know, it's not only about painting. You can use other things, but we're talking about a painting. To create a painting, you need paint. You need paint. God creates the world utilizing the tools of the spheroid. They're called adornments. Tikkunen. Tikkunen are like adornments. It's like clothing. You know what they say. Clothes makes the person, right? It makes. It can enhance the appearance. This adds something to the equation. When I say this, what I mean is the spheroid adds to the equation. God is perfectly infinite and beyond and transcendent. And how do you go from that to a physical limited reality? And the answer is using 10 limited tools. So what we know about God are really the way that God shows up in this projection that he then creates with. That's what we see of God. What we don't see is the essence. That remains beyond human comprehension. Does that make sense so far? Give me an example. Let's do an example. Let's say. I mean, we can even stick with art for a moment. Somebody paints a painting and you observe the painting. Not the process. You observe the finished product. And you're looking at it and you're enjoying it. Say, wow, it's a beautiful painting. Huh. What do I know about the artist from the painting? And whatever you're going to. Answer. Whatever you'll come up with, it might be right, but it's limited. Because all you'll know about the artist from the art is whatever they put into that art. And not what they held behind. When someone gets to know you, all they get to know about you is what you've chosen to allow access to. It's like you download software. It's like what can. Yeah, download an app on your phone. It wants to use the microphone, the location, your credit card. It wants everything. You're like, hold on. Slow it down. Time out. You're not going to get this. You're not going to get my calendar or my contacts or my phone number or my social. I'm holding this back. In life and in relationships, think about it, right? You have a good friend. How well do they know you? You know what the answer is? As much as you open yourself up to them, right? But I'll tell you this. In life, I don't think there's anyone that doesn't have something that they're holding inside. Something that they keep to themselves. Everyone's got something that they don't. but they don't, reveal, they don't show. And so the same duality of there's me inside, and then there's the me that projects outside, I think this is text 1a and text 1b. God in text 1a is being described as beyond understanding, beyond comprehension, one but not a number. And that's God as God is on the inside. You can't figure that out. Like, what is that? It's beyond. It's beyond anything that we can grasp. But what we do know is what God has chosen to project our direction, and that is the ten spheroth, which he uses to create in the fabric of creation, like I said before, like the paint. That's what this masterpiece of life, of this beautiful world, is built on. It's built on the ten spheroth. And we'll talk about this and what they are and how they work. We'll talk about this tonight. I'm going to pause for a moment and check in. Does this make sense? Yes. There's the inside and the outside, the me, the me. That's inside and the me that I chose, that I choose to project. Okay. So that's the two realities, God's essence and God's spheroth. Good. So the question then becomes, what are these spheroth? We said there's ten of them. Well, what are they? Let's go. Let's get, let's get some names and some labels. We continue with text 1c. The Zohar continues, and it continues by, enumerating and spelling out what exactly these ten spheroth are. Alex, please continue.
Speaker 2We call them by the following names. Chesed, kindness, is the right arm. Gevurah, strength, is the left arm. Tepherah, beauty, is the torso. Netzach, victory, and Hod, splendor, are the two properties. Yesod, foundation, is the edge of the torso, the sun of the holy earth. Naput, victory, and Hod, splendor, are the two properties. Tepherah, beauty, and Hod, splendor, are the two properties. Loyalty, is the mouth, corresponding to the oral and tooral. Ho'oh. Wisdom, is the brain, the brain of thoughts. Mina, understanding, is the heart. With it, the heart understands. It says, concerning the latter two, the hidden things are for the Lord our God. Transcended, Keter, crown, is the royal crown. It is the skull, the fulfillment of the heart.
Speaker 1Thank you for reading that. So here, the Zohar, what we just read, the Zohar enumerates the ten Sfirot. Chesed, Gevurah, Tepherah, Netza, Hod, Yesod, Malchut, Chachma, Bina, and Keter. That is ten, yeah. What is the Zohar? The Zohar is a, first of all, Zohar means radiance. So the English translation of the name of the book, of the title, would be the book of radiance. Sefer Hazor would be the book of radiance. And it is a book of Kabbalistic wisdom that is structured as, almost like an elucidation of the Torah. So it'll take a verse, and then it'll talk about the Kabbalistic or spiritual meaning of it. And so, in the text, a lot of big ideas are covered. Like the soul inside, but also God and the spiritual forces on a cosmic level, on a macrocosmic level. And so that's a very much on one leg, short answer. That's what the Zohar is. It's a book of spiritual wisdom, Jewish mysticism. And it's an, if it's Kabbalah, it's probably from there. Meaning it's probably somehow sourced in there. It's not the easiest book to read though. First of all, it's written in Aramaic, not even Hebrew. It's written in Aramaic, which is the language that the scholars wrote and spoke then. It is written very cryptically. Not everybody was a mystic, and they wanted, back in the day, they wanted to keep it like that. If you want to learn mysticism, you're going to have to be, you'll, you got to have some initialization. Today, it's a bit of a different style. We, you know, Kabbalah is taught to all. So it's very hard to read. It's very hard to learn. And even when we read these texts, I did a lot of kind of elucidation and explanation as we're going along. And so we find ourselves at a space where, okay, we understand that there's God on the inside. Then there's God in projection mode. We get that duality. One God, but, you know, dual manifestations or modalities. Right. Modalities, we would say, you know, inside, outside. And then we read the 10th Spheroad, and we might be wondering, okay, well, what are they exactly? We listed them, but what are they? But the second question that comes up, you know, I want you to ask me, what question might come up from text 1C that we just read? What's bizarre about it?
Speaker 3Yeah. It's all about.
Speaker 1Oh, thank you very much, John. You got it. That's my question as well. Why is the Zohar, why is Kabbalah mapping divine energies onto the earth? Because it's a human body. Like, what does that even mean? Chesed is the right arm. Whose right arm are we talking about? Gevurah is the left arm. Tiferet is the torso. Netzach and Hod are the two thighs. What is happening here? What is going on here? Text 1A, 1B, and 1C is an unbroken narrative in the original text. God is one and beyond enumeration. God is unfathomable is 1A. But God projected 10 Spheroad. With which to create the universe. Text 1B. Text 1C. And these 10 Spheroad are. Here's the list. And the list maps onto the body. Who's talking about the body? We're talking about God and spiritual energies. The forces of creation. The fabric of existence. So why are we mixing in arms and legs and torsos and skulls? What's actually happening here? That's what we're going to explore right now. To do this. Did someone have a question? Toba, did you have a question?
Speaker 4Well, we've written for Ina and Dada.
Speaker 1Yes. Excellent. Excellent question. So the list. I'm going to explain your question. And then I'm going to address it sort of. The list that we just. Yes. The list that we just read from the Zohar enumerates 10 Spheroad. But omits. Omits. Yeah, that's the word. The Spheroad of Da'at. Knowledge. Da'at. And the question is, what happened to Da'at? In fact, if you know, Chabad is an acronym for Chachma, Bina and Da'at. Chabad. And if you look at the Zohar, it's Chab. I have to change all the signage now. Welcome to Chab. Right? Yeah. Join Chab on campus for Friday night dinner. Like, what's, what is this? Where's the Da'at? I don't see the Da'at. So, the answer is, and again, this requires much more elucidation than we can do right now because of the volume of material we're going to cover tonight, is that when you count Keter, you don't count Da'at. And when you count Da'at, you don't count Keter. Because there's only 10. If you count Da'at and Keter, you get 11. Da'at and Keter are like the Clark Kent and the Superman of the Spheroad. You will not see them at the same time. You will only see one at a time. Because they both represent two sides of the same coin. And therefore, if you're looking at it this way, it looks like Da'at. If you're looking at it that way, it looks like Keter. So, it's only one shows up in the count. The Zohar focuses top down. And therefore, we have Keter being enumerated and not Da'at. There's much more to explain about that. Why are they the same? But first of all, we didn't even describe what any of these are, let alone why two would be part of the same coin. So, it's an excellent question. And just know that some texts will mention Keter, Chachmah, Binah, and then go Chesed. Some texts will not talk about Keter, even though Keter is a thing that exists. And start Chachmah, Binah, Da'at, and that's how you have your 10. But Kabbalah says often that it's Eser, 10, V'lo, Tesha, V'lo, Achad, Esar. 10, not 9. 10, not 11. 10 is a highly specific number. Now, what are these? Why are they mapped into the human body? Those are the questions we are up to right now. And to answer these two questions, we're going to present a verse from Bereshit from Genesis. And the verse is one of the perplexing verses in the Torah, amongst many. And it literally is a head-scratcher. Text 2A41. Larry?
Speaker 3Larry, yeah. Divine image, Genesis 126. God said, let us make the human in our image, in our likeness.
Speaker 1Pause for a moment before we get to text 2B. Take a look at that text. What question do you have on that verse from text 2A?
Speaker 3What questions? The first person plural.
Speaker 1Good. Let us make man. Who's the us? How many? How many gods are there anyway? Who is this creation committee? What is this, a building committee? What's happening here? That's question one. What's question number two? Here we go. Good. Okay, so it seems to be repeating the same thing. What else on that word? Excellent. What kind of image does God have? Judaism certainly believes in a God that is imageless. A God that is formless. We don't believe in a God that has a body. A God that has any sort of human. features. So what does it mean that God said, let's make man in our image, in our likeness? Every single biblical commentary, every Torah scholar that has ever read this verse has an opinion on what it means. Can you imagine? When you say two Jews, three opinions. And some say four opinions, just to have different opinions about how many opinions the two Jews would have. Let us make man the plural we're going to leave aside. That question is also dealt with extensively. But the core question we're going to deal with right now is, what does it mean that the human is created in our image, in our likeness, in the image and likeness of God? If God doesn't have an image, then what kind of image are we created? And by now you might know the answer. Text 1a and text 1b. We already talked about it before. God in his essence has no image, but God as he projects the tense we wrote, there is an image. And so Kabbalah says that you know what it means that the human being is created in the image of God? That means that you and I, human being, we have imprinted in and upon our being, we have the tense we wrote. Now you might be thinking, but we said everything is created through the tense we wrote. Yeah, through the tense we wrote. The tense we wrote are the building blocks, the spiritual DNA of all life. But guess what? You and I, we have the source code inside of us. We have the exact formula. You know, like the Coca-Cola formula behind the vault. And me and my kids, we have a bit of a debate whether there's actually the formula there behind the vault. I'm pretty sure it's not there. Why would it be there, right? But the point is that when it says that the human being is created in God's image and likeness, what it means is, according to Kabbalah, that you and I are created in the image, with the image and in the image of the tense we wrote. Larry, text 2b, please continue, 41.
Speaker 3Mystical meaning, Genesis 127. There is a deep matter in this verse, scaled away in the treasuries of the Kabbalists who seek God. It is the secret structure of the tense we wrote, which are incorporated in the human being and reflected in the human form.
Speaker 1So, according to Rabbeinu Bachia, who is a 13th and 14th century mystic and scholar, he quotes the Kabbalists, he quotes the mystics, and he says, according to Kabbalah, you and I are created in the image of God. And he says, according to Kabbalah, you and I are created in the image of God. Do you know what this verse means? The verse means that the human being contains the secret structure of the tense we wrote. Again, everything is created through the tense we wrote, but you and I have the tense we wrote imprinted. Now, the question is, where? Like, am I missing something? Where do I find the tense we wrote? The easy answer, the one that you'll find everywhere in Kabbalah is the soul. Your soul has tense we wrote. Just like God employs tense we wrote to create the world, your soul, my soul, everyone in this room has a soul that contains exactly the same ten powers. You have chesed, you have gavur, not defining them yet, you have gavurah, you have teferet, you have netzach, and hod, and yesod. And malchut, and chachma, and bina, and keter. Just like these ten powers exist with God, not that they are the essence of God, but God projects them into being in order to create the world. But they are God's projection, they're God's tools, God's manifestation of attributes. God gave us the very same kit. Everything else is created through them, but you and I have them. Does that make sense? In our soul. And we'll talk about what that means soon. But then Kabbalah goes a step further, and this is where it gets absolutely radical. When Kabbalah says, guess what? It's not only your soul that has the tense we wrote, but it's also your body. And folks, we're going to do this very simply with very little exercise involved, although it is an exercise. Take your hands and hold them up. Count your fingers. How many you got? Why do you have ten fingers? Well, because ten, evolutionary, it's helpful for dexterity. And I just referenced last week, if you were here last week, that's like the people arguing about what's in the bag. I think it's this, I think it's that, it might be metal, it might be a gem, it might be this. From the outside in, you can come up with any theory you want. Google, why humans have ten fingers. Oh, so you can go like this, so you can go. Ten makes sense. And according to Kabbalah, you know why it's ten? Because it mirrors the tense we wrote. Now you're thinking, yeah, but why fingers? Well, what were the sphero used for? To create. And what do we use to create? Kabbalah might drop. God employs tense we wrote to create. And God imprints these powers in our soul and mirrors them also, or eludes them at least, in our body. And where? In the fingers, the ten fingers. Pretty cool. We asked before, what's the deal with mapping the sphero onto the human body? Chesed. God's chesed is the right arm. What kind of right arm? God's gvur is the left arm. What kind of left arm? We already have, without even getting into a deep dive into the sphero, which we will in a moment, in just a moment, we already have the answer. You know why Kabbalah maps the sphero onto the human body? Because that's part of the lesson too. That's not just that God emanated, manifested these attributes or these powers with which to create the world, it's that God also then handed them off to us in our soul and in our body. So your right arm is not just a right arm, it's chesed manifest. It's important to know what chesed is, to know like what my arm can really do. And my left arm is not just a left arm, it's gvur manifest. It's important to know what gvur is. So let's talk about this, what we're going to do now. Pause for a moment again. Are we, is this making sense? Yeah. Ten energies that God uses to create the world, that is the underlying DNA of all of creation, but you and I were given the source code to operate with. We've got it in soul, we've got the ten powers, in our soul, and they also show up in our body in interesting ways, and that's what it means in Genesis 1:26 or 27, depending on which, there's two citations here, I'm not sure, I didn't look it up. The book seems to imply 26 or 27, either way, that's the meaning of the verse that says God created man, the human, in his image and in his likeness. Just like God has ten attributes, we have ten attributes in soul and in our soul. And this is a radical idea, we're going to unpack this slowly. Folks, buckle up, we have just scratched the surface. What we're going to do right now is go through each of the ten sphero. If you are a note-taker, this is your time to shine, because this is it. This is why you were taking notes in fifth grade social studies class, and they said it was going to be on your permanent record, and they lied, because that was never permanent. But this right now, all those note-taking skills are going to show up right here, right now. So grab your Torah center pen, grab your Torah center pad of paper, and let's go, let's go. What we're going to do is for each of the ten sphero, we're going to talk about five elements. The meaning of the name, the meaning of the energy, how it shows up within us, the Hebrew letter it's associated with, and the body part that it's connected with. Are you with me? Five layers for each sphero. There are ten sphero, that means we're talking about 50 different elements. Buckle up, we're up, we are moving at Kabbalah speed. Here we go. Not too fast, but just fast enough that we can get through everything, because after that we've got a ton more content as well. I want to be clear what we've done so far. I'm going to do a very quick, less than 60 second recap. We started off by talking about the tension of reality. How do you go from infinity to finitude? We explained that this is what Kabbalah deals with. This is the bread and butter of Kabbalah. How do you go from an infinite God to a finite reality? God is infinite, and Kabbalah adds the missing link, and that is what God emanated, the sphero. These are ten energies that God uses to create a finite reality. Great. Then we said God created, the Torah says God created man in his image. What does that mean? That means that you and I have those ten sphero in our soul, and the big idea here is also in our body. What are the ten sphero? And that brings us up to speed where we are right now. We're going to go through each one, five layers. The name, the meaning of the energy, how it shows up in our lives, the Hebrew letter it's associated with, which will be important soon, and of course the body part. Let's go with Keter. We're going to go out of order. We're going to go Keter. The order that I like will go from top down. That's not how the Zohar said it, but we're going to go in our own order right now. Keter. Keter means, I just said it, Keter means crown. So I'll ask you a question. Where do you put a crown? Good. Good. Excellent. Keter goes on top of your head. What would the head symbolize? What's inside your head? Your brain. So the head would symbolize and be associated with? Intellect, intelligence, right? Understanding, right? A crown that sits above the head symbolizes something in you that transcends intelligence. What ability do you have? What power do you have that transcends logic? What is that? What's a good word for that? What's something that you have that is super rational? Super rational, above rationale. Intuition is excellent. What else? Good. What else? Faith. Excellent. What else? These are great. You guys should be teaching this. This is great. Intuition, passion, faith, pleasure, will, desire. I don't mean because you were looking for a car and research consumer reports and like buy Volvo because it's safe. And you're like, I guess I'll buy a Volvo. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about, the stuff that you want that transcends logic, that somebody will tell you it doesn't make sense. You're like, it doesn't matter. I'm all locked in on this. Why? Because I am. That's Keter. You have it inside. There are things in your life that you pursue. There are things in your life that you're passionate about. Things in your life that you want, that you can't explain to anyone, including yourself. And you don't know where it comes from. It comes from the depths of your soul. That is your Keter. Your Keter. That's your Keter. That's your super rational will, desire, pleasure, passion, etc. You with me so far? That's Keter. What body part? The skull. Why the skull? Meaning the top of the skull. That's where the crown goes. So it's about that which is above the brain. What letter is it associated with? Take the smallest letter. And find the smallest point of the smallest letter. The top of the Yod. The Yod is the smallest letter, but you draw Yod by like taking the pen and shaping it. So the top, imagine if you're from the Yod and then looking up, and you go to a point that then disappears into the infinite beyond. And that's Keter. Keter is the top of the Yod. Keter is that which is beyond, because Yod represents, as we'll see soon, intelligence. This is above that, or at the top of that. Yes, Keter is good. We'll put Keter away. Now, let's pull out Chachma. I love Chachma. Which one? Chachma. Chachma is typically translated as wisdom. Wisdom is not a very precise definition. So I will share with you the way Kabbalah explains Chachma. Chachma is your ability to be creative, to express creativity. It's creative intelligence. It's coming up with new ideas. It's, okay, what if we made a phone without any buttons? Can you imagine a phone without a button? What kind of, how ludicrous would that be? And Blackberry is like, that would never sell. We're fine with buttons. Fast forward a little bit, right? It's about creative thinking. If you're an artist, you got a lot of, everyone's got Chachma, by the way. Everyone's got all of these. But everyone's got in a bit of a different measure. Think of a soundboard with a mixer, different frequencies. And, you know, different levels. It's at a different level. Some have a little bit more of this frequency, a little bit less of that frequency. Some people have a lot of Chachma. And they're, I mean, they're walking in the forest. And they'll see a twig and they'll be like, that's not a twig. That's a dancer. And you're like, that's definitely a twig. I don't know what you're talking about. But the artist doesn't see a twig. The artist sees something magical. That's Chachma. Insight. Insight. Chachma is likened to a Barak HaMavrik, the lightning bolt of insight. In comic books, you know what, how they depicted that. When someone got an idea, what was always above their head? A light bulb. It's the light going, it's like that moment of, I got it. Even before you can articulate what you got. But you know you got it. And someone's like, what did you get? You're like, oh, shh, don't mess it up because I got to download it first. But I know I got it. Don't interrupt it. I got it. That's Chachma. That's Chachma. You with me on this? So is it wisdom? I don't know what wisdom means. Wisdom is way too vague and nebulous. Wisdom is way too broad or whatever. Chachma is creative intelligence. Koach Ma, the power of Ma. Ma is what? Power of the question. You get to Chachma by asking questions. You get to new ideas by questioning the status quo. If you accept the status quo, it's a twig, it's a stick, then there's no art there. If you accept the status quo, phones have buttons, you're not creating anything new. There's nothing new under the sun in that scenario. So Chachma is all about creativity. The letter that it's associated with is, I mentioned before, the letter Yod. The letter Yod is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The reason why that's important here is because the flash of insight of Chachma, in its first emergence, is an undefined kernel of information that then has to be expanded. You with me on this? You get it as like a single point of insight that then has to be fleshed out. That's the second step. That's Bina, we'll get there in a second. So what's the body part that it's associated with? It's the brain. Let's move on to Bina. We talked about Keter and Chachma. We're down eight to go. Bina is our next faculty, the next power. By the way, what we're doing here, just to be clear, I should have mentioned this before, what we're doing here is discussing the 10 Sfirot as they exist in human form. Because as they exist above would be a little bit too difficult for us to discuss. But the good news is, because the Torah says that we're creating the image of God, we can reverse engineer it as we're not projecting upon God. God in the Torah says that we're created in his projection, which means that if we understand what these look like down here, we can maybe extrapolate on some level to understand what they mean above. So our discussion now is firmly rooted within the human soul character experience. So we have Keter, will, desire, pleasure, big things that can't be explained. Then we have Chachma, insight, flash of wisdom, creativity, intelligence, Bina. The next one is Bina. Bina is not creative intelligence. It is analytical intelligence. It's the ability to take that seminal point of Chachma and expand it. Think of a seed that you put into the ground and then it begins to develop into a tree. And I always marvel at that. I'm like, that is a magic trick. I mean, you buy a seed, you go to wherever, Pike, is that, Pike, right? You go to Pike, you don't buy the, I'm not talking about the thing that you buy already. You buy a seed in a little packet or flowers, whatever it is, a little packet, a little seed. Throw a seed in the ground. Next thing you know, it's a thing. How is that a thing? Where was it? Like, it's crazy. Chachma is the seed. It has everything, but it's undeveloped. Bina is the process by which it unfolds and develops. That's okay. So what does Bina look like in us? Bina is, you know, have you ever heard like right brain, left brain? So like the right brain is like the creative Chachma side. The left brain is more of the analytical side, and that's the Bina side. It's not the artist. Maybe it's the accountant. It's the one who takes data and breaks it down and makes sense of it. Takes an idea and applies it from one area to another area. Understands its breadth, its length, and its depth, all three dimensions. Just expanding on the idea, making sense of it. That's why the Hebrew letter associated with Bina is the "He". Because the "He" is a full letter. The letter "He" has got the full expanse. It's got the horizontal width. It's got the vertical length. It's got like a little thing on the side. It's almost like a full three-dimensional letter. Not really three dimensions, but it's a full letter. Whereas the "Yod" is small. Just one dot. Even a dot could be conceptually a "Yod". The "He" is expanded, symbolizing the process of Bina in our own mind. By the way, Bina is interesting. Bina is also perception. Because you can give two people the same kernel of insight, and they can run with it in two different ways. Like, I guarantee you, this is not even like a prediction, like hot take, but I guarantee you, ask two people from this class what did you hear tonight? Completely different stories. Why? Because we interpret things differently. Chachma is a little bit more objective, the objective idea. Bina is a little bit more subjective, how you understand it. So then, and the body part is actually the heart. It's not the mind. The mind was chachma, the heart. Why? Because it's a little bit about how you feel about an idea. It's not just how you understand it, it's how you feel about it. about the idea. It's like, do I like it, how am I going frame it so it's funny because like a world event for example something can happen and two people observe the same event and they'll say well it means this to me it means this to me where's that coming from that's not coming from here that's coming from here my personality that's my bina my bina is my bias my bina is my um my shading my how i tint the the lenses that i wear that then uh we have some nice uh what's it called um those windows stained glass yeah when the light shines in you know the and toward the morning or whatever it is like the creates a glow is if it's red it's red if it's green it's green if it's blue it's blue and the same ways with people it's like the lens that i wear is going to influence what i see and what i understand that is bina and then we skip that because this is the the methodology that we have here from the czar and we move on to chesed why do you not love chesed that was a clue what is chesed love and kindness generosity and giving it's about someone who says tell me what you need and i'll give it and the truth is even if you don't need it take it did you have a mother that would give you food when you traveled jewish mothers love to do this right take food you're going on a trip but ma it's a 30 minute bus ride you never know you never know right who knows what's gonna happen you gotta take sandwiches you gotta take grapes you gotta take food why it's not about you i want to give right sometimes generosity is not even about the recipient it's about the giver the giver wants to be generous happens to be there's someone there but it's really about me wanting to give chesed is pure giving from the perspective of the giver do you need do you not need i don't even know i want to give i want to be generous express my love to you right that's what chesed is so in a friendship right in a friendship it's such a beautiful thing i want to give i want to share i want to treat you i'll take you out we'll go out to eat i'll pay for it it's a beautiful gen that's what chesed is chesed is kindness and generosity okay so that's what chesed is and where is it mapped the right arm oh the letter by the way is vav but that's going to be for the next six and a half years so that's what chesed is and the right arm is the dominant energy so we'll keep i'll explain it at the end but chesed we said is the right arm why the right arm well for most people the right arm is the dominant arm i know there are other lefties in the room do we have some lefties lefties as you raise your left hand very good that's what a lefty would do um so most most people are righties and the right therefore is the stronger and more dominant and therefore the more dominant modality of the human being should be one of chesed and kindness and generosity and generosity and generosity and generosity and kindness and love and generosity and giving and sharing etc contrast this with gavura which is our next energy gavura means literally means strength but what it means for us and in us is restraint or withholding so whereas chesed is generous giving gavura is withholding now i mean should we do more hand stuff why not right open up your hand open up your palm right that's the open hand that's the giving hand and then close it right and that's the closed hand that's withholding so open is chesed closed is gavura now which which um requires more muscles or creates more tension open or closed closed that's why closed is gavura it's actually harder to say no than to say yes maybe not for everybody for for most people it's harder to say no it's harder to say no because who wants to look like the bad guy or you know who wants to be the bad bad person it's always easier to say yes gavura is very important gavura is creating boundaries gavura is creating um space it's respect it's i don't have to be like you and i can be friends but we don't have to be all up in each other's business all the time like you can live your life i live my life and we can connect still and we can you know we can have this great friendship and relationship but we don't have to be like ah like it's i don't have to be like chesed all the time little gavura what do they say about um about fences good fences make good neighbors right that's that's a gavura mentality and modality gavura is very healthy in fact i would say in a relationship probably respect is more important than love i mean think about it when did if somebody shares an opinion when would you use the phrase i love that and when would you use the phrase i respect that think about it when do you say i love that when you agree and when do you say i can respect that opinion that's right what's which which is more important how hard is it to love what you love not that hard but to respect difference that's that's impressive so gavura one might say is even more impressive than chesed okay withholding saying no it's very important to be able to say no so that's gavura um and it's the left arm which is for most the weaker arm and the message is we have to uh wield it with caution to make sure we're not pushing people away um we don't want to be too harsh even as we create boundaries and create spaces healthy spaces we don't want to ever um hurt someone else scare someone else right push someone else away so it's important to to to uh um to wield um gavura with caution so that hence the left the left arm the letters vav will explain the vops um after everyone with me so far we're about halfway through yeah the next one is to ferret i love to ferret to ferret literally means which means beauty to ferret means beauty so bless you the ferret is also related to the idea of harmony the truth is the mystics tell us and the mystics teach that what is beautiful when is art beautiful when it combines multiple colors or multiple dimensions something that's very monolithic is not at least according to kabbalah beautiful now i know what you're thinking i went into uh the high museum of art and i saw this square canvas and it was all red and it was titled red and it's selling for thirty thousand dollars sounds like it's beautiful all right modern art sometimes notwithstanding right you could also buy you can also buy a banana taped to a wall with duct tape and spend a few million dollars on that and by the way i looked up i remember that guy that was doing that it was art so if you bought it what i was curious i'm like okay so if you bought if you bid and bought it so what do you actually get you know what you get you get a banana and a roll of duct tape tape my friends if you would like a banana and a roll of duct tape i've got way less expensive options you're right you do get the concept and you get like the seal of approval from the from the artiste but if you were to install that in your own home i'm pretty sure you can replicate that fairly accurately but it's not official okay back to the story beauty is combining dynamics it's combining colors and the ferret is likewise a balance of chesed and gvura in fact it's psychological gvura and behavioral chesed which i'll explain um right now chesed doesn't judge i'm ready to give whoever you are whatever you need i'm going to give them generous gavura says not so fast do you really need do you really deserve i don't think so i'm i'm i'm i'm walking away i'm closing my hand to ferret which is that third emotional energy to ferret is psychological gavura but behavioral chesa which means that it's doing the judginess it's judging but it's then giving at the end so it says oh shame oh you're really in a bad place and instead of saying oh well i hope you get out of it like i wish you luck you say because of that i'll actually help you so it's not without judgment see chesed is without judgment chesed is just giving gavura has judgment so to ferret has the judgment of gavura but the generosity of chesed we call that empathy or sympathy or compassion where is that located that's the torso right in the middle because it's not the right it's not the left it's kind of the center it's the balance of both and it corresponds to the letter vav which as you know will explain natsach natsach what is natsach natsach literally means victory what it means for us is your power of ambition your power of tenacity of fortitude of there's better words for this perseverance grit i love grit it's a great word it's the ability to see something through to the end despite the obstacles and when the obstacles stand in your way you smash them down like a linebacker smashes an open wide receiver in a crossing route and if you don't know what i'm talking about welcome to football my friends right it's uh it's a hockey player guy's got his head down but home. The guy's now on the ice, right? That's how I grew up in Pittsburgh. I'm a hockey guy. So this is how it works. You move forward and anything in your way, you just bulldoze. That is Netzach. Netzach is the ability to achieve, to see it through to the end. And by the way, we know people with a lot of Netzach, right? Raise your hand if you know someone who's high Netzach. High Netzach, you can identify them by that nothing gets in their way. You give them a mission, you give them a task. So most people, most mere mortals, you know, in the face of challenge, they'll be like, maybe I'll pivot. A Netzach person is still going strong, right? Still going all the way through. That's Netzach. It's the right thigh. It's the right leg. Why? The right is the dominant and the leg is about movement. It's about pushing through all the way to the end. What's the, yeah, Netzach. We talked about Netzach and it's the letter V also. Hod, left side, left leg. What is Hod? Hod is the opposite modality. Hod is yielding. Hod is slowing down. Hod is allowing the other person. Okay. Who has ever done one of those alternating merges and then it's your turn and the other guy zooms in front of you and you're like, what? That guy was Netzach. Okay. And have you ever seen the person that's letting everybody in? That person is Hod. So in a room in a conversation, there's someone who has to have the opinion and everyone has to hear it and everyone has to agree to it. That's a high Netzach. By the way, Netzach is not good or bad. Netzach just is. It could be used either way. Hod is yielding. Hod is saying, I'm open to hearing. Hod is a good listener. Has a lot of Hod. Hod is surrender. Hod is humility. Hod is, um, what do we call it? Splendor. I don't know what splendor means, but Hod is yielding. I'm open to hearing. Has a lot of Hod. Hod is surrender. Hod is, oh, it's like, Hod is like mode. Ani. I concede. I surrender to you. I, I say modani. I, um, acknowledge. It's acknowledging. It's gratitude. Gratitude. All, all of this comes from Hod. The ability to say thank you comes from Hod. To accept the favor comes from Hod. All of that is Hod energy. Make sense? Oh, this is so much fun. Um, okay. That's all. What is Yisod? Again, it's a middle energy. Yisod is siyuma dagufa in the language of the Zohar. The end of the body. That means, uh, the end of the torso. So Yisod means, Yisod means in Hebrew foundation. If you think of the foundation of a building, imagine a big building. So let me ask you a question. What do you think? You, you just slap a building down on the earth. That's not going to work. It's going to fall over. So what do you do? You need a foundation. How do you make a foundation? What's the first thing you do? Dig a hole. And then that goes in the ground, which means that Yisod foundation means a bonding between two, a very tight bonding between two entities. And the truth is any relationship requires a little bit of the two prior energies, a little bit of Netzach, a little bit of Hod. Let's say you're hanging out with a group of friends and you're thinking about, Hey, what should we do for dinner? Which restaurant should we go to? And everyone's got a different opinion and everyone's. So you're like, okay, let's, uh, try to come to a consensus. So the Netzach person would say, no, it's gotta be Chinese. The Hod person says, whatever you want. But the truth is, it's also hard to be friends with someone who's like always, whatever you want. It's like, I want to know what you want. So you need a good balance of, of Netzach and Hod. And that's Yisod. Yisod is bonding connection relationship. That's Yisod energy. Um, okay. Grounded. Yes. Grounded. Yes. And then Malchut. Malchut's the last one. Malchut is literally means royalty or kingship, but in our con in within us, it's to be a king or a queen for this. It's the ability. It's the quality of leadership and leadership in Kabbalah is a dual, uh, energy and leadership is amazing because the way Kabbalah describes Malchut is it's, it's the last of the 10 energies. So it receives everything that is before it. And then it is the energy that then does the creating, meaning, um, pays it forward. The example that Kabbalah uses is a cup. I don't have a cup, but a bottle of water will suffice. So any vessel like a bottle serves two functions. It both receives and gives. Now you might be thinking, how does it receive? Well, look at it. There's water inside. You know what happened? It got filled up. It contained. If it had a hole, there wouldn't be water here. So step one of a vessel is to receive, but step two is That's the mark of a leader. A leader has both the quality of listening and gathering data, gathering opinions, right? And then has the ability, the executive functioning ability, to then make a call and move forward. By first gathering all the information and then you move forward. That is the key to malchut. By the way, a dictator who doesn't listen to anybody, that wouldn't be the definition of malchut. That person would have the giving part, the second part, the part, I guess, part B, but not the part A. And if you're only gathering information but you can't make a move because now you're paralyzed by all the paths, the possible paths, which is possible, it's like, I don't know what to do, I'm indecisive. Well, that's also not malchut. Malchut means you're taking all the data, you analyze it, you make sense of it, and then you make a decisive move forward. That, and you can communicate. You communicate that with others, so that's malchut. That's why malchut is associated with the mouth because the mouth does both things. Let me explain. The power of speech and communication, what's happening, information from the mind, from the brain is going to the mouth, so it's receiving, and then it's bestowing. It's sharing that with someone else. So I have, I mean, I've been doing a lot of talking tonight, as you probably noticed, because this is straight Kabbalah. So I want to communicate to you what malchut is. In my head, I have it, but how do you know what's in my head? So it's got to move from my head to my mouth. My words are the container to then convey it to someone else, to you in this context. So my words, literally happening right now in real time. This is so meta, right? In real time, what's happening is my brain is going into my words, which is then being conveyed through the air to you and in your brain. You're interpreting it, and you get it. That's how communication works. So what's the moral of the story? These are 10 divine sefirot that God employed in creation of the universe. And guess who he gave them to in direct fact. Everything is created of them, but you and I have these 10 tools in our own toolbox. You have the capacity to be generous. You have the capacity to hold boundaries. You have the capacity to be creative. You have the capacity to make sense of the world. You have the capacity to lead, the capacity to connect. You have the capacity to be tenacious. You have the capacity to be surrendered. You have all 10. You have the capacity to dream, and to want, and to love, to enjoy. All of these are what you have in your soul. Why? Because you and I were created in the image of God. We have the full suite of 10 powers, of 10 abilities, 10 faculties, 10 sefirot within us. As they exist in heaven. So imagine, I used the example of constellation before with a spoon, that bizarre example. But imagine you see a constellation of the sky. You see, you know, 10 sefirot, the image of the 10 sefirot. Guess what? It's also right inside. As it is out there, it is also in here. But here's the kicker. I've already mentioned a few times. It's not just in the soul. It's also in the body. Your right arm is chesed. You're thinking, well, my right arm is chesed. It's a right arm. Kabbalah says, your right arm is channeling chesed. And that's why what's interesting is, you know, there are some mitzvot that you and I are supposed to do with the right hand. Do you know this? Like reciting kiddush, sanctifying the Shabbat with a glass of wine or grape juice. We pour a cup of wine or grape juice and then we recite the prayers and the blessings and then we drink it. So which hand should we hold it in? The right hand. If you're a righty. If you're a lefty, you hold it in your left hand. But there's one mitzvah that even if you're a lefty, you always do with your right hand. You know which one that is? To fill in switches. I already explained it before. The right arm is chesed. Giving charity. Even if you're a lefty, you're like, well, my left is my dominant hand. When it comes to charity, it says in the good books of Jewish law and custom that traditionally, And that means that you would make Kiddush with your left hand. You would do a lot of things with your left side because that's your dominant side. So a lot of mitzvahs would switch if you're a lefty. But one mitzvah never switches because it's your chesed arm. No matter if you're a righty or a lefty, that's your chesed energy. And so you do the chesed with your chesed arm, with your chesed hand. One of those, there are those who are missing. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Or have them taken off.
Speaker 5Or whatever more.
Speaker 1I'll share with you a story that happened in the 1970s. I wrote about this in a book that I wrote on disability inclusion. I wrote a book called Inclusion and the Power of the Individual. I think it's out of print. Which is why I can say it's the best book ever because you can't even find it. Kidding. So I wrote, I wrote up in the book a story that happened in the 70s. The Paralympic Games were taking place in Toronto, Canada. I forget, maybe 76, 72, one of those years. And a group, Israel had a team. And these soldiers that lost limbs and were in wheelchairs from the various wars and, well, someone said, you guys are going to North America. You got to see the Rebbe in Brooklyn. You got to see, you got to go to Chabad. You got to go to headquarters in Kronitz. And so they went. And they cleared the shul. And it was just this delegation. It wasn't just the athletes. It was all, you know, the delegation and the Rebbe, a blessed memory, who addressed them. And there's an audio recording of it in pictures and it is just the most moving thing. And one of the things that the Rebbe says is that in Israel they call them, what's the Hebrew word? I think it's Nechei Yisrael. Maybe I'm getting the Hebrew word wrong, which means the disabled of Israel. And the Rebbe said, I don't like that word. This is before PC was PC, by the way. The Rebbe said, I don't like that. I vote, I suggest that we call you Mitzuyanei Yisrael. Which means excellent. This is not the same as special needs. That means the need is special. That's a different focus. The PC word, whatever, I don't know if it's still in, is not the same thing as the Rebbe was saying. If, and he explained, if Hashem, if God Almighty, takes away a physical ability or whatever, what it means without a question is that there is a greater power elsewhere within the person. If you don't have this, then you have more of that. And so why focus on the area of the lack? Why call a person by their disability? Why don't we focus on their extra ability? And that's what the Rebbe was talking about in that talk. And it is so touching and so moving. And it's so true. And you realize that it's true of every person as well. It's like, why focus on what I can't do the best? Why don't we focus on what I can do? It's just a, it's just a complete mind. So what I think how it would apply to what we're talking about today is that the power of the soul would still exist. And maybe it couldn't manifest itself in that limb if it wouldn't be, if it's not there, but it could manifest itself in other ways and show up in other ways in other channels, certainly without a doubt. I mean, we know that somebody, let's say who can't see, there are senses that are heightened and that's really what we're talking about here. So if it's not there, then it's elsewhere. But again, the general, we're talking about in more general, but again, specifically, so that I hope that addresses it somewhat. But generally speaking, we have the 10 soul powers that match up with the tense if you wrote. And there are 10 locations, locales within the body that also kind of express that. And that explains what it means going all the way back to Genesis, the opening chapter of Beretia of Genesis, where it says that the human being is created, the divine image. What does that mean, divine image? In both soul and in body, we are in the image of God. Now, let's do a few more things. Oh, I mentioned Hebrew letters. I forgot to mention the last one. Sorry, so much to juggle here. Malchut, the last sphere that we spoke about, leadership, the mouth, the cup that receives and then gives. Malchut corresponds to the letter hey. And I said before, we'll get back to the letter vav. We had a bunch of vavs in a row, six vavs in a row. Vav is the letter hey. Vav is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So if we were following the conversation, yud, sorry, chachma is yud, bina is hey, chesed through yesod is vav, and malchut is hey again. And you know what yud and hey and vav and hey spell? Don't pronounce it, please. You know what it spells? God's name. And you know what that means? That means that not only are we imprinted with the spherot, but since the spherot match up to the four letters of God's name, you know what else that means? That means that God's name is imprinted on our very being as well. In soul, sphera, power, but also in body. Take a look at this. Oh, there's so many texts that we skipped. Let's see. Text four. Yeah, we talked about it outside. Figure 2.2, we just went through that. I'm just turning pages here. Turning pages, turning pages. Let's go. Okay, here we, yeah, text five. That seems to be a good spot. Howard, do you mind reading text five, please?
Speaker 4The name is spelled with yud, hey, vav, hey. The yud is spoke when the hey is given. The vav is prepared, which includes the six spherot. And the final hey is malchut.
Speaker 1So there we have it. Thank you. So here we have it in black and white. Chach ma'z yud, b'nez hey. The six other emotive energies are vav, because, oh, I don't know if you can explain that, because vav is numerologically aleph, bet, gimel, dalet, hey, vav. It's the sixth letter, so it corresponds to six, the six energies. And then the final malchut, the final power of malchut is hey. Yud and hey and vav and hey, and that spells God's name. And you know what's amazing? That, too, is imprinted on the human body. Text number six. Laura, if you don't mind, please read text number six, page 49.
Speaker 5The name spelled with yud, hey, vav, and hey is alluded to in the form of the body. How so? The head is shaped like a yud, the ten fingers of the hand, five opposite five, corresponds to the numerical value of hey and hey. It expands the body. It's like a vertical line. It's the vav.
Speaker 1So here, thank you for reading that. So let me, I'll model this. By the way, I got a call today. Very weird. I don't usually answer calls if I don't really recognize. Like, it looks, it's a scam likely, but I answered it anyway. It was this Kabbalah modeling agency. And they're like, can you model the yud, hey, vav, God's name tonight in the class? I'm like, I mean, I don't know. But, I mean, I don't mind to do a little Kabbalah catwalk action. Okay. That was online. I'm sorry you couldn't see that. I actually am happy you didn't see that, because that was a little weird. All right, here we go. I'll just, so what text six, which is from the Shalah, the mystic from the 1500s and 1600s, the Shalah, the Shnei Luchad HaBrit, he's Rabbi Shia Levi Horowitz. What he says is that if you look at the human body, not only do you see the tense of your rope, but you also see the four letters of God's name. The head is the yud. The torso is the vav. Five, hey. Five, hey. Now you're thinking, well, that covers pretty much everything except for the toes. You're ready for this? I'm going to add some toes to the mix. You think, like, how do you get toes? I'll show you toes. Not like that. But I'm going to explain this for a second. When you pronounce, when you speak the letter hey, okay, pause for a moment. Every letter, when you speak it, has more letters to that letter. I'm going to explain. The letter aleph. Is one character. Meaning it's one letter. But say aleph. And what do you hear? Three letters. Aleph. Right. It's like Sesame Street for Kabbalah. Aleph. Aleph. Right. Bet. Bet. Right. Bet. Gimel. G-M-L. Gimel. Right. Every letter has two or three letters. Now. Listen to me. Say this letter. Hey, I said a very breathy, but for a reason, there's different ways to spell. Hey, if you want to spell out the letter, the letter is just one letter, right? But if you were spelling out the way it sounds, you could spell, Hey, Aleph. Hey, you're or Hey, Hey, if you spell it, Hey, Hey, guess what? You have an extra. Hey, right. So you have two haze. And he, oh, that was weird. You have two haze and each hay has another. We call this the Milo. The filling of the letter is what you hear, but you don't write. The miloy of hey is another hey. That means each hey has another hey. And that gives us our hands and feet. Five and five and five and five. And now you've got the whole body covered. Yod, hey, hey, hey, hey. Vav, your basic Kabbalah. Oh, it would be great to run an operation called Kabbalah Chiropractors. We'll get your Vav back in alignment with your Yod. We'll get your Hays, you know, right in order. Someone get on this. This is gold. Someone run with this. It's almost as good as my other idea for a business, which is a very quick alteration story. You know, you drop off a pair of pants, you come back a week. Who has a week? What are you talking about? Imagine someone that works really quickly and you call it the Swift Taylor. I thought that you guys would laugh at that. No. No. No. Are we not? That's where we drew the line on humor. Fine. All right. Moving on. Yeah. Which one? Oh, that's an old. That's been ruminating in my head for a while. All right. Back to the story. So Kabbalah teaches. Today, I set out the intention at the beginning of the class. Last week was about how your soul inside bubbles up through the pores of your body. That was last week. This week is how. Your body and soul are influenced from above. So we've talked about how the sphere wrote above literally shape your personality. You got kindness, you got limits, you got, um, ideas. You have leadership skills. You're tenacious. You're active. You got the sphere out. You're literally embodying sphere out. But in addition to that, your, your soul embodies the sphere, your body embodies the sphere out. And of course, also God's. Name, which takes us to the final stretch of today's class, the final stretch. By the way, what I just said about the feet and the hands is tech seven, which we're not going to read inside. You can read it if you want, or it's going to skip text eight as well. And we're going to get to the end of the class and ask the final question. And maybe the most important question, which is okay. Today was interesting, but what does it mean for me? What's the takeaway? So I know that I'm creating the image of God. And I know what. Kabbalah says about that, that my body and soul are imprinted with this fear wrote in God's name. What do I do with it? What's the takeaway? How does it change my life? I told you at the beginning of the class, that it's going to be fascinating. It's going to be mystical. This is legit Kabbalah. This is not some pop Kabbalah. You know, this is not your Madonna's Kabbalah. This is the real, I'm not, that's what's yours, but I don't know what she studied, but this is not like some, you know, this is legit Kabbalah. What we're learning today, but what does it mean? What, what do I do with it? How do I. I unpack it in my life. How is tomorrow different than today? I want to share three things, two and a half things. Number one, a person might live their life and think me and God, I don't know. I don't have that, that close of a relationship. God, I don't even know who and what God is. Kabbalah says, you don't have to look far to find the imprint of God on your very person. God is right there. You're like, I don't know who God is and what God is. Look. Look at your own soul and your own personality. You want to know what that image is? Just look inside Job, Job, biblical Job. They named the book after him, the book of Job, right? Job said, sorry, from my flesh, I see God and there's a basic way of interpreting, which means from where I stand, I can see God, but it means something much deeper. According to Kabbalah, that from my own flesh, when I understand myself, I can better understand God. And it's not only better understanding God, I can appreciate the closeness of God to me. Because my soul is imprinted with divine imprints, divine fingerprints. My body is imprinted with divine fingerprints. It's amazing. Well, that's lesson number one. I'm going to read some texts quickly now. Text 9A and 9B. Rabbi Chaim Vital, the primary student of the Arizal, the great Rabbi Isaac Luria, the founder of Luriana Kabbalah, mystic from the 1500s, So he taught the following, text 9A, 55. You should always direct your awareness and consider yourself as if you are dwelling on the throne for the Holy Spirit, because God created the human in his image. Doing so is especially appropriate and imperative during prayer. By holding this intention, you are more likely to have your prayer accepted and answered from heaven. So when you're praying, he says, have a meditation. Think in your mind that I mirror the divine. I am created in God's image. But then he goes further in 9B and he says, it's not just for the synagogue. It's also for the cinema. Text 9B. I paraphrase. I say cinema. Likewise, when walking in the marketplace, contemplate that your two legs are netzach and hod. We talked about that before. And when you look at something with your two eyes, contemplate that they are chachma and bina, which we didn't say before. And so on. In all the particulars, consider yourself as a throne for godliness. This is the secret to know him in all your ways. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you are carrying with you the image of God on your body. And that's amazing. Which leads me to the second takeaway, which is, well, now. Now that I know that, what do I do with it? And the answer is, if I know that my right arm is chesed, incarnate, then maybe the next time I contemplate that, I'll be more likely to be generous, to give, and to show love, and to show friendship and kindness. Which takes us to text number 10. The Ramach, Rabbi Moshe Kordovera. If he sounds familiar, it's because that's how we started the course with last week. He's the guy that gave the parable of the. The precious gem in the sack that everyone's trying to figure. In the bag that everyone's trying to figure out. The Ramach says, text 10. We ought to model ourselves after our creator so that we truly embody the secret of the heavenly spheroid. If we mirror the heavenly spheroid in our bodies, but not in our actions, we misrepresent the heavenly spheroid. People will say of us, a beautiful form with not so beautiful deeds. In fact, the primary function of the heavenly spheroid is God's action of creation. Of what benefit is it, then, to carry this in our limbs? If our actions do not resemble our creator. What he's suggesting is, if you and I know that our right arm is chesed, then the question becomes. Then it's. Not only should I feel uplifted knowing that I have the image of God on my body, but I should ask myself the question, so what am I doing about it? How am I acting on it? If my right leg. I'm stuck on the right side, I guess. If my right leg is netzach, then what obstacle. Do I need to overcome in my life that's holding me back from achieving what I need to achieve? And when I meditate on that, that God has given me a right leg, God has given me the power, and what that symbolizes, the power of netzach, and I have that in my soul, and I can overcome obstacles. And I don't have to let them get in the way. And even if I did in the past, even if I stopped my progress, and I gave up, and I took on good resolutions, and I had good intentions, but at some point I tapped out because I said, it's too hard. That might have been yesterday, but today I know that I'm creating the divine image, and I have netzach flowing through my right leg. And I can keep on going. And when I do that, I channel that force of netzach, divine netzach, in my life. And that shows up in a magical way. And the same thing with every other part of the body. So what's the takeaway? What's the takeaway from tonight's class that we know we're creating the divine image? Number one, you're creating the divine image. That's amazing. God is not as far as we thought, perhaps. And number two, you're creating the divine image. Express it in your actions. Thank you for joining me tonight. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope it expanded your consciousness a little bit. That's the goal. The goal is to learn and also to know that there's also a lot of deep wisdom out there. And I hope that the takeaway has resonated. May we all embody the spherot in a beautiful way and create beautiful lives for ourselves and those around us. Thank you for joining. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. You guys were great. But one thing before you go, next week, we're going to do something absolutely. First of all, it's probably reckless, but we're going to do it anyway. Next week, we're going to build on tonight and ask the question, so what's your soul personality? If we all have 10, the template of 10, but we also know that each one of us has maybe a different type of temperature of the 10, so what's your specific soul character? What's your specific soul template? How do you show up in the world? And how can you learn from the spherot how to optimize your life and personality? So next week, this is not. Oh, I wish I knew the names of this. Maybe someone knows this. You know when you go into corporate and they do the personality assessments? Myers-Briggs. Thank you. They also drive the armored trucks. Joke. Myers-Briggs. That's Brinks. So this is the Kabbalah of personality. Personality assessment. That's all next week. Lesson number three of this course. Thank you for being a part of it. And if you know of anybody who would like this and enjoy it, please invite them to come. They can check it out. Sit on the class. Sit in on a class and enjoy. Oh, I need to mention one more thing. Sorry for the. My brain is just catching up. I'm all spherot. My brain is all spherot, but now I have to think of other things. One thing that I want to mention that's coming up that's very, I think, very beneficial to everybody. We have coming up. in just under two weeks, a mystic, a capitalist from Australia. his name is rabbi rabbi dr label wolf he's written a book called one of my favorite books on kabbalah is called practical kabbalah um and he leads guided meditation speaks about spirituality meditation and mindfulness staying calm in a world that is so chaotic he's going to be speaking for one night only here to our community the date is help me out i think it's monday november 9th monday november 9th he'll be here it's called meditation and the modern soul a meditation workshop led by rabbi label wolf come for the accent because it's marvelous stay for the meditation and the spirituality it is more than marvelous and trust me take this is a guarantee you will enjoy this evening and walk away refreshed that is
Speaker 3a guarantee yes
Speaker 1it's online you can sign up yes it's online i think you were the first one
Speaker 2to sign up so yeah but i want to yes about the myers-briggs yeah okay when i before you know i had it in 2012. hold on one second
Speaker 1we're on so hold on well let's let's sign off officially and then we'll schmooze um really great to see everybody good to see you pleasure pleasure pleasure pleasure good to see you pleasure pleasure good to see you all right dr maxi and richard and ellen and ellie and matt and sandrine sarah and david and wayne and jackie and mom good to see you all hey love you too all right we'll see you good to see you guys lila tobe everyone good night
Speaker 5all right my
Speaker 2prayers one more
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