ASSUNTOS DO MEU INTERESSE

HyperText Hebrew Alphabet

Semantic Structure and Formative Meanings of the Hebrew Alphabet: Summary

The letters (autiot) of the Hebrew alphabet considered as abstract, generalized formative principles, or "fundamental powers of being." The aleph-bet is the minimum set of semantic primes required to generate an autonomous universe. The keywords are not definitions (particularizing semantics) but rather pointers in the direction of abstract principles (generalizing semantics). The autiot are semantically-accurate (self-signifying, recursive) signs for twenty-two totally-generalized, biologically-structured energies (states of consciousnes) in different states of organization.
The semantic, or formative, dimension of the autiot and sephirot have always been just under the surface, waiting for man's capacity for abstraction to catch up. The root icons of the Hebrew letters (ox, house, camel, door, fence, etc) carry meaning as individual letters, but no one would think of stringing the icons "ox-ox goad-fence-hand-fish" together to say something -- the letters are considered as place-markers in an arbitrary linguistic system, not as signs in themselves with inherent qualities.

As a thought experiment, we can do just that, and consider the autiot as signs which unite signifier and signified across the range of structuration in an integral mode of thought. Instead of limiting ourselves to the arbitrary, particularizing semantics of sense-bound colloquial languages, we can consider an abstract language of consciousness and energy, where the signs signify the most abstract and generalized concepts of which the specific literal icon is a particularlized material representation. Then, for example, ox=fundamental power, ox goad=controlled movement, fence=life, hand=existence and mem=biosphere and we can begin to understand the internal structure and meaning of the equation called Elohim.

Three Worlds: Outside, Inside and Beyond Space-Time
Archetypal 1-9 Existential 10-90 Cosmic 100-900
Life/Death & Existence 1
Container / Boundary 2
Movement 3
Resistance 4
Organic Life 5
Sex / Fertility 6
Indetermination 7
Unstructured Energy 8
Structure 9

Semantic Structure of the Hebrew Alphabet
Formative Primes Archetypal 1-9 Existential 10-90 Cosmic 100-900
Life/Death & Existence 1
Intemporal Continuity Cosmic Consciousness
Container 2
Container Physical Supports Universe
Movement 3
Movement Equilibrium Univ. Wave Function
Resistance 4
Resistance Response Cosmic Tabernacle
Organic Life 5
Life Existential Life Realized Life
Fertility 6
Union/Copulation Female Fertility Cosmic Proliferation
Indetermination 7
Indetermination Actual Probabilty Cosmic Freedom
Unstructured Energy 8
Unstructured Energy Pool of Possibilities Cosmic Potentials
Structure 9
Cell Structure Perfected Form

Nine States of Energy on Three Levels of Manifestation
Inner Outer Move Resist Life Sex All Possible Possibilities Structure
Archetypal

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Air
Existential

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Water
Cosmic

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Fire Finals

Traditional Meanings
Archetypal

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Ox House Camel Door Window Nail Sword Fence Serpent
Existential

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Hand Palm Ox Goad Water Fish Support Eye Mouth Fish Hook
Cosmic

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Ear Head Tooth Cross

22 Autiot Yassod + Finals

Hypertext Hebrew Alphabet

Semantic Structure of the Hebrew Alphabet

2009-12-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

Semantic Structure of the Hebrew Alphabet: Revived Qabala of Carlo Suares (Carlo Suarès) Phonosemantic and Esoteric Meanings: Maaseh Bereshyt/Bereshit/Beresheet: Work of Creation

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/qbl/autiot_semantic_structure.html

Heavens Shamain

2009-12-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

Shamain: Heavens
Shamaim

40/600 10 40 300
Gematria: 390/950

Bereshyt Bara Elohim Et Ha Shamaim Ve Et Ha Eretz

Suares: "The manifestation is twofold: there is the existence of that which contains and the life of that which is contained. Existence of the husks and the life of ther kernels. External circumstances and interior life."

Shamaym (the schema which is translated "heaven") is simply the impact of Sheen (300), the cosmic metabolism, upon Mayam.

"The so-called "heaven" in the first verse, the name of which is Shamain, contains a Yod between the two Mem. This sequence indicates the cosmic movement of Sheen acting against Mayim, the so-called waters: the two Mem (40) between which Yod is playing against its partner Aleph in the game of existence versus life."

Suares, CoG, 65-80

Sheen-Mem-Yod-Mem

Sheen: Cosmic movement
Mem: Passive organic resistance
Yod: Existence
Mem: Passive organic resistance

The existence of the container: Yod caught between the dual mem, the living and the dead waters, played against by Sheen, Aleph's representative in cosmic movement.

We know that the "father" is YHWH. As to "heaven", Shamaim, we have seen that it is the action Sheen (a cosmic breath) upon the symbolic "waters" (Maim) of life as existence, and we also know that it is the action of timeless YHWH permanently pervading the Universe. We can thus compare Shamaim and YHWH:

40 10 40 300
Shamaim

5 6 5 10
YHWY

This comparison of the two schemata reveals that the schema YHWH (as "father") truly is included in Shamaim: 10 corresponding to 300 shows it in existence, 5 and 5 corresponding to 40 and 40 shows them alive, and 6 corresponding to 10 shows it to be fruitful.

Suares, Cipher of Genesis, p.189

See: Eretz | Mayim | Day One

Os Poderes do Genesis

2009-12-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

THE POWERS OF GENESIS
by Jean Houston

[The following is the text of a mystery school talk.]

The Power of Projective Language

Let us begin by considering a people in the distant future who are entirely tone deaf and without music suddenly discovering musical notation. They could analyze it, interpret it as a variation on ordinary speech, but they could not hear it, and would have no comprehension of the concept of music. If one of their number then took enormous pains to rediscover music by determining that these notations are really signs for sounds of different tones, and then re-trained his brain and nervous system out of being tone deaf so that eventually he could actually hear different tones and then chords and then musical phrases, eventually he would be able to hear musical themes and then symphonies. He then understands the need for instruments to express these tones and reinvents musical instruments. He becomes a musician in a tone deaf world, a world that has no conception of what it cannot conceive, and no notion of instruments for music. What happens if he performs for an intelligent audience on these instruments. Most would shuffle their feet uncomfortably at this strange noise. Quite a few would walk out deeply offended by this esoteric claptrap. Others would try to analyze the variations in this speech pattern--thinking it an especially interesting version of glossolalia, while a very few would have stirrings of memory from the time that music could be heard. It is thought that "it has been kept alive in them because it happens that the interpretation of the musical notation as ordinary speech is so devised that the symphonic themes appear as a kind of echo under the guise of poetry" (Cipher of Genesis, p. 3). The exposure calls to a repressed but still available potential within them; they could still wake up to music and even the possibility of becoming musicians. Music, like mathematics, is a projective language. A good musicians reads a score and hears it: it is projected as energy transforms inside his being. The same is true of a fine mathematician who reads mathematical symbols and internally performs the pattern of mathematical operations of which the symbols are the projection.

Now there are a few ancient languages that are also, at certain levels, projective languages. Discuss why this tends to be so only [for] ancient languages. Among them are Sanskrit, high Javanese, and most fully realized--Old Hebrew. The sounds and portraits of their alphabetic characters perform multiple musics on several levels of understanding. In Sanskrit the fundamental syllables, called "bija" syllables like "Om", "Ram", "yam", are thought to be the primary codings of the energies of the Universe and of Creation. . .

With regard to Hebrew an ages-old traveling and hiding mystery school has been developed around the implicit content of the projective dimensions that are there to be received in Hebrew. The name of this mystery school is the Qabala. The word Qabala means: that which is received. And what Qabala says is that the twenty-two glyphs which are used as letters in the Hebrew alphabet are in fact and in essence twenty-two proper names originally used to designate different states or structures of the one cosmic energy, which is the essence of semblance of all that is. However, although these letters correspond to numbers, symbols and ideas, they exceed all classifications. The letters themselves, Aleph, Bayt, Ghimel, etc., are projections, codings of biolically structured energies in different states of organization. And it would seem that primary languages provided ontological linkages with the essence of the objects specified. We would ask, why is the left hemisphere of the neo-cortex--what we may refer to as the speech center or even the logos--laser so large? Because it is meant to be the transducing vehicle for the cosmic languages and codings.

What a modern Qabalistic scholar like Carlos Suares suggests is that there is extraordinary substance in the Biblical account of the archetypal myths and quasi-historical episodes recorded in Genesis which is not there to the surface eye. Most of us, even good scholars among us, read Genesis from a tone-deaf perspective, not with the eye and the ear that is attuned to Qabala to the receiving of the incredibly complex cosmic history which is codified within the projective resonance of the Hebrew letters. Read with the musician's or Qabalistic ear, a Biblical account is not only the record of the wanderings of a Semitic tribe and their patriarchs, it is, he says, " a concealed record of the actual events of the projection of the Cosmic Drama into the biosphere" (p.26). Suares also feels that "the names and the quasi-historical events recorded in the Bible are, regarded from the point of view that only 'ordinary' history occurs, fixed in time and space to definite individuals and periods. This is probably indeed the case, judging from the results of contemporary Biblical research." (Discuss Biblical archeology and what we learn of Abraham's wanderings and Joseph in Egypt.) "But if there is also a sacred history, it escapes from time and space save for those tremendous historical moments, the kairoi, such as the time of Christ, when the two histories coalesce into one. The "time of Abraham" may have been also such a time, or it may not have been. It may be that the sacred history has become, for convenience, grafted onto the account of secular history given in the Bible."
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A Few Notes and Brief Excursion on the History of Qabala
Before I go any further, I'd like to offer a few words on what the Qabala is. Rabbi Philip Berg, the director of a kabbalistic institute and press in New York, and one of the world's leading Kabbalistic scholars, says, "Into this mysterious universe we are born, with no apparent set of instructions, no maps or equations, no signs or guideposts, nothing but our equally unfathomable instincts, intuitions, and reasoning abilities to tell us where we came from, why we are here, and what we are supposed to do. What we do possess--perhaps it is the key to our survival as a species--is an almost unquenchable need to know. A human being comes into this world with a passionate sense of wonder and inquisitiveness and an equally powerful need for self expression. yet, somehow these seemingly indelible primal imperatives become eroded, as a rule, after only a few years' exposure to modern reality and contemporary educational methods." Berg strongly suggests that his way, the way of Qabalah with its symbols and tools, is a major key to finding the answers. In fact, in his book The Kabbalah Connection, he actually says, "The alef-bet is a cable representing the missing link between the sending of a message from the physical to the metaphysical level." In 1983, Berg who was then the much esteemed director of the Institute for Kabbalah in Jerusalem, delivered a paper entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Life in Outer Space: Forces Behind the Future." He spoke of Hebrew as very likely being a kind of cosmic computer code for programming our "walking bio-computers," and said that the great kabbalistic book, the Zohar, linked with certain Biblical chapters, especially Genesis, provided an excellent system for contacting extraterrestrial intelligence. In other words, in qabala are to be found the ways and means of reprogramming our body-minds into higher vibratory forms that make of us a kind of meta-computer able to contact universal codes and intelligences. Indeed, there are esoteric kabbalists who believe that Genesis is a kind of code book written by some ultra-terrestrial intelligence for those spiritual hackers who can figure it out.

We will be operating in our exploration of the book of Genesis on the supposition that the historical character of the Bible is really twofold, just as the Hebrew language is twofold. The Hebrew language can be used as ordinary speech or it can be, as you will soon see, used as a projective experience. The historical aspect of Genesis conveys not only ordinary history (that there were wandering tribes coming out of Ur of the Chaldees some 4000 years ago--with all their sheep and cows and chattel) but, hidden within that, a sacred history concerned with the stages and working out on earth of this cosmic drama. This may be why the Hebraic text was preserved so very accurately over thousands of years. Thus, the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and with it the text of Isaiah from the first century--which is virtually the same, letter for letter, as our previously earliest known text from a thousand years later.
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The Nine Archetypal Letters
To begin to understand the qabalistic interpretation of the deeper meaning of Genesis and why it is not just a collection of folk tales, we have first to explore the interior meanings of the nine archetypal letters. The ancient texts are preserved so rigorously because every letter and the pronunciation of every word is taken as significant. The Qabala tells us what the Hebrew letters are made of and shows us how each letter is not simply an initial but is a word complex: an equation. When we say "a", we mean "a"; in Hebrew you would say ALEPH. ALEPH is made up of ALEPH, LAMMED, PHAY, and LAMMED and PHAY are made up of many other living characters, each of which is filled with meaning as you can see and which branches and re-branches like a tree, a living organism or a most elaborate chemical compound. This is a form of hieroglyphic thought rendered in alphabetic characters in such a way that the Hebrew characters introduce us to a language capable of conveying depth of meaning and complexity virtually without limit, yet remaining within the limited bounds of our capacity for thought. When studied, it activates in us, as music did for the tone deaf with residual memory, an uncoding of tremendous knowledges which have been forgotten or perhaps which are so deeply coded in us that we have been unaware of their existence. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that what it uncodes in us is our future possibility, the culture that we are painfully moving towards, the culture no longer just homo faber, the tool maker, but of homo mondo faber--the world maker.
BR> As Suares says, "It is a code which uses these equations and not ordinary words as we are accustomed to use them. It trains the mind to hold together, all at once, a complex structure, each part of which is relevant to every other part." (Discuss why the Jews, as the holder of so many of the structures of existence, have been able to survive in spite of the entropy of antagonistic cultures that have tried to suppress them.) The reading of Genesis then becomes the reading and the experience of a living code of creation and transformation; the keys to the transforming of culture and society, and even of world making. This is obviously a subject which could take many, many lives of inquiry. Within one weekend, albeit within the subjective and eternal time of a mystery school, we can only dip into a fragment of a fragment, but let us just do that briefly now so as to set up a few musical cadenzas in your mind for your experience of the cosmic drama of creation which is implicit in the musical notation called Genesis.
Take the first letter, ALEPH.

In the depth understanding of the Qabala, the symbol ALEPH is used to project a concept of an unthinkably immense energy, hyperspatial and hypertemporal, transcending time and space, without which nothing could exist, operating within the structure of everything as that by which it is able to be. ALEPH projects into us a constant awareness of the mystery of existence. Although it is not thinkable, we participate in it on many levels that it thinks its way through us. Perhaps it is correspondent to the Chinese Tao. Alone among all Hebrew letters, ALEPH has no pronunciation of its own and according to where it is placed in a configuration of letters it can be sounded as any of the vowels, so ALEPH transcends all logical use in language just as a concept it transcends all understanding. For the Qabala to be sacred means to partake of this mystery of ALEPH. Everything that exists is sacred because it is inhabited by ALEPH. ( Discuss the ALEPH point and read from the Borges story about the ALEPH in the Possible Human.) Relate Aleph to Bohm's notion of the Implicate and the Superimplicate orders. > The first archetype letter is ALEPH, naturally. The second is BAYT.

BAYT means house or physical support or container, any kind of dwelling. It is the complement of, and polarity, if you will, of ALEPH. It is the container, whereas Aleph is the immeasurable energy. BAYT may be seen as that which allows for the implicate to become explicate in time and space.

The third principle is GHIMEL.

GHIMEL has the meaning of change and transformation of energy. If there is ALEPH and BAYT together, there must occur a transformation of energy, for how is ALEPH going to flood into BAYT and how is BAYT going to contain any ALEPH at all without some fundamental change going on. GHIMEL gives us some clues to this mystery. GHIMEL which is also related to camel, which stores and converts water, is the mystery of conversion of the energies of the life force.

The fourth projected archetype is the letter DALLET.

DALLET means resistance to disruptive forces. It is the principle of homeostasis and of restoration of that which is being disturbed. In atomic nuclei it is the role of the binding energy. It is the archetypal principle of challenge and response. If you have the flowing of energy in ALEPH, the attempted containment of this energy in BAYT, the conversion of this energy in GHIMEL, than you are certainly going to need the energy of DALLET to respond to all these challenges and bind it all together.

The fifth principle is the letter HAY.

HAY is the principle of life in itself and the tasks which life performs--that is transmitting impulses, maintaining balance, knowing the appropriate timing to release more life and conserve life, to adjunct to the requirements of the external and internal environment. It is the principle, ultimately, of keeping the ecology of energies going. If you are going to have the overwhelmingness of ALEPH flooding into the containment of BAYT with the help of the conversion of these energies by GHIMEL and the binding of all of these energies together in DALLET, then you have to have the sensitivity of the life of HAY to keep all of these principles functioning equitably and ecologically.

The sixth principle is VAV.

VAV is the archetype of fertility projected into living organisms as the function of reproduction. It is the power of perpetuation connecting the old with the new and assuring existence in time. If you have the cosmic energies of ALEPH into the containment of BAYT being changed and converted into the energies of GHIMEL, bound together by DALLET, and equalized by the life Expression of HAY, then, if you want all of this to continue, you've got to have the reproductive function of VAV.

The seventh principle is the letter ZAYN.

This means archetypally structured movement towards indeterminate potentialities. It is motion towards an entelechy that is calling. If you have the immensities of ALEPH, attempting to indwell in BAYT, undergoing the energy conversion of GHIMEL, held together by DALLET, within the life form of HAY, and reproduced in VAV, then it has to be called forward to its next unfolding in a motion of ZAYN.

The eighth archetypal principle is the letter HHAYT.

This is the concept of the storehouse of potentialities, the pool of patterns and genes, if you will, that are there to be accessed and which can be used to give form and creative innovation to structures in this world. If you have the cosmic energies of ALEPH contained in the house of BAYT converted to the energies of life of GHIMEL held together by the binding energy of DALLET within the life form of HAY, reproduced by VAV, set into motion towards indeterminate potentialities by ZAYN, then all of this is going to find the new patterns for the next stages of the coding in HHAYT.

The ninth archetypal principle is the letter TAYT.

TAYT is the womb place of gestation, of bringing all these archetypal energies into new genesis for the new creation in time of the cosmic drama that was begun by ALEPH--the immensity of cosmic energy, projected into the container of BAYT, transformed into the living energies of GHIMEL, held together by the binding forces of DALLET, within the ecological life principle of HAY, reproduced by VAV, and set into motion towards new learning by ZAYN, found in the storehouse of potentials of HHAY, and all of these together re-gestated in the place of new genesis to TAYT. This is the multi-dimensional thinking implicit in the sacred reading of Hebrew as found in Genesis.

According to Qabala, when ALEPH is projected into existence-in-time, it becomes YOD. YOD symbolizes the assertion of existence. The Hebrew symbol is a hand. By this it becomes limited and within the framework of time sequences. It also is coded in the notion of the hand of God reaching out to start existence as in Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. This implies a sacrifice on the part of ALEPH of its own unique character. It compromises its nature when it becomes YOD and is thereby involved in contradiction. The war with time enters all existence and becomes a conflict between time and eternity, ALEPH and YOD. This is the great Cosmic Game, the Cosmic Drama-- the tension between ALEPH and YOD. If we search for the outcome of this cosmic game and why it is at all, we are asking for the meaning of QOF, which is the symbol for 100, and higher reconciliation. ALEPH (I) finds its limited time existence in YOD (10) and its fulfillment in QOF (100). In QOF the division is reconciled. Number symbolism is critical in Qabalistic thought. For example, the symbolic age of 100 reached by Abraham when his son Isaac was to be born (previously his name, Abram, had been changed by the addition of HAY, meaning lease of new life. Previously Abram--whose original name means top Daddy or exalted Pop, is changed by God by an addition of HAY, meaning lease of new life (father of multitudes, exceedingly fruitful). His wife, Sarai, has her name, originally meaning Queenie, similarly enhanced by the addition of the HAY and her name, Sarah, means mother of all nations. (By the way, the original name in Egyptian, Ab-ram means "he who is father of the sun", or "he who possesses the sun". In Tibetan, Ram means the basis of the world. In Sanskrit, Ram is God, as in Rama. In the Celtic languages, Ram equates to universal essence. In Qabala, Ram means cosmic dwelling.)

There is also a further coincidence that may have immense cross cultural significance; it is this: ABRAHAM with the order of letters very slightly changed, looks like BRAHMA. (A place in which it occurs is the oldest scripture of India dating actually from around the time of Abraham.) The coincidence signifies, according to the Qabala, that the traditional revelations of Abraham and Brahma are essentially one and the same in source. The fact that the Aleph is the first letter of the one, the last of the other, points to a single revelation which is split in two. Could it be that at some actual moment of history, ordinary and sacred history merged and a new dispensation spread over the earth both east and west?

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Genesis 1 & 2 as a Training Course in God School

I am going to suggest to you now a very unique and somewhat whimsical hypothesis which, if not actually true, can be considered to be mythically and archetypally true: that in the opening chapters of Genesis, understood in the ways in which I have been calling attention to, we have an account of the training received in God School and that the first chapters of Genesis are the practicum of the course (Genesis 101 and 102). (The lab time is evidently seven days.) That is the mythic archetypal level of my statement (the sacred history, as it were, behind Genesis). The historical existential history is that it provides at the same time a loaded coding for you and me and whatever other willing people in space and time choose to learn the high and holy and very scientific nature of true creativity. Regarding Genesis then from this twofold premise, let us look at what is going on in the course.

The text of the course develops from the first word, the mistranslated, "In the beginning". The word in Hebrew is BERESHYT. It does not mean "in the beginning". It probably means something like "the principle". But within this notion of principle is contained cabalistically in the letters of Bereshyt that which means - the Great Archetypal patterns, the ultimate containers of existences, the upspringing of life, the Biggest Bang of all, Becoming Itself! Rabbi Berg devotes an entire course just to the word BERESHYT alone.

The second word in Hebrew is BARA. In Qabalistic depth understanding it means "ways of creation". Look at the word Bara--it is actually Bar-Aleph--that is, child of Aleph! Or if you will, the ways in which the immense potentials of the Aleph are born into time and space, how the high creative becomes immanent and actualized. In other words, birthing in a big way. So the text has as its true meaning, "Principles Of Creation: How To Do It." Or like I said, Genesis 101 and 102.

The next word is the one that tells the tale for the word is ELOHIM, translated in English as God. ELOHIM is both a masculine and a feminine word and is plural. But it means much more than that. Using some of the principles of projective language which we have just explored, let's look at the nature of that word, ELOHIM.

The spelling is ALEPH - LAMMED - HAY - YOD - MEM. and the only letters that we have not looked at is the one MEM, which signifies fruitfulness in the highest degree, that is, the creation of the biosphere. LAMMED means the channeling through which energy changes can happen, thus ELOHIM means the immensities of energy and power (ALEPH) and channeled or transmitted through the organic movement (LAMMED) of life (HAY) playing out the Cosmic Game with its own projection YOD in existence in the biosphere, MEM. The cosmic game is indicated in code in ELOHIM by the presence of ALEPH and YOD together. Life, or HAY, is in the middle, maintaining the balance. With ALEPH-LAMMED the spirit of creative energy on the one side, and YOD-MEM of the physical supports on the other. This is the nature of an evolutionary process. In fact, that is the subtitle of this course. So what you have in the first three words is a catalogue listing at the God-Training University or, if you will, God University, or if you really will, GU (GO GU!) GO GU is quite literally true if you look at the history of the early stages of the world and what is implied in the name ELOHIM. For the juxtaposition of the putting together of the letters ALEPH-LAMMED signifies that the energy of ALEPH acquires the power to project changes in existence. Without this Lammed or channeling transformational force, Aleph is not able to become organically alive in HAY, life. So Aleph, without these other characters or helpers, is a loaded, locked up nucleus, having an explosive potency not yet released.

On the other side of the HAY lies the density of existing things, mattering matter. On the earth, YOD-MEM existing without the HAY would be locked into conflict with the ALEPH LAMMED, tremendous energies of Aleph endowed with the potency to bring about tremendous changes. Without the HAY, you would have a tremendous and cataclysmic upheaval succeeded by comparative quiet of time off from the game and then a rallying as the game shifted from one court into the other. In the history of the earth this is seen with whole continents, seas and mountain ranges, appearing and disappearing again and again as the earth writhes between the furious attack of the two-fold energies of the explosive ones of ALEPH-LAMMED and the compressive ones of YOD- MEM. This situation of the GU game persisted for two billion years of geological time before the biosphere emerged because of the principle of HAY, life rising in the center of the conflict to reconcile the adversaries. Life is therefore the balancing factor in the cosmic game. The seven days constitutes cycles of the transmission of life, as we shall soon see in good geological and biogenetic fashion.

So we learn that in the beginning ELOHIM created the heavens and the earth, which really means Catalogue listing--new semester God U. PRINCIPLES OF CREATION: A Course in Creation Through Evolution. This conceptual and experiential course will have the student learn how to use and reconcile the dynamic energies and materials of the creative process, and to do so initially by working with the conceptual activating materials of (heavens) and the raw natural materials of earth. (This course is also known by the students of GU under the shorter title of "Learning Creativity Through Making A World.")

The heavens, as we know in the Hebrew (Shamaim), refers to the realm of ideas and of creative patterns to be accessed (Sheen mem yod mem--that is, the breath of god or the spirit acting upon the mass of energy to activate a new reality), and the earth (eretz) represents the raw material to be worked with. The mem (waters) that guard the yod can be considered the buffer zone that sets up the resistance to the spirit entering into time. We might consider this the entropy principle, or the principle of homeostasis. In human terms, it is the waters of the unconscious that keeps us protected from the overwhelming beingness of spirit. Always here is portrayed the extraordinary tensions between the immensity of the desire of the elohim of the Aleph to imbue the raw material of time and space and density with its higher vibration that will cause it to make evolutionary progress. Now let us discusss what this tells us, Gods in training, about our own forms of creative unfoldment. (Discuss.)

The second part, Verse Two, begins the course itself. The lines are "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of ELOHIM moved upon the face of the waters." Without going into a long kabbalistic analysis of the Hebrew (WHICH WOULD TAKE US AT LEAST 40 YEARS) I will suggest to you that what is really being said here is that the earth was totally disorganized an entity and darkness covered its convulsing surface--the sun could not get through. This refers to the early stages of earth's convulsions before creative intention really went to work on it. The words "without form" are from the Hebrew word which also means superficial, referring also to the superficiality of our existence before our creative spirit really begins to YOD, that is, take us in hand. The word that is translated as "spirit" also means breath, NEPHESH or the activating ideas. According to the text, they move, or in Hebrew they hover or concentrate over. The "Face Of" in Hebrew means awareness. "Waters" denotes the place of vision or of the imaginative process. It is also the place of unexpressed capacities and potentials.

So a depth-level translation of this would be the activating creative forces within us can, even when our existence is meaningless and superficial, evoke and vitalize the deep creative forces within us through brooding or hovering over our deeps; It is the solitary brooding in the darkness that is able to call forth the light. This can also be seen as the concentration of awareness and determination to form new ideas or creative expressions upon the vast raw potential of our being. Applying this to ourselves, you have the bases of primal stuff that is filled with incredible patterns and potencies that require your activating intelligence to work upon it. You are after all, Adam, Aleph in the blood. If, then, you could play elohimically upon your own raw but utter availability of potent substance--if you would truly brood or hover over it, you would know that not only could you help create a world, but you could radically re-work yourself. The Qabalistic thinkers are always saying that if you can maintain this kind of doubled vision, then almost anything is possible on earth as it is in heaven. As Yod-Mem, you contain the protein bio-computer and sufficient senses and circuits to give you a fine working material matrix. But you need to also channel or allow Aleph-Lammed, the imaginative potentiating creative ideas into your substance. Thus, the need for a truly radical reframing and reconceptualization of how we think, reconceptualize and then work upon ourselves as living continents of possibilities that are as yet seeds asking to be called into full life. Think of yourself as the seeded land, and you begin to get the idea, the seeded land, Aleph in the blood.

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The First Day of Creation

Now the course turns to an exploration of the sequences of the creative process. You will note the very private, solitary character of the text. God, as the Elohim, is talking to himself. There are no listeners, no bystanders, no teller of the narrative, only his own commentary on his work. This is a true telling of the inward aspect of the creative process. And so the third line in the text is, "And ELOHIM said, let there be light, and there was light." "Said" in Hebrew means desire or determination. It is an uttering that requires an outering. It is the creative will determined to effect a change and selecting what it wished to have changed. In most pre-literate societies there was great magic in utterance, for it was thought that declarative speech set up a kind of vibration that called things into being. When you are in your "let there be" modes, are you determined enough and are you selective enough to make things happen? God school is very specific about the use of creative intention. The text does not read "And God shot the breeze with some of his cronies and said Hey, good buddy, what about light? Hey there, far out, too much, too much trouble, forget it, okay, sorry I mentioned it, how about... (This is the way of most of our putting out of our creative ideas.) This word "light" is all important in the Course on Genesis. In Hebrew it is pronounced AWR. It is made up of three consonants, ALEPH-WAW (which is a form of VAV) and RAYSH. Now RAYSH expresses the notion of the whole blooming universe. It is the immense physical support of everything that exists, that which contains everything, like a vast receptacle. AWR therefore means that ALEPH is connected or fertilizing RAYSH and impregnating it with the character of ALEPH itself in some way reproducing its own nature in everything that exists in time-perpetual. AWR therefore expresses the impregnation of the ALL by the ONE.

Now as we've just seen, AWR in Hebrew is the word for light, but clearly it means much more than the local concept of light. Perhaps the discoveries by Einstein and the quantum physicists in this century of the properties of light helps to illumine the depth meaning of the Biblical statement. Only light itself can ever reach the speed of light. An infinite quantity of energy would be required to make any existing object travel at the speed of light, thus nothing that exists ever can. According to Einstein, if a clock could travel at the speed of light, it no longer would show the passage of time. It would exist timelessly, thus only light exists timelessly. Not moving in time, it is at rest in time. Only in space does it move in time. Evidently it carries messages and impulses and information from one end of the universe, the RAYSH, the great receptacle, to the other. It fertilizes the universe by its initials. It illuminates everything upon which it falls, thus bringing intelligence or understanding. Because we are also made up of light particles, light is carrying us ubiquitously throughout the universe. Thus AWR is the God self being sent out everywhere so that every creation you make, every thought you have, is not just part of the local universe. It passes as light to the trillions of stars and planets. Your calling card is everywhere, so you'd better take care in what you are sending out. Similarly, we catch the light of others, all others, even those from the past, or maybe the future. That is why most information is available, and why Qabalists like Philip Berg say that we have access to ultra terrestrial personages and information. What this means for us is that in our involutional preparation for creation or evolution, we declare for light or illumination. This calls the light to us RAYSH-ettes as it were, senders and receivers of knowledge and feeling. (EXERCISE: PROCESS IN BECOMING LIGHT. )

We next learn that ELOHIM saw that it was good. That means, hot dog, it works! The word given is "tov", like in Mazel tov. It also means that all that emanates from the divine creative principle is good and will always work. We next learn, "And ELOHIM divided the light from the darkness and ELOHIM called the light day and the darkness night." Day represents the state of mind of creative expressive intelligence. Night represents the depth world in Hebrew, the unconscious forces that do not get illumined by the creative spirit but are there resting and waiting for their fertilization. The text then reads, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." This is important because at the end of each day, Genesis says, "And the evening and the morning were the - day. " As we grow in awarenss, first we don't comprehend, we are unconscious, that is the state of evening, then we do understand, that is the state of morning. Day, in Hebrew is therefore referring to a stage in a process and not a definite period of time. We are given the evening to brood upon what we did during the day and to deepen that day. If you do not have the time of knowing, followed by brooding or unknowing, followed by knowing, you don't create much of anything. (Discuss brooding and its cycles, or cycles of knowing and unknowing.)

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The Second Day of Creation

Genesis 1:6-8 then reads, "And ELOHIM said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And ELOHIM called the firmament heaven. And there was evening and there was morning the second day." Now firmament means to find a firm point of distinction. Waters denotes latent capacities which need to be visualized or imagined in order to be expressed. There must be a firm starting point or firmament, or faith in the possibilities that are lurking there so as to determine what actions to take. The next lines are fascinating because they talk about the waters above and the waters which are below. This speaks to the unexpressed capacities or potentials of the human unconscious world, and the paradigmatic archetypal capacities in the ALEPH world. The problem is to get the unexpressed to relate to the UNEXPRESSED through the vehicle of HAY or life. With this, another stage of unfoldment has occurred. Let us summarize here that even in these few opening lines read and understood in the manner we are giving we begin to get a sense of the cosmology of world-making as revealed through this kind of projective understanding of the ancient Hebrew texts. When we think mythically and projectively, when we think musically, we are able to accelerate the understanding of how we exist in the universe and the extraordinary promise that each of us holds, When we re-frame and re-train our brain/mind systems in God school, we access a whole new way of being. We become the upspringing of Aleph in the blood. Our consciousness can be trained to serve as the bridge between the potentials that we contain in our given existence in space and time and body and brain and the depth potentials of the Aleph or archetypal world. How this happens is given in the next few verses.

Genesis 1:9-13. "And the ELOHIM said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And ELOHIM called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM said, let the earth put forth grass, herbs, yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein the seed thereof upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein it is the seed thereof, after their kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day."

The third step in creation, according to God school, is the beginning of the formative activity of the mind called imagination. This gathers the depth capacities which are yet unexpressed, that is, the waters to gather into one place so that the dry land of substantive creation can appear. Then the imagination begins a great creative unfolding into time and space of different forms and shapes in the mind. The emphasis on this verse on seeds is at once referenced to the coded entelechy that already exists when one is ready to bring a thought into action--thus, the book that you plan to write is already there in its seed form as is the project that you plan to express, but it must be planted into the earth of fertile consciousness. (Talk about what I see in the gifting -- all the little seeds, like little eggs, saying, "I'm ready, I'm ready.... Hey, tell her about me! She thinks that all she wants is a husband or to be without anxiety, but I'm here too!") Since the forms of creation on this stage of creative development are solely grass and herbs, we are looking for the greening of mind and spirit that will re-fertilize the soil. (A line that is lost is "Let there be plenty of manure to nurture this soil.")

So we see the First Day of Creation reveals the light for inspiration of spirit. The Second Day establishes faith in our possibilities to access the patterns of both our own internal creativity joined to the archetypal creative patterns and to bring forth what had hitherto been invisible in both depth worlds. The Third Day is the day of imaginative work. The nature of imagination.

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The Fourth Day of Creation

Genesis 1:14-19 "And ELOHIM said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And ELOHIM made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And ELOHIM set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

The greater light, which is the solar light, is understanding. It rules the day, that is, the realm of consciousness which has been illumined by spirit. The lesser light, the moon of ourselves, rules the night ,which is the will which has no illumination but whose job it is to carry out the requirements of understanding. The will does not reason, but is the natural muscular agent of the inspirational spirit. The will carries out the agenda of the solar spirit. The stars are the deep interior proprioceptors, that is, the imaginal qualities for being able to richly perceive internally the realm of ideas. They are the eyes and ears and all the perceptive faculties of the inner life--the ecology of inner space. (Quote Rumi about the interior gardens.) This passage is about the practice and use of creative imagination, both physically and metaphysically. The way in through your dominant sense...then the rule of three. (Discuss its applications.)

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The Fifth Day of Creation

Genesis 1:20-23: "And ELOHIM said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And ELOHIM created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

The discussion of the fifth day is pretty darn good evolution, concerning as it does the creation of the fishes and sea monsters and even birds in early times. In the depth understanding of the Hebrew language, it offers us a rich vocabulary of creative process. The swarms of creatures are the swarms of budding thoughts. The birds of the heavens are those thoughts that have risen and are now liberated. We are still in the world of the unexpressed for these are the creatures of the waters and of the heavens. All of these creatures express, however, the emotional impetus that has to be added if our creative will is to flourish. Dealing also as it does with the budding creative ideas of our own deeps and the soaring ideas of the archetypal or heavenly world, this passage tells us in no uncertain terms that our local creative imagination is beginning its expressive forms as is archetypal creative imagination. The creative forms are now truly launched although they have not unfolded yet on earth. That is the task for the Sixth Day.

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The Sixth Day of Creation

Genesis 1: 24-31 - "And ELOHIM said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And ELOHIM made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And so ELOHIM created man in his own image, in the image of ELOHIM created he him; male and female created he them. And ELOHIM blessed them, and ELOHIM said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And ELOHIM said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And ELOHIM saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

In this magnificent passage, we are told about the bringing forth of ideas after their kind. "After their kind" in Hebrew really refers to "according to a great archetypal pattern." Herein, the earthly creative imagination has come into very close conjunction with the heavenly imagination of archetypal ideas, and higher forms of creativity are flourishing. These higher forms, cattle, and beasts and creeping things are, as it were, preparations in the lab experiment part of this course for the master work, the doctoral thesis, which is about to be created--the human being. Here the course requires that one create something in which one is totally reflected -- it is the total giving out of what one is into creative materialization. How do we know that? Because in Hebrew, Adam is described as the living image of ELOHIM. Adam recapitulates and improves upon all the biological stages that have gone before. The name is spelled ALEPH-DALLET-MEM. Now DALLET signifies the entire structure of animal and vegetable life which must respond to the challenge of the ALEPH, driving it further towards the next stage of fulfillment in MEM--MEM being complete and total creative fruitfulness, that is, a being that is capable of doing what the ELOHIM can do. In other words, at this point, in God school, we learn how to produce a creative double of ourselves. But projective Hebrew is filled with greater complexities, for the DALLET-MEM of Adam is the word for blood, hence the name signifies ALEPH in our blood--literally, the incarnation of ALEPH. And as the "living Image" of ELOHIM, Adam is made flesh.

This is the sacred concept in Genesis. For what is being said here is not that Adam occurred at one time, but, rather, life has evolved to the point in which Adam or ALEPH in the blood can arise to become the projection of ELOHIM, thus all men and women have within them the potency for the transformation of their Adamic nature from a life of ordinary people which terminates with the life of the blood--that is, that lives out its life by its hereditary, instinctive and genetic patterns, that is a life that repeats its own achievements again and again in the image of ELOHIM .

What Qabala teaches us at this point is that Adam is there as Adam Kadman which means the archetypal Adam of God-University entering into a co-creative life with ALEPH in the world - Second Genesis such as we have already discussed. Since the reference here is also to the creation by the ELOHIM, which is both masculine and feminine and not to the creation by Jehovah (that does not occur until the next chapter, in another account which is written by someone else). In this account, we learn that the creation of the Adam in the living image is rendered more precise by the terms of this androgyny - "In the image of ELOHIM created he him ; male and female created he them". Thus we learn that the creative one, that is you and me in our creative phases, has to reconcile or bring into union the male and female aspects of our natures. And, by the way, according to the passage they are vegetarians.

The phenomenology of the nature of male and female is fascinating in the sacred Hebrew. IYSH AND ISHA are the words for man and woman in Hebrew. They are spelled ALEPH-YOD-SHAYN and ALEPH-SHAYN-HAY. SHAYN means high transformation or the fullest drawing out of potential. Man or IYSH has the YOD of existence. ISHA has the HAY of life. Thus man exists but has no life whereas woman has life but does not exist--a very modern interpretation, it seems to me, in the present problems of the sexes. The union of both, within ourselves, creates the full being who can create the world. It is very important here to note that the woman is not called Eve. Eve comes later in the story. She is called ISHA and what the text says is that ISHA was alive and that is why she could gain the knowledge of knowing the difference between good and evil which then gave her the possibility of becoming as God. The idea in this passage of the Sixth Day is of gaining dominion over all the seas. The full creative one knows how to sow the seeds of world- making into the substance of creative mind and thus grow real food on which the world and the self can be nourished. The sixth step in creation is the concentration in the balanced psychically-androgynous human of all the ideas of the divine or archetypal realm. The human at this point is allowed authority and dominion over world-making. He and she are the image, the outering of Elohim. At this point, this extended human is given a new name and one is gradually out of the course with the name; the name that he is given is JAHWEH which means, "I am that I am". "I am" is the image and likeness of ELOHIM as spiritual man which is placed in the nest of formative man called Adam.

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The Seventh Day of Creation

We are told that on the seventh day, ELOHIM rested. And sanctified the time of rest. The actual Hebraic expression is, "And ELOHIM blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it rested all the work which ELOHIM created to be made." What this suggests is that Genesis 101 is about to be graduated into Genesis 102, the second term in the course of Creation. Course 1, coded for those who cease to be tone deaf in the music of Genesis Chapter 1 tells how the creative act takes place in the spiritual realm. How the ideas are in-gathered and worked with imaginatively, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, but the formation has not yet taken place. This is the stage of involution or of creative gestation. Genesis 102, also known as Genesis, Chapter 2, is about evolution. How JAHWEH, the graduate student, goes about forming in evolution what has been created by ELOHIM, universal mind, in involution.

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Psychological Archetypes of Genesis

Genesis e a verdade

2009-12-21T18:57:00.000-08:00

ESTUDOS DO LIVRO DE GENISIS ( Prs. Jurandir e herica) Aula nr dia INTRODUCAO Jo 5:39 “ Examinai as escrituras porque vos cuidais ter nelas a vida eternal e sao elas que de mim testificam” Oseias 4:6 “Meu povo perece por falta de conhecimento…” Sal 78:1-2 Abrirei a minha boca numa parabola, falarei enigma da antiguidade Pv 25:2 A Gloria de Deus esta nas coisas encobertas, mas a honra dos reis esta em descobri-las. Porque Deus fala em parabolas? Mateus 13: 1-23 (Isaias 29:10-13, 2 Cor 4:4 Desvendando as parabolas : Joao 6:36-56, Joao 15:1-7, Joao 7:38, Isaias 46:10 Que anuncio o fim desde o principio e desde a antiguidade as coisas que ainda nao sucederam… Ecl 1:9 O que foi , isto ‘e o que ha de ser. E o que se fez, isso se fara, de modo que nada ha de novo debaixo do sol Ecl 3:15 O que ‘e ja foi, e o que ha de ser tambem ja foi, e Deus pede conta do que Passou GENISIS 1:1 NO principio criou Deus os ceus e a terra. ……Principio /substantivo masculine Joao 1:12 Col 1:10-18 Ap 22:13 Eu sou o Alfa e o Omega, o _________e o fim, o primeiro e o _____________ A VERDADE SOBRE O LIVRO DE GENESIS (PR JURANDIR) File: toreng1.htm GENESIS AULA 2 JANEIRO 4-2008 CASA DO GERONIMO GENESIS 1:1 casa da meggy Ag 28, hr 10 PM , Pr FatimaCarlos NO PRINCIPIO- BERESHIT-7228 1-DE ACORDO COM O DICIONARIO BIBLICO, QUAL A TRADUCAO DA PALAVRA BERESHIT? 2-COMO VOCE DEFINE A CRIACAO, QUEM CRIOU TUDO? DEUS OU JESUS? COMO PROVAR NA BIBLIA? A- JOAO 1:1-3 NO PRINCIPIO ERA O VERBO=PALAVRA B- * HEBREUS 11: 3 E 1: 2 E 10, 2:5, PELA FE, ENTENDEMOS QUE OS MUNDOS, PELA PALAVRA DE DEUS, FORAM CRIADOS , DE MANEIRA QUE AQULO QUE SE VE NAO FOI FEITO DO QUE ‘E APARENTE. SALMOS 33: 6 PELA PALAVRA DO SENHOR FORAM FEITOS OS CEUS E A TERRA 1- EU SOU A VIDEIRA VERDADEIRA… JOAO 15: 1 A 7 (EX:Jose era ramo frutifero GN 49:22 e Gn 36:06 HA VIDA EM CRISTO, JOAO 5:26 ELE ‘E A ARVORE DA VIDA ONDE TODOAS AS COISAS SUBSISTEM POR ELA. ( JOAO 1: 3) . “TODA A VIDA PROCEDE DESTA ARVORE!!!!” HA DUAS ARVORES: UMA FISICA E OUTRA ESPIRITUAL, A FISICA ESTA NO JARDIM DO EDEN (terreno), GENESIS 2:9 E A ESPIRITUAL EM APOC 2: 7 E 22:2 E EZEQUIEL 47 2-HA UMA SEMENTE NA ARVORE ( Gn 1:11-12) A- O QUE ‘E , E QUEM ‘E A SEMENTE? – B- O QUE ‘E ESTA EM LUCAS 8:11 (PALAVRA) E TAMBEM ‘E JESUS E OS FILHOS DE DEUS ESTA EM GENESIS 3:15, GENESIS 12:1-2,22:18. MT 13:38 C- VEJO HOMENS COMO ARVORE- MC:8:24 E EZEQUIEL 31, Ez 28:11 MUITOS NAO ENTENDIAM PORQUE FOI FALADO POR PARABOLA ATRAVES DE MOISES PROXIMA AULA ESTUDAREMOS SOBRE A ERVA genesis 1:11-12 GENESIS AULA 2 JANEIRO 4-2008 CASA DO GERONIMO GENESIS 1:1 casa da meggy Ag 28, hr 10 PM , Pr FatimaCarlos NO PRINCIPIO- BERESHIT-7228 1-DE ACORDO COM O DICIONARIO BIBLICO, QUAL A TRADUCAO DA PALAVRA BERESHIT? 2-COMO VOCE DEFINE A CRIACAO, QUEM CRIOU TUDO? DEUS OU JESUS? COMO PROVAR NA BIBLIA? C- JOAO 1:1-3 NO PRINCIPIO ERA O VERBO=PALAVRA D- * HEBREUS 11: 3 E 1: 2 E 10, 2:5, PELA FE, ENTENDEMOS QUE OS MUNDOS, PELA PALAVRA DE DEUS, FORAM CRIADOS , DE MANEIRA QUE AQULO QUE SE VE NAO FOI FEITO DO QUE ‘E APARENTE. SALMOS 33: 6 PELA PALAVRA DO SENHOR FORAM FEITOS OS CEUS E A TERRA 1- EU SOU A VIDEIRA VERDADEIRA… JOAO 15: 1 A 7 (EX:Jose era ramo frutifero GN 49:22 e Gn 36:06 HA VIDA EM CRISTO, JOAO 5:26 ELE ‘E A ARVORE DA VIDA ONDE TODOAS AS COISAS SUBSISTEM POR ELA. ( JOAO 1: 3) . “TODA A VIDA PROCEDE DESTA ARVORE!!!!” HA DUAS ARVORES: UMA FISICA E OUTRA ESPIRITUAL, A FISICA ESTA NO JARDIM DO EDEN (terreno), GENESIS 2:9 E A ESPIRITUAL EM APOC 2: 7 E 22:2 E EZEQUIEL 47 2-HA UMA SEMENTE NA ARVORE ( Gn 1:11-12) D- O QUE ‘E , E QUEM ‘E A SEMENTE? – E- O QUE ‘E ESTA EM LUCAS 8:11 (PALAVRA) E TAMBEM ‘E JESUS E OS FILHOS DE DEUS ESTA EM GENESIS 3:15, GENESIS 12:1-2,22:18. MT 13:38 F- VEJO HOMENS COMO ARVORE- MC:8:24 E EZEQUIEL 31, Ez 28:11 MUITOS NAO ENTENDIAM PORQUE FOI FALADO POR PARABOLA ATRAVES DE MOISES PROXIMA AULA ESTUDAREMOS SOBRE A ERVA genesis 1:11-12 The Academy of Jerusalem – Torah from Zion Project, The New Israeli Genesis Exegesis (The Book of Genesis as a Redemptive Scenario and Rebiographic Guide) Exegesis for the Parashah of Bereshit (Gen 1:1 – 5:8) A. A. The Place of the Book of Genesis in the Pentateuch, and the Pattern of the first Genesis Parashah-Portion. According to the teachings of later (Lurianic) Kabbalah, the whole of Being (HaWaYaH) is structured in a five-stratum pattern (each as if “below” the predecessor), which are called: 1. Adam Kadmon (Primordial Humanity), 2) Atziluth (Emanation or Divine Consistency), 3) Beri’ah (Creation), 4) Yetsirah (Formation), 5) Assiyah (Making or Actuality). Most of these names are gleaned from the prophetic verse (Isaiah 43:7), which details the work of Creation: “every one that is called by my name (and recall that Adam is the one who calls names – Gen. 2:20), for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea I have made him”. Of all these strata, only the one – the fifth and lowest one – is capable of sensory perception. We see the Action, but not the processes of Formation, not the thought that brings about the planning, and not the whole array of forces – “The Nature” or haTeva, which has the gematric value (the sum of the numerical values associated with the letters that make up the Hebrew word under consideration) of 86, which is the gematric value of Elohim (the word for “God” in the Book of Genesis). (It should be noted that the word Elohim is in the plural form, as a plurality of forces or “Laws of Nature”. This means that, in a certain sense, Elohim-God is identical to “The Nature”, as we shall discuss in the sequel). The text also testifies that the intention of the Creation was to form Adam-mankind beTsalmenu kiDemutenu - “in our Image-Tselem - after our Likeness” – (here too, God’s own regard to himself is in the plural form), as well as “so God created Mankind in his own image (Tselem), in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them (1:27). Namely: if the Adam is in the Image of God - also the converse is true: Elohim-God is in the Image-Tselem of “Adam”, and this is the hidden secret of “Adam Kadmon” – who is primordial and God-Elohim is made in his image. In this context we may also note that the first word, Bereshit (commonly translated as “In the Beginning”, which gives less than one percent of its plethora of meanings) can also be read – as is done in the Zohar, not as the adverb ‘in the beginning”, but as a proper noun of a hidden entity who created God! “Bereshit created Elohim-God” – or, that through the agency of “the Beginning-Reshit” God-Elohim was created. The Book of the Zohar identifies this Bereshit with the Torah, and with this – with the Sephirah of Hokhmah-Wisdom, and bases this identification on the verse in the Proverbs (8:22), where Wisdom is personified as saying “the Lord created me in the beginning of his way”. This exegesis follows that of Bereshit Raba 1:1 that notes “there is no other Reshit (beginning) but the torah”. The Zohar then equates the name Elohim (God) with the Sephirah of Binah (Understanding), which issues from Hokhmah-Wisdom. The first verse of the Book of Genesis can thus be understood as dealing with the creation of God-Elohim, or with the birth of heaven and earth, where Bereshit is the Father and Elohim-God is the Mother. The Book of the Zohar - which regards the Torah as an entity that preceded the creation of this world, something like a guidebook for the creation (see the introduction chapter above) – was revealed in our world at the precise beginning of the Sixth Millenium. Only at the sixth millenium of the Creation – or the sixth “Day” of the Hebrew Calendar, which is the “Day” for the creation of Adam – could there be performed the additional stage, the attempt to contend theologically with the concept of “Adam Kadmon”. From the Book of Etz Hayim (the Tree of Life) that relates the teachings of the Holy ARI of blessed memory, there is brought the conception that this Adam Kadmon is the primordial substance, which created the Torah, which in turn created God-Elohim who is the sum-total of the Laws of Nature. The whole structure of the Pentateuch corresponds, to a certain measure, to this scheme of five strata: the Book of Genesis-Bereshit (the combination of the words BaYiT (house) and RoSh (head) as we shall presently see) is the story of the Adam, as we shall presently see. The Book of Exodus-Shemot – which carries the great stories of divine revelation at the Exodus from Egypt and the Giving of the Torah – represents the level of Atzilut-Divine consistency. The Book of Vayyiqra- Leviticus (literally God’s Calling) – which calls upon Israel to fulfil the Torah – is on the level of Creation-Beriah. The Book of Numbers-beMidbar – namely within the divine Dibur-Speech – is on the level of Formation-Yetsirah, whereas the book that seals the Pentateuch - Deuteronomy-Devarim – is the summary of the practical commandments and actions that should be performed for the restitution of Adam – and relates, therefore, to the level of Action-Assiyah. It is interesting and characteristic that the names of these five books constitute together a meaningful sentence, which enfolds the essence of the process of Bereshit- Creation and all the process of restitution: Bereshit Shemot vayikra baMidbar Devarim – “In the Beginning, Names (were) called, Objects of (the Divine) Speech”. Namely: the Beginning of the work of Adam is to call Being (HaWaYaH) by Names (Gen. 2:20), and for this aim he calls in the Midbar – the Creation which is all made of divine utterances the specific things that ought to be performed. In the sequel, we shall discuss the three Genesis versions of the Creation from the perspectives of the worlds of Beri’ah, Yetsirah and Assiyah. 1 The First Story of Genesis – World of Creation Version of Bereshit About the Creation as Divine Utterance It is plainly stated in the Book of Genesis that all the Creation of the six days was performed through divine utterances whose number is ten: 1. 1. “Let there be light”. 2. 2. “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide waters from water”. 3. 3. “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear”. 4. 4. “Let the earth bring forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”. 5. 5. “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”. 6. 6. “Let the waters swarm abundantly with moving creatures that have life, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven”. 7. 7. “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after its kind”. 8. 8. “Let us make Mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”. 9. 9. “Be fruitful, and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it”. 10. 10. “Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, on which there is the fruit yeilding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food”. Of these primordial utterances, the first seven are “sayings about”, of an objective command (“I-It” relationship in the language of Buber), whereas the last three are “sayings to” with an address towards self and other (an “I-Thou” relationship), in an air of consultation. The idea of Creation through speech and divine utterance returns also in later sources. “By the word of the Lord-YHWH wre the heavens made, and allthe host of them by th breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6), as well as “For ever, O Lord-YHWH; Thy word stands fast in the heavens” (Psalm 119:89). There are those who insist that at the basis of the belief in one God there must be Creation out of nothing, and that that Creation must have occurred on a specific moment. In our times – those who believe so seek a validation for the Biblical cosmology in the modern cosmological theory of “The Big Bang”. But Maimonides, for example, who leaned to the opinions of Aristo about the preexistence of the universe, claimed that there is no religious significance to the difference between a unique creation and ongoing continuing creation. The “Alte Rebbe”, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Habad (Chabad) teachings, taught, based on the above noted verse (“For ever… Thy word stands fast…” which is in the present tense), that the whole of creation is recurring every infinitesimal period, through these ten divine utterances that keep standing there recreating the world for ever. Moreover, the letters of these utterances – according to this conception – are the raw material of all and every manifestation and these letters turn about in all their permutations and combinations to create everything, much like human speech comprising the sum of letter permutations. (The Book of Tania, Gate of Unification and Belief. See especially the (Hebrew interpretation of Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinsalz) to this book). Our analysis of the first creation story in the Parasha of Bereshit will therefore relate to the structures of letters and words, in the assumption that coded in them are the primordial patterns that serve all the processes of creation and of restitution-Tikkun. We shall examine the letters and words as if they were kind of mathematical formulae of instructions for building viable patterns. In spite of the clear count of ten utterances, the sages said “Bereshit Ma’amar nami” (the word “Bereshit” is also an utterance). Our understanding of their saying is that the letters and words of the first sentence of Genesis comprise a hidden “utterance” in which are encoded the principles of the Creation. (This is akin to the formula on which is based the fractal geometry of the Mandelbrot Group. This is an extremely short formula - Z2 => Z-a – which pertains to the conditions of existence and stability of all the “offspring” derivations of every reference point in two, or three, dimensional space, which multiply times their own values and lose a fixed quantity during their “generation”. In most places in this space, the “offsprings” will multiply and tend to infinity within a few “generations”, but from certain points in the space the offsprings will survive within a limited region of defined existence. Through continuing iterations (inertia), the formula creates rich complexity – in fact infinite – of complex “landscapes”, in which stability is maintained in spite of the many reproductions – and the basic form of the group, a semblance of a sitting Buddha, is repeated in an infinity of small reproductions). Numerical Patterns in the First Creation Story of Genesis That recent fashion of searching for numerical codes and “jumps” in the Bible (Droznin et all), brought in a veritable deluge of wiseacring nonsense, and is likely to give a bad name to the concept of systematic and meaningful number codes in the scriptures. Even the traditional gematrias are largely mere diversions, which can “prove” just about any thing - as the sages said: “Birds’ nests (bird sacrifice issues) and onsets of menstruation (for sexual conduct) are “the body” of ordinances; the movements of the stars and gematrias (calculation of letters) are mere “deserts” for teachings” (Wisdom of the Fathers, 3:18). Yet there still are authentic numerical codes that were apparently sacred already when the scriptures were composed. The Pythagorean mystery schools, where the members made vows not to reveal their secrets, are perhaps the more exposed edge of the hidden work of the ancient scribes. Sefer Yetsirah (“The Book of Creation”, the first book of the Kabbalah, and which can be regarded as a characteristic Pythagorean work [a], emphasizes the subject of counting (Sephirah), Sephirot and numbers (Misparim) in the works of the Creation. The scribes of the scriptures were called Sophrim, which literally means “counters”, and it stands to reason that they took care to count the verses, words and letters in their books. In the first verse of Genesis, at any rate, we do find primordial patterns, Tavniot Bereshit, patterns from which whole worlds were created. To start with, we find fractal patterns of self-similarity already with the first letter, the first word and the first verse of Parashat Bereshit: The Letter Beyt at the Beginning of the Book of Genesis – its pronunciation, form and meaning. Many Midrashim (exegeses) have already been written about the choice of the first letter of Genesis. The MaHaRaL (“Our Teacher Rabbi (Betzal’el) Loew” of Prague, the legendary creator of the Golem) explains that the letter Beyt, which is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, shows the duality that is in the basis of the created world. Franz Rosenzweig (in his book “The Star of Redemption) explains that the letter B expressed the specification (in his language “Besonders”) against the generalization of the first letter A (in his language “Alles”). The annunciation of the letter B’ is the first annunciation of the child. The baby generally learns to say “Abba” (father) before “Imma” (mother), even though the mother is much closer to him/her. Likewise Creation-Beri’ah itself – namely Birth – starts with the letter Bayt, whereas the part of education and instruction – the commandments part of the Torah – start with the letter Alef - Anokhi YHWH elohekha – “I am the Lord Your God”. The meaning of the letter Bayt is Bayit – house – and that is also its shape. That first word Bereshit can be broken down (among other ways, see below) into the two words Bayit – house – and Rosh – head, one inside the other, a head inside a house. The form of the accentuated Bayt (Bayt degushah) that opens the book of Genesis-Bereshit is also reminiscent of the seed (the accent point) inside the womb (which is the primordial house of every born creature). These two meanings, birth and building are relevant here. The form of the letter Bayt has already been referred as exegesis on the creation of the world as a process of a birth from a womb, in whch one does not know what precedes what, what is above and what is below, but one got to emerge out and start contending with the world. The second word, Bara – “Created” (which is already enfolded in the first word Bereshit, as Bara – Shith (“created six”, see below)) also means bringing out and separation, much as at birth. But the creation of Bereshit is also of Building, the building of the orderly world – the Cosmos – and the introduction to the building of the Temple – the House of YHWH – in the world. This is not an unconscious creation but planned building, a “house”- Bayit - in which there is a “head” – Rosh – which means consciousness, which is symbolized by the spherical human head. The letter that corresponds to Bayt in the in the European languages (whose script is derived from the Phoenician-Hebrew script) is the letter ‘B’, whose implicit meaning is (especially in English) is Existence – Be, Being. In the following we shall see that the letter Bayt also functions among the letters of the first verse of Genesis, in the same way that the accent point functions inside the letter Bayt, as Being or consciousness. The letters inside the first word - BeReShIT The first word is made of six letter, the first one of which is accentuated. The word Bereshit is divided, as already noted, to two words: “Bara – Shith”, namely “created six” (shith is in Aramaic “six”). This is the beginning of the building of the cosmos in six days. The ancient symbol for orderly building – of Cosmos – is the perfect cube, which has six faces. The cubic pattern expresses sanctity both in Judaim (the form of the Holy of Holies and of the phylacteries), in Christianity (the cube of “The New Jerusalem” in the ending of the Christian Bible) and in Islam (the Kaaba). (In his essay [b] “The Meaning of the Numbers in the Book of Genesis: a Pythagorian and Numerological Interpretation”, Dr. Me’ir Bar Ilan of Bar Ilan University, Israel, dedicates a primary place for the number 6, precisely because it signifies conscious building, because a brick or hewn building stone has six faces. According to his analysis, the basic numerical pattern in the Hebrew scriptures is of “n + 1”, so that the 7, the seventh day of Genesis, is of a different quality than of the six days of Action.) the accent in the Bayt is the clue for the seventh element, the consious center that is nested within the cube with its six faces. The Pythagorians saw in the number six “a perfect number”, because the sum of the numbers it is divided by (1, 2 and 3) equals the number itself. It seems that the author of the Book of Genesis wanted to start the account of creation with such a perfect number. The letters in the first verse in the Book of Genesis In the first sentence there are 7 words (in the language of the Sages Tevot – “boxes”) in which there are 28 letters. In the language of Sefer Yetsirah these are 7 “houses” (Batim) built from 28 “stones” (Avanim) We claim that these two numbers are not random numbers, but are very intentional. The seven words correspond to the pattern of the seven days of creation, which are enumerated in the first creation story, which issues from this sentence. But there is reason to note that the number 28 is the second “perfect number” (the Pythagoreans apparently knew only these two perfect numbers). 28 is divided by 1, 2, 4, 7 and 14, whose sum is 28. Moreover, these two numbers, the 6 corresponding to the number of letters of the first word, and the 28 corresponding to the number of the letters in the first sentence of Genesis, comprise the sum of the important primary numbers 3 and 7. Thus 1+2+3 = 6, whereas 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 28. Therefore it is appropriate to start the account of the creation by the perfect creator with these two perfect numbers. The number 28 appears, for instance, in the account of the 28 “times” – “A time to be born, and a time to die..” etc (Eccles. 3:2) – which are also counted in seven sentences. The wheel of 28 divisions is common to various esoteric systems and serves as representation for the schematic month: 4 weeks = 28 days. In many Sufi diagrams, including in the ceiling of the dome at the El-Aksa Mosque (which is not the Dome of the Rock) at the Temle Mount, there appears the motif of the wheel made of 28 divisions. In our times there became known a structure of a zodiac wheel with 28 sections, “The New Jerusalem Diagram” investigated by John Michell. Michell claims that many of the world’s ancient monuments, such as the Great Pyramid and the Neolithic temple of Stonehenge in England and many others, are based on the proportions of this diagram. This diagram indicates, first and foremost, the image of the camping of the Twelve Tribes around the Tabernacle. There is a reason that this diagram, which is relevant for the Tabernacle and the future Temple, as we shall still see at the close of our discussion of the Book of Genesis, is already enfolded in the first verse of Genesis. [presentation of John Michell’s New Jerusalem Diagram] The Numbers 28 and 27. We have already seen the n+1 relation between the numbers 6 and 7. Such a relation exists also between the number 28 and the one near it – 27. It is possible to divide the 28 letters of the first sentence of Genesis to two groups – the first letter, the accentuated Bayt with which we have already dealt, and the rest of the 27 letters. We have already seen the number 6, which represents a sacred cube as a symbol for the cosmos – the orderly and constructed part of the universe. The number 27 is a cube of 3 in the 3rd power. 27 equal cubes comprise a large cube, each edge of which is of 3 units. In the language of Sefer Yetsirah, the 27 letters are “stones” that together build the square “house” (Bayit) – the cube or the Kaaba. Just as we have shown the accent (Dagesh) nested within the letter Bayt – the House – it is also possible to see the letter Bayt itself as representing consciousness or Being, which is nested inside the cube of the 27 letters-stones. It is also worth noting that even though we are used to attribute 22 letters to the Hebrew alphabet (and this is how the Sefer Yetsirah, regards them), there are actually 27 letters in the Hebrew alphabet – 22 ordinary letters and 5 final letters. Therefore the large cube can be seen as the housing (Mishkan) of the 27 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, and the passage of consciousness between them creates the sequences of letters that comprise the various utterances that can be expressed in the Hebrew language – including the utterances of Bereshit. There exists also a tradition, according to which the tablets in the Ark of the Covenant were actually two stone cubes, a cubic cubit each, on which there appeared miraculously the letters of the Ten Commandments. (There is another number which related to the two numbers above, which is the number 26, which is connected to with the gematric value of “the Name of Being” (YHWH) and with the very meaningful number 13. But this number does not appear in the first account of Genesis, which is associated with the name of Elohim, but with the second account, which is attributed to the name YHWH, and we shall discuss it there). We may thus make an intermediate summary and note that the explicit story of creation contains also an implicit numerical parable (hidden at least for the generations who forgot the code) of whole Creation and Formation. But the numerical codes in this Parasha are not exausted with the numbers of letters and words, but also pertain to the number of repetitions of the key words in the account. The Numbers 10 and 32 in Parashat Bereshit In the Creation narrative that includes the ten utterances (namely the six days of creation), there appears the name of God Elohim 32 times, until the summary: “And God-Elohim saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31) (in the sequel, the appelation Elohim will appear three more times, in the section that deals with the declarqation of the Sabbath). We have, therefore, a verbal pattern made of ten (utterances) and thirty-two (appearances of Elohim). This is a pattern that is treated intensively in Sefer Yetsirah – the earliest of the Kabbalah texts – and this is its language: “In thirty-two wonderous paths engraved YaH… and created His world in three Sefarim (both “book”, “counting”, “account”, “story” and “writer”)…. ten Sefirot Bli-Mah.and twenty-two letters. (Sefer Yetsirah, 1:1-2). The pattern of the ten Sephirot is prhaps the general basic (and hidden) pattern of Being, Creation, the Soul of Man and the World of Tikkun (Restitution), and the majority of the Mekubalim (Kabbalists) employed it extensively. (We may single here The Bahir, Yoseph Jikatila’s Sha’are Orah (Gates of Light) and of course The Zohar. Since their publication, it is common to see in the ten Sephirot the essence of the esotric teachings in Judaism, though we shall later mention the later, and less known, Kabbalah). There is no need therefore to explain it here. But we shall note one aspect that is important for understanding the realization of the Acts of Bereshit in our times, and which has not yet been noted by the interpreters. The primordial decimal Bereshit pattern, which constucts the Tree of the Sephirot, will bring us to a system made of 1010 elements. This is according to the assumption that each Sephirahis made of a tenfold count of the Sephirah below it (in other words, that the ten primordial utterances has a fractal structure, and each one of them is made in the decimal pattern, so that each Creation utterance multiplies the possibilities ten-fold), so the sum total is 10 billion. According to a theory developed by the English researcher Peter Russel in his book “The Global Brain”2, ten to the power of ten is precisely the number needed for a system, in order to grow to an incomensurably more complex system, which allows the emergence of entirely novel and far more developed characteristics. This is, for example, the average number of atoms in a living cell, and this is the order of size of neural cells in the cortex – the “thinking” portion, or the seat of consciousness – in the human brain. This order of size – 10 to the power of 10 – also pertains to the number of stars in the galaxy we belong to – the milky way – and this is also the estimate for the number of galaxies in the universe. Russel claims that the human population upon earth is likely to stabilize on a population of about ten billion humans, which would allow from a quantitative point of view the ttransition to a new supra-human organization, which will act as one creature, with super-consciousness, much as the brain is the suoer-organization of the neurons it is made of. Also the philosopher Engels, the partner of Karl Marx, tried to determine a historical law, according to which “quantity turns into quality”, in the transitional stages of socio-historical development. More organized workers, he claimed can bring to the threshold of new qualities. Russel calls this super-creature, made up of about 10 billion human beings who are connected together by the name of “The Global Brain”. But we can call this creature simply “Adam”, the one that is emerging towards the end of the sixth millenium according to the Hebrew calendar, a date that will occur at about the year 2240 of the common era. The 32 Paths of Wonder In spite of the common exegesis of Sefer Yetsirah, it se3ems that the number of “32 Wonderous Paths” is not just the sum of the decade (ten) and the 22 Hebrew letters, but it also a whole and meaningful entity by its own. Even traditional interpretations for Sefer Yetsirah which explain “the 32 Paths of Wisdom” as different types of Sekhalim - “intelligences” – (such as of the RaABaD, and inadequate as they are), make no inner distinction of 10 and 22 among them. From pure numerological perspective, 32 is 2 at the 5th power. At the beginning of our discussion we have surveyed the five-fold patternof the books of the Pentateuch and of the “worlds” in the scheme of the later Kabbalah. IF we note that the number 2, just like the letter Bayt which we discussed earlier, is the sign for division and discrimination, then the number 32 will serve well to represent the range of distinctions that are generated in the transitions between 5 worlds. Already in the hidden world of Adam Kadmon there is a certain distinction (signified by the letter Bayt as the beginning of the Book of Bereshit), for else it would not be possible to refer to it as a “world” that contains some components. This primary distinction is becoming more detailed in the world below it (Olam ha’Atsilut) into further distinctions [c]. These distinctions pass further division and distinctions at the world below it (Olan haBeri’ah), and so on at the World of Yetsirah-Formation and then in the world of Assiyah-Action, which is largely apparent to our senses, there are already 32 primary distinctions. The number 32 is associated with Wisdom-Hokhmah, precisely because it requires wisdom to observe the existence of the primary distinctions – as well as of the possibility of annuling these distinctions and return affairs to the state of Unity. We have already mentioned that one representation to the number 28 can be found in our times at the dome of the El-Aksa Mosque at the Temple Mount. It may be even more interesting that the most magnificent representation of the principle expressed by the number 32 can also be found at the Temple Mount – in the magnificent pattern on the ceiling of the very Dome of the Rock. It is likely that contemporary Moslems are not aware of these meanings (much like most Jews nowadays are not aware of the meaning of the numbers and patterns in the Torah), but it is very likely (and there are supporting sources to it) that the Sufi artists-designers of the shrines at the Temple Mount belonged to ancient sects of “Free Masons” and secret knowledge (such as the circles of Pythagorians and Mekubalim), who studied the secrets of the Temple of Solomon and of the Tabernacle, and who strove to have “the Spirit of Wisdom” like Betsal’el (the architect of the Tabernacle) who knew “to combine the letters from which heaven and earth were formed” (Talmud Bavli, Tr. Berakhot 55:1). At any rate, it is noteworthy that in the sacred precinct in Jerusalem there are found even today specific (albeit unrecognized) representations for the secrets of Bereshit and of the Temple. The Twelvefold Pattern Enfolded in Parashat Bereshit The decade pattern of the ten utterances and the ten Sephirot is surely the hidden, and recognized, pattern of Being (HaWaYaH), of the Creation, of Adam and of the World of Tikkun, and we shall still mention and use it a lot in the sequel. But there is still another hidden pattern enfolded in the first verse of Genesis - and which is extended and interpreted in the sequel of the book of Genesis in the story of the sons of Jacob and the founding of the tribes, and in the rest of the Bible in the manner of the camping of the tribes around the Tabernacle and the division of the land into homesteads – and that is the pattern of the Twelve. It is instructive to note that the Sefer Yetsirah, which was the first to make explicit the principle of “The Ten Sephirot”, does not deal with accounts of tens, but prefers counts of 3, 7 and especially 12. We know that the twelve, as in the division of the Zodiac, was very common in the ancient world and also in Israel, and evidence for this abounds in the mosaic floors in synagogues from the Second Temple period and onwards, as well as in hymns to the zodiac signs which apparently were voiced in those same synagogues. It is therfore surprising to find that the Twelve is not mentioned explicitly in the Story of the Creation (and one may even suspect that it is intentionally hidden, so as not to add validity to the worship of the stars and constelations which were current in the ancient world). Yet there is no doubt that this principle was implied. If we accept that the story of Creation-in-six-days amplifies the concept of Cosmos as a cube, then elementary spatial geometry shows us that every cube of six faces also has twelve edges. Whereas the conceptual cube is constructed from the six faces, an actual cube is hewn or cunstructed from material, and when a cube is built in actuality, the construction is through the setting of twelve edges. In the Book of Genesis, too, there is a need for the birth of the tribes and their establishment upon earth in order to realize the divine plan, which is expressed in the pattern of the six days. The Sevenfold Pattern and Sefer haZohar As we have shown above, there are seven words in the first sentence and there are also six paragraphs in the first account of Creation – corresponding to the seven days of Genesis-Bereshit/ The sevenfold pattern is of course, before all else, the pattern of the seven days of creation and the “Seven Sephirot of Construction”. The Zohar equates the seven days to the system of the Sephirot of the Kabbalah. The names of most of these seven lower Sephirot are derived from the verse of David (I Chron. 29:11): “Thine, O Lord-YHWH, is the Greatness-Gedulah, and the Power-Gevurah, and the Glory-Tif’ereth, and the Victory-Netsah, and the Majesty-Hod, for all that is in heaven and on earth is thine, thine is the Kingdom-Malkhut (In the following, these names will be given with few of their multifaceted meanings) The Zohar exegesis for Parashat Bereshit builds the parallels between the seven days of Genesis and the seven lower Sephirot, “The Sephirot of Construction” in great detail. The Zohar deals, as noted, with the first word – Bereshit and translates it to Aramaic: “Bara Shith” – or “created six”. Namely: in the beginning there was created the sixfold pattern of the Sephirot of Construction, and with them the world was created in six stages. Already the Talmud dealt in various passages to the concept of “The letters of Creation”, such as “Betsal’el knew to combine the letters in which heaven and earth were created” (Talmud Bavli, Tr. Berakhot 55:1). Rabbi Akiva (the greatest authority for the Talmud) was known as one who would have an exegesis about each and every letter in the Torah. But it was only about a thousand years later when the Mekubalim in general, and the Zohar and its offshoots in particular, set to formulate a whole systematic scheme, in order to interpret each word and each letter in the account of Bereshit, and to show how there are encoded in them the basic instructions for the building of the worlds. The Zohar thus regards the word ELoHIM – God – as the dynamic combination of the concepts of MI (Who?) and EleH (these), in accordance with the verse (Isaiah 40:26) “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who-Mi created these-Eleh things?”. The Zohar details and presents Creation as a dynamic process within God-ELoHIM, a process in which MI (Who) created – that is brought outside of it – EleH, “These”. The gematric value of the letters of EleH is 36, namely six squared, which reinforces the identification of these EleH with the more overt six “Sephirot of Construction” and the six days of Genesis. Each day of the Creation has a parallel among the Sephirot: The 1st Day – Hesed (Grace, Love), 2nd Day – Gevurah (Severity, Judgement), 3rd Day – Tif’eret (Beauty, Articulation), 4th Day – Netsah (Overcoming, Eternity), 5th Day Hod (Thanking, Splendour) and 6th Day – Yesod (Foundation, Thoroughness). These are the overt Sephirot. We prefer not to rely on gematrias in our exegesis, but in such a case, of using basic numbers and their squares, we deem that the gematrias are based on the authentic numerical patterns and codes of the scriptures. MI (Who), on the other hand, is connected with the number 50 (its gematria value) – a number associated in the Kabbalah with the concept of “The Fifty Gates of Binah (Understanding)”. The number 50 is found explicitly in the scriptures in connection with the counts of the years of the jubilee and of the days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (Pentacost, and literally “weeks”). It is made there of the 49 days of seven weeks (just as the number 36 is six sixes) and an additional day. We can therefore understand the meaning enfolded in this Midrash about the name ELoHIM as containing the revealed and the hidden together. The six sixes of the created world issue from the hidden seven sevens, of the secret of the Sabath, and of the unique One which is above all. (The legend says that to Moses were revealed “the 49 Gates of Binah, but the 50th Gate, the most hidden one, remained hidden from him too). This means that in the world ELoHIM (God) there is a geometrical pattern akin to what we saw in the word BeREShIT – here as the array of EleH (These - 36) explicit Laws of Nature arrayed like a square (of 6x6), and nested within the square (of 7x7) of the hidden MI-Who? – whereas the One, which is even more hidden, connects with them all. In this sense, Elohim-God has a three-strata structure or Image – Tselem Elohim – in which Man was created. The process of Creation is cyclical: Creation is the division of the hidden MI-Who? From the (potentially identifyable). In the course of creation, EleH – These – are separated from the MI – Who? – fal down, and become manifest as heaven and earth. Their ability to reunite is dependent on the answer to the question “Me bara Eleh?” (Who created These?). In the very ability to reach in consciousness the One God – these return and connect. The process of the rectification of the divinity, the return of the Elohim to the pristine unity, is tied to our reaching awareness of God, and in the realization and answer to the question “Who created These?”. The identification of Bereshit with Bayit – House – and Rosh – Head – forms a framework for the entire Bible. The Hebrew Bible is sealed by the declaration of the emperor Cyrus (whom the prophet called Messiah – Isaiah 45:1) in the end of the Book of Chronicles: “The Lord-YHWH God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He has charged me to build Him a house in Yrushalayim (Jerusalem), which is in Yehudah (Judea); Whoever (Mi) is among you of all his people – the Lord-YHWH God be with him, and let him go up”. So “the House of God” is already implied in the first three words of the Bible, and in the verse that ends it. This final call for action seals the intention in the creation of heaven and earth. [the figure of the first verse of Genesis as “The House of Elohim”] This means that the whole Torah could be regarded as given primarily for the goal of teaching how to build the House of YHWH. And indeed, if we examine the Torah quantitatively we shall find that whereas the Torah allocates for the whole description of the whole process of Genesis, the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host, including humankind mere 34 sentences (and in the strict action, until “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host”, only 31 sentences) – then the erection of the Tabernacle, a man-made temporary structure, is described in det5ail through 256 sentences that deal with the plan of the Tabernacle, its design and construction, and another 75 sentences about the design of the priestly garments and their preparation [d] This means that from the perspective of the Torah – the erection of the Tabernacle-Mishkan, which is the prototype of “The House (of God) in Jerusalem which is in Judea”, is seven times and more (and in a different version: ten times) more important than the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host. The Torah, which begins with Bereshit, which comprises as we have seen both “House” for the “Head”, continues then to elucidate the conditions required for completing the creation of the world through the construction of the “House” in order to house the divine “Head”, the divine presence – the Shekhinah – in this world. The sages have noted that the construction of the Tabernacle was made in the same pattern that heaven and earth were created. Just as the story of Bereshit repeats in three different versions (see below, section 3), so also the description of the erection of the Tabernacle is repeated in much detail three times: first time in the description given by the Lord to Moses – which corresponds with the level of Creation-Beri’ah and revelation; second time in the description given by Moses to Betsal’el – which corresponds with the level of Formation-Yetsirah; and another, third, time about the construction itself – namely at the level of Action-Assiyah. Now – as we have noted the correspondence in the patterns – we can return to the different stories of the creation. The first creation story is sealed with the aim, which is the subject of the Sabbath – which in the Kabbalah is that of the Sephirah of Malkhut - “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. And by the seventh day God ended His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and He sanctified it; because in it He rested from all His work which God had created to be performed”. The concept of Sabbath-Shabat should be understood also in the sense of returning-hashava and answer-Teshuvah – the answer to the question of the meaning of human existence, of returning the world to its creator, to prepare His House and to sanctify the world. II – The Second Creation Story – The Yetsirah Version of Bereshit Yetsirah-Creativity and Yitsriut-Passion: The Tree of Knowledge and the destiny of Adam and the Adamah-Living Earth “These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord-YHWH God-Elohim made the earth and the heavens… And the Lord God (YHWH Elohim) formed Man-Adam of the dust of the ground-Adamah…. And out of the ground-Adamah the Lord God (YHWH Elohim) formed every beast of the field…. (Gen. 2:4,7,19) Here we have the second Story of the Creation, which is entirely different from the first one. Not just different but quite the reverse: Adam is created on the day the creator made Heaven and Earth, before he formed the שיח השדה or the animals. This is no longer the “objective” account of the primordial creation, but the story of Yetsirah, a dramatic story in which humans and their passions are in focus. (The Hebrew word Yetsirah – Formation – is associated with the Hebrew words Yetser – instinctive-emotional urges – that appears later in this story (Gen 8:21), and has to do with Tsur – to form or fashion and its product Tsurah – “Form” or “shape” – as well as with Tsar –“narrow”, and also “enemy” – and its female form Tsarah – trouble. Yetsirah – Formation – has to do with artistic fashioning from already available raw materials, which is distinct from Beri’ah – Creation that is bringing out something entirely new, “ex-nihilo”. But this distinction hardly exists in English. Thus Yetsirah would be translated as “creativity”, yet we should keep the Hebrew distinction in mind). YHWH (YeHaWeH) – Yotser Bereshit But not only is the order of the Creation reversed, but even the main protagonist, the Yotser or the Creator Himself, is called here by a different appelation – YHWH Elohim. There are those Biblical critics who saw in this the vestiges of a negligent editing of two or three different traditions that were preserved. Others see in it the mark of different writers – or even writeress (2). But we do not accept this simplistic explanation as explaining the richness and depth in the story of Genesis, and are looking for a method that calls for this difference and requires it. Let us therfore return to the verse in Isaiah (43:7): “Every one that is called by My Name: for I have created him for Me Glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him”, and to the claim that the world was created, formed, and made in different strata. From this follows that until now the account dealt with Olam haBeri’ah, “the World of Creation”, which is a world of (mathematical and structural) laws, whereas now it turns to deal with Olam haYetsirah, “The World of Formation”, which is the world of creativity, feelings and urges - Yetser. And indeed, this is confirmed by the wording of the text. In contrast with the opening words of Bereshit Bara – more or less “Foremost Created” – here we have vayitser YHWH Elohim et ha’Adam…. Vayetser… kol Hayat haSadeh – “Then the Lord (YHWH) God (Elohim) formed the (or rather “would form” – as explained towards the end) humans (Adam)… and (would have) formed all the animals of the field”. This is why there is now required also a change in the name of the Creator and Fashioner - YHWH [e] - a name that can be called upon. For how would a human being call his maker when he calls Him(/Her): Elohim – which is in the plural form? That whose meaning is hidden (the letters of Who (are) These)? Elohim-God is, as we already noted, many different forces/laws, 32 pathes of Wisdom; or – according to its gematria – “The Nature”. Should man cry out and appeal to “the Nature”? But YHWH is a primary form of communication. According to the Torah Or (Torah of Light) of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the “Alte Rebbe” and founder of the important HaBaD school of Judaism), the first letter of this name, the Y’od - which has the (pronunciation and) form of the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, almost a point – is the Tsimtsum-contraction, the wise focusing on the point of what is to be communicated to the other; the second letter of the name, H’eh - which has the expansive form (and pronunciation, like breathing in or out) – is the building and expansion from that point for elucidation; the third letter of the name, W’aw – meaning “hook” and which has the form of a line, and is used in Hebrew as the connector – is the “pipe” (Tsinor) of communication through which the information is transmitted to the receiver; and the additional, final, H’eh, is the building up of the information at the receiver’s mind. Another way to approach this divine name is to relate to its literal meaning – Being, Existence, HaWaYaH – in a grammatical form that signifies both becoming and its cause. The letters of YHWH repeated three times are the letter (in Hebrew) for “Was, Is and Will be”, and the name represents the three of them together, an eternal process of Being which is beyond time and for which Time is completely transparent. The name of YHWH is the name that appears in conjunction with the issues of the Garden of Eden and of the ideal state of Israel in the statue of “the People who know Thy Name”. But through the many generations of exile there has grown a huge avoidance from relating directly to the Holy Name of YHWH, and without reflection there has grown a whole system of strange names (that most often are like words of revulsion) that “succeeds” in making the Jew forget the experience of the Lord his God – and this is perhaps the real expulsion from Eden in our times. (On the other hand, there are many gentiles who have no compunction from trying to call the Lord by names like “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”. Such names are definitely meaningless, and their users, who often regard this name, anyway in derision and revulsion haven’t got a clue what they are referring to. Both gentile and Jew refer to YHWH as a proper name, which is to miss the whole point altogether. Thousands of years after the giving of the Torah and ostensibly basing world culture on the Bible, people’s conception of the divine are more primitive and uninformed than were those of the gentiles in Abraham’s time.) The recoil from “pronouncing the name of the Lord in its letters (lahagot et shem YHWH be’otiyotav”) is based perhaps on a proper sense that it is not possible, in fact, to pronounce the Name in its true level. This is a name that is composed from vowels without any consonants, from the three most subtle letters in the Hebrew alphabet, those that serve to mark the future tense, that which has not yet happened. This “Tetragramaton” name, YHWH, constitutes a perfect representation of the process of creation-formation, in which “things” pass from the realm of taciturn thought to the letters of speech and into action. The description of “a river went out of ‘Eden… and from thence it was parted and branched into four streams” (Gen. 2:10), is also correct for the holy Tetragramaton, YHWH. When the letters of the Tetragramaton become more material (the vowels turn into the consonants nearest to them in pronounciation), this name become realized into four primary meanings, from which the whole world is formed and maintained: 1) 1) Existence – Havayah – and subsistence – Hivuy. As noted above, “was, is and will be” – Haya, Hoveh ve’Yiheye. These comprise the New Adam. 2) 2) Will – Yahav – or Passion – Ta’avah. “The Holy One desired to dwell among the lowly – nit’avah haKAdosh Barukh Hu lishkon batahtonim – and that is why He created the world. 3) 3) Love – Ahavah – without which surely the world would not survive - with all its subjects (like Yohaveha – He would love Her – Ye’ehavuhu – they will love Him – etc. The 13th century Mekubal Rabbi Avraham Abul’afia prophesied that before the Redemption there will be revealed an important Holy Name AHWY. This prophetic name may be associated with the pronounciation of Ehevi – (please) Love (me/us, addressed to a feminine form of the divinity.) 4) 4) Experience – Hawayah – of the presence of the divine in life and action. Significantly, it is in the first Creation Story, when the creator is impersonal, He calls (six times) His creations by names: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night… And God called the firmament Heaven… And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas” (Gen. 1:5, 8, 10), and also “Let us make Adam”. Whereas in His personal appearance in the second Creation Story, He leaves the work of calling names for the Adam. It is the Adam who will fill the world with knowledge and imagination. About the Gematric-Geometric Meaning of the Name of YHWH The Mekubalim have persistently dealt with the numerical meaning of the gematrical value of the name of YHWH, which is 26. In the late Kabbalah of the Holy ARI (the great15th century master of the Kabbalah “The Divine Rabbi Yitzhak Lutia Ashkenazi” and his disciple Rabbi Hayim Vital, there are employed much the gematrias of the name of YHWH with the “fillings” of its letter combinations (the names of AV (72), SaG (63), BeN (52) and MaH (45). It is possible that this excessive dealing with the name is a certain compensation for the Jewish avoidance of using the name as it is spelled and pronounced, but still the question remains – are these numbers meaningful within the Biblical text? It is evident that the number 13 (2 x 13 = 26) is meaningful in the Bible (and the gematrias of 13 for both Ahavah – Love – and Ehad – One – are also quite appropriate). For example, the fact (or incidence?) that the numerical values of the names of the Patriarches make multiples of 26 in a descending series begs attention (Isaac-YITsHaK – 208 = 8x26; Jacob-Ya’AkoV – 182 = 7x26; Joseph-YOSePh – 156=6x26). But our approach gives inherent value for gematrias only when they contain also geometrical message. The symbolic-geometrical meaning of the number 26 is in its connection with the cubic number of 27. 26 relates to 27 in the relationship of n-1. This means that from the central point within a cube, one can observe the 3-dimensional space from its 26 directions: 6 faces in directions of Up, Down, Right, Left, Forward, Backward; 12 edges in combined directions (such as up-forward, Left-Down, etc.); and 8 vertices in triple directions (such as Forward-Up-Right, Forward-Down-Left, etc.). These six directions and their combinations have symbolic meaning of the relationship of one person to another or the environment. The number 26 therefore represents the sum of our types of relationships to others and to the world around us, and enables to sum up the rectification of our relationships in each of the types of humanly meaningful relationships. The full realization of the divinity in this world means the recognition of infinity beyond the restrictions that surround one in all the twenty-six meaningful directions one might be oriented in. The Names of the Protagonists of the Drama of the Tree of Knowledge Let us relate to the names of the three protagonists of the second Creation Story, the Yetsirah account, or the Story of the Garden of Eden: Serpent-Nehash, Eve-Havvah and Adam. All three represent different modes of knowledge, and they are tested, therefore, through the Tree of Knowledge. The Serpent – Nahash – as to do with guessing/speculation – Nihush. The Serpent-Nahash develops many theories, and would like to verify them, but is not interested in testing and experiencing by himself. The Serpent guesses why the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden, he guesses what will happen to the one who would eat from it, but prefers to remain outside the action and not to change himself. He leaves the experience – Havayah – to Havah-Eve, who prefers to live – Hayah – and experience – havoh – by herself. Adam is the middle position between thesee two. Adam medameh-imagines the experience-Havayah to himself, but joins the action only when pressed. On the face of it, there is no great difference between speculation-Nihush and imagination-Dimyon, but in fact there is a considerable qualitative difference. The Adam, who was indeed formed from the taciturn earth-Adamah, was also frormed with a similarity-Dimyon to his maker – on one hand, it is God’s wish “Let us make Mankind-Adam in our image-Tselem after our likeness-kiDemutenu, whereas the human aspiration os Adameh le’Elyon – “I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14). The whole pattern of the Adam is the pattern of the Tree of the Sephirot (see the preceding chapter), which is also the pattern of the Torah-the Tree of Life with its 248 (ReMaH) members and 365 (ShSaH) sinews, in body and in soul. The serpent, who does not want to change – is punished by change. He was erect, but was sentenced to go upon its belly. (In this context, a side note: today we are aware, through recent research on the ancient dinosaurs, that the reptiles – among which the serpent belongs – were indeed with legs and erect bodies, so that the snakes that survived them, indeed lost their legs). No less interesting is the common vulnerable state of these three protagonists. Traditional interpreters and translators refer to the word Arum (Gen. 3:1) given about the serpent as “crafty”, but this word means in Hebrew also “naked”. The it is well known that the serpent is the animal that sloughs (sheds) its skin, and remains in certain times naked and vulnerable (and aware of it). Adam and Eve did not feel naked before they ate of the fruit of the Tree, but through the experience there came the knowledge. So the serpent managed to make them naked as he was. The three of them are representatives of an alternative world – the paradisical world, of the Garden of Eden. We are dealing here, as noted, with the World of Yetsirah-Formation. The beautiful expression of the World of Yetsirah/Formation is the place called the Garden of Eden (Gan be’Eden), which forms a very intuitive image that appeals to every person. We all regard a beautiful garden, full of trees, as a desirable thing. In translations, the Garden of Eden is caled “Paradise”, from the Persian word – that was also absorbed in the Hebrew language – Pardes. The word Pardes appears in the last and latest part of the Hebrew Bible. Thus the beloved appears in the Canticles (4:13) as Pardes Rimonim – an orchard of pomegranates – while the poet of Ecclesiastes (2:5) describes the ultimate riches through the Pardes: “I made great works for myself…. I made gardens ans orchards (Pardesim)…..”. In the Talmud we meet again with the Pardes, with the four sages who entered it and what happened to each one. The medieval scholars would translate this as PaRDeS or as the acronym for Peshat-literal, Remez-hint, Derash-exegesis and Sod-mystical/ secret (meanings of the Biblical text), but it seems that the intention (Ezrahi, 1997) of the sages was to the original meaning, to the Garden of Eden (regarded as the Holy of Holies in the Temple), to the passage through the Cherubs and the “bright blade of the revolving sword” (Gen. 3:24), with the attending dangers, for entry to the Tree of Life. The image of the ideal garden is thus deeply imprinted in the human condition (something like the “D.N.A Gene” – which remarkably has the same letters as the Hebrew “GaN AdeN”). This is not fortuitous that at present – the end of the Sixth Millenium according to the Hebrew Calendar, namely, the end of the Sixth Day of This World, the “day” of the creation of Adam and his appointment for the caretaker of the Garden – there is an amplification of ecological consciousness, with the strong nostalgia of return to nature and to the Garden. But it should be noted that Adam was not introduced into the garden for pleasure, but “to till it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15). That is: if Adam’s primary task were accomplished, if humankind only succeeded to keep the ecosystem undamaged from the beginning – there would have been no need to disturb the ecological balance further through the development of agriculture. This is important to remember: according to the Biblical view – the garden of Eden is still extant, and the way to it and to the Tree of Life is a possibility, that is why it was necessary “to place “the Keruvim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and the bright blade of a revolving sword to guard the way to the tree of life”, so as to make it 'difficult to those who seek to return to the garden, so that one cannot return there just by whim. And since the Temple was destroyed and the Cherubs upon the Ark of the Covenant disappeared – the re-entry is still more difficult and dangerous, as would be testified by the experience of those four sages. About the Topology of the Garden of Eden “And a river went out of (the Garden of) Eden… and from thence it was parted, and branched into four streams”: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Hiddeqel and the Prat. Let us try to examine what are these four rivers. Concerning the Hiddeqel and the Prat – there is little doubt that what is meant are the rivers called the Tigris and the Euphrates. Their origin is in the inner Taurus Mountains in Turkey, whence they separate, and then return and unite a little North of the city of Basra, in order to flow into the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf. Concerning the Gihon and the Pishon there is no semantic continuity, especially since the only water source that kept the name Gihon is the pulsing (Gah) spring around which there developed Jerusalem. But this is a tiny spring, compared with the immence water sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris (albeit there is a prophecy that in the future a great river will go forth from Jerusalem). It is necessary, therefore, to examine the further hints given by the scriptures about their basins – the Pishon “which compasses the whole land oh Havilah, where there is gold”, whereas the Gihon “it compasses the whole land of Kush”. From these RaShY deduces that these are the Nile sources, the White and the Blue Nile, which separate in East Africa, in the present Ethiopia, and return to unite near Khartum, to flow together into the Midetreanean. IF so, we are dealing here precisely with the four rivers that gave the life to “The Fertile Crescent”, and which enabled the existence and development of humans in ancient times. It was not for nothing that when Lot, Abraham nephew, decided to settle “at the plain of the Yarden (Jordan), that it was well watered everywhere” (Gen. 13:10) it was compared to the waters of the Nile “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Mizrayim (Egypt)”. Upon reading the sentence: “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and branched into four streams”, we intuitively assume there was a single source from whence flow these four streams – but this is not so. Not only do these rivers not meet, they even surround the whole region of the Fertile Crescent, from the North and from the South. We should then assume a source river that surrounds the whole region of the fertile crescent as if in a circle, and gives the gift of water, that is – the vitality (Hayut). The river that went out of Eden seems to have disappeared, along with the garden, but left behind the four streams, that still preserve a few facets of paradise. Without them, the whole wide region that is considered as the cradle of human civilization would have been a desert. The Bible was written in Hebrew, the language of the people of “Ever haNahar” – the other side of the River – and is marked by the character of that environment. The site of the Biblical Garden of Eden must have been here, in the Fertile Crescent that is in the Middle East. But since this region is, in fact, at the center of the earth’s continents [f], at the sacred center-point for all humankind, the ancient Biblical parable (Meshal haKadmoni) holds a universal meaning for all humankind. But it is not mere geographical territory that we are dealing here with, but mainly with psychological-symbolic territory. We have already related to the river from Eden as surrounding. With this, we return to the Kabbalah symbols, where a world surrounds a world: the World of Assiyah-Action is the central circle, and is limited to concrete things. It is in turn surrounded by the World of Yetsirah, with which we are dealing here, and whch is structured to contain still much more. Thus, for example, the separation of the surrounding one into four streams: The pattern of the Four is called in the ancient Hindu teachings “Mandala” (which actually means in Sanskrit a circle), and is a model of the world. Such a model, made of four elements, is not exclusive to Indian beliefs, but is common around the world, ever since the times of ancient Sumeria. The psychologist Jung reported that people who have entered into chaotic states, and have started to reorganize their lives – are inclined to draw Mandala-type drawings with clear fourfold symmetry. Often these drawings also contained two trees in the middle. This cannot be explained away by referring to the Judeo-Christian tradition within which Jung operated, because such elements appear already in ancient Sumeric art. We shall leave for a moment the fourfold pattern and return to the Kabbalah sages, who form from the story of Genesis seven-fold patterns: seven mansions of the lower paradise and seven of the higher paradise, and against these seven kinds of earth and seven regions of hell. These patterns are based on the pattern of the Creation in seven days and the Sabbath, as well as on the first seven words of the Torah (Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’Shamayin ve’et ha’Arets – “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth”). The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil “The tree of\life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:9). These two trees bring the drama of the Garden of Eden to a climax. The Tree of Life has all the flow of life in it. Man is lodged in its web, like a fish in the water, and is not able to perceive it, because he cannot (as long as he lives) to regard life in a detached view that brings awareness. The Tree of Knowledge, on the other hand, requires a certain detachment, an examination and inquiry, and then merger, just like with the sexual union which Da’at-Knowledge represents (“And the man knew Havvah his wife” (4:1) At first, Adam was only forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. As if God was wary lest His children acquire education and knowledge. Ostensibly, if they would only taste of that tree, there would be revealed to them the most arcane secrets of the Creation. But what was that knowledge to which “the eyes of them both were opened”? “and they knew that they were naked”. Thus – sexual knowledge, the ability of making a sexual selection, is the most basic knowledge, is the one that makes them to be as gods. This is also the way that God discovers that the transgression was made “And He said – who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee that thou should not eat?” Till here, we have became familiar with the kind of man that was completely under the rule of the urge (Yetser) and instincts, who “there was not found a help to match him” – or as RaShI interpreted, he was constantly in heat. When he ate of the Tree of Knowledge, sex became a conscious thing. “And the man knew Havvah his wife”. And clothing is the counter-measure. There is no incest (Giluy Arayot – Hebrew for “uncovering the genitals”) without clothing. The Aggaddah goes still further and brings an assumption that Adam kept himself separate from his wife for a hundred and thirty years (RaShI for 5:3). Such separation would have been inconceivable under the conditions of ignorance of Adam in the Garden of Eden. The urge, or natural inclination, is of the characteristics of the Garden of Eden, whereas choice belongs to the outside world. It is for a reason that there formed traditions that identified the Tree of Knowledge with wheat (e.g Genesis Raba 15:7). According to this theory – Adam was punished with the subject of the transgression. They sought to eat of the fruit of this garden – and that was given them, forever, with the good and the bad of it. There ended the age of “Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely it” (2:15) and instead there came the age of “in the sweat of face shalt thou eat bread” (3:19). We have already mentioned in the introductory chapter the importance of the cultivation of cereals for the development of human civilization, a development that transformed humankind from the pastoral stage to that of fixed settlement – that ostensibly saved us from the fear of hunger, but got us bound in slavery to the earth, and initiated the problems of population density. These brought about the formation of social classes, to landowners and serfs, but – in the spirit of the Tree of Knowledge – also to further specialization and knowledge. In other words – which we shall further discuss in the next section – here lie the roots of the continuing conflict between shepherds and agriculturists, between those that get enslaved to property and the people of freedom, between the patriarchs, who were taken out of their land and brought to other places, and their offspring, who were educated by the Torah to become permanent settlers. There is, therefore, no wonder that the picking of the fruit was attributed to the woman, who was – as the archeologists concur – the mother of the domestication of plants and of agriculture. The men were the hunters-gatherers and they pushed for the wandering life, whereas the women became the growers of cereals and fruits at fixed places, and pulled the men for sedentary life upon their homesteads. The entire Torah is a testimony and chastisement about the dangers to the human spirit entailed by servitude to the soil. Idolatry was strongly connected with the tenure of the soil – at every place in the world, the cult of the gods of corn required sacrifices, including human sacrifices, and in the environmental conditions of the Middle East the main object of idolatry was to force the gods of the sky to bring the rain. That is why already in the first story about the beginning of humankind – the story of Adam and Eve and their sons – this conflict is already enfolded. In the next stories, about the further attempts to re-establish humankind, we shall see the development of this tension. In the first war between brothers in human history according to the Book of Genesis – the struggle between Cain and Ebel, was the prototype of the struggle between agriculturists and pastoralists. “Noah Ish ha’Adamah” (the husbandman of the soil (really “living earth” or “Gaia”), was the next one chosen to establish a new humankind. After he failed, Abraham and his family, a family of wandering shepherds, were chosen for the next experiment. It was important for the editors of the Torah to teach a nation of agriculturists who incline after the deities of the land that their forefathers were shepherds, men free from servitude to the soil and its negative influences, and who worshiped a single superior God, and not the gods of Canaan, the idols of rain and of cereal. Cain, the founder of the first city, is the representative of the great idolatrous kingdoms, such as Egypt, Assyria and Babylon that were enslaving. The tribes of the Torah were meant to have a collective memory of free shepherds, unfettered by social and religious domination, whether they themselves come to settle in great walled cities or when dominated by urban cultures. The self-image of the nomad is of a relatively free person, who can develop his potential through choice and not through coercion. It is the woman, as we noted, who observed the fruit of the Garden of Eden and the potential of its separation from the tree and the cultivation of its seed. The Kabbalah regards the transgression not in the actual eating from the tree, but in eating the fruit, or in its language in “the cutting of the shoots” (kitsuts biNeti’ot). The trees of the Garden of Eden are formed, according to the Kabbalah, in the pattern of the Tree of the Sefirot, and that man and his wife transgressed in that they separated the Sefira of Malkhut (“Kingdom”, concrete reality) from the rest of the Sefirot (the more abstract and causal realms), namely, they chose to separate the food part of the tree from its other parts, which together comprise the whole of the tree. This utilitarian behavior neglects the reciprocal relations and the factors that form and create and limits itself to the pleasurable things that issue from them. This is an exit from the world of Formation (Yetsirah) and certainly from the World of Creation (Beri’ah), which is the world of Health (Beri’ut) and wholeness. (In this context it is fit to recall the “Indian Bible”, the Bhagavad-Gita, according to which human vocation is “to act without desiring the fruit of action”, a practice that even Mahatma Gandhi confessed at the end of his life that he did not succeed to accomplish). We shall deal in the sequel extensively with the implications of the characteristics of the Tree of Life upon those who eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and just note here that the curse of the Tree of Life of our times – namely of science and technology – has brought eventually to a human population increase that it is doubtful whether the earth can accommodate. The Tree of Life "ועץ החיים בתוך הגן",, namely, embedded in the garden, in its overall pattern and in every detail thereof. This is a distinct case of the Self-similarity noted before. Therefore, the Tree of Knowledge may be embedded within the Tree of Life and vice-versa, as we saw that the knowledge hidden within the Tree of Knowledge includes also the knowledge of death. Ostensibly, this is the punishment expected to those who eat of it: “for on the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die” (and really death is not “punishment” for the case of the Tree of Knowledge, because the creator then says (3:22) that if the man would only eat later of the Tree of Life he would not die, from which we may surmise that the man was due to die from his inception. So the eating from the Tree of Knowledge only brings the fact of death into awareness. Then did God regret the punishment with which He initially threatened the first man? For according to the text, Adam lived long (930 years) and begot many offspring! But the real, and automatic, punishment of any man who eats of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was the knowledge of death, the fear of death. The very awareness of death changed his conception of time and all his being. The names of the two sons of Adam testify to this conception. With the one there is an attempt to contend with this dire verdict and to increase possessions – Qinyan – from thence the name Qayin, with the other there is resignation in the manner of Ecclesiastes: “Havel havalim ha’Kol Hevel” (“vanity of vanities, all is vanity). Therefore, according to the view of the Alte Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the RaShaZ, the founder of the HaBaD (Chabad) movement, in his book Torah Or), there is a measure of compassion in the new edict that was issued on Adam “and now what if he puts forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eating, live foe ever”. rather than a punishment. For initially, the eating from the Tree of Life was not prohibited. But after they became knowers of “Good and Evil”, and good and evil became mixed within them, they would most likely suffer for the rest of their life. The angels, like God Himself, are not influenced by the evil, but they are capable of observing all the worlds with a detached, objective or quasi “scientific” observation. Whereas man ends up fighting with evil for the duration of one’s life, and it is better for him that this struggle will be relatively short, for a few decades, rather than endure for millenia. Ever since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Trees of Life and of Knowledge must balance each other, and the struggle is now at its fiercest. Let us then examine the assumption we brought at the introduction chapter, according to which we are living now at the sixth millenium, namely at the “Sixth Day of Creation” – the epoch of the creation of Adam. A close examination shows that this Sixth Day started about 1240 C.E. It is quite interesting that these are the years in which there developed the Kabbalah in general and the Book of the Zohar in particular, and there became known the Tree of the Sefirot, as the pattern of the Trees of Life and of Knowledge. A thousand years earlier there3 was developed the symbol of the Cross, the symbol of the separation between body and spirit, between earth and heaven and which denies the concept of the Tree of Life, through the belief in the doctrine of “The Original Sin” – the “sin of the First Adam” – from which there is no restitution. The concept of the “Original Sin” is a late invention of the founder of Christianity, St. Paul, (with preludes at the Dead Sea sect) – an invention that gave the church an enormous power over its believers, by explaining to them that they are all sinners from nature and would certainly perish in hell unless they obey all its dictates. Since then there took root in humankind the opinion that the moral of the entire Bible, and especially of the story of the Garden of Eden, is to tell about “The Original Sin”. But in fact in the entire original Hebrew Bible there is no single divine teacher or prophet (who dwell at length upon the iniquities of the people) who saw in the story of the Tree of Knowledge any special “sin” that is worth mentioning. Moreover, the whole pattern of the Torah, as we have shown and will do so in length in the sequel, is of ongoing restitution and not of an unredeemable original sin [g], and the exegesis of the Church fathers is an arbitrary interpretation based on a small section that goes against the entire context of the Torah. Regarding the terrible sufferings that this doctrine inflicted upon many millions of human beings, we may well see in the formation of this doctrine (of the original sin) the very original sin of Christianity. The Kabbalah - and especially the Zohar – believe that the whole vocation of man is in the ability to change and mend. IT was not for nothing that the Zohar called the Cross “The Tree of Death”, as an antithesis to the elaborate Tree of Life it pointed to. For this comparison between the two religious conceptions I would like to add here also the Moslem conception, whose impression appears in the decorations of the Dome of the Rock at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and especially upon the inner side of the Dome. These decorations can be seen as an attempt to depict the Garden of Eden [h]. In my opinion, the pattern within the Dome can be seen as a visual representation of the Tree of Life and a visual exegesis upon the Sefer Yetsirah, within the canons of the non-figurative Islamic art. In this pattern there are 32 special figures, decorated with vegetal motifs, that surround the center which is related to the One God and which form – together with the spaces between them – 160 “leaves” or “fruits”. Each couple of such figures – along with the spaces between them, form one Kabbalistic tree, and the whole ensemble is tree-like, which is made of many trees, and which is difficult to perceive as such, because we are, in a sense, inside it, as components of it. The Encounter with the Tree of Knowledge in our Time. Since the middle of the sixth millennium (and in the Common Era, since the 18th century), science – namely “scientia” – namely Knowledge – knew a tremendous development. Human knowledge started admittedly to accumulate in former millennia, we know about Chinese wisdom of Greek philosophy. But the tools, the technologies, have gathered momentum only in recent times. Two main thrust stood behind this development: that of achieving a military advantage, and that of achieving economic advantage. The welfare of the whole world as a living system – namely the Tree of Life – has never been the main concern of humankind. But the amazing outcomes of the technological race, will force us to return and to taste of the tree of life. The human population of the earth has grown five-fold in the last hundred years. If we desire only the “fruit” of the Tree of Knowledge – of science – and disregard its whole structure, the mutual connections among its branches, and maintain them as separate scientific branches and disjoint disciplines; if we will not wise up to use the bio-ecological knowledge about the importance of the mutual relationships among the various natural factors, if we will not bring the technological development into a sustainable stead-state, the Tree of Knowledge will overwhlem us, an ecological disaster will happen, and we shall bring on us the curse of the Tree of Knowledge by our own hands: “cursed is the ground (Adamah – the Living Earth and female for of Adam) for thy sake” (3:17). It seems that there cannot be a more important message for our times – we live now at the end of the sixth millennium and just before the encounter with the Tree of Knowledge. In order to overcome the environmental holocaust it is necessary that all human beings upon the earth will decide and act together, and from this issues the transformation of all humankind to an individual – into Adam. 3rd Genesis Account – the World of Action version of the Works of Bereshit The third version of the Story of Genesis appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 5, and it brings a still different version about the creation of humans: “This is the book of the generations of Adam (Man). In the day that God (Elohim) created humankind-Adam, in the likeness of God he made him; male and female he created them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam (Man), in the day they were created”. Let us compare this new version to the two former versions of the story: Undoubtedly, the version we study now is syntactically similar to the 2nd version and goes still further from the 1st version. Let us lay them in parallel: 2nd version, Gen. 2:4 3rd version, Gen 5:1 These are This is the book of the generations the generations of the heaven and of the earth of Adam (Man/humankind) when they were created. In the day that the Lord God In the day that God created Adam made the earth and the heavens In the likeness of God He made him . male and female He created them. There is, thus, a parallel between heaven and earth and Adam – being both male and female – and there is a parallel between “EleH-these” (as a part of the essence of God-Elohim = MI EleH, as we explained above), which is a kind of counting, and book-Sefer, which is accounting and noting. The Zohar sees in “The Book of the Generations of Man” (Sefer Toldot Adam) mentioned here a real book, a book in which are noted and counted all “the forms of the generations of Adam”, namely all the sould of the children of Adam (and of Enosh in the sequel): “This is the book for the generations of Adam: for pictures (figures, namely souls). Rabbi Yitzhak said – the blessed One showed the first Adam the pictures of all the generations that will come into the world, and of all the sages of the world and the kings of the world who are destined t rise for Israel. When he saw that King David is born and quickly die, he told (God) from the years (which should be mine) I add for him seventy years. So they sutracted from Adam 70 years and God gave them to David… “This is the Book” (Sefer) – really a book. As we have already explained that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden, God brought him down a book through the holy angel Raziel (“God’s Secret”), who is charged with the holy heavenly secrets. In this book were engraved superior marks and the Holy Wisdom, and seventy-two types of wisdom were spreading from it into 670 engravings of the ulterior secrets… At first, he used to study it every day and to use the treasures of his Lord, and the supreme secrets, which were not known to the ministering angels were revealed to him. But when he transgressed the command of his master the book flew away from him, and Adam would טופח his head and cry, and went into the waters of the Gihon spring onto his neck… In that hour, the Blessed One gave a cue to the angel Raphael (God’s healing), who gave him this book back. And Adam used to work with this book, and left it for his son Seth and all his offsprings until it reached Abraham, and with it he knew how to contemplate the glory of his master. All this has already been explained, and this book was also given to Enoch and with it he gazed at the highest Glory” (Zohar for Genesis, 358-365). This is not a fixed predestination, not as the Church taught – an unredeemable “Original Sin”, but a possibility of re-writing, or “re-biographing”. Adam saw that King David is born and dies at birth – and he changed this. He was punished by the book flying away from him – “and Adam would hang down his head and cry” – and the book was returned to him. But the possibility for restitution rises also from the plain verses. In the last sentences of the second Story of Genesis is written: “And Adam (Man) knew his wife again; and she bore a son, and called his name Shet; For God, said she, has appointed (shat) me another seed instead of Hevel (Ebel) whom Qayin slew. And to Shet, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh: then men began to call upon the Lord (YHWH) by name”. Shet is a giving new birth, or new creation, or re-writing - namely a Tikun-restoration – instead of Hevel who was slew by Qayin. And indeed, “the generations of Adam” is the story of the children of Shet and Enosh, and not of Qayin, who is no more mentioned in the scriptures, as if he withdrew to another country, in which perhaps there did not occure the flood. (It is possible to interpret Qayin -Cain as pertaining to “China”, namely, to conclude that Cain is responsible for the formation of the larger part of humankind (the Mongol and Amerind races) which is not included in the part of humankind (Hebrew Enoshut, from the name of Enosh), namely the children of Shem, Ham and Yefet (the Semitic, Hamitic, and Caucasian races) with whom the Biblical history used to deal till now). This third version seems to disregard issues of flora and fauna, which are so important in the first two versions, and deal exclusively with humans and their deeds. But as we shall see, it is actually this version that contains the most extreme “ecological message”, as it is the story that comes to discuss the matter of Noah. The Tikun-restoration for the issue of the two contending brothers is so clear and pronounced, that even the names of the generations of Qayin and of his brother that replaces him – Shet – are almost completely parallel: Shet Enosh Qayin Qenan Hanokh (Enoch) Mahalal’el Irad Yered Mehuya’el Hanokh Metusha’el Metushelah Lemekh Lemekh Yaval, Yuval, Tuval-Qayin and Na’amah. Noah The two lists count six generations of people bearing almost identical names, and we cannot assume this is coincidental. This is rather a deliberate re-writing of “the generations of Adam” which lays the foundations of humankind from Shet and Enosh, rather than from Qayin. The most interesting figure in this list, which will still incite the imagination of the coming generations, is the figure of Hanokh (Enoch), who was considered in the apocrypha and in the Dead Sea scrolls, and eventually also in the Kabbalah, as “The Minister of the Face”, the archangel Metatron, the cosmocrator in charge of the whole world. But the comparison above makes his figure even still more interesting. The first “Hanokh” is the son of Qayin, on whose name the first city was called: “And Qayin went out of the presence of the Lord, and dwelled in the land of Nod (namely wandering), to the east of Eden. And Qayin knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Hanokh: and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Hanokh”. The name of the son, and therefore also the name of the city, has to do with restoration, education-Hinukh, namely, the way by which humankind strives to improve and restore culture from one generation to the next. It is written about this Hanokh “ Since it is not written expressly that Hanokh died, many traditions assumed that he did not die but ascended alive to heaven, as was the case with the prophet Elijah. Thus there formed a group of Biblical figures who exist beyond and over death. This group includes Hanokh and Elijah, as well as the enigmatic figure of “Malkitsedek (Melchitsedek) King of Shalem, priest for the superior God לבדוק . This group pertains to the sevrets of the ultimate redemption. In the next chapter we shall therefore return to examine the symbols connected with the name of Hanokh – the first city and the heavenly figure, and also the connection with the figure of Malkitsedek ing of Shalem, and glean a hint and expression of the existence of a perfect heavenly city, against the earthly city that needs education and improvement.

Bereshyt:Genesis

2009-12-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

Bereshyt/Bereshit/Beresheet/Berechit
Bereshyt/Bereshit/Beresheet

400 10 300 1 200 2
Gematria: 913

Yom Echad

Bereshyt Bara Elohim Et Ha Shamaim Ve Et Ha Eretz [Gematria = 2701]

berê'shiyth bârâ' 'elohiym 'êth hashâmayim ve'êth hâ'ârets

Suares:

Bayt: Containers of existence, existence of containers; duality; thought.
Raysh: Universe containing the existences, containing its own existence.
Aleph: Upspringing of life, intermittant pulsation, invisible, new, always/never present.
Sheen: Creation, cosmic movement, depth of movement, custodian of all possibility.
Yod: Existence, projection of life, negation of existence, continuity in duration of all that duration destroys, manifested existence in time of Aleph.
Tav: Sanctuary of energy, cosmic resistence to life which enables life to manifest.

Bayt-Raysh-Aleph-Sheen-Yod-Tav

Bereshyt is the primal statement of the Qabala, and contains the whole revelation in one word.

We may meditate endlessly on this initial equation which begins the story and compresses the whole process of creation descibed as the interplay of life/death and existence into six letters, and become that revelation in ourselves.

Bereshyt describes creation in a language where the signifier is the signified, and the map is the territory. It states that everything that is is the result of one dual energy, brought into creation by the Aleph (life/death, timeless) and Yod (existence, time) of Bereshyt.

Instead of poetic, but arbitrary translations, it is possible to follow the text of Genesis letter by Hebrew letter and watch coherent, visible structure emerge, in which every letter contributes to the whole meaning, and the whole is in every letter.

In order to get past the conditioning of our colloquial translations, we can begin reading with the analogy of formal logical statements or thermodynamic equations, and consider each Hebrew letter as one element of a basic set of 22 archetypal signifiers or energetic/formative structures. Each letter has both an energetic/numerical and a semantic/alphabetic aspect, each letter is composed of other letters of the basic set which determine its meaning and value and each letter does, or does not contribute to forming other letters of the set.

With that background, we can analyze the first 5 verses of Genesis in terms of the development (following Bereshyt) of these pairs of equations: heaven and earth; formless and void; darkness and light; (innner and outer light) night and day; morning and evening. All these pairs develop from the structure of Bereshyt.

We can then transcend these translations and follow the descendents of Aleph and Yod into manifestation, as they annouce the primary themes of Genesis, and begin the adventure of discovering a totally unseen dimension of a familiar reality.

Bayt-Raysh-Aleph: Life (consciousness) arises endogenously in the universe as a result of the containment of cosmic energy. It is not endowed from without, but arises as a result of God's presence in his creation.

Sheen-Yod-Tav: All of creation is the result of the interplay of the two players in the game of life, life/death and existence. Aleph, timeless pulsation of life springing from containers, Yod, the evolutionary process of existence in duration, caught between cosmic movement and ultimate resistence. This theme pervades Genesis from the first word and is elaborated intensely in the energy-equations of the first verses of Genesis and in the primary equation pairs of Elohim and YHWH, man and woman, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and so on through Abraham and Lot, Issac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, etc.

GENESIS CHAPTER 1:1 Mistranslated, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

In the original letter-numbers this is:

Bereshyt Barah Elohim et Ha Shamaim Vay et Ha Eretz.

Bereshyt: Containers of existences, existences in their containers. Universe containing the existences, containing its own existence. (Movement of the Universe.) Upspringing of life, intermittent pulsation invisible, not thinkable; life always new, always present, never present.

Creation! Vertiginous movement, immeasurable movement, movement that transcends all conception. In the hidden depths of movement is the secret of existence. And this movement is the custodian of all possible possibilities. Existence, projection of life, negation of existence. (Everything that exists must cease to exist.) Apparent betrayal of life. Revelation! Life-death is One. And the collision, the shock of passive resistance of the mass, the hard, the dry, the stones: blessed resistance! Without resistance there could be no birth. This is the becoming.

Thus are introduced the two partners playing against each other: Aleph springing from its containers, and Yod smitten by the "breath" of Sheen pressing against all that resists it so as to contain it.

Suares, Cipher of Genesis, p.88

In our digitalized translations of Genesis we forget that not only are there no vowels, but there are no punctuation marks, including spaces in the original. Without being distracted by "In the beginning" and "create(d)" we can see the whole structure of double creation elaborated as both an inner and outer process in the second Bara. The focus of the equation is the Yod of existence. This double creation in Bereshyt-Bara is the basis for the double creation of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Genesis (outer and inner creation).

Bara Shyt Bara

1 200 2 400 10 300 1 200 2

It is necessary to release ourselves from idiomatic translations of this text, and begin to think analogically in terms of energy and structure. As soon as we accept "In the beginning" we are lost in a land of irrational thought.

Bara, Bayt-Raysh-Aleph, is creation, considered not as an event in the past, but as an on-going, everpresent miracle of manifestation. Bara, creation, states the problem. The solution, or the most basic "how" of creation is given in the rest of the equation: Shyt, Sheen-Yod-Tav. As a result of Aleph's presence in the universal container of Bayt-Raysh, Existence (Yod) can manifest between the movement of the universe (Sheen) and its ultimate capacity to resist (to) Life-Death (Tav).

The second Bara, Bara-Shyt-Bara, completes the initial statement, and brings a second creation into full view: manifestation is a result of a double creation of an inner (the contained) and an outer (the container) life. This double creation is defined as existence.

So it is not just conventional translations that we need to abandon, but also conventional modes of thought, if we are to begin to enter the world contained within the equations of Genesis. If we do, we will find completely new story, of which the story we know is a shadow, and our interpretations the shadows of shadows.

Then, the true, inner story of Genesis, the story of how it is that anything at all exists and Man's place in God's creation, will unfold with the full complexity and beauty of the universe that it creates.

In Hebrew, each letter has its own spelling and structure. The first letter of creation is Bayt, but Bayt is spelled Bayt-Yod-Tav, so Yod and Tav are brought into existence in a latent form by Bayt. If we expand Bara, we see that it already contains the its own solution, the Sheen-Yod-Tav of Bereshyt:

Bara

Bayt, Bayt-Yod-Tav contains: Bayt, Yod, Tav, Waw, Dallet, Lammed, Mem.
Raysh, Raysh-Yod-Sheen contains: Raysh, Yod, Sheen, Waw, Dallet, Lammed, Tav, Noun.
Aleph, Aleph-Lammed-Phay contains: Aleph, Lammed, Phay, Mem, Dallet, Tav, Waw, Hay.

Three letters bring thirteen into manifestation and foreshadow everything in Genesis 1:1 up to the Tsadde of Eretz.

Bereshyt: Full Expansion
The Thoughts of Man

22 Autiot Yassod + Finals

Elohim
Elohim

40/600 10 5 30 1
Gematria: 86/646

Yom Echad | Archetypes of Genesis

Suares: "Total process through which timeless Aleph becomes Yod which is of time. This process sets in motion the organic functions of living beings. Existence is projected into the passive multitudes of resistence. These allow themselves or do not allow themselves to be fertized after the manner of the living and the dead waters."
--Cipher of Genesis, page 79.

Bereshyt Bara Elohim

Aleph-Lammed-Hay-Yod-Mem
Aleph : infinite, timeless, intermittant, sign of the unknowable, creation
Lammed : organic movement, functional, existent
Hay : archetype of Life itself
Yod : existence, duration in time, foundation of actuality
Mem : maternal waters (Maim), projection of resistance into organic/existence, where it becomes the passive creative matrix for existential life (Noun, 50)

Far from signifying some abstract conception of a "God," Elohim is an exact equation for the total evolutionary life process in the universe. Again, the two partners, Aleph and Yod, who made their appearance in Bereshyt, now in an organic, evolutionary role, driving the life process. Aleph (infinite unknowable consciousness) sets in motion organic life (Lammed-Hay); existence (Yod) then proves fertile, or not.

"In the beginning, God created ..." is an invitation to leave rational thought behind, an invitation taken in almost every case. The unthinkability of this thought is rarely tested, as Gershom Scholem points out in commenting on R. Isaac Luria's doctine of Tsimtsum:

This paradox of Tsimtsum -- as Jacob Emden said -- is the only serious attempt ever made to give substance to the idea of Creation out of Nothing. Incidentally, the fact that an idea which as first sight appears so reasonable as "Creation out of Nothing" should turn out upon inspection to lead to a theosophical mystery shows us how illusory the apparent simplicity of religious fundamentals really is. Scholem, Major Trends, Schocken 1995, p.253

Readers of English/Christian translations of the "Old Testament" (Hebrew Tanakh) may not always be aware of the actual Hebrew words translated as "God" or "The Lord" or "The Almighty" and may miss the significance of the different usages. There are many explanations for the usages of the two principle sacred-names of the Old Testament, Elohim and YHVH.

In brief, Elohim is the evolutionary process, while YHVH is Life-In-Existence, the goal of the involutionary process.

Elohim appears 32 times in Chapter 1 of Bereshit/Genesis.

Elohim
In Hebrew, Elohim is written in two alternative ways, according to the Qabala. Both terminate in MEM, but this may take the value 40 or 600. The spelling is ALEPH-LAMMED-HAY-YOD-MEM. The number-schemata are therefore either (1.30.5.10.40) or (1.30.5.10.600). We shall write the former as ELOHIM and the latter as ELOHIM .

Both words signify a projection into life on Earth of the Cosmic Drama of ALEPH playing the game against YOD. Incidentally, the word YOD is spelt YOD-WAW-DALLET and means hand in Hebrew. Since DALLET conveys the notion of resistance and response to challenge, the Hebrew meaning of hand could be rendered into English by "that which holds its own ."

MEM (600) signifies the highest achieved state of VAV (6). Since VAV is fertility, impregnation or planting, this MEM therefore symbolizes fruitfulness in the highest degree. Any achievement of cosmic significance is indicated by 600.

LAMMED (30) is the projection into existence of movements of change; the transformation of what exists; transfer or transmission through what exists.

Hence ELOHIM reads:

The unknowable power or energy (ALEPH) transmitted into and through the organic movement (LAMMED) of life (HAY) plays out the game with its own projection (YOD) in existence as "the waters" (MEM) of the biosphere.

Hence MEM (40) states the process. ELOHIM with MEM (600) expresses that the highest state of achievement of the process is in action: extending its scope, as it were, more and more. Through the action of ELOHIM the "waters" of the biosphere teem and seethe with living things, all participating individually in the process ELOHIM.

In ordinary usage, MEM (600) is the plural ending, indicating the notion of a numerical fruitfulness by which the one becomes many, becomes a multitude.

The cosmic game is indicated, in code, in ELOHIM by the presence of ALEPH and YOD together. Life (HAY) is in the middle, maintaining a precarious balance (precarious because the drama is hazardous) between opposing impulses of ALEPH-LAMMED and YOD-MEM acting from either side. The drama is being played out on the stage of life by two duelling actors. The fight is carried on through life and this is ELOHIM. ELOHIM , therefore, expresses a simultaneous emanation of life and of its physical supports, as an evolutionary process. It is not the deity it is supposed to be.

The juxtaposition of the letters ALEPH-LAMMED is a schema signifying that the energy of ALEPH acquires the power to project changes in existence. Without this LAMMED, ALEPH is not able to become organically alive in HAY. So ALEPH in isolation is like the enormous energy locked up inside the atomic nuclei, having an explosive potency not yet released. ELOHIM without the HAY would symbolize an enormous density of existing things on the Earth (YOD-MEM) locked in conflict with ALEPH-LAMMED, the timeless energy of ALEPH endowed with the potency to bring about tremendous changes. The out-come of their conflict would manifest as cataclysmic upheavals succeeded by comparative quiescence, the two alternating as the rallies of the game shifted it from one court to the other. Historically, whole continents, seas and mountain-ranges appeared and disappeared again and again as the Earth writhed between the hammer and the anvil of a doublefold energy, explosive and compressive. As we know from Earth history, this situation persisted for the two thousand millions of years of geological time that preceded the action of the biosphere as a reconciling force. At a certain moment, this conflict opened up the issue of ALEPH, and the Earth was able to produce the archetype ADAM. The cycle of evolution of life commenced to elaborate the living forms of the biosphere in order to resolve a further stage of the cosmic game playing itself out through ELOHIM.

The letter HAY is in a central position amongst the nine archetypes, the remaining eight are equally balanced on either sie -- four on one side, four the other. Life is a balancing factor in the cosmic game. It can transmit an impulse of reconciliation. Through ELOHIM, the conflict can maintain a state of equilibrium which evolves through stages of finer balance until a cycle of evolution is completed. Then a further cycle begins, and so on. They are not cycles in time but simultaneous. Vegetable life and animal life coexist as different modes of equilibrium whose seven-fold structure is exemplified in the biolgical classification of: Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum and Kingdom. This is the projection of ZAYN (7) into life on Earth (the Seventh "Day"). The cyclic structure of vegetable and animal life, however achieved, is only a static, identical recurrence of the same modes of equilibrium. In them, ALEPH is, as it were, taken around closed cycles aganin and again, indefinitely. The cosmic game is being played out through an endless recurrence of the the same prototypes and not getting any further. ALEPH can only burst out of this closed cycle into a further cycle in a human being : ADAM This is why, in the book of Genesis, ADAM is described as "the living image" of ELOHIM. ADAM has with him as the DALLET of his name the resistance which must respond to the challenge of the ALEPH driving towards a further stage of fullfilment in MEM (600). In harmonizing these warring natures with him, he is ABRAM. In succeeding and thereby gaining a new life, he becomes ABRAHAM.

Suares, Tree II

Scholem on Bereshyt Bara Elohim:

There are certain spheres of Divinity where questions can be asked and answers obtained, namely the spheres of "this and that", of all those attributes of God which the Zohar symbolically calls Eleh, i. e., the determinable world. In the end, however, meditation reaches a point where it is still possible to question "who", but no longer possible to get an answer; rather does the question itself constitute an answer; and if the domain of Mi, of the great Who, in which God appears as the subject of the mundane process, can at least be questioned, the higher sphere of divine wisdom represents something positive beyond the reach of questioning, something which cannot even be visualized in abstract thought.

Ihis idea is expressed in a profound symbol: the Zohar, and indeed the majority of the older Kabbalists, questioned the meang of the first verse of the Torah: Bereshith bara Elohim, "In the beginning created God"; what actually does this mean? The answer is fairly surprising. We are "told" that it means Bereshith -- through th medium of the "beginning," i. e., of that primordial existence which has been defined as the wisdom of God,-- bara, created, that to say, the hidden Nothing which constitutes the grammatical subject of the word bara, emanated or unfolded, -- Elohim, that is to say, its emanation is Elohim. It is the object, and not the subject of the sentence. And what is Elohim? Elohim is the name of God, which guarantees the continued existence of creation insofar as it represents the union of the hidden subject Mi and the hidden object Eleh. (The Hebrew words Mi and Eleh have the same consonants as the complete word Elohim). -- In other words, Elohim is the name given to God after the disjunction of subject and object has taken place, but in which this gap is continuously bridged or closed. The mystical Nothing which lies before the division of the primary idea into the Knower and the Known, is not regarded by the Kabbalist as a true subject. The lower ranges of God's manifestation form the object of steady human contemplation, but the highest plane which meditation can reach at all, namely the knowledge of God as the mystical Mi (Who), as the subject of the mundane process, this knowledge can be no more than an occasional and intuitive flash which illuminates the human heart, as sunbeams play on the surface of water -- to use Moses de Leon's metaphor."

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends, Schocken, 1995, p.220

See: Belimah | Bereshit | Adam | YHWY

22 Autiot Yassod + Finals

Um bom ato muda tudo

2009-12-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

UM BOM ATO MUDA TUDO - PARASHÁ VAIERÁ 5770 (06 de novembro de 2009)

“Quando o Sr. Schainberger foi morar em Israel, ele ainda era um jovem rapaz religioso que queria tentar construir sua vida na terra sagrada do povo judeu. Era um período conturbado, de muitas guerras com os inimigos árabes, e mesmo que ele já havia passado da idade de servir o exército, teve que servir por um tempo em uma unidade especial. Por alguns meses ele foi escalado como guarda noturno de uma cidade que fazia fronteira com os árabes. Revezava o trabalho de vigilância com outros jovens rapazes que também tinham ido morar em Israel.

Quando a festa de Pessach começou a se aproximar, todos os soldados começaram a se preocupar. Apenas o jovem Schainberger era religioso, mas todos queriam fazer o Seder de Pessach com suas famílias. Um dos turnos ia das 8 da noite até as 3 da manhã, e o próximo turno era das 3 da manhã em diante. Quem pegasse o primeiro turno ficaria sem o Seder de Pessach. Como ninguém se voluntariou para trabalhar naquele horário, os oficiais decidiram que iriam fazer um sorteio.

Durante vários dias o jovem Schainberger rezou muito para que ele não fosse sorteado naquele turno. Chegou o decisivo dia e, para o seu alívio, ele foi sorteado para o segundo turno. Ele ficou muito feliz, mas quando olhou o rosto do soldado que havia sido sorteado para o primeiro turno, viu que ele estava arrasado. O jovem Schainberger começou a refletir e chegou à conclusão de que mesmo se ele chegasse em casa às 3 da manhã, faria de qualquer maneira o Seder de Pessach de acordo com a lei judaica, mas aquele outro soldado, que não era religioso, certamente iria direto para a cama sem cumprir a Mitzvá. Então, sem pensar duas vezes, ofereceu trocar o turno com o outro soldado, que aceitou com grande alegria. O jovem Schainberger percebeu uma lágrima escorrendo nos olhos daquele jovem soldado.

Mais de 20 anos se passaram e o Sr. Schainberger já era um arquiteto que buscava divulgar seu nome pelo país. A situação não estava fácil, ele não tinha muitos clientes e precisava de um empurrão na sua carreira. Foi então que ele escutou que o governo de Israel estava pretendendo reformar a área em volta do Muro das Lamentações e havia lançado um concurso para escolher o arquiteto que faria o projeto. O Sr. Schainberger entendeu que aquele poderia ser o empurrão que ele tanto procurava e foi imediatamente se inscrever. Esforçou-se muito, conseguiu fazer um belo projeto e foi sendo aprovado durante todas as fases eliminatórias. No final, ficou apenas o Sr. Schainberger e outro arquiteto. Uma comissão faria o julgamento de qual seria a proposta vencedora.

Quando chegou o dia da decisão, o Sr. Schainberger estava muito nervoso. O futuro dele dependia do seu sucesso naquele dia. Cada membro da comissão expunha sua opinião e dava seu voto. A votação seguia empatada, até que chegou a vez do último jurado da comissão votar. Uma pesada tensão estava no ar. Olhando bem os dois trabalhos, ele decidiu dar a vitória ao Sr. Schainberger, que comemorou muito com seus amigos e familiares. Quando os ânimos se acalmaram, o último jurado chamou o Sr. Schainberger de lado e falou:

- Você se lembra que certa vez você trocou de lugar com um soldado, para dar-lhe a oportunidade de fazer o Seder de Pessach?

O Sr. Schainberger ficou branco. Quem poderia saber disso? Nem ele mesmo se lembrava direito daquela história, já havia passado tanto anos! Então o homem sorriu para ele e disse:

- Eu sou aquele soldado. Por muitos anos eu guardei uma dívida de gratidão por você. Hoje eu paguei a bondade que você me fez há tantos anos” (História Real)

Ensinam os nossos sábios que um dos pilares do mundo é o Chessed (bondade) que fazemos com o próximo. E não sabemos onde podem recair os méritos espirituais de cada ato de bondade que fazemos.
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No final da Parashá passada, D'us comandou para Avraham Avinu a Mitzvá de fazer um pacto com Ele, o Brit-Milá. Avraham escutou a ordem de D'us e fez em si mesmo o Brit-Milá com a idade de 99 anos. E a Parashá desta semana, Vaierá, começa justamente no terceiro dia depois do Brit-Milá, o dia em que a pessoa está mais debilitada e dolorida. Avraham, apesar das dores que estava sentindo, sentou-se na porta de sua casa para que nenhum viajante passasse sem ser notado. D’us, vendo o sofrimento de Avraham por não receber visitantes em casa, mandou 3 anjos disfarçados de beduínos. Imediatamente Avraham correu para acolhê-los e alimentá-los.

Se prestarmos atenção nos versículos iniciais da Parashá, percebemos uma pequena contradição. No momento em que os anjos chegam, assim diz o versículo: “E (Avraham) levantou seus olhos e viu, e eis que 3 pessoas estavam parados sobre ele” (Bereshit 18:2). Alguns versículos depois está escrito “... e colocou (a comida) diante deles, e ele (Avraham) estava parado sobre eles sob a árvore, e eles comeram” (Bereshit 18:8). Por que no começo está escrito que os anjos estavam sobre Avraham, mas no final está escrito que Avraham estava sobre os anjos?

Às vezes, ao elogiar uma pessoa, cometemos um erro sem perceber. Quando vemos alguém fazendo uma boa ação, dizemos “Ele é um anjo”. Mas aprendemos da nossa Parashá que dizer que somos anjos é limitar o nosso potencial, pois podemos ser ainda mais elevados espiritualmente do que os anjos. Quando Avraham recebeu os anjos em sua tenda, a Torá descreve que eles estavam sobre Avraham, isto é, em um nível mais elevado do que ele. Mas depois que Avraham fez Chessed, se esforçando para receber convidados e cuidar deles, a Torá diz que Avraham estava sobre eles, isto é, chegou a um nível mais elevado do que os anjos. Mas como é possível um ser humano, uma criatura de carne e osso, se tornar mais elevada do que um anjo, uma criatura espiritual criada para cumprir a vontade do Criador?

Existe uma grande diferença entre os anjos e os seres humanos. Os anjos têm um elevado nível espiritual, mas eles não fazem o bem porque escolheram, eles não têm livre escolha. Eles já foram criados neste nível elevado, e não têm nenhum mérito por isso. Já o ser humano tem livre escolha, e precisa se esforçar para fazer o que é correto e bom, e com isso ele se eleva em um nível ainda maior do que os anjos. Para fazermos o bem é necessário vencer nossa má inclinação, e por isso cada bondade que fazemos equivale a um grande mérito.

Como Avraham conseguiu, com seu ato de “Achnassat Orchim” (receber convidados), se elevar mais do que os anjos? O Avraham não fez apenas Chessed, ele teve Achavat Chessed (amor pelo Chessed). Ele estava doente e, portanto, isento da Mitzvá. Mais do que isso, D’us fez o dia ficar mais quente para que nenhum viajante passasse e Avraham pudesse descansar. Ele poderia ter ficado deitado na cama, poderia pensar “Hoje estou passando mal, os outros que cuidem dos viajantes do deserto”. Mas Avraham não pensou assim, ele não conseguia ficar deitado sabendo que alguém no deserto poderia estar precisando de um prato de comida, de um copo d'água ou de uma sombra para descansar. A dor do Brit-Milá era grande, mas a dor de não fazer Chessed era ainda maior.

Existem vários níveis de Chessed. Podemos dar alguns trocados diretamente na mão de um pobre. Podemos doar de forma que o pobre não saiba que fomos nós que doamos, para que ele não se envergonhe. Melhor ainda se nós também não soubermos para quem estamos doando, assim não cobramos nenhum agradecimento do pobre. Mas qual é o maior nível de Chessed que podemos fazer a outro ser humano? Uma dica está na continuação da Parashá. A Torá descreve o nascimento de Ytzchak, filho de Avraham. Aos dois anos ele foi desmamado, como está escrito “A criança cresceu e foi desmamada. Avraham fez uma grande festa no dia em que Ytzchak foi desmamado” (Bereshit 21:8). A palavra “desmamar”, em Lashon Hakodesh (língua sagrada na qual a Torá foi escrita) é “Lehigamel”, que tem a mesma raiz das palavras “Gamal” (camelo) e “Gmilut Chassadim” (fazer bondades). Explicam nossos sábios que palavras que contém a mesma raiz, mesmo que tenham significados completamente diferentes, estão de alguma maneira conectadas entre si. Qual a conexão entre desmamar, fazer bondades e o camelo?

Quando Adam Harishon deu o nome aos animais, ele incluiu no nome a essência de cada um deles. Qual a essência do camelo? Damos para ele uma grande quantidade de água antes de começar uma viagem para que ele aguente a viagem toda sem precisar tomar mais água. A mesma idéia encontramos quando se desmama uma criança, isto é, damos para ela leite materno o tempo suficiente para que ela possa se tornar uma criança forte e possa começar a se alimentar de outras coisas. Portanto a essência da raiz “Gamel” é ajudar ao outro de forma que ele não necessite mais de nossa ajuda. Daqui entendemos que a verdadeira bondade (Gmilut Chassadim) que podemos fazer a outro ser humano é dar para ele a oportunidade de conseguir seu sustento sozinho, de maneira honrosa, sem precisa voltar para pedir esmola novamente. Isto significa que o maior nível de Chessed que podemos fazer com alguém faminto não é dar-lhe um peixe, e sim dar-lhe uma vara, um anzol e ensiná-lo a pescar. Pois para o ser humano é algo muito humilhante ter que pedir esmola, e a melhor ajuda é dar uma oportunidade para que ele possa trabalhar e conquistar seu próprio sustento.

E da maneira que nos comportamos com os outros, D’us se comporta conosco, como ensinam os nossos sábios “Aquele que faz bondades recebe bondades”. Portanto, se queremos que D’us escute as nossas rezas e nos ajude, antes de tudo precisamos escutar as pessoas necessitadas e ajudá-las.

SHABAT SHALOM

Rav Efraim Birbojm

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HORÁRIO DE ACENDIMENTO DAS VELAS DE SHABAT:
São Paulo: 19h04 Rio de Janeiro: 18h48 Belo Horizonte: 18h49 Jerusalém: 16h06
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Este E-mail é dedicado à Refua Shlema (pronta recuperação) de: Frade (Fanny) bat Chava, Chana bat Rachel, Léa bat Chana; Pessach ben Sima, Eliashiv ben Tzivia; Chedva Rina bat Brenda; Israel Itzchak ben Sima; Eliahu ben Sara Hava; Moshe Leib ben Tzipa; Avraham David ben Reizel; Yechezkel ben Sarit Sara Chaya; Sara Beila bat Tzvia; Estela bat Arlete; Ester bat Feige; Sofia bat Carol; Moshe Yehuda ben Sheva Ruchel; Esther Damaris bat Sara Maria; Yair Chaim ben Chana; Dalia bat Ester; Ghita Leia Bat Miriam; Chaim David ben Messodi; David ben Beila; Léia bat Shandla; Dobe Elke bat Rivka Lie; Avraham ben Linda; Tzvi ben Liba; Chaim Verahamin ben Margarete; Rivka bat Brucha; Esther bat Miriam, Sara Adel bat Miriam, Mordechai Ghershon Ben Malia Rachel, Pinchas Ben Chaia, Yitzchak Yoel Hacohen Ben Rivka, Yitzchak Yaacov Ben Chaia Devora, Avraham Ben Dinah, Avraham David Hacohen Ben Rivka, Chaya Perl Bat Ethel, Bracha Chaya Ides Bat Sarah Rivka, Tzipora Bat Shoshana, Levona Bat Yona e Havivah Bat Basia, Daniel Chaim ben Tzofia Bracha, Chana Miriam bat Chana, Yael Melilla bat Ginete, Bela bat Sima; Israel ben Zahava; Miriam bat Nacha Blima.
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Este E-mail é dedicado à Leilui Nishmat (elevação da alma) do meu querido e saudoso avô, Ben Tzion (Benjamin) ben Shie Z"L, que lutou toda sua vida para manter acesa a luz do judaísmo, principalmente na comunidade judaica de Santos. Que possa ter um merecido descanso eterno.

Este E-mail é dedicado à Leilui Nishmat (elevação da alma) dos meus queridos e saudosos avós, Meir ben Eliezer Baruch Z"L e Shandla bat Hersh Mendel, que nos inspiraram a manter e a amar o judaísmo, não apenas como uma idéia bonita, mas como algo para ser vivido no dia-a-dia. Que possam ter um merecido descanso eterno.
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Este E-mail é dedicado à Leilui Nishmat (elevação da alma) de: Avraham ben Ytzchak, Joyce bat Ivonne, Feiga bat Guedalia, Chana bat Dov, Kalo (Korin) bat Sinyoru (Eugeni), Leica bat Rivka, Guershon Yossef ben Pinchas; Dovid ben Eliezer, Reizel bat Beile Zelde, Yossef ben Levi, Eliezer ben Mendel, Menachem Mendel ben Myriam, Ytzhak ben Avraham, Mordechai ben Schmuel, Feigue bat Ida, Sara bat Rachel, Perla bat Chana, Moshé (Maurício) ben Leon, Reizel bat Chaya Sarah Breindl; Hylel ben Shmuel; David ben Bentzion Dov, Yacov ben Dvora; Moussa ben Eliahou Cohen, Naum ben Tube (Tereza); Naum ben Usher Zelig; Laia bat Morkdka Nuchym; Rachel bat Lulu; Yaacov ben Zequie; Moshe Chaim ben Linda; Mordechai ben Avraham; Chaim ben Rachel; Beila bat Yacov; Itzchak ben Abe; Eliezer ben Arieh; Yaacov ben Sara, Mazal bat Dvóra, Pinchas Ben Chaia.
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Para inscrever ou retirar nomes da lista, para indicar nomes de pessoas doentes ou Leilui Nishmat (elevação da alma), e para comentar, dar sugestões, fazer críticas ou perguntas sobre o E-mail de Shabat,favor mandar um E-mail para ravefraimbirbojm@gmail.com
(Observação: para Refua Shlema deve ser enviado o nome da mãe, mas para Leilui Nishmat deve ser enviado o nome do pai).
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Forum Gêral de Judeus.Net -> KADDISH
por dámaris tavares - Sunday, 30 August 2009, 23:33
B\"H

Kaddish!

A oração de Santificação é parte vital e integral das rezas diárias judaicas. Estrategicamente posicionado em certos estágios da reza, o Kaddish funciona como uma ponte de diferentes formas.

Genericamente falando, existem dois tipos de Kaddish: (a) o Kaddish Rabínico. que é recitado depois do estudo da Torá ou discursos homiléticos; e (b) o Kaddish dos Enlutados, que é recitado pelos enlutados e está associado à ascensão da alma.

Ambas as formas de Kaddish são invocadas universalmente. O Kaddish Rabínico é recitado não somente após profundos estudos, discussões ou julgamentos haláchicos eruditos, mas também depois do estudo ou discussão de pregações e estórias da Torá pela maioria de Judeus, para quem o estudo da porção diária do Talmud possa ser muito difícil.

Da mesma forma, o Kaddish dos Enlutados é recitado pelos descendentes de todos os Judeus, não somente dos grandes e justos. Mesmo para alguém que era ignorante e pecador, deve-se mostrar honra e respeito recitando-se o Kaddish em sua memória. Além disso, todo enlutado deve recitar o Kaddish (veja o Shulchan Aruch quanto às regras específicas), não importando qual seja sua situação pessoal.

Assim, o Kaddish evoca a idéia de que todos os Judeus são especiais, pois, ao dizermos “Yitgadal, exaltado...”, mesmo o Judeu comum tem um impacto em todo o Povo Judeu e acrescenta grandeza e santidade ao Santo, Abençoado seja Ele.

O Kaddish Termina, A Alma Ascende

Esta faceta de nosso costume de concluir o Kaddish um mês inteiro antes do Yortzeit enfatiza nossa forte fé na eficácia de nossa ação positiva de ajudar à alma a atingir seu lugar no paraíso o mais cedo possível.

Além do costume descrito acima, existem outros costumes que prescrevem que o Kaddish seja concluído somente uma semana ou um dia antes do final do ano de luto. Esta prática minimiza os bons efeitos do costume. Já que a Torá é a Torá da bondade, ela logicamente prescreveria a precoce declaração de bons méritos para que a alma do falecido possa se elevar ao seu lugar no paraíso no menor tempo possível – um mês inteiro antes do Yortzeit.

Tudo isto levanta uma outra questão: Por quê nós dizemos o Kaddish no dia do Yortzeit ao final dos 12 meses de luto? Não será paradoxal? Tendo concluído a recitação do Kaddish ao final dos 11 meses (pelos motivos positivos explicados antes), por quê recitar o Kaddish novamente no Yortzeit?

Poderia-se sugerir que o Kaddish ao final dos 12 meses é semelhante ao Kaddish recitado a cada ano no Yortzeit. O objetivo do Kaddish anual é o de provocar a ascensão da alma de nível em nível e não está conectado ao assunto de julgamento.

A verdade é que mesmo que o primeiro Yortzeit tenha semelhanças aos futuros Yortzeits, ele também tem uma conexão com o primeiro ano de luto: ele representa o período final do primeiro ano de luto e, como tal, está relacionado ao próprio período de luto. Conseqüentemente, ele pode ser um Yortzeit, mas também é parte dos 12 meses. O que nos traz de volta à questão, por quê dizer Kaddish ao final dos 12 meses quando nós acabamos de interromper o Kaddish no final dos 11 meses?

Consideremos antes um outro aspecto.

O Kaddish é uma Escada

Há uma explicação paralela exposta nos ensinamentos esotéricos do Arizal sobre a função da reza do Kaddish na ordem das rezas diárias. O objetivo do Kaddish, de acordo com esta interpretação, é o de provocar uma elevação de mundo espiritual em mundo espiritual, de Asiyah para Beriyah para Yetzirah para Atzilut. Estes mundos são representados pelos quatro estágios da reza aludidos na alegoria da “escada sobre o chão e cujo topo alcança os céus” (Bereshit 28:2). Existem quatro degraus na escada e existem quatro pontos de ascensão na reza da manhã nos quais o Kaddish é recitado. Estes “degraus de Kaddish” permitem ao indivíduo se elevar ao mundo mais superior e, então, alcançar outros quatro degraus descendentes nos quais a revelação de cima pode ser trazida para baixo, para a realidade do mundo, novamente através da recitação do Kaddish. (Há um total de dezesseis recitações de Kaddish durante as três rezas diárias e elas formam a estrutura deste processo de subida e descida).

Quando estudamos o significado do texto da Kabbalah, vemos que, de fato, estamos falando de subidas muito elevadas.:

Yitgadal – exaltado e santificado seja Seu grande Nome.

Em essência, estamos provocando um aumento aparente na grandeza e santidade do Senhor, bendito seja Ele. Pois nós pronunciamos: “Possa Seu grande Nome ser abençoado...”. Nós somos capazes de produzir bênçãos ainda maiores até mesmo no Nome de D\'us.

Nós podemos agora perceber como a recitação do Kaddish pela alma que se foi de um justo irá causar uma elevação para a alma, para subir de um nível elevado a níveis ainda mais elevados no Jardim do Éden (“paraíso”).

Maiores explicações são necessárias neste ponto.

A simples observação nos diz que há um texto para o Kaddish. Nós dizemos o mesmo Kaddish por um Tzaddik, com a intenção de ajudar a elevar sua alma ao mais alto nível do Jardim do Éden, e nós recitamos exatamente o mesmo Kaddish para os nossos entes queridos que se foram e que talvez não fossem tão justos em suas vidas. Nós até usamos o mesmo texto quando recitamos o Kaddish para uma pessoa que precisaria que o Kaddish fosse dito por todos os doze meses!

O Kaddish Traz Salvação

É uma manifestação da infinita misericórdia de D\'us, Abençoado seja Ele, que Ele determine o caminho da salvação de forma a depender da recitação do Kaddish pelos enlutados. “Yitgadal – exaltado e santificado seja Seu grande Nome”. É esta reza que causa a mais elevada ascensão na alma.

É interessante notar que existem outras áreas nas quais a associação do mundano com o sublime acrescenta força ao sublime. Filosoficamente, esta simbiose encontra sua fonte na Torá e mitzvot e está incluída na ordem de enobrecimento dos mundos. O Todo-Poderoso, o Próprio D\'us, usa este padrão:

Pois assim disse o Elevado e Exaltado, que habita até a eternidade, e Seu Nome é Sagrado: “Entre os sublimes e os sagrados Eu habito, e com os oprimidos e humildes em espírito, para reviver o espírito do humilde e para reviver o coração do oprimido” (Yeshayahu 57:15).

Quem pode reviver “o espírito do humilde?” Somente o “Elevado e Exaltado” que habita “entre os sublimes e sagrados”. O mesmo princípio se aplica no caso do Kaddish: para que se possa salvar a alma do Judeu modesto (o espírito do humilde), o Kaddish deve ser invocado: “Exaltado e santificado seja Seu grande Nome!”.

Primeiro Yohrtzeit – A Ascensão Revelada

Nós agora podemos examinar a fundo a lógica de se dizer o Kaddish mais uma vez no encerramento dos 12 meses. A recitação do Kaddish durante 11 meses foi feita com o propósito de ajudar à alma se elevar de nível em nível. Em continuação a estas subidas, dizemos Kaddish novamente após os 12 meses, pois é chegado o momento não do salvamento da alma do julgamento, mas o momento quando a salvação e a ascensão pré-arranjadas serão reveladas. (Enquanto que, ao final dos 11 meses, nós encontra mos somente o tema da salvação).

Apesar dos costumes e práticas do Yortzeit aos 12 meses estarem geralmente associados às questões do luto, apesar disso, a ascensão provocada pelo Kaddish recitado ao final dos 12 meses é uma substancial subida e é muito mais elevada do que meramente ser salvo do julgamento, em cujo caso os aspectos negativos são removidos, permitindo à alma escalar de nível em nível no Jardim do Éden e se deleitar na glória da Shechinah.

Nós, agora, enfrentamentos um outro paradoxo. Explicamos que o Kaddish produz uma ascensão para o falecido e minimiza o julgamento; nós, portanto, encerramos a recitação do Kaddish para uma pessoa comum após os 11 meses em respeito à alma que partiu. Agora não está claro por quê encerramos a recitação do Kaddish para um Tzaddik após onze meses.

No caso do Tzaddik, o objetivo do Kaddish é somente positivo. Então, por quê parar?

A resposta é que, até mesmo para um homem ou mulher justos, um novo estágio de escalada se inicia após os onze meses que é incomparavelmente superior ao que era antes. A elevação nos mundos do Jardim do Éden alcançáveis pelo Tzaddik após onze meses é semelhante ao salto-quântico da pessoa comum após onze meses. Porque o salto vivenciado pela alma do Tzaddik naquele momento é tão grande, é incompreensível dizer Kaddish, pois mesmo as palavras elevadas do Kaddish são relativamente fracas e não podem alcançar a energia suprema da ascensão naquele momento. Entretanto, quando o 12º mês é alcançado, a pessoa que diz Kaddish está em um novo e mais elevado nível e, agora, as palavras do Kaddish podem, novamente, ajudar a causar a elevação da alma.

E Sobre o Jejum no Yortzeit?
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Forum Gêral de Judeus.Net -> ROSH HASHANÁ
por dámaris tavares - Thursday, 27 August 2009, 12:33
B"H

Rosh HaShaná

O Significado de Rosh HaShaná

Saiba mais: Compre o livro: Festas Judaicas e Dias Santos

O primeiro dia de Rosh HaShaná é o aniversário do dia em que Adão e Eva foram criados. Naquele dia, eles também pecaram ao comer o fruto da Árvore da Sabedoria do Bem e do Mal. E neste dia, D'us os julgou.

Atualmente, a cada ano, neste dia, todas as pessoas são julgadas. A decisão é feita a respeito de que tipo de ano cada um de nós terá, baseado não somente em nossas ações, mas também em nossas intenções, em nossa resolução de fazermos melhor e em nosso arrependimento.

Não pode haver um rei sem um povo. D'us criou os humanos pois Ele desejava ter criaturas para as quais dedicar sua bondade. Mas D'us não queria criaturas cujo único propósito era servir e sugar sua bondade. O bem é muito mais apreciado quando é recebido por merecimento. Então D'us nos criou, pessoas com livre arbítrio, que podem escolher o bem, e trabalhar por isso.

O maior bem que uma pessoa pode ter é um relacionamento verdadeiro com D'us. Neste mundo, esta relação significa trabalhar ao máximo para o bem. No Mundo Vindouro (Olam Habá), a relação será receber o máximo bem, não como um presente, mas como um prêmio conquistado.

Então, quando Adão e Eva foram criados, o propósito da Criação foi concretizado. A primeira parte pelo menos: neste mundo, onde o trabalho pelo bem acontece. Não vem ao caso a história de terem comido o fruto proibido, pois isto é assunto para outro texto.

Sendo este o início da história do mundo, D'us se tornou Rei neste dia. Então, o mote de Rosh HaShaná é o Reinado de D'us.

Esta é umas das orações que dizemos em Rosh HaShaná e Iom Kipur:

Deixe nos relatar o poder da santidade deste dia, pois este é grandioso e assustador. Nele, Seu Reinado será exaltado em nossa orações, Seu trono será reafirmado com bondade, e o Senhor sentará no trono da bondade com a verdade.

É verdade que o Senhor sozinho é quem julga, prova, conhece e presta testemunho, é Aquele que escreve e sela, conta e calcula, Aquele que lembra tudo que foi esquecido. O Senhor abrirá o Livro das Crônicas - e ele se lerá - e não haverá dúvida sobre sua veracidade.

O grande shofar será soado (no Céu), ainda mas um som leve e lento será ouvido. Anjosse apressarão, temor e terror os cercarão, e eles dirão: "Esteja atento, é o Dia do Julgamento, esta nos dizendo para juntar-nos ao Guardião Celestial para o julgamento!" Pois se as pessoas da Terra forem consideradas culpadas, e esta Terra for destruída, nem mesmo os anjos serão poupados.

Toda a humanidade passará perante Ti individualmente, como membros do rebanho.

Como um pastor cuidando de seu rebanho, fazendo suas ovelhas passarem sobre seu bastão, assim o Senho fará passar, contar, calcular e considerar a alma dos vivos, e o Senhor proporcionará as necessidades de Suas criaturas e escreverá seus vereditos.

Em Rosh HaShaná são inscritos, e Iom Kipur selados: quantos deixarão a Terra, e quantos serão criados; quem viverá e quem morrerá; quem morrerá em sua hora predestinada, e quem morrerá antes da hora; quem por água e quem por fogo; quem pela besta, quem pela fome, quem pela sede, quem pela tempestade, quem pelas pragas, quem por estrangulação e quem por apedrejamento. Quem irá descansar e quem irá perambular, quem viverá em harmonia e quem não, quem desfrutará de tranquilidade, e quem sofrerá, quem empobrecerá e quem será feito rico, quem será degradado, e quem será exaltado.

Mas o arrependimento, a oração e a caridade podem remover qualquer decreto do mal.

Pois Seu nome representa misericórdia, e é assim que o Senhor será louvado: difícil de se enervar, e fácil de se apaziguar, pois o Senhor não deseja a morte mesmo de alguém que a mereça, o Senhor quer que ele se arrependa e viva. Até o dia de sua morte o Senhor o esperará; se ele se arrepender, o Senhor o aceitará imediatamente.

É verdade que o Senhor é o Criador, e o Senhor sabe a inclinação das pessoas. Pois somos carne e sangue. A origem do homem é o pó, e seu destino é retornar ao pó. Sua vida é gasta para que ganhe seu pão. Ele é como um ramo quebrado, grama que murcha, uma flor que desbota, uma sombra que passa, uma nuvem que se dissipa, um vento que sopra e declina, pó que voa e um sonho que desaparece.

Mas o Senhor é o Rei, o D'us vivo e eterno!

Não há alcance fixo para Seus anos, e não há nenhum final ao comprimento de Seus dias. É impossível calcular a carruagem angelical de Sua glória, ou esclarecer o poder do Seu nome. Seu nome é digno do Senhor, e o Senhor é digno de Seu nome, e o Senhor incluiu Seu nome em nosso nome.

Agir pelo poder de seu Nome, e mostrar a santidade de Seu Nome através desses que declaram a santidade de Seu Nome, pela glória de Seu Nome honrado e reverenciado, de acordo com o conselho dos Serafim (anjos sagrados), que declaram Seu Nome sagrado nos lugares mais sagrado. Assim faça esses com que esses que moram nas alturas e declaram Seu nome sagrado junto com esses que moram embaixo.

Talvez isto possa dar-lhe um gosto do sentimento e das emoções que nos tomam durante este período. A admiração e temor a D'us, e o conhecimento de que se nos arrependemos, D'us nos concederá uma vida melhor. Porque D'us quer que nos arrependamos.

Fonte : Enviado pelo chaver (ubiratan_rufino@yahoo.com.br

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El significado místico de las letras hebreas, por Gal Einai (presentación)

2009-12-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

IeshivahNet: Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas, por Gal Einai (presentación)

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Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas, por Gal Einai (presentación)

Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas, por Gal Einai (presentación)

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01 - Alef
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

ALEF
La Paradoja: Di-s y Hombre

La alef está formada por dos iud, una en la parte superior derecha, y la otra en la inferior izquierda, unidas por una vav en diagonal. Esto representa las aguas superiores e inferiores con el firmamento entre ellos, como fue enseñado por el Arí z"l ("rabi Itzjak Luria, de bendita memoria", quien recibió y reveló nuevos conocimientos de la antigua sabiduría cabalística).

El agua, es mencionada por primera vez en la Torá, en el relato del primer día de la Creación: "Y el espíritu de Di-s merodea por sobre la superficie de las aguas". En ese momento, las aguas superiores e inferiores eran indistinguibles; su estado es llamado como "agua en el agua". En el segundo día de la Creación, Di-s separó las dos aguas "extendiendo" el firmamento entre ellas.

En el servicio del alma, como enseña el jasidismo, el agua superior es agua de alegría, la experiencia de estar cercano a Di-s, mientras que el agua inferior es agua de amargura, la experiencia de estar lejano de Di-s.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Alef

02 - Beit
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

BEIT
Propósito: Una morada aquí abajo para Di-s

La letra bet, primera de la palabra "casa", se refiere a la casa de Di-s: "Mi casa será llamada Casa de Oración para todos los pueblos". Consta en el Midrash que la Motivación Divina para la Creación, fue que el Santo, Bendito Sea, deseó tener una morada en la realidad inferior. El cumplimiento de este deseo, comienza con la creación del hombre, un alma Divina investida en un cuerpo físico, y prosigue con la multiplicación del hombre, la "conquista" completa del mundo para convertirlo en el reino de Di-s.

La Torá empieza la descripción detallada del Tabernáculo y sus utensillos, con la declaración de su propósito final: "Y me construirán un Templo y moraré en ellos". No dice "en él", explican los sabios, sino "en ellos", en cada uno y uno de los judíos. "Morar en ellos" es en esencia la revelación de Divinidad en el pueblo de Israel, siempre presente, pero a veces "ensombrecida", como en el tiempo del exilio y la destrucción del Templo. La santidad innata del pueblo de Israel, causa que la Tierra Santa se expanda y eventualmente abarque toda la tierra (la realidad inferior), como está dicho: "la tierra de Israel, se extenderá a todas las tierras del mundo".

Bet (bet-iud-tav) equivale numéricamente a la palabra "taavá", que significa "deseo" o "pasión" (412).

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Bet,Beit

1

10 - Iud
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

IUD
El Punto Infinito

La letra iud, un pequeño punto suspendido, revela la chispa de bondad esencial escondida en la letra tet. A continuación del tzimtzum inicial (la contracción de la Infinita Luz de Di-s para hacer "lugar" a la Creación), quedó dentro del espacio vacío un punto potencial e individual o "impresión". El secreto de este punto es el poder del Infinito de contener el fenómeno finito dentro del Si Mismo, y expresarlo en la realidad externa aparente. Una manifestación finita comienza de un punto de dimensión cero, luego se desarrolla en una línea unidimensional y una superficie bidimensional. Esto está insinuado en la escritura completa de la letra iud (iud-vav-dalet): "punto" (iud), "línea" (vav), "superficie" (dalet). Estas tres etapas corresponden en cabalá a: "punto (necudá), "espectro" (sefirá), "figura" (partzuf). El punto inicial, el poder esencial de la letra iud, es el "pequeño que contiene mucho". "Mucho" se refiere al simple Infinito de Di-s, escondido dentro del punto inicial de revelación, que se refleja como el potencial Infinito que tiene el punto, de desarrollarse y expresarse en todo el múltiple fenómeno finito de tiempo y espacio.

Antes del tzimtzum, el poder de limitación estaba oculto, latente dentro de la Infinita Esencia de Di-s. A continuación del tzimtzum, se reveló este poder de limitación, y paradógicamente la Esencia Infinita de Di-s, que originalmente "encubría" el poder de limitación, se volvió ahora El mismo oculto (no de verdad, sino desde nuestra limitada perspectiva humana) dentro del punto de la luz contraída.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: iud,iod

11 - Caf
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

Caf

El Poder de Realizar el Potencial

Las dos letras de la escritura completa de la palabra caf, son las iniciales de dos palabras hebreas: coaj ("potencial") y poel ("real"). Así la caf alude al poder latente dentro del reino espiritual, el potencial de manifestarse completamente en la esfera física de lo real. Di-s debe crear el mundo continuamente; de lo contrario, la Creación dejaría de existir instantáneamente. Su potencial, es entonces actualizado a cada momento. Este concepto se conoce como "el poder de revelar el eterno potencial dentro de la realidad". En el jasidismo se nos enseña que esta debe ser la primera percepción al despertar. De momento que el significado literal de la letra caf es "palma" - el lugar del cuerpo donde se lleva a la práctica el potencial - esta percepción es reflejada en la costumbre de poner una palma sobre la otra al despertar, al recitar la plegaria de Modé Aní: "Te agradezco, Rey viviente y eterno, porque devolviste con misericordia mi alma dentro de mi; Grande es Tu fidelidad".

El poner una palma en la otra, es un acto y signo de subyugación, similar al acto de inclinarse frente a un rey. Cuando uno se inclina, nulifica totalmente la conciencia en presencia del Rey, al poner una palma en la otra, uno entra en un estado de súplica y plegaria al Rey, con el fin de revelar una nueva voluntad en Su corona suprema (deseo) hacia Sus súbditos.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Kaf,Caf

12 - Lamed
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

LAMED
Aspiración: Contemplación del Corazón

En las "Letras de Rabi Akiva", la escritura completa de la letra lamed (lamed-mem-dalet) es la sigla de la frase: "un corazón que entiende el conocimiento" (lev mevin daat). El valor numérico de esta frase, (608), equivale a "corazón" (32) veces "Eva" (19), es decir, "el corazón de Eva".

En su comentario de la historia del Jardín del Edén, el primer episodio del género humano, Rabi Avraham Ibn Ezra declara que Adán es el secreto del cerebro; Eva, el secreto del corazón; la serpiente, el secreto del hígado. En la cabalá y el jasidismo, estas correspondencias fundamentales son desarroladas y explicadas en profundidad.

Adán y Eva, hombre y mujer, son los prototipos espiritual de las fuerzas de dar y recibir. La unión marital y el dar del hombre a la mujer, se relaciona con el secreto del conocimiento, como está dicho: "Y Adán conoció a su esposa Eva". Por esta razón, son vistos a menudo como que representan al maestro y el alumno. El maestro contrae su intelecto en un punto (iud), para poder transmitir sus enseñánzas a su estudiante, mientras que el discípulo nulifica sus niveles previos de concepción, para ser un recipiente adecuado para las nuevas y maravillosas enseñanzas de su maestro.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Lamed

13 - Mem
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

MEM
La Fuente de la Sabiduría

La mem, la letra del "agua" (maim), simboliza la fuente de la Sabiduría Divina de la Torá. Así como las aguas de una fuente material, (manantial), ascienden desde su desconocido origen subterráneo, (el secreto del abismo en el relato de la Creación) para revelarse sobre la tierra, también la fuente de la sabiduría expresa el poder de fluir desde su origen supraconciente. En la terminología de la cabalá, este flujo es desde keter ("corona") hacia jojmá ("sabiduría"). Esta corriente es simbolizada en Proverbios como "la corriente que fluye, la fuente de la sabiduría".

En particular, se nos enseñó que hay trece canales de flujo, desde su origen supraconciente hasta el comienzo de la conciencia. Estos canales corresponden a los Trece Atributos de Misericordia revelados en el Monte Sinaí, como también a los trece principios de exégesis (interpretación) de la Torá, la (supraracional) "lógica de la Torá.

La mem es la decimotercera letra del alef-bet. En la cabalá, se nos enseña que "trece mem", como si fuera, aparecen en el "aire primordial", el "espacio exterior" en el que la letra lamed se eleva. Cada atributo de misericordia es de hecho una contracción de una relativamente Infinita sabiduría, ubicada a nivel de la supraconciencia ("aguas que no tienen fin"), para canalizar y revelar un destello de sabiduría en la "pantalla" de la conciencia.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Mem

14 - Nun
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

NUN
El Mashiaj: Heredero del Trono

En arameo, nun significa "pez". La mem, las aguas del mar, es el medio natural de la nun.Ella "nada" en la mem, cubierta por las aguas del "mundo oculto", allí las criaturas no tienen conciencia de si mismos. Al contrario del pez, los animales terrestres que están expuestos sobre la faz de la tierra, sí tienen autoconciencia.

Las almas de Israel se dividen en dos categorías generales, simbolizadas por los peces y los animales terrestres. Los dos prototipos de estas categorías son el leviatán y las behemot. En el presente, estas dos categorías de almas corresponden a las dos tendencias innatas y atractivos para el alma, para las dos dimensiones de la Torá, una oculta y secreta y la otra legal y revelada. En el futuro, los dos prototipos de leviatan y behemot se unirán en la batalla, cada uno "matando" el ego del otro, para luego unirse juntos en verdadera unión. La "carne" de ambos será luego servida en el banquete de los tzadikim en el Mundo por Venir. Las almas de los tzadikim "consumen" la misma raíz de conciencia de nuestro presente nivel de alma, para integrarla ("digerir") a un totalmente nuevo y más elevado nivel de conciencia.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Nun

15 - Samej
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

SAMEJ
El Círculo infinito

La forma circular de la samej simboliza la fe fundamental reflejada en todos los niveles de la Torá y la realidad: "Su final está incertado en el comienzo, y el comienzo en su final". Esta comprensión y percepción de la unidad inherente entre comienzo y final, que al ser comprendida en profundidad implica ecuanimidad en todas las etapas del "ciclo infinito", es de hecho la manifestación de la Luz Trascendente de Di-s (sovev kol almin), que abarca por igual cada punto de la realidad.

Esta Luz Trascendental presente en todo momento, se denomina "El es la igualdad e iguala lo pequeño y lo grande". En nuestro servicio a Di-s, esto implica que en relación a los fenómenos del mundo, todas las cosas deben ser relacionadas y aceptadas en forma igual. Este es el atributo de ecuanimidad como fue enseñado por el Baal Shem Tov, en su interpretación del versículo: "Siempre puse [shiviti, de la raíz shavé, 'igual'] a Di-s delante de mi".

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Samej,Samaj

16 - Ain
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

AIN
Providencia Divina

"Ella [la tierra de Israel] es la tierra que Di-s tu Di-s pretende; los ojos de Di-s tu Di-s están siempre [mirando] en ella, desde el principio del año hasta el fin del año".

El ciclo anual, desde el principio al final ("el final incluido en el principio"), alude al "ciclo infinito", el secreto de la letra samej, como se explicó antes. La Providencia Divina, los "ojos" de Di-s controlando el ciclo, es el secreto de la letra siguiente ain, que significa "ojo". Aunque la revelación primordial de la Providencia sobrenatural es en la Tierra de Israel, se le ordena al judío en exilio crear algo de la santidad existente en cada uno, en cada una de las escalas de la diáspora, reconociendo las Providencia Divina donde quiera que esté.

Al entrar a la Tierra de Israel, la segunda ciudad a ser conquistada por Ioshúa fue Ai, que se escribe ain-iud, forma abreviada de la ain (ain-iud-nun, donde la nun cae) "el Ojo". Jericó, la primera ciudad a ser conquistada, viene de la palabra hebrea reaj, el sentido del olfato. En el jasidismo se enseñó que el origen de este sentido es en keter, la sensibilidad supraconciente que dirige la motivación del Deseo o Voluntad. La palabra hebrea para la "tierra", eretz, deriva de la palabra ratzón, "deseo", como enseñan nuestros sabios: "¿Porqué es llamada eretz? Porque desea hacer la Voluntad de su Creador".

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Ain

17 - Pei
(Última edición: Monday, 17 de October de 2005, 14:22)

PEI
Comunicación: La Torá Oral

La boca, la letra pei, sigue al ojo, la letra ain. Las cinco bondades y los cinco poderes de los ojos izquierdo y derecho referidos en la letra ain, son de hecho las manifestaciones duales de la sefirá de daat, - conocimiento -, como es enseñado en cabalá. Daat es el poder de unión y comunicación. La Providencia es el poder de daat como se revela a través de los ojos, mientras que el poder de daat como es revelado por la boca, el habla, es la forma más explícita de contacto y comunicación entre los individuos. Como está expresado en el versículo: "y Adam conoció a su esposa Eva", "conoció", el poder de daat, se relaciona con la unión física del marido y su esposa, por eso la forma idiomática "hablar" es usada por nuestros sabios al referirse a esa unión. Y así se nos enseña en el Zohar: "[el poder de] daat está oculto en la boca".

Daat como contacto a nivel de los ojos, es el secreto de la Torá escrita. Al leerla en el servicio de la sinagoga, el lector debe ver cada letra del Rollo de la Torá; algunas veces, se usa un "dedo de plata" para señalar y dirigir nuestra vista hacia cada palabra. El contacto a nivel de la boca es el secreto de la Torá Oral.

continúa en "Alef-Bet: El significado místico de las letras hebreas"

Palabra(s) clave: Pei,Peh

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