R' Ashlag Ch. 43 (Prologue)

Chapter Forty-Three:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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43.

-- It’s important to review some things at this point in order to recoup our perspective.

-- Recall that this whole section is in response to Rabbi Ashlag's sixth inquiry as to how it could be that all the upper worlds as well as this corporeal world were created exclusively for the sake of man -- who by all appearances is, "so insignificant and hasn’t a hair’s-breadth of worth in comparison to all we see before us in this world -- to say nothing of the upper worlds" as Rabbi Ashlag put it in Ch. 33. So "why would man need (for there to be) such august and hallowed worlds?" he asked there. But as he said at the end of that chapter, it would be proven to be "worth G-d’s while to have created all the worlds, higher and lower alike, for the sake of the satisfaction and delight He’ll derive" from those of us who reach our full potential.

-- He then went on to explain that "since G-d wanted to prepare His created beings for the aforementioned exalted levels, He wished there to be four grades (of them) to unfold out of each other" (Ch. 34) so that we might ease into revelation. The four grades are "known as the 'mineral', 'vegetable', 'animal', and 'verbal' (beings)”. As he then said and as we'll begin to see exactly later on in this chapter, "those beings correspond to the four degrees of the ratzon l’kabel which the upper worlds are differentiated by.

-- As we then summed up in Ch. 39, it all has to do with the following: (1) with the fact that the only reason G-d created the world in the first place was to grant pleasure to His creations; (2) with the idea that the mechanism He created for us to enjoy that great pleasure is our ratzon l'kabel; (3) with the fact that while "some entities ... can’t sense G-d’s presence or great largesse at all ... ; others only sense it to a limited extent ... ; and others (yet) ... sense it fairly much ... "; and (4) with the idea that, in the end, it’s we humans alone who can fully sense G-d’s presence and benevolence.

-- What will prove to qualify us to sense G-d's presence and benevolence will be our adherence to the mitzvah-system, which is unsurpassed in its capacity to refine our ratzon l’kabel and to help us develop the sort of full-spectrum soul that will enable us to gain an essential affinity with G-d which is the greatest pleasure of all, and to thus satisfy G-d’s full intention for creation.

-- Rabbi Ashlag will now go on to discuss our souls and their component parts; to examine how they relate to the mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal realms; to indicate how all that ties-in with the sephirot and the various supernal worlds; and to explain what all that has to do with the mitzvah-system after all.

-- The discussion itself will get rather complex and convoluted at times, but we’ll do what we can to resolve it and enunciate its overarching points.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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