R' Ashlag Ch. 61 (Part 5)

Chapter Sixty-One:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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61.

5.

"That’s true of each specific partzuf as well: when it comes to the CHaBaD and CHaGaT vessels down to the 'chest', the lights (there) remain covered over and don’t begin to exhibit out-and-out mercy -- i.e., they only exhibit the high Chochma-light from the 'chest' downward, i.e., from the NeHYM (level)."
-- We’d learned that the grand partzuf that is the universe is comprised of a beginning, middle, and end which are termed CHaBaD, CHaGAT, and NeHY, and that there was so little manifest light in the course of the CHaBaD aspect that it was like a head without a body.
--Rabbi Ashlag’s point here is that what’s true of reality en toto is also true of each segment of it: the higher or CHaBaD aspect exhibits very little light, and as such, it too seems to be “like a head without a body” -- and by extension, the ChaGaT aspect (which will be expanded on below) exhibits more light but not all that much.
-- (The “M” at the end of NeHYM stands for Malchut. That isn’t discussed much here, as we’d indicated above, but suffice it to say that it represents the recipient or end-product of all that’s offered by CHaBaD, CHaGAT, and NeHY.)

"That’s the reason why the Zohar itself and Kabbalah in general weren’t revealed to the world before the vessels of NeHYM in the universe’s single partzuf, which represent the last two millennia, manifested themselves."
-- That’s to say, Kabbalah wasn’t promulgated until near-modernity (though it was studied within small circles of scholars) because the earlier eras simply couldn’t endure the degree of light that Kabbalah study would have manifested.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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