A Synopsis of Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar": Part 2

But we can only answer these questions by knowing the point of it all -- why everything was created and to what end. For it’s only from that perspective that all this (and everything else) make sense, since nothing seems to be either fair or reasonable while in-process.

That assumes of course that G-d had His reasons for doing things the way He did and that He had an end in mind. But while some would claim that G-d abandoned us after creating us and left us to our own devices without purpose or end, we simply can’t accept such a thought.

After all, could anyone ever imagine a human being purposefully setting out to create sentient beings who are to be tormented and tried their whole lives whom he’d utterly abandon? Of course not? So how could we ever imagine such a thing of G-d? Indeed, G-d created us as we are for His own good reasons (Ch’s 4-5).

So at bottom, we’re taught that the ultimate aim and function of creation was to allow us pleasure. That being so, it only stands to reason that G-d created us with an enormous amount of desire to *accept* what He meant to grant us, since the greater the willingness to accept something there is, the greater the pleasure derived from it.

Now that we know that, we can begin to fully and clearly explain our second inquiry, what it was that wasn’t found in Him originally but was created by Him out of sheer nothingness (Ch. 6).

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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