Ma'amar HaGeulah (Exile, Ch. 7)

Ma'amar HaGeulah

-- "The Great Redemption", a reworking of Ramchal's "Ma'amar HaGeulah"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

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"The Great Redemption"

Exile: Ch. 7

Ramchal now steps back from the end for a while and returns to the beginning -- to the very start of creation. He'll be using Kabbalistic terminology but we'll do our best to bring it all down to earth.

"All the sephira-levels that G-d created" that is, all the non-material building blocks that went into the creation of the world known as the sephirot (plural of sephira), "were (originally) arranged in order, with one under the other". In fact we learn that, "everything's in place (ideally) when the more extraneous sephira-levels are below the more exalted ones and are subservient to them, which is how things will be in The World to Come."

His point is that order and proper hierarchy are the ideal. It had been in place at the beginning and will be in place again in the end. "But everything was damaged" -- everything suddenly changed for the worse -- "when the 'husk' rebelled against its Master.

The "husk" is another name for the yetzer harah (which on both a personal level and a cosmic one is the resistance to G-dliness). It's referred to as a "husk" or "shell" because it comes about before the "fruit" of G-dliness does, because it preserves the fruit (just as the yetzer harah preserves society, for without it there'd be no childbirth, civilization, etc.), and because like all husks and shells the yetzer harah is destined to be cast aside when it no longer serves its purpose (as we'll see).

For "when the husk rebelled against G-d and thus removed itself from the natural order of things, it separated the Jewish Nation (represented by the last of the sephira-levels, which is nourished by the largesse of the lot of them) from G-d by virtue of the fact that things were no longer "in place", as order and hierarchy are the ideal as we said, and "the more extraneous levels" were no longer "below the more exalted ones and ... subservient to them".

Not only that but "as soon as the husk took control of the sephira-levels the supernal light reversed itself", which is to say that G-d's presence hid itself, "the sephirot were no longer joined together, the Divine Flow diminished, and the Jewish Nation's abilities weakened and lessened."

And in fact that spiritual chaos and malnourishment is our situation in exile on an ethereal level.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

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

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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Yashar Books.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

"Eight Chapters" (Chapter Two, Part 1)

“Spiritual Excellence” with Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Our Current Text: Moshe Maimonides's (Rambam's) “Eight Chapters”

-- Rabbi Feldman's on going series for Torah.org

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"Eight Chapters"

Chapter Two (Part 1)

Let's now tie-in some more of what we'd learned about our makeup to our search for spiritual excellence. We'll find that there's a lot more to be said, and that much of it has to do with our free choice -- our sovereign right to make ethical and mitzvah-based decisions on our own.

"It’s important to know" Rambam says, "that all acts of disobedience and obedience mentioned in the Torah" that is, all the sins and mitzvot cited there which we can choose to act on or not, "actually apply to only two parts of your Spirit: your senses and emotions" and not to "your digestive system or imagination" (though they also apply to our minds to some degree, as we'll see).

What that means to say is that, despite what’s commonly thought and widely rationalized, we can indeed decide to adhere to G-d's wishes for us when it comes to our five senses and our emotions. We can truly learn to quash feelings that run counter to G-d's requirements of us by managing to control our anger, squelch our pride, or by becoming magnanimous, for example. And we can likewise manage to avert our eyes or close off our ears in order not to look at or listen to things we shouldn't be concerned with. Even when those things seem to go against the grain.

None of that's beyond us, and most of it comes down to finally and consciously deciding to do it.

We're not free to make ethical choices when it comes to our digestive system or imagination, though. Simply because we can't *decide* to digest one way or another, as those kinds of things tend to happen despite us (though we can in fact help them along medicinally, mechanically, and the like, but that has little to do with ethics per se). Understand of course that we can choose what to eat and drink, which indeed touches on sins and mitzvot, but that's not the point at hand, since those are emotional and sensual decisions, which we learned we have control of.

And we can't decide what thoughts or images are going to occur to us all of a sudden. We can, though, decide to reject or quell the ones that the Torah disallows us, like idolatrous thoughts for example. (The operative point here is that oftentimes in fact "bad thoughts occur to good people", to coin a phrase, but that we can then reject them out of hand, and not at all be blamed for them.)

"There’s some confusion, though, when it comes to the intellect", Rambam avers. Nonetheless he contends that personal choices apply to it as well. Since we can consciously and freely decide to adopt what he terms "sound or unsound" (i.e., good or bad) ideas which then touch upon sins or mitzvot.

As such, we can decide that eating kosher isn't a good idea and fall into that trap easily enough; or contrarily we can decide that it's a good idea and follow through on that. It's just that "the intellect (itself) can’t do anything per se that can be said to be either a mitzvah or a sin", so on that level the intellect itself can't be culpable for anything, only the person who uses his or her intellect to do wrong.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

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

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

R' Ashlag Ch. 49 (Part 2)

Chapter Forty-Nine:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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49.

2.

"And then, thanks to the great power of those lights, you’re able to go on to purify the verbal aspect of your ratzon l’kabel and to transform it into a willingness to bestow. And the point of Chayah-Light which is engarbed in your 248 spiritual organs and 365 spiritual tendons is then able to bolster itself correspondingly."

"Indeed, when the point of Neshama-Light (eventually) becomes an entire partzuf (unto itself) it then ascends upward and is engarbed in the sephira of Chochma in the spiritual world of Asiyah, which is an unfathomably subtle vessel. It then extends a great and mighty light from the Infinite that’s termed Chayah-Light (referred to above) or the 'Neshama of Neshama'".
-- As was explained in Ch. 41, there are five supernal lights which correspond to the five levels of the soul that are termed Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechida. Rabbi Ashlag has expanded upon Nephesh, Ruach, and Neshama so far. The "Neshama of Neshama" cited here corresponds to the Chaya which is the arcane root -- or “soul” -- of the more empirical, lower soul levels of Nephesh, Ruach, and Neshama. (We won’t be referring to the Chaya’s own “soul”, however, because as we also learned there, it’s utterly beyond our ken.)

"Then all the details of Asiyah -- all its mineralness, vegetableness, and animalness that correspond to the sephira of Chochma -- help it take in the Chochma-light in full, along the lines we explained in regard to Nephesh-Light (see Ch’s 46-47). And it’s then also termed 'Holy Verbalness' because it corresponds to the pure level of human verbalness."

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"