Glossary of Terms Used in the Ki Tavo (When You Come) Weekly Torah Portion

• First Fruit
• Tithingt
• Altar
• Blessing
• What Is, “With God’s Help”?
• Choice
• I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you

First Fruit

When the will to receive grows, we bring it to correction, to scrutiny. That desire is called “first fruit.”

Tithing

The tenth part, ten percent, which cannot be corrected. Malchut is the tenth Sefira in the structure of our soul. She cannot be corrected because it is the will to receive itself. She must instead be mingled with the first nine, the first nine qualities of bestowal, and this is how she becomes corrected.

Because it is impossible to correct the will to receive itself, we give a tithing instead. We simply do not work with the part that cannot be corrected. Rather, we hand it over to bestowal so it will be corrected by itself. Afterward, at the end of correction, it will be corrected.

Altar

An altar is the place where correction is made, the contact with the upper light.

Blessing

A blessing is the force that a person receives from above in order to perform acts of bestowal toward others. This force comes after one prepares for it, when one truly wants to perform acts of bestowal above, from whatever one will have. When that happens an upper force comes to that person, and this is called “receiving a blessing.” A blessing is the Ohr Hozer (Reflected Light) that the individual activates, a force from above.

Blessing vs. a curse: a curse, in its simple form, indicates that a person is not asking, and is also not receiving the upper force. On the other hand, a blessing is reception of power from above in order to perform an act with the aim to bestow upon others, in which a person discovers that he or she is similar to the Creator and feels as such.

What Is, “With God’s Help”?

All we have is God’s help. We can do anything; our actions are not difficult. The difficulty is only in coming to a state of demanding the Creator to do it for me, and then it is immediately done so, which is why everything is easy.

All we need is to make contact with Him and then do everything with His help, with the help of the upper force, the upper light. When it comes, it scrutinizes all the details in us, all the desires, giving us strength and correcting us. This is how we discover that we truly are, “You have made me from behind and from before” (Psalms, 139:5), that He does everything for us.

Choice

The choice is to see that in truth, man is not the operator, but the Creator. Man needs only to demand of Him, as it is written, “My sons defeated Me.” By committing Him, “You have made us, help us, and do it on us,” we achieve a perfect world.

The meaning of the term “perfect world” is that in all of our 613 desires, which have been corrected, we had a share, as well—we asked for them to be corrected. This is why we see the world as perfect, spiritual, and eternal.

I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you

“First, it is written, ‘And I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians,’ and then, ‘And I will deliver you from their bondage.’ And afterwards, ‘And I will redeem you.’ Should He not have said first, ‘And I will redeem you,’ and then, ‘And I will bring you’? Indeed, He first said the most important, since the Creator wished to first tell them the most beautiful—the exodus from Egypt.” But “The most beautiful of all is, ‘And I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God.’”

Zohar for All, VaEra (And I Appeared), item 52-53