November 29, 2024
Archive for January, 2014
January 25, 2014 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Torah Portion
Exodus, 25:1-27:19
This Week’s Torah Portion | January 26 – February 1, 2014 – Shevat 25 – Adar 1, 5774
In A Nutshell
The portion, Teruma (Donation), deals primarily with the building of the tabernacle. The Creator instructs Moses to tell the children of Israel, “And they shall take for Me a donation from every man whose heart moves him you shall take My donation” (Exodus, 25:2). The donations were intended for the building of the tabernacle and its tools—the ark of the covenant, the ark-cover, the showbread table, the Menorah (lamp), the boards of the tabernacle, the sockets, the veil, the copper altar, and the hangings of the court. The Creator also tells Moses how to build the tabernacle. The portion is called Teruma (donation) because of the commandment to donate.
Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman
All we have is the building of the tabernacle. This is where the Creator is revealed, and this is where He resides. We must build it through a donation, and by raising the importance of the quality of bestowal and love of others (in Hebrew, the word Teruma (donation) also pertains to Harama (raising), as in, “raising the Hey”)[1]. The more we extol the quality of bestowal and use it properly, the more we correct our Kelim (vessels), namely our desires, which we currently use for ourselves, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination…”[2]
The building of the tabernacle explains the process of our correction from the easiest to the hardest as we gradually build the tabernacle from our lightest, to our heaviest, greatest, and most egoistic desires.
The donation to the tabernacle must come from the heart, which contains all the desires. Only one who is driven by impulse in the heart is permitted to offer a donation, and from this “investment” one builds one’s Kelim. The Kelim are the connections between us, which establish the tabernacle. In the tabernacle appears the upper force, the Creator, according to one’s equivalence of form. That is, we discover the Creator to the extent of our similarity to Him.
The Creator is a hidden force. We are not inherently born with tools to discover Him because we do not possess qualities that are similar to His. For example, we hear sounds because our eardrums react to certain frequencies. Likewise, we can tell different smells because we have olfactory neurons that detect them. These are our Kelim (in Hebrew, Kelim means both “vessels” but also “tools”). However, we are devoid of tools to “detect” the upper force, the Creator, the source of energy.
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January 25, 2014 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Definitions
Donation
A donation is what a person can set aside, sacrifice of one’s ego and correct it into working in order to bestow. Each time we must set aside for correction more and more of our heart until it is entirely “a heart of flesh” instead of the current “stony heart.”
Atonement
The collective soul was shattered; we are all broken. Atonement means we must correct the intention of those broken vessels, broken desires—the 613 broken desires which are our soul.
We must bond with the other and thus discover the Creator, who appears in neither, but rather in the unity between us. Gradually, we must all build the tabernacle, and in it attain the revelation of the Creator. It is written that the Creator tells us each time, “Do this or that work and I will come and appear before you there, and tell you what needs to be done.” The common work of people is what yields the revelation of the Creator between them, and what clarifies the next step.
The Ark of the Covenant
This is where the upper force comes from; the place from which the Creator appears.
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January 25, 2014 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Q&A
[slickquiz id=8]
January 18, 2014 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Torah Portion
Exodus, 21:1-24:18
This Week’s Torah Portion | January 19 – January 25, 2014 – Shevat 18 – Shevat 24, 5774
In A Nutshell
In the portion, Mishpatim (Ordinances), the Creator gives to Moses a collection of laws and judgments pertaining to various topics: between man and man, Hebrew slaves, Hebrew maidservant, murder, theft, lending money, and others. The Creator also dictates laws concerning man and God, meat and dairy foods, the Sabbath, Shmita (year of omission, refraining from growing crops), etc.
Moses conveys to the children of Israel the message that the Creator will help them enter the land of Israel, and warns them about practicing idolatry. Moses reads before them from the book of covenant, and the people reply, “We will do and we will hear” (Exodus, 24:7). Moses builds an altar and offers sacrifices to the Creator, and a covenant is signed between the people and the Creator. Moses carries out the Creator’s command, ascends Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the covenant, accompanied by his servant, Joshua, and stays there forty days and forty nights.
Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman
In the portion, Mishpatim (Ordinances), Moses ascends Mount Sinai although he had already received all the laws and ordinances and the children of Israel had already kept the Torah and the laws regarding the offerings. This tells us that laws and ordinances are one thing, and the Torah is another.
The portion details all the laws of the spiritual world, everything a person needs to do. In order to be able to do it we must receive the Torah. The Torah was given because “I have created the evil inclination, I have created for it the Torah as a spice.”[1] That is, one is shown who one is compared to what one should be at the degree of “man,” in a state of loving others and connection among everyone, a state of correction of all the egoistic desires.
This is why the laws come first. One who begins to study the wisdom of Kabbalah understands that first one must correct oneself, one’s attitude toward the group, toward the people, and toward the world. There are many internal corrections of the evil inclination that one must perform. When one understands what one must do is when the time of reception of the Torah arrives. A person learns to receive the light that corrects one during the study.
This is how we gradually obtain the upper world, the Creator, the upper force that fills the upper world. This is why it was said, “We will do and we will hear”: first we must do, and then—in the corrected Kelim (vessels) that we build—we discover the Creator filling those Kelim.
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January 18, 2014 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Definitions
Law, or Rule
We are living under laws. The whole of nature is a law. The Creator is a law; the creature is a law; everything is one law—the law of equivalence of form with the upper force. The upper force is the primer, the foundation, and we constantly measure ourselves and all other laws in relation to it.
The laws are particular instances of a single law—the law of equivalence of form. The whole of creation must achieve balance, equivalence, similarity to the force of the Creator. Each of us, at our own degree, must achieve bestowal and love.
What is the difference between law and judgment?
We must accept the law of bestowal and love as superior to the ego. Hence, what controls the ego and sustains it, what gives it the form of bestowal instead of the form of reception is the force of Din (judgment). Man must restrain the ego, keep it at bay, and build above it a new Kli (vessel).
Is this natural, coming from nature?
No, what nature has given us is the ego, the will to receive. In order to turn it into a desire to bestow we must have the influence of the upper light. We need an outside force to come and help us, the light that reforms, which reforms that negative force and turns it into a good one. It was a good force once; this is why it is called “reforming,” turning back to good. Now it is our task to turn the negative force into a positive one. This is our work.
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