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Glossary – Lech Lecha (Go Forth) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Go Forth

Go forth from your desire, regardless of how fine it may seem to you. You must come to a new state, a new degree. Each time, “Go forth” indicates that you will constantly be on the way, going upward.

Canaan

Canaan is the land of Israel when it is still not fully corrected.

Hunger

Hunger means I cannot satisfy my will to receive, if I am as an Egyptian, or that I cannot satisfy my desire to bestow, if I am as a Jew, seeking unification with the Creator.

Sister

There are several names that we use to refer to the will to receive. Among them are “sister,” “wife,” and “servant.” The word, “Sister,” refers to the will to receive you can use with filling of Hochma (wisdom), as it is written, “Say unto wisdom, ‘You are my sister’” (Proverbs, 7:4).

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Noah Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Noah

Genesis, 6:9-11:32
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 29 – October 5, 2013 – Tishrei 25 – Cheshvan 1, 5774

In A Nutshell

The portion, Noah, speaks of sinful people and the Creator, who brings a flood on the world. “Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations” (Genesis, 6:9). This is why he was the one chosen to survive the flood.

But he did not survive alone. Rather, he was commanded to build an ark and move into it along with his kin, and pairs of all the animals, and to remain in the ark for forty days and forty nights until the flood stopped.

The Creator made a covenant with Noah and his family that the flood would never return. As a token of the covenant, He placed the rainbow in the sky.

The end of the portion speaks of the tower of Babel, about the people who decided to build a tower whose head reaches the heaven. The Creator decided to confuse their language so they would not understand one another, and then He dispersed them throughout the country.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The portion, Noah, is long, intense, and contains many details and many events compared to other portions. As this portion takes place in the beginning of the Torah, it also marks the beginning of the spiritual path, the most important time in a person’s development.

These initial stages unfold quite quickly, unlike subsequent events, when one begins the actual corrections and corrects one’s qualities meticulously. Later on, the events are far more detailed, as we will see in the future events unfolding in the Torah.

Our development takes place entirely over our egotistical will to receive, which we must turn into bestowal. Today we are still in the midst of a process where the whole of humanity is to begin to work with its ego in the right connection between people. The work against the ego is always a big problem, and appears as waves of a great sea, called Malchut of Ein Sof (Malchut of infinity).

Each time, the ego surfaces more and more, and at first, a person does not know what to do, so the only option is to hide in a box, an ark. It is not merely an escape; it is a correction. A person builds a kind of bubble, the quality of bestowal, and hides in it from all of one’s terrible egotistical qualities, and this is how one advances.

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Glossary – Noah Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Noah

“Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations” means that quality of bestowal that is now appearing in a person. Noah is righteous, from the right side, Hesed, in relation to that flood, in relation to those egotistical desires.

Flood

On the one hand the flood is water. On the other hand, it is water with the force of Gevura, the power of fire, the destructive egotistical power. It is an incorrect connection between left and right, where the left, the ego, dominates the right.

The Ark

The ark is the quality of Bina, bestowal, Hassadim (mercy). It is a mother who tends to anyone who joins her and is under her influence.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

This period marks the difference between Malchut and Bina. Bina is called “blocked Mem” (final Mem in Hebrew). Mem is forty in Gematria. The ascent from the quality of reception into the quality of bestowal, from Malchut to Bina, means ascending to the degree of forty.

The Crow

The crow is the part of the left that requires correction, compared to the dove, which is from the right. Therefore, when the dove governs instead of the crow, when it returns with an olive leaf, it is clear that the correction has been completed, and the ego is entirely under the domination of bestowal.

An Olive Leaf

The olive is used for many things, such as oil for lamps. Oil itself is one of the foundations of life. It is light of Hochma that can be inside the light of Hassadim, when we have come into a state from which we can keep developing. The development takes place through the light of Hochma, although the correction is done by light of Hassadim. These are always two opposing forces.

Rainbow

The rainbow marks the covenant. If I make a covenant with you, it is not because we enjoy being together, because in that state there is no need to sign anything. Rather, it is a guarantee for tomorrow. We fear that our relationship will deteriorate, or that we anticipate that it will, therefore our fore-signing will force us to maintain good and proper relations.

In Hebrew, a rainbow is called “an arch in the cloud.” The cloud does not symbolize a good situation, but the arch, the connection between us, which is over the cloud, ties us in a way that allows us to continue. We need that covenant, which is an everlasting covenant.

The Tower of Babel

This is the big ego that intensified during the time of Nimrod. The ego is constantly growing—evil waters, waters in Gevurot at the time of Noah, then the tower of Babel, and then the ego comes in the form of Pharaoh, then in the form of the Romans and the Greeks. The ego constantly grows and wears different facades.

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Beresheet (In the Beginning) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

Bereshit2

Genesis, 1:1 – 6:8
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 22 – September 28, 2013 – Tishrei 18 – Tishrei 24, 5774

In A Nutshell

Beresheet (In the Beginning) is the first portion in the Torah (Pentateuch). It tells the story of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest on the seventh day. It talks about the creation of the man, his arrival at the Garden of Eden, and the creation of the woman. The portion also narrates the story of the sin of the tree of knowledge, Cain and Abel, the generations from Cain to Lamech, the ten generations from Adam to Noah, the corruption that engulfed their generations, and the renewed hope that emerged with the birth of Noah.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Beresheet contains more stories than any other portion in the Torah. In many ways it is also the deepest of the portions, as it discusses the basis of our being—the creation of the soul.

The common soul was created out of the will to receive delight and pleasure, or simply, “the will to receive.” That will is the soul’s core, and it’s affected by six qualities: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod. These qualities penetrated the substance—the will to receive—and designed it in synchrony with the upper force, the Creator. The reason why man is called Adam is that the word Adam comes from the word Adamah, from the verse, Adameh la Elyon (“I will be like the most high,” Isaiah, 14:14), since he is similar to the Creator, the sublime bestowal, sublime love, to that upper force that gave birth to it.

Adam is the structure of the soul that is equal in form to the Creator and is in Dvekut [adhesion] with Him in the Garden of Eden. A garden means “desire.” The garden is the part of the creature, Adam’s substance—the will to receive. Eden marks the degree of bestowal, degree of Bina. Adam, who is on the degree of Bina, is in the Garden of Eden.

This does not pertain to our world or to the universe we know, but rather to the common soul that the Creator created. From the very beginning, the common soul undergoes a special preparation, the sin, because at its inception it was adhered to the upper force, which means that it had no authority of its own, nothing to its name, or any sense of independent existence. In a sense it is like an embryo in its mother’s womb—on the one hand it exists, on the other hand it is part of its mother, and each of its actions is ruled by its superior.

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VeZot HaBracha (This Is the Blessing) Parsha – Weekly Torah Portion

VeZot HaBracha2

Deuteronomy, 33:1-34:12
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 8 – September 14, 2013 – Tishrei 4 – Tishrei 10, 5774

In A Nutshell

The portion, VeZot HaBracha (This Is the Blessing), is the last portion in the Torah. It is dedicated to the greatness of Moses. In this portion, Moses blesses the tribes of Israel and mentions the uniqueness of each tribe and its lot.

Moses dies at the age of 120. Before he dies he climbs up Mount Nevo and is buried in a valley in the land of Moab. The children of Israel mourn his death for thirty days and assume Joshua as his heir.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

“This Is the Blessing” is the portion that concludes the Torah, and there are new issues in it that are not immediately noticeable. The whole Torah speaks of one person, within us. The Torah relates to our correction, the correction of the heart, our desires, to our rising above our egos and to the work by which we invert the ego, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice” because “the light in it reforms them.”

Our entire ego becomes good. Instead of exploiting, deceiving, and stealing from others, we need to act to the contrary—bestowing and loving others. We perceive the spiritual, upper world through the quality of bestowal to others. This is really the entire correction that we need to make on ourselves. It is the entire process we must go through, and which we do in this portion, at the conclusion of the corrections that the Torah details.

Throughout the portions, we gradually correct ourselves through the light that we draw from the Torah. It is not a simple thing to do because we need to know how to draw the light. In the end, when we have drawn enough light during all the portions of the Torah, having corrected our egos, we arrive at the last stage in which the point in our hearts—the point of Moses, which has accompanied us, prepared us, explained to us, and took care of us—concludes its work.

There is no death in spirituality. In fact, there is no death anywhere; it is only how we perceive things. When we speak of someone being dead or a live, it only seems to us that way, where in fact there is renewal of forms of matter.

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