We’re about to touch upon one of the most esoteric subjects in all of Kabbalah — Sh’virat HaKeilim, “The Breaking of the Vessels”. It sets out to explain how it is that all the wrong, evil, and injustice we experience in this world somehow managed to derive from God’s presence even though they are seemingly its antithesis. (We’ll also explore the subsequent rectifying, correcting, and repairing of all that, as well as humankind’s role in it, but that isn’t the subject at hand now, though there’s no denying the fact that simply knowing that all wrong, evil and injustice can and will be rectified goes far to assuage our discomfort with their existence, and simply understanding that we ourselves will play a part in that bolsters our sense of our own importance.)
Yet, despite the fact that it’s vitally important for us to know all of that in order to shore up our faith in God’s ways in this world, the actual process of Sh’virat HaKeilim isn’t actually described in Klach Pitchei Chochma, just as the essential concept of Tzimtzum wasn’t actually described in the body of Klach either as we’d seen before. But, why weren’t they?
Well, as we’ll see, knowing what that’s so helps us to understand the actual makeup of Klach. And it would do us well to explore that next.
(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.
You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).
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