Monthly Archives: April 2012

כללות ענין אבי”ע הוא עולם אחד עם שלושה לבושים. והיינו כי האצילות עצמו אינו שלם אלא עם לבושיו.

אמנם כשנבחין הלבושים כל אחד בפני עצמו, נקראים כל אחד עולם בפני עצמו. ובאמת יש לכל אחד פעולה בפני עצמה. נמצא, כשנבחין בי”ע עם האצילות – לא יחשבו אלא ללבושי האצילות. וכשנחשבים לפי פעולותיהם – נקראים עולמות בפני עצמם:

In general terms, the seemingly four separate worlds of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah that comprise the world of Nikkudim are actually one world which is over-covered with three “garments”, given that Atzilut is only complete  in its functions with these “garments”.

But the difference is as follows: when we examine these “garments” of Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah individually, each one is termed a world, since each one of them serves a unique function. That’s why when we consider Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah along with Atzilut altogether, then Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah are only considered Atzilut’s “garments”, yet when they’re considered in light of their functions, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah are termed and taken to be separate worlds.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

שורש מציאות קלקול ותיקון הוא ענין שבירת הכלים ותיקונם. כי אם לא היה קלקול בהם – לא היה קלקול בעולם, ואם תיקונם היה נשלם לגמרי – היה סוף הכל.

אך בהיות שהיה הקלקול בא, ואחר כך התיקון, ולא גמור, אלא בשיעור שהיה נותן שורש לקלקול ותיקון לסבב בעולם. וסוף הכל יהיה תיקון שלם, שלא יהיה אחריו עוד קלקול כלל:

            The existence of flaws and their repair in the world of Nikkudim is rooted in the issue of “the breaking of the vessels” and their repair. For if they, i.e., the Sephirot of the world of Nikkudim, hadn’t any flaws to them, there’d have been no flaws in the universe. And if they’d been fully repaired, that would’ve been the end of the need for repairs.

            Nonetheless, flaws came about, and a repair occurred afterwards. Yet the repair was only partial and only to the degree that would allow human actions to allow the sequence of flaw and repair to continue in the universe in the course of the 6,000 years of Divine services. Nonetheless, in the end everything will be utterly repaired, as a consequence of which there’ll no longer be any flaws.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

עולם הנקודים הוא מה שהאצילות עם כל ענפיו היו הולכים ונעשים, כאומן העושה כלי מחתיכת עץ, שבתחלה הוא גולם, ואחר כך בהשתלם צורתו – אז נראה היופי שלו בצורה שלמה.

The world of Nikkudim came about when the world of Atzilut with all its offshoots i.e., the worlds of Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, were fashioned successively much the way a craftsman produces something (literally, “a vessel”) out of what’s at first an amorphous piece of wood which proves to be something orderly and beautiful when completed.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

The next step downward would involve the body holding more sway indeed, but still not as much as we now experience; and so on downward by degrees.

Finally, there’s our current situation, in which the body and its needs dominate every one of our thoughts, actions, and concerns, while the soul is like a “stranger in the land”, as Ramchal terms it, that “needs to follow the ways of the body”, which is native to the land.

The opposite will be the case in the World to Come, we’re assured; the soul will be the native then who will be well at home and very much in control of things, while the body will be the stranger.

In fact there had been a couple of historical precedents for a point in time when the soul reigned and the body hardly mattered, Ramchal points out: as when Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah from God, and he neither ate nor drank for forty days (Baba Metzia 86a). And though Ramchal doesn’t cite them, we could learn the same from the experiences of Elijah (2 Kings 2:1–11) [1], and Enoch, who soared heavenward while alive and in bodily form [2].

This now completes section seven: Adam Kadmon and its Offshoots. We’ll soon begin section eight: The World of Nikkudim which is comprised of Petachim 36-50.

Notes:

[1] But see Sukkah 5a.

[2] See Ramak’s Pardes Rimonim 24:13.

Ramchal underscore the point there that, of course, the body could be a means of drawing closer to God and not at all a spiritual detriment. For each one of us is advised to “acknowledge (God) in all your ways” (Proverbs 3:6) — to find a way to draw close to His presence in the here and now, no matter what we happen to be doing.

After all, “we need to eat and to drink, and we can’t do without it”, as Ramchal points out, so seeing that we can eat and drink and the like in either a profane or a holy way, it would behoove us to do it the holy way. Thus we’re specifically enjoined to eat and drink, and the like, on the Shabbat on Holydays for the sake of the day and with God in mind then too, not only when we pray to Him and serve Him in other seemingly more sacred ways (see Berachot 63a, Avot d’Rebbi Natan 17:7, Hilchot De’ot 3:2-3).

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

There are four less exalted epochs of human development all-and-all than that one. And as we’ll see, the lower the stage of development, the greater will be the body’s assertions of itself, and the more profound will the soul retreat into the background.

The first step downward from the highest level will involve the body et al being more conspicuous and in control than above, but only on a broad, sweeping level still and all. Yet, it certainly wouldn’t play a detailed role in our lives (as it does now, for instance).

Interestingly, Ramchal compares the experience of the body at this lower stage to that of “someone who’s grief-stricken and unhappy” in some sort of “vague sense, and for no a specific reason”. That’s to say that the experience of the body and self then would be rather vague and hazy like the memory of something uncomfortable in the past that somehow whispers in the distance.

This all serves as an explanation of the relationship between Adam Kadmon and its “ears”, and it depicts their interactions. It will occur in the era of the Resurrection of the Dead. And the lower steps that we’ll come to touch upon Adam Kadmon’s other “apertures”, and will plays themselves out in the course of the Messianic Era or will have already come about in human history.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

This return to things as they could have been — to how reality would have wound up had Adam and Eve only followed the course set at their feet before they erred — will come about in the ultimate future: The World to Come, Olam Haba [1].

But the process will occupy great stretches of time — ten millennia — and be a result of great and mysterious, mystical machinations involving our bodies and souls growing closer and closer in proximity and type. (Understand of course that the term “millennium” isn’t to be taken literally, as time will no longer figure in once the world approaches the tenth “millennium” and passes it.)

In the end, the soul will “return to its source” after having “soared upward as a result of her accomplishments”, as it was designed to do from the first. Body and soul will be as one then, but the soul will be decidedly dominant as the body will hardly have a presence.

That’s to say that while the body will certainly be there in the mix, it will “be almost non-existent, and will be utterly and wholly subservient to the soul” then. In fact, Ramchal states, “it couldn’t even be referred to by a name” since it would have so faint a presence, and it could “only be said to exist” and to “have no (other) effect” than that.

This all serves as an explanation of the relationship between Adam Kadmon and its “hairs”, and it depicts their interactions [2].

Notes:

[1] This whole lay-out is derived from Da’at Tevunot 88.

[2] The various Adam Kadmon analogies to be drawn are all derived from Klallim Rishonim 9.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

“Had Adam not sinned, his body would have been pure; it would have been perfected in an instant” (Ramchal’s comments to Petach 41). Body and soul would have joined in blissful combination right there and then, and that would have been it [1]. But having been granted the will to do as he saw fit, Adam — along with Eve — erred, and as a result body and soul were wrenched apart, and perfection needed to be fought for and won by us, their progeny.

Note:

[1] See Derech Hashem 1:3-5-8; Da’at Tevunot 40; Da’at Tevunot 2, p. 64 (also see p. 35 there); and Adir Bamarom 2, p. 32.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

As we began to indicate, the whole phenomenon of Adam Kadmon and its visage speaks to the interplay between body and soul — in the primordial past, in the ever-shifting present, and in the ultimate future.

Ramchal has a lot to say about this in quite fresh ways, and we’ll begin to explore that soon.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

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).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.