Monthly Archives: December 2012

Petach 52

שורש מציאות הז”א הוא הדינים של אימא – ה’ גבורות שלה. ולפי מציאות זה כל אור עומד בפני עצמו, ואינו מתחבר עם חבירו. וזה כי טבע הדין – שלא להראות אחוה, אלא הכל עוצב ופנים זועפות. אלא שאימא מגברת עליו המיתוק שלה. וכמו שהדין נשקע – העוצב עובר, והאחוה נמצאת. ועל דבר זה נכנסת אימא בו. ועושה לו אחוה בין ספירותיו.

אך זה עושה על ידי המלכות, כי היא הושמה מאנא דכולא, שלא ישפיעו האורות כל אחד בפני עצמו, אלא ילכו כולם רק אל מקום אחד. ואז מתעורר ביניהם חיבור, ופונים כולם אליה, בסוד, “אילת אהבים”. והם עצמם מתחברים זה עם זה. ויותר שהם פונים אליה – מתגברת ביניהם האחוה, ומגעת אל השמחה הרבה.

וזה מה שהיה חסר במלכין קדמאין, כי הו”ק לא היו פונים אל המלכות, ולכן לא יצאו מן העוצב וזעף הפנים, ואימא היתה מנחת אותם כך עדיין. וכנגד זה היו חסרים ג”ר של ז”א, שהם מה שאימא באה ומתקנתו. ואז היו נקראים רשות הרבים, וזהו מצב שממנו יצאה הס”א, שעל כן טבעה ופעולתה רק להפריד:

The source of the makeup of Zeir Anpin, i.e., of the Partzuf of that name that’s comprised of the six Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, is Imma‘s, i.e., is the Partzuf equivalent of Binah’s, Judgment — her five Gevurot. In fact, it’s because of its, i.e., of Din’s, makeup that each light, i.e., that each of the six Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, exists separately rather than together with the others. For by nature judgment doesn’t exhibit “brotherly love” but rather “sorrow” and “severity”; it’s just that Imma overcomes this with her “sweetness” so that when judgment subsides, “sorrow” passes and “brotherly love” comes into play. That’s actually why Imma enters there, i.e.,intoZeirAnpinin the world of Tikkun: in order to foster “brotherly love” among its Sephirot.

But this is done through the agency of Malchut, for it was established to be the container for all of them, i.e., all of the Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod that precede it, so that instead of each light functioning separately, they’d all head in one direction, i.e., toward Malchut, and a connection would then be established between them. For they’d all face toward Malchut which would function mystically as the “hind of love” (Proverbs 5:19), and they’d join with one another. In fact, the more they turn to her, the stronger the bond of “brotherly love” there’d be between them, which would bring great “joy”.

This in fact is what was lacking in the primordial kings, in the world of Nikkudim during the breaking of the vessels. For the six Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod that came into play then, didn’t face towards the Malchutthat came into play and theythus weren’t spared “sorrow” and “severity” or isolation, and Imma allowed them to remain that way so as to allow for the cleansing process. That’s also why the first three Sephirot of Zeir Anpin were missing when Imma entered into and rectified it, i.e.,ZeirAnpin. The six others were then termed a “public domain” rather than a “private domain”, which was the condition out of which the “other side” emerged, since its nature and role is to bring about division.

(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).

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

Petach 51

שורש הבריות הוא רק בז’ תחתונות, שהם ז’ ימי בראשית. והג’ ראשונות הם רק עטרות על הז”ת, להנהיגם ולתקנם. על כן במציאותם אין שייך קלקול, כי הם למעלה ממעשה בני אדם. והעוונות אינם פוגמים אותם, אלא מסלקים אותם, ועל כן נמצאו ונתקיימו.

אך מה שנמצא בהם לצורך הז’ תחתונות – זה לא נתקן אפילו בהם, כי אם היה נתקן, היו כל הז’ תחתונות מתוקנים גם כן. ולכן גם בהם מה ששייך מהם לז”ת – נפגם. וזה עושה שלא יתפשט כוחם היטב לתקן הז”ת, כי אם היה מתפשט תמיד – לא היה קלקול בעולם:

The seven lower Sephirot, i.e., Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Yesod, and Malchut of Atzilut, which are, i.e., correspond to, the seven days of creation, are the root of the created realm, while the first three Sephirot, i.e., Chochma, Binah, and Da’at, only serve as “crowns” over the lower seven to help govern and rectify them. As such harm is irrelevant to them, i.e., to the first three Sephirot, since they’re beyond the reach of human actions, so sins don’t harm them and can only set them aside. That’s why the first three Sephirot continued to exist and endure during the course of the breaking of the vessels.

Nevertheless, what exists in them, i.e., in the first three Sephirot, that serves the needs of the lower seven Sephirot wasn’t rectified, for had it been, then all of the seven lower Sephirot would also have been rectified. So those aspects of the first three Sephirot that relate to the seven lower Sephirot became blemished rather than break like the lower seven. Still and all, that blemish stymied their ability to repair the seven lower Sephirot. For if they were able to, then there’d be no harm in the world whatsoever.

(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”.

Section Nine

This next section is referred to as an analysis of “The First Three and Seven Lower (Sephirot) of Nikkudim”, and it’s comprised of Petachim 51-53.

As usual, we’ll begin with a translation of the relevant Petachim and go on from there.

(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 Other Worlds (5)

This all-encompassing mass, i.e., the world of Nikkudim, had to be divided up into its component parts of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, and then there initially came to be the basic foundation which is called Atzilut with its three garments. Afterwards, control was passed to each garment unto itself, which were then called the worlds of Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah.

For Atzilut when fully repaired is the root of everything, while Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah serve to bring forth the offshoots of Atzilut. Each one, i.e. Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah,eventually brings forth its own distinct offshoot, but they’re all merely offshoots of what already existed in Atzilut (Petach 40).

At bottom we’d say that the world of Nikkudim was like a single mass out of which all the details, i.e., Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, had to come about; as all of existence — both above and below — is a single phenomenon comprised of many details waiting to come about. But this phenomenon is only comprehensive when all of its details function together (Petach 39) [1].

He then goes into great detail about the final rectification and the roles of these worlds in all that.

In order to actually bring rah about before it would be done in the end, these “garments”, i.e., the worlds of Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah had to provide a place for rah to exist. That was accomplished by the selection and gradation that took place among them, until only the very last level — Malchut of Assiyah — was left to produce wrong. The three worlds of Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah will then become the four worlds of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, that is, when Malchut of Assiyah becomes a new Assiyah, Assiyah becomes Yetzirah, Yetzirah becomes Briah, and Briah becomes Atzilut. Wrong will then be rectified and revert to goodness, things will revert to what they’d been at first, and there will no longer a need for wrong to exist in actuality, as it will enough for it to have once existed and to have then been rectified.

Then the new Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah will revert to Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, and the Malchut of Assiyah will become integrated with its whole, i.e., with the world of Yetzirah that would then exist, and the original exalted Atzilut of the general Nikkudim that was removed in the course of the “breaking of the vessels” will be revealed. The “garments” will then remain the root of the wrong that once existed but was rectified and reverted to goodness. Ein Sof will then be said to have completed His task, and He will be exalted unto Himself in His sovereignty (Petach 49) [2].

Ramchal then offers this encapsulating detail in his comments there: “we can thus refer to everything that exists from the world of Nikkudim on down as a single phenomenon which the various levels that we’ll discuss below are nothing but parts of…. (but which are all) necessary in order for the Divine Yichud to be revealed”. That’s to say that everything — heavenly and more earthly — is a part of the single great celestial method of evidencing God’s supreme sovereignty, which is the point of it all [3].

Notes:

[1]       See Petachim 44, 46, 47, 49 for more on the “garments” and Atzilut.

[2]      See Ramchal’s exposition of this in his comments here where he offers, among other remarks, that “What happened when the vessels broke is that they fell down to Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah, which afterwards became (the combination of) Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah. They were thus missing the true Atzilut, which existed before the vessels broke and which will be revealed in the future. If so, these worlds must then all go back to being (the combination of) Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah in relation to the true Atzilut that will then be revealed”.

Also see there, “The distinguishing feature of what happens at the time of the repair is that it comes to rectify everything that became damaged at the time of the breaking of the vessels, which was as follows. First, the original Atzilut became concealed. Second, its garments descended to (the combination of) Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah which turned into (the combination of) Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah. This resulted in the last part of Malchut of Assiyah being left to produce rah…. And third, all of the garments remained flawed because of their role in the production of rah”.

[3]       See Petachim 48-50 and 97.

This completes Section Eight

(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).

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

The Other Worlds (4)

(This entry follows this one.)

In total, Ramchal goes on to say, 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” (Petach 38).

As Ramchal explains in his own comments here, in our experience, “garments are what cover the body after it’s already complete (i.e., after it’s set in place and operating). A covering (like a garment) isn’t a part of the body at all (i.e., it’s merely an accoutrement). (In fact,) there can be many garments, one on top of the other, and not one of them adds anything new to the body.” Well, “the same is true of Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah in relation to Atzilut. For as we already know, the governing process is brought to completion in Atzilut” and the other worlds are merely accoutrements to it, so to speak.

That’s not to say that Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah are meaningless: they clearly aren’t, since “each provides a separate division of creations. Briah provides souls and Yetzirah provides angels, while Assiyah provides the material entities”, as he adds there and is widely known. And besides, “Atzilut is unable to carry out even what specifically relates to it except if it’s clothed in Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah”.

But the difference is as follows: when we examine these “garments” of Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah individually, we find that each one is itself termed a world unto itself, since each one of them serves a unique function as we saw above. 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 (Petach 38).

(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”.

Back-Peddling a Bit

Some of the things we’d need to made clear here that touch upon the worlds of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah which is the subject at hand is the sequence from the World of Tohu (i.e., chaos) [1], to the World of Tikkun (i.e., rectification), to the eventual final Tikkun.

The Bahir (2) asks what the Torah meant when it said that “The world was Tohu and Bohu” (Genesis 1:2) [2] at creation, seeming to imply that it had already been so? It explains that to mean that in fact “the world was originally (in a state of) Tohu until it turned to (one of) Bohu” referring to the initial Tohu phenomenon of the Breaking of the Vessels which was then followed by the initial Tikkun.  Let’s trace this.

As we’d explained here, there was a shattering of the last seven of the original ten vessels which couldn’t endure the breaking-through of the effulgent light (see Eitz Chaim 8:1) [3]. That was the World of Tohu, exemplified by the chaotic upsetting of the design of things.

That chaos was largely rectified by God Himself, with the act of the creation of this world, when a balanced triad system of left, right, and center poles within Partzuf-complexes collaborated with each other, and corrected and compensated for each other [4]. What was rectified there, though, was nearly undone by the actions associated with the eating from the Tree of Knowledge (and later on by actions associated with the Golden Calf), but the ultimate and utter rectification will come about when humankind does what it must do to bring that about [5].

Notes:

[1]       This is also known as the World of Nikkudim, which is the subject of this section.

[2]       I.e., “chaotic then defined” according to the Bahir, though the expression is usually translated as “formless and empty”.

[3]       This was likewise termed “The Death of the Kings of Edom” (see here; see Otzrot Chaim, Sha’ar Rapach Netzutzin 1).

[4]       See here. Also see Pardes 4:6, Tikkunei Zohar p. 17a, Eitz Chaim from Gate 8 onward, and the rest of Klach Pitchei Chochma.

[5]       See here.

(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 Other Worlds (3)

The first point Ramchal makes here is that the world of Nikkudim — which is the subject at hand — 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 (Petach 36).

It’s vitally important to know about this realm because “it is the true root of everything in the lower realms, which did not exist until we reached this level” (Ramchal’s comments here). His overriding point here, though, aside from introducing the various elements involved, is that God formed these worlds successively and in an orderly way, as that is the way He interacts with the universe, as we’ve seen [1].

Note:

[1]       See 4:2 where we cited this quote from elsewhere in this work: “The very first thing to know about (God’s) governance is that it’s dependent upon sequence, which is the first principle God wanted” to exist in the universe (comments to Petach 30),

(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 Other Worlds (2)

As we’d seen earlier (see note 33 to Sec. 7 above), Ramchal explains Ar”i layout of the worlds of Akudim, Nikkudim, and Verudim which we’ve been involved in as follows.

In the first stage, the Sephirot were not yet divisible into separate lights contained in ten vessels; rather, they were experienced as a single vessel comprised of ten Sephira-elements. The next stage is where the expansion of the lights began, and where from the one vessel that included all ten the ten Sephirot became separate and distinguishable “dots”. This is what is called “the world of Nikkudim“. It can be said to be a sort of transition stage to the world of the Verudim.

And the latter is where every sephira becomes comprised of ten of its own, which was repeated over and over again. It is the world of Atzilut where we find the root of all multiplicity. So we’ll concern ourselves here at the end of this section with the formation of Atzilut and its associated 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”.