B”H
By the grace
of God I have, after a great deal of prayer and exertion, been given the words
to write this essay - a piece I wanted to write for so very long and didn't
know just how. May God watch over me as I write and keep me, so that I do not
fail.
Let me
reiterate that: The galut is
misinterpretation of the mitzvoth, not an effect of misinterpretation, but the
very misinterpretation itself.
Neither
is there hope of the galut ending until we relearn to both read and interpret
the Torah, as I will, with the help of HaShem, explicate. In this essay, part 1
of 2, I will discuss how the galut is the misinterpretation of the
mitzvoth. In part 2, I will, with
the help of God, explain how the galut is ignorance of the gematriot and go a
bit more into depth explaining that truth and demonstrating how. For the time
being, let us consider the gematria of the word æîï, it is 747, which is the gematria of the word î÷øàåú as well as the gematria of the word ìäáéï. From this gematria we learn that our understanding of time,
and all that appears to be occurring, event after event, in that imagined
continuum is nothing more or less than a representation of our level of
self-awareness in äî÷øàåú.
That which arises in our consciousness and appears to us to be happening in the
continuum of time is entirely dependent upon our understanding and observance
of ääìëä. As we understand and
observe öã÷ åàîú ääìëåú
so the events of our lives as if unfold before our consciousness in a
procession, i.e., úäìåëä.
We now see the deep connection between the words äåìëåú and úäìåëä.
It
seems there were Talmudic Sages who understood this truth. We find the
following passage in Tractate Sanhedrin.
ùàìå úìîéãéå àú øáé éåñé áï ÷éñîà: àéîúé áï ãåã áà? ...àîø ìäí: ìëùéôåì
äùòø äæä åéáðä, åéôåì, åéáðä,
åéôåì, åàéï îñôé÷éï ìáðåúå òã ùáï ãåã áà.
(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 98a, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE
(Responsa Project) Version 10].
Translation:
The disciples of R. Jose b. Kisma asked him, 'When will the Messiah come?' — He
answered … “When this gate falls
down, is rebuilt, falls again, and is again rebuilt, and then falls a third
time, before it can be rebuilt the son of David will come.” (Soncino Babylonian
Talmud on Line
http://www.come-and-hear.com/tcontents.html)
Ostensibly
the “gate” being referred to is the gate of Caesarea Philippi, the home of R.
Jose, a symbol of Roman power. Its fall would, similarly, be a symbol of the
destruction of the Roman power by the Parthians (ibid. see note 45). However,
we can understand the word ùòø on a deeper level, as referring to the gateway or portal that leads
to the created world as we are now creating it and in which we are trapped in a
procession of unforeseeable and painful, sometimes tragic, events.
Did you
see the original movie called “The X-Men”? Do you remember the character “Magneto” who has the ability
to control magnetic fields and can thus manipulate metals? There is a very cleverly done scene in
the movie in which “Magneto” is walking on a bridge. The bridge is quite unlike what we think of as a bridge in
that it is nothing more than two metal plates. As “Magneto” walks he moves one plate in front of him and
steps on it as he steps off the plate that was behind him. He does this alternating his feet as he
goes. Other than the two metal plates there is no bridge whatsoever. It is the
magnetic influence “Magneto” exerts on the plates that keep them moving before
him to step on as he goes. This is
exactly how we are creating the realities that we live in. The only difference
between “Magneto” and us is that we are not aware that we are doing this and
are thus not in control of where the bridges that we are treading upon lead.
That is the galut.
Just as
“Magneto” was walking on a bridge that was not a bridge, but rather only that
which was beneath his own two feet described by the magnetic force he was
exerting on the metal plates, so there is no medium that is called “time”. Time
is an artifact of our imagination.
If time is an artifact of our imagination, then there is no history, no
gilgulim and no space in objective reality “out there”. They exist, but only insofar as we
perceive them. They exist as our
illusions.
Even a
slight misinterpretation of Torah will cause distortions in the mind so that
the messages it is receiving from Soul are not being interpreted properly.
Diversions from the correct way of doing the mitzvoth result in distortions in
the created world as will be explained anon. The mind receives its dictation
from the heart and not the other way around. The mind is nothing more than that which creates symbolic
representations of our spiritual/moral state. If we have not been utterly
honest in interpreting Torah we cause the heart to be twisted. In turn the mind will be forced to
concoct convoluted reasoning to try to justify the dishonest emotions. In so
doing it creates a very complicated world for us indeed; a world characterized
by multi-dimensionality, time frames, fantastic distances, imperfect
mathematical systems, personal problems that are redoubled and compounded by
circumstances, indeterminable data, uncertainties that are not interesting but
rather frightening and all of the other problems we are familiar with that vex
and torment us and from which we do not know not only how to extricate
ourselves, but even that we can, and should, extricate ourselves from them. The
world we live in appears to be an imperturbable given. This is the cruelest illusion of all.
There is no hope for us to escape from so tangled a web of perceptions so long
as we do not read and interpret Torah correctly.
Thus,
if our Rabbis have not interpreted the Law with absolute and uncompromising
straightness, rectitude, integrity, and dedication to öã÷ åàîú they create distortions in the realities we live in and we, in
turn, increase and compound those distortions when we perform äîöåú. Those who have taught us Torah have misguided us and they have
no less than led us into a universe of deception and pain.
We are
äîöåú. Understand
this. The gematria of the word äîöåú, written as it should be with only one å' is 541. This is
also the gematria of the name éùøàì. éùøàì = äîöåú. We, éùøàì, are not merely doing the äîöåú, we are the äîöåú.
More correctly, we are the mitzvoth being and doing themselves (ourselves) and
creating a world. We must be
extremely careful, then, to remain true to ourselves. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot make the
slightest compromises with what we know to be true in our deepest levels of
Being and why we must not act improperly. When we allow any amount of untruth
and compromise to enter into our understanding and performance of äîöåú we have doomed ourselves to being distorted and living in a
distorted common reality. We are connected to one another and the reality that
we inhabit is necessarily a common and composite one, the result of the
kavvanot and behaviors of each and every one of us. This is true even though each of us experiences what he or
she does in accordance with his or her own moral/spiritual achievement. Despite the fact that we are
individuals, and individually responsible for our learning, understanding and
doing ääìëåú, we are also connected
as a People, not only in this generation, but also in every generation. In
reality there is no time, as we have said, thus the entire Jewish People exists
at once, even if it doesn’t appear to the eye as such. If even one of us is
amiss we will all suffer the effects and live in a distorted reality. ÷ì åçåîø (Argumentum a minori ad majus or a
majori ad minus; corresponding to the scholastic proof a fortiori) if
wanton misinterpretation of ääìëä
is the norm, as is the case under Rabbinic Judaism, we suffer the compounded
effects of each and every one of us who is not interpreting Torah correctly and
become trapped in and endlessly complicated world of distortion upon
distortion. This and more: since we are the mitzvoth any distortion of
interpretation of the mitzvoth results in a distortion of our expression of
being in whatever world we express ourselves.
Flagrant
contraventions of Torah like prozbul or heter mekhirah were ‘justified’ by the
Rabbis by saying that they were socio-economic considerations that supposedly
protected the poor. There is an explanation of why Hillel instituted prozbul
on:
http://tinyurl.com/2e9u2.
It behooves the reader to consider (or reconsider) everything that is
written on that page. Now anyone with a heart and mind can see that what is
written there is utter nonsense and that prozbul is nothing but protecting the
interests of the rich. It is very likely true that the rich were not giving
loans to the poor close to the Yovel.
Why then did the Beit Din not exert pressure upon the wealthy to do as
is written in Torah? Why was a
ruling harming the poor that is in contravention of Torah devised instead?
The
case of heter mekhirah is a similar case of protecting economic concerns
‘against HaShem’ Laws’ because “Moshe did not know the halakhah” (see Tractate Menachot (29b), Talmud Bavli. An abbreviated translation is found on: http://alexandria.uscjhost.net/RH5764A.html), a contention
the Rabbis were so outrageously brazen as to write down for posterity
and teach to their students assiduously generation after generation
(generations in a galut created by lies such as these). How the heart hurts to
read such things! Anyone with a mind and heart can see that in reality prozbul
and heter mekhirah are mechanisms that maintain the economic status quo. Rather than devising a system of
economics that would protect the society as well as Torah observance,
subversions of the Law were devised.
Could it be that HaShem’s Laws if kept would harm society? Did we need “chakhamim” to protect us
from HaShem and his servant Moshe who “didn’t know the halakhah”, Ch”V? There
is no estimating the twists and turns of self-deception the heart must make
within itself and how it must harden itself in order to be able to tolerate
such self-deceit and deception of innocent others. In turn, the dictates of the heart that are relayed to the
mind, which transcibes those dictates into perceptions, become likewise twisted
and distorted in proportion to the heart.
This is the galut. The result of rulings such as these is that we have
lost the ability to calculate ùðåú ùîéèä
with certainty, and thus we do not know when the éåáìåú are. We have thus
been rendered incapable of setting slaves and debtors free by the distortion of
the Law that is prozbul. The distortions that those rulings created locked us
in “time”, from which we cannot extricate ourselves, because we compound and
complicate the distortion every time we conduct ourselves according to these
rulings, and thus the galut is perpetuated indefinitely.
Only
if we live in correct accordance with the Torah can we live in a world that
will be punctuated and described by the holy îåòãéí. As things stand we do not know the correct time of our îåòãéí, we are locked in galut, we are out of touch with the other
generations of éùøàì
and we are incapable of getting ourselves out of this sorry estate. All of this is because the Torah as it
is being taught and practiced is not the true interpretation. That is not to say that it is wholly
untrue. That is not to say that
there isn’t a need for continuing äìëä and çãåùéí.
Of course ôøùðåú
is absolutely necessary. No one from any school of Jewish thought has ever
denied this. In fact, the desirable and correct creation and description of
time is the continual unfolding of the hidden depths of Torah and the
adaptation and application of the mitzvoth to the realities that are created as
a result of proper kavvanot, learning, doing the mitzvoth aseh and not doing
the mitzvoth al ta’ase. The only
question is whether or not we are being honest in our ôøùðåú. The proof is
always in the proverbial pudding.
The reality is that our common, composite reality is uninhabitable for
sensitive, moral, spiritual Human beings – Jew and Gentile alike.
One must be true to one's
heart. God has planted many tenets that are anathema to the sensitive heart in
each religion. Why? It is so that you will question - not question the truth of
the precept, but question your own understanding of it most profoundly. If one
comes to God with an honest and humble prayer and says: "I respect what I
see written here, but my heart tells me otherwise. How shall I proceed? How
shall I act? Have I understood what is taught? Surely I have not seen to the
depth of Your wisdom. What do You desire of me?" that person will have
fulfilled God's true Will in planting the tenet in the faith - that person will
have entered a dialogue with God. This
is God's
true desire - to teach you the depths of Torah directly, so they you may see
for yourself. This is one of the bases of true Torah Sh’be’al peh – learning
those aspects of Torah intended just for you to learn and reveal for the very
first time as intended from Beraysheet from HaShem’s “mouth” to your
consciousness directly. This is
the process of Tush’ba that can never be written down, although the revelations
so received can be preserved and shared with others, indeed they are intended
to be. Such a one who prays this way will be blessed with vision and insight
heretofore unknown to him/her or to the world-at-large. That person will see ways
of understanding and interpreting Torah that *resolve* that which s/he thought
were contradictions, precepts which limit the freedom of the Soul and harsh
commandments. S/he will come to see the righteousness and compassion that
exists in the seemingly harsh precepts with clear eyes, in a way that is
compatible with all of God's creation. The ability to express these
understandings to others will be granted to that person as well. The îñåøú will not be contradicted or contravened in any way. Au
contraire, it will be strengthened and made more comprehensible. The one who
enters into a dialog with God will understand the mitzvot with ever-increasing
depth as God personally takes the person “by the hand” and leads her or him
through eternity.
HaShem
has given us a “yetzher hara” to assist us in interpreting the mitzvoth that
are harsh and difficult for our “yetzer tov” to understand. Those mitzvoth the
chesed in which is revealed can be easily apprehended by our “yetzer tov”. We
do not need to exert ourselves overmuch to understand those precepts. The
goodness in them is apparent. We readily understand the kindness inherent in
such mitzvoth as not taking the garment of the poor as collateral or of having
just weights and measures. We may have to exert ourselves to consider the many
applications of the mitzvoth in our everyday lives, but we have no trouble
whatsoever in recognizing them as being good immediately. We have far more trouble in seeing the
kindness and goodness in the ordeal of the woman accused of being a Sotah, or
the mitzvah aseh to put the ben sorer u’moreh to death. We might be tempted
either to carry out the mitzvoth as it appears to our untrained and undeveloped
consciousness, as the ordeal of the suspected Sotah appears to have been in
those cases in which the woman agreed to it, if we can trust the reports of and
allusions to the ordeal in the Talmud, or not to carry them out at all, finding
loopholes as it were, in the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, again assuming that
the passages concerning this matter in the Talmud are in earnest. While we see that the simple meaning of
these mitzvoth disturbed the Rabbis, neither carrying out the ordeal nor
contriving impossible conditions that render the mitzvah de facto impossible to
carry out comes from the depths of wisdom. Neither of those reactions comes from inducting both the
yetzer tov and the yetzer ra into the service of understanding the mitzvoth and
thus gaining a deeper level of insight such that the p’shat presents itself
differently to our consciousness and thus we act on it differently. If we do
not engage both the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra when learning Torah we do not
have the “stereoscopic” insight needed to understand what Torah is saying to
us. We read one-dimensionally and
arrive at conclusions that are shallow, even spurious. We then carry out
meaningless, even dangerous, actions and, in so doing, create an absurd,
nightmarish world for ourselves.
It is
the nature of the yetzer tov to be good and kind, but rather insipid, simple
and not very creative, interesting or fun. The yetzer hara, on the other hand, while capable of cruelty
and perversity, is crafty, cunning, colorful, riveting and creative. It is only when we use both of these
abilities in tandem that we can understand Torah properly and, correspondingly,
Torah is written and devised in such a way as to encourage us to develop both
of these faculties for the sake of serving Hashem. This is the reason why Torah
contains both mitzvoth aseh that are apparently good and those which, upon
encountering for the first time, shock and offend our yetzer tov, if we are
honest with ourselves, even while they engage the attention of the yetzer hara.
If we are not honest with ourselves we suppress our yetzer tov when
interpreting and carrying out those mitzvoth. If we engage only the yetzer tov
we never arrive at the profoundest levels of understanding Torah. Neither of
these reactions is correct. We are
to summon both our yetzer tov and our yetzer hara to look deeply into those
troubling matters and find the chesed hidden within them. The depths of the
chesed inherent in the mitzvoth that appear offensive upon perfunctory
consideration is far greater than those inherent in the mitzvoth the goodness
of which need not be searched for. We are being invited to look very, very deeply into Torah
when we encounter disturbing mitzvoth.
We are not expected either to deny them or to carry them out according
to a perfunctory understanding.
We
have seen why HaShem has given us the ability to be wily. This ability is not
to be destroyed, but rather harnessed in order to serve HaShem and one another.
When our being crafty is used to deceive and otherwise hurt others we create
dark chambers in space/time that did not exist before within which to hide our
intentions and ourselves. Once caught in those dungeons of the mind and
emotions we are locked in them and shackled to their impenetrable walls on all
of the levels of our being that exist in the created world. The world that is
created by performing the mitzvoth as misunderstood and distorted by
Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism is a nightmare world of insecurity, upheaval,
constant danger, feelings of persecution and proactive persecution, hatred,
destruction, death and genocide. The terrible pity of it all is that those who
practice Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism do not have the first inkling that it is
they who are creating that world or that the world does not have to be that
way. They heap calumnies upon the
Gentles attributing to them every negative trait. They do not, nay will not, understand that it is they who
are creating those ignominies and horrors for themselves; they who are
attracting those experiences to themselves.
In
contradistinction, when we use our ability to be wily and shrewd in order to
protect one another and create that which is salubrious and lovely for one
another, we create dimensions that did not exist before. We create a world that
is complex, interesting and ever changing but not threatening unpredictable,
sinister and dangerous. The worlds
we create when we ask ourselves how we can apply the Written Torah to deduce,
induce and decide äìëåú that
will serve us, all of us, while remaining true to the Law fascinate the mind,
and delight our playful intelligence, even as they protect one another, and us,
from harm and shame. One such example from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition of
the proper use of the shrewd aspect of our creative intelligence is the
following äìëä:
òðé ùàéðå
øåöä ìé÷ç öã÷ä, îòøéîéí åðåúðéï ìå ìùí îúðä àå ìùí äìåàä.
[Shulchan
Arukh 253:9, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE (Responsa
Progject) Version 10
Translation: “(In the case of) a poor
person who does not want to receive charity we act cunningly and give it to him
in the guise of a gift or a loan.”
The radical òøí in this case means: to be shrewd; to be crafty; to be sly;
to be cunning. It was in the utilizing of our ability to be òøîåîééí, even as we
are guided by the dictates of our yetzer tov that we come to a äìëä that is a beautiful
example of our good and bad inclinations supplementing and complementing one
another to serve Humanity.
It has been amply, and chillingly, demonstrated that matter is
compressed energy. There is, to
date, no satisfying definition of ‘energy’. Energy is thought of in terms of
what it does, and can do, i.e., work. This author should like to posit the
following, interim, definition of energy:
Energy is the creative Will made corporeal enough to transfer itself
from one body to another in the physical worlds. Matter, then, would be
extremely compressed creative Will.
Matter is not in a form in which it can transfer itself from domain to
domain or from body to body, but needs to be transferred. In the case of humans
this is accomplished by a motile being that has a will of its own and does the
work of transferring purposefully. The world as it appears in our consciousness
is characterized by the presence of space, both stored (potential) and flowing
(kinetic, mechanical) energy, and matter the form of which is determined and
set to some extent over a period of “time” yet also continuously changing. (The question of whether one or any of
these “precedes” the others temporally or in importance that might arise in the
mind is based on our illusion of time and need not be entertained at all.) In
our present state of consciousness matter exists in two states: the material
with which we are confronted by nature (raw material) and the statements of our
imposition of our will upon the world (finished products). In reality, however,
it is our own creative Will, i.e., the aspect of HaShem that takes on the form
of human consciousness, that is becoming the space and energy that we perceive
as well as all of the matter. The mitzvoth are that which guide us to use the
Godly creative Will and our actions to create the best possible reality.
It should not be
understood that there exists a cause and effect relationship between Will and
the world created by it. There is
no time lapse. With the Will the world created by the Will arises spontaneously
and “simultaneously” for lack of a better word. Finished products differ from
raw materials in that while our Will is creating both by considerable effort
required in order to pour our own Life Force into creation, the former is the
result of the additional physical effort as well. The strain of existence that
we feel is not our struggle with the material world, so much as our exertion to
create the physical world. The exertion we put into Talmud Torah is the
creation of the world, be it as it may in accordance with our learning.
From this understanding we can draw the simple conclusion that
the quality of our lives, indeed how the universe reflects itself back to us,
is wholly dependent upon what we will and what we do. It is, therefore, of
paramount importance that our intentions be pure and that our actions be
correct; for our intentions are that which create the raw material of the
universe and our actions determine the finished products.
If we do not both intend and act properly we expend incalculable
effort creating a physical reality that is neither hospitable nor
benevolent. The collective world
that we create becomes increasingly untenable and unmanageable when we do not
use our will properly or perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed.
Thus, we have to invest greater and greater amounts of effort into maintaining
that which is unstable. We exhaust ourselves as we pour our own Souls into a
world that affords us precious little joy, serenity or security.
The mitzvoth were designed to create a world of absolute maximum
happiness and utility for us. If
we perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed with the correct intention
the energy that is created transfers the Love, Knowledge and Creative Will of
HaShem that is within us unimpeded.
The raw material that is created forms the basis of a world of optimum
level of habitability. We create
finished products that are stable, serve us wisely and well and are maintained
with the minimum amount of exertion so that we may be free to learn and
contemplate Holiness.
May we have the courage and honesty to admit the error of our
way, return to HaShem, to the true Torah and to end this bitter exile.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel, 5764