KEHILAT NOTES 7/10/04
PINCHAS starts Nu. 25:10
Jim:
17th of Tammuz:
Moses broke the tablets
offerings at Temple were suspended during seige
adulterous image placed in sanctuary
Gate of Jerusalem was breached 70 CE
9th of Av: (July 27, Tues. this year)
report of spies was accepted by Hebrews
Babylonian destruction
2nd Temple destroyed 70 CE
Bar Hochba revolt crushed
Over 100000 Jews died 135 CE, Jerusalem destroyed
Spanish Inquisition
WWI broke out
Mass deportation of Jews from Warsaw Ghetto began 1942
Jews go into mourning at this time. If you’re tied to Israel you do too.
If you don’t have faith in Messiah and what God can do, what’s happening in Israel is impossible to understand. It looks like the Arabs are winning right now.
Meriam:
July 4, 1776 was the 17th of Tammuz, which may have meant that we were joined to Israel at that time.
Jim:
This week’s portion begins after Phineas had just killed the two Zimri who were shacking up together. He’s a hero right up there with Noah, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego. It’s hard to understand.
In Pirkei Avot (Wisdom of the Fathers), Hillel recommends a life following the way Aaron lived. This is one of loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people.
When you explore history you find out that Phineas killed a couple of people who were not just off the streets. Zimri was a prince, and Kozbe was a Midianite princess. Phineas is a descendant of Jethro – thus a descendant of an idol worshipper. But it says he singlehandedly saved Israel from a plague that would have wiped out all of Israel. 24,000 had died already. He was rewarded by Hashem with a long life – 400 years later he was still alive at the time of the Judges. The Sages say he eventually changed his name and became the prophet Elijah who was taken up to Heaven alive. He is going to come back with his shofar and proclaim the Messiah.
Only those grandsons born after Aaron became Cohen Gadol, or high priest. Phineas was rewarded by being given that title. 18 Coehn Gadols were descendants of him during the First Temple time.
Moab / Midian’s scheme is the beginning of this story. Jews were seduced into worshipping Baal Peor. This goes all the way back to Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot’s daughters after escaping assumed they were the last people in the world looking down on the devastation. So they had to commit incest with their father. Gen 19: 32 – 38. First son had his ancestry concealed. Second daughter flaunted incest as an “alternative lifestyle”. Her son was named Moav, which means “from my father”. It is the descendants of this boy who entice the Hebrews into sexual immorality and idol worship.
The method of worshipping Baal Peor was through defecation. Humans share 3 things in common with animals, eating, procreating, and defecating. We sanctify the act of eating by keeping Kosher. We sanctify sex by doing it only within the marriage. We sanctify waste elimination by saying a prayer thanking God for the functioning of the body. As insignificant as it sounds, it’s actually very important. Where did that come from? Who blesses us with the ability to keep that functioning? All of these things we need to be thankful for.
We find that this has all come together again through God’s will. It wasn’t just the Midianites deciding to mess with the Jews. It goes back to Sodom and Gomorrah – the things that happened there affected them again.
Part of the Phineas story is understanding violence. What does peace really mean. In this week’s portion we get instructed concerning all these issues. Nu 25: 10 – 12 God administers the reward. His act of zealousness is rewarded with peace. This does not mean a passive lack of war. Peace is a state of being in which there is a closeness of relationship, a way of dealing with each other. We live together and work together, and we have a unity and commonality that all of us have as a whole. It’s a cooperative symbiotic relationship where they help and perfect each other. Neighbors who simply don’t bother each other are not really at peace.
It is very often necessary to create peace only through what seems to be an act of violence. Does anyone think that the Nazis or Osama bin Laden could be dealt with nonviolently? Reference: Arden Bernstein, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb.”
In the real world, wars usually end up bringing peace, and not pacifism.
People think it’s a terrible thing to hear a husband and wife arguing. The real problem is when it assumes its validity in selfishness. In a good marriage there can be a sense of cameraderie when there’s an argument. But when the time comes, if God, Torah, Israel, and the relationship come first, that’s peace.
Don’t be fooled by peace being a lack of violence or disagreement. These are things you need to think about.
When we’re in the thousand years coming up, I have a feeling it’s going to sound like a Yeshivah. As we grow in Torah, there’s always going to be a different interpretation. Every word in Torah has 70 faces.
Mikhael:
Continuing with the Anatomy of the Soul, but we have to build some more groundwork first.
Tzimtzum = first act of creation.
Most of the people there accept the fact of creation as a cosmic happening. Have you ever considered how creation came about? In the Torah you have the first day, God said, the second day God said, and we’ve never thought beyond that. We have to think beyond that and get what our responsibility in that. We can understand how God works today.
In the first part the only thing that existed prior to that was the Sof. The Ein Sof was, in a word, God, but there’s an understanding that God never began and never ends. God is infinite and our understanding cannot comprehend that. A person can pray every day that I find a new God. That seems strange, but you can daily ask that he reveal another aspect to you. He’s the god who heals, who prospers us, who keeps his promises. Every one of those aspects carries a different name in Scripture. El Alyon the most high God. El Shaddai, who meets all my needs for life. Every day you want to know another aspect, which can never be contained or numbered.
The nature and character of who he is, is beyond counting. This is the Ein Sof. In the beginning all that existed was the Ein Sof. The Ein Sof could never be considered in any recognizable shape or matter. How was the creation of all things to be in the presence of the soulness and power of who he is? Ohr Ein Sof is also called the Primordial Light.
A real good English translation is “in the very beginning of the process of the creation of the heavens and the earth, was confusion and void, emptiness”. There was Hosech, darkness, obscurity, hiddenness, or a secret place. The antidote to Hosech is light, so God said “let there be light”. The first act began with the revealing of the light of the Ein Sof. In the beginning of creating as is properly rendered it was necessary that the Ohr Ein Sof be revealed against the darkness that was concealing it. The darkness was uncovered in terms of the light of God. This was the Primordial Light. It was illuminated from within the secret place of obscurity.
All that was within this place through the disclosure of light, all that existed was revealed in the first act of creation. Can you define the beginning? God constricts himself with the start of time. Ein Sof never began, and has always been in existence. God’s light filled all of existence at the beginning, and that’s all that there was. There were not created beings. This could be characterized as space or matter, and had substance.
This is heavy stuff but it could give us insight. He decided to create this world. There was nowhere to create it because there was no space, or borders of existence. Nothing can exist in the Ein Sof. No man can be in the presence of God and live. Along with the intensity of his revelation, the Ein Sof cannot be contained. He contracted his infinite light leaving a void or space where spirit and matter could exist. This is Tzimtzum in Hebrew. God constricted his primordial light to allow space to exist. This is an act, not a place.
Hallal Hafenui is the empty space where space and matter could exist. In this place we can find sparks, not the intensity and fullness of the Ein Sof. The Ein Sof cannot dwell, or exist in this space.
Earlier I said that the spirit and revelation of God’s light can exist in this void. It is described by the sages, but cannot exist in its fullness in that space. His desire was to create, and to make this world, and to have relationship with men. To have a place where man could have his existence. His total absence would be chaotic. There is this concept of the Sages called “the shattered vessels”. He sent vessels of his light which represent his presence. His presence is that part of his light that came in these shattered vessels. When he put his light into them they could not contain him. So they shattered. It mixed in this world, mixed with evil and became that balance of good and evil. This is that tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We see it through the map of the Torah. This is where decision making or the will is involved.
We can’t find it. Deu 4:29 if you seek the Lord God you will find it if you look with your heart and soul. Jer. 29 13-14 I will be found by you. There are fragments, bits and pieces of the light of God mixed in the darkness of this world. We see it like in the voice of strangers, in daily revelation. When we study the Torah portion we get a spark of light that changes our lives. We get it in bits and pieces because we can’t stand the whole thing.
Infinite perfection. He created the whole world as an extension of his being. There would not be existence in this world if the world was completed and perfected in this existence. The world stands on two things: Justice and Mercy. It takes a balance of both. Through the act of Tzimtzum it created the concept of incompletion and deficiency. He created what sought completion. Its purpose of our life here is to complete creation. All humans were created with one mind and purpose to be working at one with the Creator. John 10:30 – he and God were of one mind and purpose to bring completion and correction to creation.
The Talmud in Nederim 39 – the mitzvot are God’s commandments to bring correction and completion. Tikkun – the spirit of seeking to repair what has been damaged by sin and evil. Teshuvah – a person that changes his course, which is an integral part of creation.
Tzimtzum is the catalyst of creation. By the fullness of the infinite light of God being constricted and revealed to us. Dineem – judgement – the potential for adversity and suffering. Goodness is hidden from the world. It is the concealment of the part of God’s creation by which we can see evil and adversity. The concepts of Baal, good, and Ra, evil, all being necessary for the choice that we make in the view of balance in these things. The mitzvot, the Torah, which is the blueprint of creation, by the act of doing it (not just quoting it or discounting it as something passed away) we bring that balance to creation. Creation is revealed to the rest of the world, to bring Teshuvah to the rest of the world.
I’ve in the past few months had the opportunity to talk with, eat with people who are not normally in my world. A guy gave me a card and asked me to call him, so we can talk about this God.
By walking around and doing in front of others we bring mitzvot – we bring the evil out of people and elevate their Neshamah, their souls. We can bring the creation, re-creation, to others.
The meaning of existence is that man endeavors to claim our place and responsibility as partners in God’s creation. In doing so we encounter judgements that hamper our ability to do this. We encounter frustrations in negotiating our daily existence. The barriers keep us from God, always having to do with our physical existence. Only through Torah can we reprogram our minds to see perfection, in Tikkun and Teshuvah.
Gen. 2: 1-3 it says that God has finished and completed his work, and he abstained from further creation on the seventh day. Let’s look at the word – thus all the heaven and earth were completed. The Hebrew word is Kalah – “accomplished all that was intended to be accomplished.” By the 7th day God abstained. The word is Shabbat. It means to cease, desist, to call a halt to something and to rest. So he abstained on the 7th day, and blessed it. On it he shabbated, abstained from all his work. He accomplished all that he intended to accomplish, and then abstained. He called a halt to what he was doing in his creation process. It does not say he finished it all, but just what he had intended.
To abstain means there is more to be done. Was the world complete, or was it left incomplete during the previous 6 days? Rest needed to come on the 7th day. In the Midrash Rabbah it says “in fact God did finish the work he intended to finish, and he left unfinished the work he intended man to do.” Torah is our map to finding the spark of the shattered vessels that were left at creation where we can find his presence among us.
Judgement is the part of creation that keeps in balance the aspect of God’s revelation of mercy.
Gili:
Even in the tiniest atom there is constriction. There is no reason why the atom should exist. It is one of the smallest pictures of contradictions in the universe. Each one of us has an opposite nature, like an evil twin. Even within the tiniest atom there are these electrons and protons that only exist because God holds them together. Everything in creation has an opposite and equal force that holds it in balance.
So our responsibility is to build the good so we can balance the universe. This is a physical thing down to the existence of the smallest atom.
Michael:
The point of tonight’s teaching is to explain Tzimtzum so we can understand it. This is a common concept in Hebrew. The Kav is a ray of light, like a tunnel, like a way into the empty space. It’s like a ray of light, every morning creation was inserted via the Kav. This is God’s will to be inserted into our world.
These are concepts we need to understand so we can go on to dissect the 613 parts of a human being. Each one of those represents different worlds that our souls can understand and have revelation. We can understand how the different parts of our body relate to the soul and the rest of creation.
I was watching a guy putting down a tile floor. He spent about 8 hours planning it out, and about 2 hours actually laying it down. That’s how it is with this teaching, laying down a foundation.
NEXT WEEK: MATTOS/MATTOT Num. 30:2 – 32:42
Jeremiah 1:1-3