A Kabbalistic Journey Through Time #4 - Collected Talks of David Solomon #105

[Music] so those of us who have followed this journey so far let me recapitulate what it exactly we've tried to look at and in the first talk we spoke about the revelatory ideas that are really taking shape from the sephietsira through to a book such as ravios of chicago and then desire which really and all through the bahir and the way the sha'areora kind of synthesizes that to create the kabbalistic map that we have going forward desire then takes that map and provides a quantum shift in revelation about how that cosmic and spiritual map of the relationship between divine creativity and human existence can be applied to the entire torah and to show the people of israel in that cosmic picture all the way from adam de la ella right down to this concrete world and our place in it and in fact even in historical reality how that revelation takes effect and what it means for us and what we can do about it and then in the last week we looked at the revolution of the revolution and revelation of the further major nexus point uh in the revelation of kabbalistic ideas uh which uh is in in swat and we we talked about two books primarily we talked about paradise of monsieur cordovero which really kind of synthesizes and systematizes all of the kabbalistic revelations that have happened up until the 16th century and then the arie just that's his starting point and he's exploding in a completely new if i mean though i hate it has that to use the word new because the ire would have seen everything that he's saying as a commentary on the tsar but there were definitely entire new fields of perspective on cosmic processes and on the human being and its effect on our reality and what we do and how we look at things and what the world actually is and at a totally new level so tonight i don't know some of the more astute among you i may have noticed that i didn't bring any books in tonight and the reality is is that because during the last week in thinking about this talk i've i underwent not once but probably twice a type of a type of smashing of the vessels that we spoke about last week because what i want to communicate is that in the last four to f 400 years or the last four centuries the revelations of the arie and the ideas bubbling forth from that wellspring are so impenetrably deep and so profound that their influence is everywhere and they have really determined the course of the last 450 years or so since the re and so it's very difficult to pick any particular book or even two books to talk about to compare in an ocean of responses to the aries that have gone on to formulate the kabbalistic world of today some of you have made sufficient progress in your reading maybe even beyond where i'm at where you have come to realize that there are more there's more than one school of kabbalah in the world today and that kabbalah seems to mean different things to a range of people and i'm not even talking about the wider world even within the jewish world itself even within the jewish textual world even within the observant jewish textual world this concept of kabbalah and what leads to it and what defines it seems to have a great many options and opinions and how do those opinions and options interconnect what's the relationship of them and i thought that that might be a more useful question to explore tonight than any specific text or texts although in the course of discussing that i'll obviously mention key texts of the last four centuries that have deeply influenced the revelation of kabbalah in the jewish world in ways that some of us are not even aware and so that's what i'm going to do and if that doesn't work then people are welcome to leave now i do understand but i'm not going to talk about any specific texts so last week and it's interesting how one would enter into this but i'll do it kind of chronologically because that's the easiest way to do it last week we spoke about the ari the transmission of the aries ideas in two basic streams if you like through two primary students there is the main student of the arie when i say the main one the most famous one and the one that has written by far the most of his teachers teachings and who spent decades doing that project so that we would now have as you know as such a comprehensive overview of what the ari was saying and that person of course is khaim [Music] they were from calabria of the family very interesting family but vital is only one mode in which the lurianic transmission was made the other of course was anyone remember yeah rabbi israel sarug academics kind of argue as to whether or not they feel scholars of the period historians argue whether or not they think that sarug was actually in but it doesn't really matter his influence as a transmitter of loryanic ideas was overwhelming so that by the time you enter into the 17th century you've basically got these two i wouldn't say competing but these two different strands circulating in manuscript and the conflicts weren't great because they basically governed different geographic areas the sarugi and kabbalah got more lurianic kabbalah got more into europe in a general sense and the writings of vital were circulating more in the middle east and north africa during the latter part of the 1500s and the early part of the 1600s and if you would recall and it's important to remember this if you would recall what was one of the most noticeable differences between the kabbalah of rabbi vital and the kabbalah of israel now it's it's a very very specific question because if one would be doing very well if one would even be able to talk about lurianic kabbalah generally without even specifying the different aspects of his students but on the assumption that we can do that does anyone remember what the next kind of in the next generation following vre there's some very differences great differences when you look at the way in which they are transmitted and what they are saying we did touch on this last week but i'm going to as they say in the classics touch upon it again does anyone remember sorry i'm actually i hear you i'm actually referring to a specific point in the cosmology of creation how you get from an infinite god to a finite world what we call what we call and this term is kind of a little borrowed from jewish philosophy what we call the seder what's the meaning of the word seder order the unfolding what is the fundamental difference between vital and sarug on the order of the histal salute sarug starts well before vital vital comes and tell you i'm going to tell you about the contraction of the antibiotics in some of the ants off you can't get any higher than that i'm going geometric on you and so rook goes geometry we've got way many levels before vital and i'm going to tell you about them and does anyone remember what it is that is at the top of the sederistal as outlined by sarol where does it start at what point it does not start with its insulin of the denim of contraction as per khaim vital and even some of the other students of the ari where did saruk take you to even beyond divine thought he took you to divine delight he took you to a level called the sha'ashua which is the ainsoft completely self-contained in what what shalom actually referred to in major trends there's this beautiful phrase called autarkic self-sufficiency in other words that's the level of the sha-shu already at the level of sha'shuah god's having thoughts and there's no question that when you openly modal that it is a highly erotic depiction auto-erotic depiction of the divine we won't go too deep into that but there is a theme that has been noted by scholars and then he'll take you into the level of vibrations and from vibrations it creates letters we then have a mal bush a garment of letters that gets folded and in that space then is the tahiru in which is the khalal in which everything is going to happen and then it will join up with vital but these are very very important points to realize that they might look on power are they having an argument about cosmological angels on a pinhead but it's much much more than that because these differences are going to have tremendous influence on jewish spirituality and how it's approached in a kabbalistic framework now one of the books if i was speaking about a book tonight and if i was to follow my own system and just pick one or two books almost unquestionably one of the books i would choose would be what scholars i think would probably regard as the ah it's hard because there's some very stiff competition but at the end of the day one of two if you don't count the ets if you don't see the edited editing project on the etz which was around the middle of the 1600s and if you see that more as belonging to the vitalian writings of the late 1500s then probably the most dominantly influential kabbalistic text and i have spoken about it in other contexts because it's so important historically that even when you talk generally about the 17th century in jewish history you don't have to go too far below the surface to meant to come across the influence of this book and it was a cat full on kabbalistic text and it was of course hamelech the valley of the king i have to tell you you know i was um i mean maybe we'll edit this out i don't know but um i i was telling uram last night actually uh or yesterday in trying to work out what i was wanting to talk about in this talk i listened to a series i gave in in 2009 and what i want to communicate to you i don't really know much about what happens on the website which holds the podcasts that i that are given by this chap called david solomon i did look at the website and i was really impressed by the job that marjorie's done on it but i actually went into the website and i don't often go into to listen to these talks because i wanted to see whether i could get a focus and frankly frankly any detail that i would want to go into now you'll find in those three talks on the post lurianic so i don't feel like i'm pressured to go into that i want to do something a little more general now so i'm only going to touch upon ideas that are really like literally zooming across and what's interesting of course is that i want you if you can to listen to that and follow because i was kind of impressed by myself although at the same time while i was going far that's a good point david oh that's excellent while i was doing that i was also listening to myself going ah you're such an amaris you really don't know what you're talking about because 12 years ago i was on the other side of before certain adventures that i've gone on in the last 12 years that make you hear your own work but it's still good and i'm still recommending it and i don't often plug my material and you people know that but i actually was very entertained by it i so ame kamelik i discussed there as i also discussed with alsa rugas i also discussed a lot of the material i'm talking about tonight in much greater detail because it's across three lectures but emi kamelech is a total watershed kabbalistically it's in the sarugian tradition and it is a book that extantises completely the existence of the primordial thought in god the entire first part of the book is called the gate of the shaashua that's his focus that thought is going to concretize that primordial thought is going to concretize in the world as the people of israel it's they're not two different things it is the same thing it's just in this world we are its manifestation what is coming really through the cuv and you know what i'm referring to when i say the cove remember just the three first basic steps of lurianic kabbalah are that ainsoft we did this last week ainsof simsum creates halal the khalal is the vacuum tim tsum is the act of contracting away the halal is the vacuum and then ainsof re-enters the halal in a cup a line so a huge geometric adam bration of the whole theocosmic picture and what is coming down through the curve for rabbi naftali bachrach who wrote emme kamela and what is being revealed or what is coming through is in fact torat hassad itself the torah the the mystical meaning of the torah which each and every individual is to generate the point of kabbalah is the revelation of kabbalah but it's not something that is coming down in a way that we just receive from on high we ourselves generated each of us has the ability to generate taurat assad and it comes through us obviously it's going to require different types of preparations and different types of journeys but all of us have a unique kabbalah to reveal there's only yeah so i'll come back to emma melech in a moment but what emma cameron managed to do somehow was translate the kabbalah of the arie through israel rabbi israel sarug into this absolute geo-historical reality that we live in and he's pretty convinced and he's very ecstatic about it and he shows you how it all works that the redemption of the cosmos through the people of israel the manifestation of the primordial thought behind creation is imminent it's about to happen of course he wasn't entirely right in his age he it is of course so this book is so influential that i'm going to talk about its normative outcomes it did of course have some quite significant antinomian outcomes it was of course the book that fused the mind of nathan of gaza so that when nathan of gaza subsequently met subtit nathan was able to completely subsume the sabatean project within a wider kabbalistic mythical framework and that really emerges from emeka melech and it's a book that has not yet been translated completely interestingly enough some of it was translated into latin in the 17th century but we're still awaiting the full translation of that book and i'm not even sure that we are ready for that it's not an easy book bearing in mind that some of the great sages have said some interesting things about it i won't i mean it's another one it's since another talk and we have to bear in mind that a lot of kabbalistic energy was being suppressed in the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century why was kabbalistic energy being suppressed then correct shabtai sv because shabtai tv was a movement an antinomian movement that completely demoralized the entire jewish world and yet was directly the outcome of the combination of lurianic kabbalah and mental instability so it was perceived then and so it is perceived now that they thought that kabbalah once again acquired this kind of dangerous aura and there were many brilliant minds throughout the jewish world that were dissuaded from the spiritual journey that kabbalah offered because of that suppression for the next 50 years after shabtaitsui all the rabbis everywhere were on shabtai watch not only is he coming back and who's going to claim to be that dude but who's learning kabbalah in a way that we think is a bit dodgy remember that nathan of gaza was like the first big theologian of the theologian of sabatinism and he did write some remarkable works people have said that if you didn't get mixed up with shampoo he probably would have been one of the greatest capitalists of that generation and when you read his works like sephirah and roshitanim and so on you can see that there is a very very original creative mind at work but we can't go into sabbatianism now although it's kind of interesting even at the level that we're at because what as as as was noticed by a number of other cabalists who put their bathers on and went into sabote and theology to have a look so that they could actually talk about why it was wrong it's not enough it's not enough for the true cabalists to sit in a room and shut the door and put their hands over their ears and go i don't want to know about it with anything with anything whether that be sabatianism or whether that be the enlightenment which was happening at the same time so those who went into nathan will tell you that what he's basically saying and the ramhal was one of them is what nathan's basically saying is that the soul of the messiah which comes down the cove can't just meet this reality it has to go through the clipper it must go below and through here and come out the other side it's a whole world we're not going to go into it now but it was dark it's this a dark idea about the soul of the messiah and that really the only way that the messianic fulfillment will come is that we have to get god's attention and really the only way we're really going to get god's attention is by redeeming sparks deep within the clipper deep within the husk and the only way we're going to ostensibly be able to do that is by sinning ritualized sinning we could talk a lot about sabbateen ritualized sinning and i reckon that would be enjoyable i might leave that for shavuot night rabbi kyle it sounds like that's something that i might get into them since i believe that's not a million miles from the theme by the time we get to the 18th century in the early parts of the 18th century there is a dominating debate amongst those who are studying and learning kabbalah and working with these revelations of the zohar and particularly the re you have to understand it take you before you're in other words by the 18th century you're not even going anywhere near lurianic thought until you have been through everything else you're not wandering down to goals and buying a copy of its heim and taking it home and going oh i wonder what it says you are studying all of tanakh well at least homage and you're doing mishna you're doing all of talmud and you're doing midrash and then you'd probably incorporate some zohar before you got to the point where you take that go down the goals and get to the extreme and open up and go oh i wonder what it's saying the effect will be the same nothing prepares you for the ethereum so people are already reeling over the influence of that and they're looking for books like emma camilla and others which are going to present it to them on a plate and then people are going oh yes but but it's talking about things that we're not finding in its home so already we can start to see the effect of the bifurcation but by the time you get to the 18th century it's dominated by a debate in the kabbalistic world between in the following proposition in the following question the whole system that the ire has described and i did describe that system in brief last week the [Music] smashing of the vessels the tikkun of parts of him to contain the world the raising of sparks the raising of worlds the massive synthesis of all of the different strands that have come before the re into this picture is that picture real is it literal or is it is it obviously the word michel is virtually untranslatable but a number of different possible english options would be allegory parable is it a machal so there's a very famous statement and it's a fantastic statement because it's so enlightening in a number of areas and it's still a statement that is repeated today i hear it from time to time and it's a famous statement and it's recorded and it's a statement made by the gigantic spiritual figure of the 18th century of the 1700s elijah the gohan of vilna who will touch upon in a moment i think it's impossible to move without the grab but in this field but who said that it is of course an allegory it's a mashall but only three people have ever understood the nimshal the nimshal meaning that which is being allegorized in other words the reality behind the parable what is it about only three people have ever understood the nimshal says the graph so high and velocity right there that he works out who those three are because the grass says only three have ever understood it and one of them is the rum hull so khaim of elojan writes there when he records this so he writes um okay so we're going to assume that haim vital understood the nimshal because he's the one kind of writing it down the ground must understand the nem child because the grammar made the statement and the other one's the ram hull that tells you a lot i know that people are looking at me blankly in this room but i can tell you it tells you a lot first of all it tells you that the gra is very very much situated in that 18th century discussion the italian cabalists had produced a number of very very serious and influential works works like shomere munim baraviyas vergas which tries to synthesize jewish philosophical concerns coming out of medieval philosophy with kabbalah with the premises of color to show that kabbalah is a type of and even a superior form of philosophy right through to people like emmanuel khaireki who are writing a book hasidim which is an absolute contracted version like a mishnah of lurianic thought and that mishnah was studied all around europe especially throughout the 18th century and of course there is the ramhal and one of the books i was going to compare tonight if i on this particular track is i was going to look at emma kamelech because emeka milk was very influential on the next century and particularly upon the gra the grad didn't count naftali bach was one of those who understood the nem chal but that didn't stop the gra basically drinking amicamilla like it was mother's milk it would be a mistake for anybody to think or to have the app misapprehension as i have come across in some places that the galana vilna was an anti or not a cabalist people sometimes make that mistake they think oh the gowanu vilna was against the hasidic movement the hasidic movement was based on kabbalistic ideas therefore the gra must have been anti-kabbalistic but nothing could be further from the truth the is one of the enormous mountains of kabbalah in the 18th century he's a huge capitalist but his picture is pretty much in line with the amekamelech and the sarugian picture and although of course he's red vital because obviously the grah had read everything but i was going to look at emma camilla and i was going to look at at it in comparison with clark beethoven put your hand up if you don't know what ram khal means or stands for oh very good don't be embarrassed we're all we're all students here so ramhal stands for rabbi moshe haim luzado i mean i've spoken elsewhere about the ram hull it is um it is a is more than a subject but the ramphole basically is hanging out for his early decades around the in in padua about 50 miles from venice and he's spending a lot of time as you know those of you who are familiar with the career of the mramhal the ramhal is a very very magnetic figure for anybody that's dabbling in this area um and as you know there was this there was that and then there wasn't and over the course of his tragically brief life the ramhal's output was so profound so immense that once again we think that those who have been influenced by the ram khal and have gone deeply into the ram khal will know that there is something of the ramhal that is also of an avatar of whatever revelation is coming into the world most people would be more than happy to accede to the ramhal that he was and it sorts a very very big nitsats a very big spark of the revelation of the ari one of the things that the ramhal is trying to establish in a book like which stands for 138 openings of wisdom in which he addresses uh the content of etz in 138 small paragraphs that he then explains and if you understand them you'll be able to sail throughout him and understand because he wants to tell you the nimshal what it's all about and the first thing he makes you realize the first thing he makes you realize is that lurianic kabbalah can be understood as a logical system it has a logic to it and he breaks down the logic he breaks down the processes it starts from the proposition that teva hatov that it is in the nature of the good to bestow good god is the ultimate good the whole of creation exists because by definition god bestows good and bestowing good equals creation we don't really deserve it but god wants to do that because that's in the nature of god but from that foundation in a kind of almost a a cartesian buildup and the ramhal has read leibniz and almost unquestionably he read spinoza they wouldn't have told anybody but the rambhol is fully across what's happening in the wider world although he's still clinging to some aspects of a kind of medieval aristotelianism in some ways but he's breaking new ground in understanding the area's logical system and then he takes that by the way 138 openings of wisdom has been translated so it's an obtainable text even for those who are not negotiating the hebrew and even for those who are negotiating the hebrew it's the end of the day you might want to make sure you understand it correctly so a translation doesn't go astray the ramhal is more than a set of books the ram hull is a derek it's a way it's a journey so part of the landscape if you look around today you will see people very very very few people are studying just the arri usually you're studying vre guided by one of the great figures that we're talking about it would not be enough but once you get to the next century is where these divergent roads begin to concretize into pathways and schools of thought the ramco is a whole derek he influences others but even if you sat down today and studied his works remember that the muskie lim even the khasa freshers were excited by the ramhal is considered the granddaddy of modern hebrew in bassam no no no no a hundred years earlier is born in 1707 he passes away in 1747. and i would even venture to say that there's another book that you should look at if you really want to understand it's a book called derek hashem anyone come across derek hashem it's more a book about theology really it's the logic of what's going on with god and the world and so on basically you wouldn't even recognize it as a kabbalistic book and i guarantee you if you ask your staff no such thing as standard or common but your your you know a random modern orthodox rabbi not khabad in the in the other parts of the jewish world a theological question oh what what's the relationship of angels to god and how does that work whatever it is you're asking and i know most of you don't speak like that but it's kind of like you know mr random does chances are 99 that the answer you will get will in some way trace back to something an idea found in derek hashem because it basically became the theological and theocosmic outlook for orthodoxy since the 18th century since the 19th century remember that the ramhal got ostracized by a lot of people his reputation was was started rick being reconstructed by the graha who said he would walk on foot to sit at his feet and learn now so ram khalsa derek so you can look at that and that there are other places to go and find out more about the ramchal but that was one thing i was going to do and then i realized oh you know and i've only got 15 minutes left i think but there is a lot more mapping to do in the world of kabbalah the first thing i really have to do right now is address the relationship between or all of this yep gown of vilna yep so we talked about the gown of vilna yep and the gown of illness kabbalistic texts such as this common trance sephiroth it's the utah that we spoke about in the tsar talk and so on are [Music] basically almost i mean transforming kabbalah on so many levels introducing the concept of psychologizing kabbalah to an extent introducing the uh the the the the idea that um [Music] torah is what is coming through the curve and the idea that we ascend through mystically i'm not going to talk about the graph i'm not going to talk about the ground right now because it kind of opens up a number of things and i wasn't going to go there so i haven't ordered my thoughts on that i want to be able to talk about the graph but i just for the moment he's uh he it's more about the continuation but it would be remiss of me and what i really wanted to do was talk about chassidut because we're here at the end of the day and because [Music] it can be ambiguous and confusing to people the relationship between kabbalah on the one hand and khasidud yep and quite a number of people argued that they are not the same thing and in fact khasi do it is not really a kabbalistic phenomenon those sorts of people get annoyed when [Music] teachers set up courses where they say they're going to teach kabbalah and then they teach us although it's not completely wrong of them to do that because hasidic ideas are at the end of the day based upon kabbalistic ideas but there's a very foundational difference the difference being is that you don't have to be a cabalist to understand khasidut but you need to be a capitalist to write khasidut all of the great rebbies of all of the hasidic movements were of themselves great capitalists and they read all of the kabbalistic material that we're talking about but the khasidim don't this would be in a direct contrast to say naftali bachrach and the grass idea that really you are the conduit and it's about going back to the source i remember i remember when i was studying in khabari shiva that there were there was i wouldn't say active discouragement but there was no encouragement or to go and read kabbalistic texts if anything and and then when i was actually uh in literature shivers after that there was even a discouragement there we still had some 18th century fear and sphincter clenching over what would happen if you studied kabbalah obviously once i started finding kabbalistic ishivat then it changed yeah then it was not we want you but we don't want cover lights well we want kabula we don't want you and then then then then you're able to work your way back into a system where you find that there are others who think like you but in a way is not mystical it demystifies kabbalah by giving you what hasidic leaders believe is the nimshal is the meaning behind all this at the end of the day if we're giving you the meaning what do you need you what do you need to go and read paris we've read it we've read it for you we're telling you it's this and so while a book for example like the tanya could not have been written by anyone that wasn't completely and absolutely immersed in kabbalistic texts and was a genius and an innovator and an immense spiritual insight into those kabbalistic texts it's not at the end of the day a kabbalistic book it's a book about how to be a better person in the world how to be a better jew in the world how to do avodah properly how to serve your creator properly how to wrestle with your own lusts and passions and become a banana what uh you know what what believe me if you've ever met a banana you'll know that uh they're not really banned on him they're what everybody else would call it sadiq but still abandon it two probably in that podcast series i spoke about if you go and you listen to it i spoke about nia zalman of lyadi and i spoke about rabbi nachman and i actually think that i said there as eloquently as anything that i would say now so i'm going to move on and i want to give another little picture but the relationship between hasidut and kabbalah is profound don't get me wrong i'm not saying that they're not is the of the the teachings of the baal shem the spiritual revolution of the baal shem tov is a wellspring from which the jewish world is still drawing very very strongly but its relationship with kabbalah is ambiguous all of the big ideas i mean for example i mean no i will just say this one point if you look for example the really the really interesting i mean they're all interesting the critical turning point in the teachings of the balchem tov is really the teachings of the magid the mageed was i mean the baal shem tov obviously knew kabbalah but he wasn't running around saying hey here's kabbalistic ideas the balshem dog was busy being the balshem top it's a different thing is starting to kind of put those thoughts into structure and there and show how they relate to deep kabbalistic ideas for the muged the tsim tsum is an act of ahava it's an act of love in the same way this is in the same way that a father will limit his intelligence in order to communicate with a child he'll even do stupid things to communicate with the child the father gets joy of that at the level of tarnug and obviously it sets up the whole mode of relationship and communication with the child the child doesn't even necessarily realize the limitations that are around him in the intellect of the father this is a different picture of tsimsum that is coming down to well yeah i mean that is amazing and the and the offshoots of that are incredible and we know that uh the alta review was very fixated to some extent on that particular mashal the tsim tsum for the grab by the way that simsum for the gra goes in several stages god creation is just one level of tim tsum creation text is another level of tsim tsung text reader is another level of tim tsum which obviously parallels yudhov hey god creation text reader each of these levels of simsum as torah as the higher veins off of the infinite is brought down into the world so these ideas in the 18th century are enormous but in the last five minutes i'm just going to talk a little bit about some of the things that have led to the what's happening now the 19th century is really where hasidic thought obviously becomes developed and i mean i it's it's criminal that the other great that the because to read to read rabbi nachman on these issues as well it's an entire field of inquiry that i'm i'm i'm going to skip over and i'm just i'm i'm i'm just highlighting that i'm i'm there are things i mean actually even before we get to the 19th you need to un there is one school of thought that also arises in the 18th that is still very very very much with us not just hasidut and remember that the great developments in hashabad for example happen in during the 19th and 20th centuries but there is one school of thought that comes out of the 18th century that hasn't changed and is one of the more dominant schools in in contemporary the contemporary kabbalistic scene and that is the school of teachings of the rashas who can tell me who the rashash is sorry indeed indeed indeed i i only asked you because i knew you'd know of shalom sharabhi who came from yemen middle of the 18th century came to jerusalem [Music] and basically said no imataruzini if you're serious then you're serious and there's one there's one teacher of the ari that teacher is haim vital you can learn it in its kim or you can learn it in the eight gates series put out by small vital vital sun says that rav shalom but that's what it is you've got the zohar you've got the ari it is said of him that he was once shown half a page of sarugi in kabbalah and he fainted total purist however knowing the details of the cosmological picture and the system is only part of it you then have to understand that system so that you can channel that vision into mind and words during prayer and he developed an entire system of kavanaught which means directed meditations that take years to master and these guys would take on a normal minha for those of you unfamiliar with shul services during the week a regular minha on a weekday in your average school in melbourne would take how long let's call it 10 minutes we're talking these guys are standing there for an hour and a half for minha with fill in beads of sweat are forming on them the amidah in a rashashi and yeshiva is not a simple business and huge volumes and writings on the cover note and so on but this is a direction that is still very very very much with us some of the big kabbalistic ishiva particularly in israel are focused on the kabbalah of the rashas obviously there are many many aspects to it the rashas himself has an entire kind of methodological approach to lurianic kabbalah that is itself intellectually interesting but it's a school the 19th century sees a number of developments but particularly the kabbalah of the gra develops through his students such as the grammar mendel of shklov and then his student isaac however who wrote a book called these books are still studied and then of course leading on to the big flowering of the grass school really which is the entire works of the leshem the lesbian being who's producing the leshem in the early parts of the 20th century the leshem is seen in many ways as a direct conduit from the school of the gra it is regarded by most of the jewish world who know of it as an authentic transmission the nation of course friends with raf cook and that whole period of time around that period of time another capitalist comes from europe who sits down in the land of israel i'll finish up in a couple of minutes he sits down in the land of israel and writes an entire commentary in modern hebrew on the tsar which he calls the sula what's the meaning of the word salam the ladder he's known by other cabalists when they quote him those who quote him refer to him as the baal hasulam the author of the sula but he wrote a great many other things but he has a particular picture of how to understand the ari he has a famous analogy that he gives i won't go into it now but his dialectic is between basically god and everything else and it's between the will to bestow and the will to receive and he shows you metaphysically how the will to receive contains the will to bestow in a way that is productive for the will to receive his famous analogy of course is of a wealthy man and a poor man the wealthy man's trying to get the poor man to eat and he's entreating him and he's entreating him but the poor man can't eat because he's just too ashamed of the fact that he's reliant on the wealthy man to feed him so he keeps rejecting rejecting rejecting until the poor man realizes that the wealthy man is so wanting him to eat that he's virtually begging him and therefore by accepting the meal he now becomes the giver and through that the will to receive can unite at the same level of ontake identity with the will to bestow it's a very interesting metaphysical system somewhere in that system not as i've described it now but somewhere in all the writings of the balas-salam who argued against most other capitalists that it was time for kabbalistic ideas to be revealed in the world in order to heal the world somewhere in that the bala sulam made kabbalistic ideas accessible to people who once again wanted to present those ideas as the definition of kabbalah they don't tell you don't tell you that the writings of the baal salam as extensive and impressive as they are and he is a major capitalist but if all of kabbalistic texts covered that wall and they wouldn't there'd be many many more they would obviously cover all the walls of the room but if they just covered that wall then the writings of yehuda ashland would occupy probably you know maybe a tenth of a show so it is profound but somehow it has borne movements out of it based on a sluggish so for example the kabbalah center and so on philip berg the late philip by philip berg and his project lateman and his project and others who have come along to claim that they are teaching authentic ashlagi and kabbalah there are cabalists now of the last 20 to 30 years the edge of kabbalah now and i have very inadequately covered some of the major streams because there are more but these are probably the major ones that we would think of when we think kabbalah outside the hasidic movement because i'm putting the hasidic movement aside for tonight because there is a obviously a an ambiguous relationship there and because i don't have time i would i would actually really like to i don't have time but in the last 20 or 30 years there has been a definite revelation of the concept that i mentioned at the very beginning of this talk series the concept of synthesis the concept of synthesis and this actually picture is just beginning to start from the end of the 19th century but at the end of the 20th beginning of the 21st it's really coming to the fore there was no discussion between people who were quoting a number of these sources with each other meaning if you were quoting the ram hull you might quote the graha but you wouldn't be quoting the baal shem tov if you were quoting raven of lyadi you weren't quoting the you weren't quoting the in the 20th 19th and 20th centuries and none of them were quoting the rashas or any of the other cabalists who were running around saying or sitting down and saying no this is loryani kabbalah there was no dialogue no cross-referencing when i grew up in chabad no one was talking about the ram khal never didn't didn't figure no one was talking about rabbinach didn't figure i mean khabar has what to be impressed with in terms of its own lineage and in terms of its own teachings but there are other things that are going on but there was no cross dialogue now that is happening now that is happening there are great kabbalistic thinkers in the world today who are unifying and synthesizing ideas and are not scared to quote the bala sulam and the baal shem tov and the gra and the rashas because they know them and because they can see that at the end of the day they're actually all talking about the same thing and what that thing is ultimately is that each of us as microcosmic units of divine potential of the muta dam both individually and collectively and not just collectively as am israel but collectively as humanity have the potential to bring down ainsoft to bring the infinite into the world to reveal the infinite in the world by way of synthesis by way of bringing things together by unifying them by working towards yehud by working towards unity in the world it is a very tragic time that we are still seeing that our friends and our families and our people in israel are once again under such incredible pressures and challenges but it doesn't help them for us to feel like the jewish people are victims the jewish people are given a role in the world to manifest ainsoft in the world to transcend these differences and one of the amazing things and i will i will i will finish on a point of chabad because one of the great things that the altareba for example is constantly driving at and and the altera shows you that he's read every camera is because whereas the grass is the torah is the light that is coming into the world and it is and for the gra the torah is what's coming into the world the going to lead to consciousness to dart but for the altareba and those like him there's a level above there's a level above the intellect there's a level above there is the level of ta'anug directly relating to the whole concept of the shashu anima the concept of the delight of god the pure will of god in the delight of relationship with humanity god wants to be here in a revealed way but he is waiting for humanity to fix itself and to fix the cosmos and may that happen speedily in our days thank you for listening to this talk and thankfully for those who follow the series it has been enjoyable obviously obviously massive spread scalia that i have after every one of these talks and i realized the things i have not said so a wonderful yomt of next week the yantov of the giving of the torah and each time we do that we have to remind ourselves that as far as the next generation are concerned we are sinai we are the torah so take it that idea on shavuot and realize what that that means as a as a responsibility and incumbency upon all of us to to first of all read the torah and then maybe to say something about it all right take care guys all the best [Music] you

Channel: David Solomon

Views: 5,465

Keywords: David Solomon, Jewish History, Jewish podcast, Jewish learning, Jewish ideas, CHAIM LUZZATTO, CHASSIDUT, DOV BER BEN AVRAHAM OF MEZERITCH, ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER, JEWISH MYSTICISM, KABBALAH, MENACHEM MENDEL OF VITEBSK, NACHMAN OF BRESLOV, NAPHTALI BACHARACH, RAMCHAL, SCHNEUR ZALMAN OF LIADI, SHALOM SHARABI, SHLOMO ELYASHIV, THE BAAL HASULAM, THE BAAL SHEM TOV, THE GRA, THE GRAMAM, THE LESHEM, THE MAGGID, THE RASHASH, VILNA GAON, YEHUDA ASHLAG, YITZCHAK IZAAK CHAVER

Id: I0HXG_ZNK0g

Length: 66min 26sec (3986 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021