Taking a break from the Tikunei Zohar this week, and offering these in the meantime. I will be back next week with TZ for the 25^th of Elul, the day of the creation of light.

For Selihot

(Comment: To avoid confrontation, in synagogue I have exchanged “the cross you left behind” with “and what you left behind”. May my sins be covered with love)

For Shofar

This is what the holy books actually mean when they say that the sound of shofar confuses Satan and defeats all the adversaries…

For U’netaneh Tokef

To be added at the end of U’netaneh Tokef:

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What is the Shekhinah?

I do not ask this question as a historian or a theologian. My favorite article about the history of the Shekhinah in Kabbalah is Art Green’s - Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs, which can be read here. Specifically, in relation to the Tikkunei Zohar I would also recommend (for Hebrew readers) Biti Ro’i’s – Love of the Shekhina, and of course there are many more books and articles on the topic.

I will write about what the presence of Shekhinah means in my own life as a practitioner whose practice in this regard has been shaped and formed in dialogue with the Zoharic texts. I have recently written about the TZ’s method of layered readings of divine images, so following that I will offer two levels at which I interact with the Shekhinah.

The first level involves the mythical images of the Shekhinah. At this level she is the female manifestation of God. She is the bride, the queen and the mother. She is the female lover of Song of Songs in her relationship with the male image of God, the sefirah of Tifferet, also known as Kudsha Berikh Hu. She is the night and the ocean, the silver light of the moon and much more. These images are important for my practice because they give her a persona, a story and feelings. This makes it possible for me to see her reflected in my own life, to experience her story intersecting with mine, and to feel empathy for her. All of this, and the myriads of other images and stories associated with other aspects of God, makes it possible for me to have a visceral, emotional relationship with God, which in turn helps make God a constant and meaningful presence in my life. Without this, God easily slips into being just a beautiful idea that I have…

The second level is the state of consciousness these images help to evoke. Engaging with the images of Shekhinah helps me facilitate the consciousness that everything that is, the heavens, the earth and all that is in them, is all God. At this level Shekhinah is God as what is in this very moment. “There is nothing besides God” (Devarim 4:35) as the Hasidim say, applies to all of space, time and every level of experience. But at this level too, Shekhinah is always in relationship with the sefirah of Tifferet. At this level, Tifferet (which I have not addressed here at the mythic level) is God as manifest in the beauty of the vision of a world perfectly balanced, all forces working together, a divine celebration of Being in which nothing is out of place. At a certain level this always is, has been, and will be the truth of existence, but we do not always experience it that way. We are people of the Shekhinah, and we experience God also in pain and alienation and loss. Tifferet may be what we trust in, even as we experience life differently. Much of the work we do in the world is an attempt to impact our consciousness and our environment in such ways that our experience will be closer to the truth we believe and trust in. God is without question manifest even where children, heaven forbid, are starving. In mythic language, the terrible gap between that experience and the wholeness we believe to be truth, is called the exile of Shekhinah. So we dedicate our lives, again, in mythical language, to bringing Shekhinah and Tifferet closer together, so close that they might even merge with each other, or as encapsulated in the liturgical formula – Yiḥud Kudsha Berikh Hu u’Shekhinteh.

With that introduction, it will be easier to understand the following section from the latter part of the eighteenth Tikkun. Whenever we pray for something, whenever there is a request or a longing included in our tefilah, we are calling out to Kudsha Berikh Hu. Our tefilah expresses the longing that our reality feel more like the wholeness we trust in.

But for the TZ, the fact that I desire, something does not in itself prove that outcome is desirable. Human beings are certainly capable of both harmful and destructive desires that create more alienation and greater suffering. For the TZ, the practice of praying for anything requires first “holding Shekhinah in your mind”. Holding Shekhinah in your mind means entering the state of consciousness where you realize that you, your enemies, all of creation, and the situation you are now in, are all part of one divine flow. It is the ability to recognize both the unity of all being and the divinity of all being. If your request is made within that state of consciousness, the TZ guarantees that an image of Tifferet that you can trust, a true vision of the divine truth and balance will rise in your mind. Note that in describing this moment the TZ does not say that your request will be granted. It says that if you are present with Shekhinah, Kudsha Berikh Hu (translated here as the holy, blessed One, and also referred to a King and as HVYH) will also immediately be there with you. Your request may be granted, and it may also be transformed by the experience.

It is possible to pray without having achieved this consciousness. The TZ says that such prayer can even be effective, and you could receive what you asked for. I take that to mean that sincere, heartfelt prayer with good intentions is never a waste of time and can bring about good in the world. Still it does not evoke the presence of Kudsha Berikh Hu. But insincere, self-centered prayer will, in the language of the TZ, get the heavenly gates slammed in your face.

The crucial theological and spiritual reminder, is that the vision and experience of divine beauty, wholeness and truth, can only arise, or as the TZ says, descend into the mind that is fully conscious of the divine presence in all there is. Otherwise, your vision of wholeness may be no more than a projection of your own brokenness.

As the Zohar says many times – “With this (zot) Aharon will enter the sanctuary (Kodesh)” (Vayikra 16:3) – the only way into the realm of the holy (Kodesh) is through “zot”, that which is here, before you, now.

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Later in tikkun 18, the TZ addresses the relational aspect of prophecy. It describes prophecy as accessible only when the holy, blessed One and the Shekhinah are together in the palace. (Tifferet and Malkhut in sefirotic language. For an introduction to the relation between these sefirot from a practitioner’s perspective, see my essay here) In this context, Shekhinah is described both as ascending to the palace and as the palace itself within which the holy, blessed One resides. It is to the gates of this palace that those seeking prophecy come seeking entry. For the TZ, this dynamic has much in common with the dynamic of prayer which also involves seeking entry into a place, or palace, where the holy, blessed One and Shekhinah are united. Tellingly, the call at the gates for both prophets and pray-ers is the verse from Psalms 51 – Adonai, open my lips. Much of the latter part of tikkun 18 is dedicated to the practice of liturgical prayer.

The piece I have chosen to translate is a short section describing the Shekhinah as she rises to join the holy, blessed One, identified here as “the king”. In almost chant-like cadence this section goes through a list of the Shekhinah’s limbs as she rises to join the King. Descriptions of divinity using detailed images of the male body are very common in Zoharic literature, but such detailed usage of images of the female body are extremely rare, possibly reflecting a sense of modesty on the side of the exclusively male authors of these books. One way or the other, the text before us is exceptional in that context.

Not that our text offers physical descriptions of the different body parts. As it lists the different body parts (eyes, nose, hands, legs, etc.) it speaks of the many malakhim who comprise each body part rising with the Shekhinah. While the word malakhim is usually translated “angels”, in this case it includes humans who have acted in certain ways that relate them to particular parts of the Shekhinah’s body. The “masters of the legs” for example, are those who stand on their feet during the Amidah prayer. This is explained in a longer prose section immediately following the part I translated, in which each group of people’s interaction at the gates is described in detail. The longer section could be seen as the TZ’s interpretation of the translated piece, further strengthening the idea that the piece before us might be some sort of incantation that called for a separate explanation.

I have not explained every detail in this chant/song/incantation, not wanting a surplus of my own ideas and associations to get in the way of the primary imaginal process of this text. As I understand this text, it takes us through the female body of the Shekhinah focusing on its functions, each limb made of a multitude of agents (my translation for malakhim) who fulfil that function in our world and in the supernal realms. Together with Her, and with all of them, we rise into the place of unity and the source of blessing.

Strikingly, the genitals of this body are described with images usually applied to the male body, the bow and the sign of the covenant (i.e. circumcision). It is however notable that unlike the vast majority of other places where the Zohar associates the practice of male sexual purity with the sefira of Yesod (associated with genitals), in the interpretive section that follows, the TZ identifies the people who belong to this group as those who are connected to the heavenly signs (sun, moon, constellations) that mark the year cycle. Make of that what you will…

It is also worth noticing the TZ’s usage of the image of the throat. The TZ uses the proximity of the trachea and the esophagus in the throat to offered an implied explanation of why prayers that move through the throat can take the place of sacrifices (eaten by humans or metaphorically) that move through the esophagus.

But I said I would stay out of the way…

The Queen’s song:

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And why does the tallit have stripes
Rather than black and white squares,
Like a chessboard?
Because squares are finite and hopeless,
But stripes…
They come from infinity, and they go to infinity
Like runways
At an airport for angels to land and take off.

(See a translation of the entire poem, here)

The association of the tallit with flying angels is ancient, and in this post I offer an example of this from the Tikunei Zohar. The angels on the mind of the authors of the TZ come from Isaiah and Ezekiel:

The TZ connects these prophetic visions of the divine presence to our (human) own practice of prayer.

The central image of Ezekiel’s vision (and to a certain extent, of the entire book of Ezekiel in which this vision is repeated three times) is the movement of God through the universe on a complex, chariot-like (Ezekiel never actually uses the word chariot to describe what he sees) structure, composed of living, supernal beings. Ezekiel describes this movement as accompanied by the overwhelming sound of the angel’s wings, and it is only when the movement stops and the angel’s let their wings relax that he hears a voice speaking to him.

As I mentioned earlier, the association of the tzizit-garment with wings is anchored already in the biblical text which refers to corners or edges of the garment where tzitzit should be attached as kanaf, a word that also means wings. An early midrash (Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer, 14) compares our wings favorably to those of Isaiah’s angels noting that we have more control over our four wings than the angels do over their six. But the phrase “mitzvah-wings” (kanfei mitzvah) as a name for the tallit, is, as far as I can see, original to the TZ. (It appears a few times in the TZ and in the Raya Mehemna which originated in the same circles. In the TZ it sometimes refers to both tallit and tefillin, though with the qualification that tefillin are dove-wings, kanfei yonah, based on a Talmudic story)

“Mitzvah wings” is an evocative phrase that allows for many associations. It think of it primarily in line with the later kabbalist tradition that interprets the word mitzvah in relation to the Aramaic word tzavta, which connotes togetherness and companionship. Within this understanding, mitzvot serving as the mode in which we reach out for connection with God – hence the “Wings of Desire” from the title (and of course, the Wim Wenders movie).

In the TZ’s interpretation, when we gather in prayer, wearing our mitzvah-wings, we ourselves become part of the angelic merkavah (chariot) carrying God’s presence in the world. This is why, when we reach Shema, the part of our liturgy that calls for listening, we join the angels in dropping our wings to help create the silence that will allow for listening. The Ari (Luria, Shaar Hakavanot, Inyan Kavanat Yotzer) connects this to the practice (some aspects of which date at least to Geonic times) of gathering the tzitzit in your hand before Keriat Shema. In this reading, dropping the folds of the tallit off the shoulders facilitates the gathering of the strings, and emulates the angel’s relaxing their wings.

Following its regular style, layering images upon images, the TZ now imagines our tallit as the robe of the high-priest.

You shall make the robe of the ephod of pure blue.

The opening for the head shall be in the middle of it; the opening shall have a binding of woven work round about—it shall be like the opening of a coat of mail—so that it does not tear.

On its hem make pomegranates of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, all around the hem, with bells of gold between them all around:

(Shemot 28:31-33)

The macrame of the tzitzit, consisting of knots and links (see picture below) evokes the decorations on the hem of the high-priest’s robe, and in doing so transforms us all into high-priests about to enter the sanctity of God’s presence.

But the TZ adds another layer of imagery, anchoring us in this specific moment of liturgical prayer. The number of knots and links on each corner are then connected to the six words of the Shema. The five knots connect to the five first words of the phrase, while the 13 links connect to the numerical value of the last word of the Shema – Ehad. (אחד 1+8+4 ) Thus, we are not only saying the Shema, but we are also physically wrapped in it.

But the TZ has even another layer of imagery. The five knots of the tzitzit and the five first words of the Shema evoke the ”harp that hung over King Davids bed, and at midnight the north-wind would blow through it and it would play (wind harps), and he would rise and engage with Torah until dawn” (bavli, Berakhot 3b). The last word – “one”, then evokes the single musical experience created by the five strings being played together.

We carry all this with us into the recitation of Shema, and more…

The tzitzit on each corner of the tallit has five knots and 13 links, which combine to 18, and when multiplied by four corners equal 72. Seventy-two is the numerical value of the word hesed-love (8+60+4=72), allowing the association with Isaiah’s vision of a throne founded on love and justice (Isaiah 16:5). Like the previous images, here too, it is the performance of the ritual while wrapped in the tallit that orients us towards imagining ourselves as the throne upon which God sits to rule the world.

The Talmud teaches that one who recite Shema without tefillin is giving false testimony about themselves (Bavli, Berakhot 14b), as two paragraphs of the Shema include a statement of the obligation to set these words “as a sign on your arm and a memory between your eyes”. This sensitivity was central to the process of tefillin shifting from being worn all day to becoming a ritual object worn only during prayer. Tzitzit was also included in this process in some ways, but it is these teachings of the TZ that create a mythology that makes the saying of Shema and wearing a tallit inseparable. The tallit is the wings with which we participate in carrying God’s chariot, and the wings we rest when it is time to listen. The tallit is the priestly robe with which we enter the holy of holies, and its strings play the music of Shema Yisrael HVYH elohenu HVYH, coming together in the harmony of Ehad. And finally, in the loving embrace of the tallit wrapped around us, we can experience the act of saying Shema as a dedication of our lives to being God’s throne on earth.

The TZ, then continues to the Amidah, and how, wrapped in our tallitot we help facilitate the wedding of the holy, blessed One and the Shekhinah, but that will have to wait for another opportunity…

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One of the TZ’s favorite sources in this context, are the verses from parashat Ki-Tetze that describe the mitzvah of sending away the mother-bird before taking the eggs or the chicks.

Already in the classical rabbinic era, this mitzvah becomes an anchor point for debates about our understanding of divine compassion. One way of understanding this mitzvah is as a response to the perceived agony of the mother-bird witnessing her offspring being taken. This seems to be the way this mitzvah is explained in Devarim Rabbah:

Why is a [male] baby circumcised on the eighth day? It is an expression of the holy, blessed One’s compassion, to wait until the baby is strong enough. And just as the holy, blessed One has compassion for people, so also She has compassion on animals. What is the source for that? The verse “and from the eighth day onwards it is acceptable as a fire offering to HVYH” (Leviticus 22:27). And the holy, blessed One further said, “do not slaughter it [the animal] and its offspring on the same day” (Leviticus 22:28). And just as the holy, blessed One is full of compassion for animals, so also is the holy, blessed One full of compassion for birds, as it says “If you happen upon a bird-nest, etc.”

(Devarim Rabbah 6:1)

The midrash identifies two forms of divine compassion. One is manifest in waiting eight days until a child is circumcised or an animal is offered as a sacrifice, and the other is not killing an animal or a bird together with its offspring. As later commentators note, if these rules are expressions of compassion, they express compassion as manifested in conflict with other values. So, for example, divine compassion extends to waiting eight days for circumcision, but not to overrule the practice of circumcision completely. Or, divine compassion extends to protecting animals from witnessing other animals being killed, but not to negate the practice of killing animals for food.

It may be that the complexity of these expressions of divine compassion served as an element in the creation of an opposing rabbinic interpretation that rejects articulating divine compassion as the driving force of this mitzvah:

One who says – Your compassion extends to a bird’s nest… should be silenced.

This was debated by two Amora’im in the west… and one said: [they are silenced] because they attributed compassion to the holy, blessed One’s measures, yet they are no more than decrees.

(bavli, Berakhot 33b)

I will not go into the details of this debate. It has been analyzed at length by the recently deceased Israeli scholar Avi Sagi, who also demonstrated that the opinion that denies compassion as an element of mitzvot always remained a marginal opinion in Jewish tradition. (Those interested can see his discussion in Avi Sagi, Morality and Religion: The Jewish Story, pp.25-45) But within the paradigm that sees compassion as a religious value, the places where compassion comes into conflict with other values are not always simple for people.

Culturally, we tend to idealize compassion as an overriding value, despite our daily experience that often contradicts this. This tendency is highlighted in the upcoming High-Holiday season in which the liturgy repeatedly asks God to set aside judgment and justice and “have compassion top all your other qualities” even if we do not deserve it. We ask the same of ourselves in this season, and we strive to forgive those who have hurt us even if we still think that they are guilty. It may be that this idealization is even stronger among neighboring communities founded on the Christian concept of “Grace”, which led to some pushback (as in “Jews believe in Teshuvah, not in Grace”) but this notion of undeserved forgiveness has a strong presence in Jewish tradition as well. An ancient midrash teaches us that the effect of our blowing Shofar on Rosh haShanah is to cause the supernal king to rise from the throne of judgement and move to the throne of compassion and respond to us with mercy exclusively (Psikta D’rav Kahana, 23:3).

When seen in this context, the divine compassion expressed towards the bird’s nest can be somewhat disappointing. We might expect that the vision of the mother’s pain would lead to a commandment to allow the mother to return to her children, rather than taking them away from her. Inevitably we also ask - is this the level of divine compassion we too might expect?

The TZ’s interpretation of this mitzvah is striking precisely because it addresses these questions directly.

It is worth noticing that the angels responsible for the birds are also responsible for different levels of human souls, to the extent that it is not always clear if the text is talking about birds or about souls. This confusion is given structure in another version of this story (Zohar Hadash, Ruth 29b) that explains that the three primary building blocks of the universe, Hokhmah, Binah and Da’at, are all present in the human-being and spread throughout all of creation including this suffering bird. It is this commonality that allows the experience of this bird to reverberate throughout all of existence.

In any case the catalyst for the divine movement described is the suffering of the actual birds. Unlike either biblical or classical rabbinic texts, the TZ describes the suffering of both the mother-bird and the chicks (“the mother goes, chased away, and the children cry out”). The TZ then describes the angels carrying the echoes of this suffering and arguing against it through all levels of the human soul and the divine world until they finally reach the holy, blessed One Herself. The holy, blessed One recognizes the similarity of the suffering of the birds and the people, and this painful recognition (“cries out” or literally, screams – tzavaḥ) leads to a commitment to act for the people and for the Shekhinah.

The radical nature of the TZ’s story becomes evident when we ask – why was the suffering of the Shekhinah and the people not noticed earlier?

It seems that in the story, God’s compassion for the people is covered by God’s justice, and possibly by God’s righteous anger. Of course the people are suffering, but their suffering is seen as justified as they brought in on themselves. They acted wrongly and did not make amends even when given many opportunities. The people’s suffering is seen as the process of learning that actions have consequences. When faced with strong convictions of right and wrong and powerful feelings of justice, compassion is muted and the suffering of others, or certainly the empathy for the suffering of others can almost disappear.

The same is true for the suffering of the birds. It is true that the birds have done nothing wrong, yet our compassion for them runs up against a strong feeling that we have the right to eat eggs and meat. This right is affirmed by this very mitzvah in which the Torah instructs us not to cause unnecessary suffering to the bird, but does not tell us to refrain from causing the birds suffering. In this context, the suffering easily becomes invisible.

The TZ however, puts suffering at the center of the story and never really enters the discussion of right and wrong. Sandalfon does not confront God with the mitzvah in general. Instead he asks, why did you decree that this bird, the one who is now screeching, be expelled from her nest? And when God ultimately relents, it is because compassion has been awakened, not a new understanding of justice. Because in the TZ’s story, what God, and with God all of us, understands, is that the issue is not just that this specific bird has done no wrong, though that makes the bigger issue easier to notice. The bigger issue is that justice does not make compassion for individual suffering irrelevant. Or as God says to the surrounding hosts – thank you for pointing out my blind-spot with the birds, but why did you never point out to me that this was exactly how I was treating my children?

The story does not end by telling us that the bird has been saved or that Israel has been redeemed from suffering. It ends by telling us that compassion has been awakened. And maybe, for us, as both givers and receivers of compassion, that is the most important message.

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Tu b’Av, the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Av, is celebrated in popular Israeli culture as a holiday of love and romance. The origins of this celebration can be found already in the Mishnah which describes Tu b’Av as a day when “the daughters of Jerusalem” would dress in white and go dancing in the vineyards in search of a spouse. (Mishnah, Taanit 4:1)

I offer two elements in honor of this celebration. First, I would like to use this platform to amplify the dance and search of a beloved friend and student of mine, an amazing, wise, beautiful and compassionate woman, who is searching for a partner. Following that, I will present a section from the fifth tikkun of the Tikunei Zohar which offers a kavanah for the use of rings in the wedding ritual.

Please help Alyson if you can. Contact information is in the QR Code at the bottom right corner of the picture.

Now for the Tikunei Zohar, which begins all of its tikunim by envisioning new paths of possibility in the first word of the Torah – Bereshit.

This elaboration of the word Bereshit begins by dividing the word into two parts, the letter Bet and the word Reshit-Beginning. When spoken out loud, the phrase Bet Reshit is a construct chain (סמיכות) carrying the meaning of the house or home of the beginning.

The TZ sees the same image in the graphic form of the letter. The letter Bet at the beginning of the word has a diacritical point (דגש) within it signifying the strong pronunciation of the consonant (pronounced as B rather than V). Hence the visual association of a point surrounded by palace walls.

Because of the association with the second half of the word, this point is seen as representing a beginning, or the starting point of all existence. Like a geometrical point, which has no dimensions, this point represents a divine “thought” of existence that has not been articulated in any way. Like the moment before the Big Bang in cosmological theory (which I present here as a layman’s image, not as a scientific explanation), this point includes all that ever will be with in it. And like that moment in cosmological theory, we have no access to that point. The Big Bang itself blocks our access, or in the language of the TZ, surrounds the point with walls so that it exists, ensconced within its palace, forever beyond our access.

Though that image does not exactly align with the graphic image of the letter Bet…

As Elijah the Prophet, who shows up at precisely this moment, points out, the letter Bet is open on one side. This makes it a less-than-ideal image for the idea or experience that Rabbi Shimeon is trying to convey – the inaccessible source of all Being. As he proposes his own explanation, Elijah does not reject the use of the letter Bet as an image. Instead, he posits it as one point in an ongoing process.

Elijah sets this image in the context of one of the ways the Zohar tells the story of creation. This version appears in many places in the Zohar, among them, it serves as the Zohar’s opening paragraph (Zohar 1:15a). The story uses very dense imagery and every word of it has been analyzed and re-imagined endlessly by both traditional interpreters of the Zohar and by academic scholars. I will offer a simple explanation, my attempt to come back from the complexities and the endless possibilities of interpretation to a vision I can both imagine and understand.

The starting point of this story is God as Ayin – No Thing. The story it tells is the story of No Thing coming into Being and ultimately becoming Everything. Prior to this process God does not exist as a king, or for that matter even as a god. This is why the story is presented as “The beginning of the King’s reign”. There is neither king nor kingdom nor reign before the beginning of this process.

The first step out of nothing is “a spark of darkness”. This paradoxical expression conveys an intermediate step between nothing and something. We usually associate “spark” with light, which we can see, but this one appears as darkness. A spark itself lives on the border between existence and non-existence, barely taking up either time or space.

Try to imagine this.

The spark then solidifies into a point, existent, but in no dimension. Or perhaps, in a universe about to be created with words, this is the first dot of dark ink on the parchment.

Then measures, dimensions are introduced (“A measuring cord”) a point of reference, and the dot extends to be a line. But this line does not yet reach out of itself. It circles back to itself to create a closed form. Divinity has entered being, but it is totally enclosed within itself. There is no time but now, no space but here, and no relationship, as there is no other. This closed form is expressed in the form of the final-letter Mem.

ם

But then, instead of staying closed in itself, the line opens and reaches out. Now it is a line moving through space, it has a starting point, a direction and possibly a destination. Now it moves with time and potentially within relationships. The god who had moved from non-existence to existence has now created a universe. This is the moment of creation, the moment encapsulated in Rabbi Shimeon’s teaching on the first word of creation – Bet Reshit.

The extended line is expressed in the form of the letter Vav.

ו

In Rabbi Shimeon’s image the dot is in the middle of the enclosed space. This is a useful reminder that the point has not disappeared even though a line has developed from it. But we must also remember that the point is in no way separate from the line.

The point is the unchanging divinity beyond time and space. The line, in its closed and open manifestations, is an expression of relationship. As Eliyahu continues to explain, within the relationship with the universe, divinity continues to move between it’s open (ב) and closed (ם) forms.

Practically speaking, this is the most important sentence of the story. It reminds us that this entire story of becoming is not linear and does not happen in time. The story of becoming moves from No Thing to the spark of darkness, to a point, to a closed line, and from there to the open-ended line of creation. But all these stages continue to exist within our lives, and the dynamics between them are the dynamics of our lives. This story translates into practice when I work on being conscious of these dynamics and respond to them.

Isaiah 9:6 is part of a messianic vision, well-known in both Jewish and Christian circles. In the opening phrase of the verse - “LeMarbeh haMisrah” (The increase of his government, in the King James translation, 9:7), the letter Mem in “LeMarbeh” is written in the closed form of the letter which otherwise in Tanakh appears only when Mem is the final letter of the word. This oddity has been the topic of much rabbinic midrash and historical research. For the TZ it is a statement about the nature of messianic possibilities like the “eternal peace” described in that same verse.

We live in a world that has already been created, and as we grow, we are also partners in its creation. In that sense, we live after the closed Mem has opened to become the Bet of creation. This is the experience we often call “reality”.

But within us and at the heart of the universe, the closed Mem also exists, and our entire life and universe is a protective shell for the untouched and even unimagined reality that can grow out of it. We tell stories about a world of mashi’aḥ to stay connected to that part of us. It is in relation to this aspect of being that the Ba’al Shem Tov taught “The Torah of HVYH is perfect” means that no-one has ever touched it, no one has even begun learning it (Besht on the Torah, Va’ethanan 29). That is what the ring of the great Mem surrounds and protects.

It is this trust in what can become, that according to the TZ, is at the center of the wedding ritual. It the time of the TZ it was accepted that only the groom gave a ring to the bride (There is no mention of wedding rings as such in the Mishnah or the Talmud. Rings as the object of giving and receiving in the wedding ceremony are first mentioned in the Geonic era, around the ninth century, and they become standard relatively quickly) and that is the ritual described here. In our communities, however it is accepted that partners give rings to each other, so in my explanation of the TZ, I will use terminology that is applicable to the communities within which I live and practice.

When one partner says to the other, you are sanctified to me with, or in this ring (the Hebrew could be understood both ways) they are saying that my commitment to you is not only to the person I know and to who you are now. My commitment is also to the endless possibilities of who you can become, to the possibilities that you yourself cannot imagine or know, the aspect of yourself that is held within the closed ring of the Mem - ם. (This is the origin of the kabbalist practice to have wedding rings that are square on the outside, like the shape of the closed Mem, and round on the inside) The aspect of holiness in our relationship is the capacity to serve as a vessel and protection for those parts that are now “form within formlessness”, and for the longing that grows from them. It is an expression of trust both in the inner hidden parts that have never seen the light, and thus have no colors, alongside the spectrum of colors that shine out in the beauty of who you are now.

May we merit to commit to ourselves and to others in such kedushah.

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Also: this is somewhat longer than previous entries, mostly because I elaborate on muti-level reading of the text. For those who are looking to develop their skills in reading Zohar texts, this could be valuable. For those who are interested primarily in the content, perhaps less so – my apologies.

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In the first part of his address, Rabbi Shimeon emphasized the need for awakening from the sleep of alienation and exile. In the last part, he demonstrates how this happens, taking us along for the ride.

Part 1

Rabbi Shimeon’s second important lesson (for the first, see last week’s essay) is that one of the ways awakening comes about, is through telling the story of awakening. The story he tells is a multi-layered story of longing, which “works” when all the longings are raised into consciousness and merge in that process. At the end of his address Rabbi Shimeon calls this, “the secret of unification”.

There are at least four stories of longing in this story of awakening, layered on each other:

1. The ancestors: This is the first layer Rabbi Shimeon evokes, the righteous ancestors he describes as “sleeping in their crypts”. This section can be a bit confusing, as in the first section Rabbi Shimeon had asked the ancestors of Ḥevron and Moshe to wake up Shekhinah, but now we see Shekhinah calling on Moshe to wake her up… As I will explain below, one way to understand this is to thing of the divine lovers and the ancestors as two layers of the same story. Rabbi Shimeon seeks to awaken the Shekhinah by evoking the ancestral presence. The three ancestral couples of Ḥevron are from “the side of the Shekhinah”, and it is through their awakening, which is an awakening of the Shekhinah, that Shekhinah can produce three cries (one from each couple) to Moshe. Moshe is from the side of the holy, blessed One, and it is through the response of these two sides to each other, that full awakening will come about.

2. The lovers: This is the layer of the story that is anchored in chapter 5 of the Song of songs.

I was asleep, but my heart was wakeful. Hark, my beloved knocks!

“Let me in, my own, my darling, my faultless dove!

For my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the damp of night.”

I had taken off my robe—Was I to don it again?

I had bathed my feet—Was I to soil them again?

My beloved took his hand off the latch, and my heart was stirred for him.

I rose to let in my beloved;

My hands dripped myrrh—My fingers, flowing myrrh—Upon the handles of the bolt.

I opened the door for my beloved,

But my beloved had turned and gone. I was faint because of what he said.

I sought, but found him not; I called, but he did not answer.

(Song of Songs 5:2-6, JPS 2023)

Note that the primary struggles here are internal. While both figures feel the love for each other passionately, one lover cannot bring herself to leave bed until it is too late, while the other, having waited outside all night (“my head is drenched with dew”) loses patience just before the door is opened. While both sides are to some extent awake, each needs the response of the other to complete that process.

3. The historical People of Israel: this is the story of exile, the story of people who have lost their land, their national dignity and independence, who feel they have betrayed their God and may have lost the immediacy of that relationship, and who are often experiencing physical oppression and suffering. The people’s longing for redemption is connected to the text from Isaiah that we discussed last week and the prophet’s call for the dead to return to life.

When the holy, blessed One says “I did not enter [my home] as long as you were in exile” God is responding to the fear that the loss of land and temple might also entail the loss of the people’s relationship with God. This particular expression of God’s suffering alongside the people of Israel is based on a Talmudic midrash in the name of Rabbi Yohanan - “The holy, blessed One said: I will not enter the Jerusalem above until I have entered the Jerusalem below” (bavli, Ta’anit 5a). In Rabbi Shimeon’s address that image shifts into an image of God as a lover waiting outside the gate throughout the entire night of exile.

The exile story itself has a sub-layer, which is the longing for redemption from the forms of personal exile which we discussed in last week’s essay. At the most immediate level, the gathering which creates the Tikunei Zohar is addressing this longing by connecting it to all the other layers of longing I have articulated.

4. The divine dynamics: This layer, the central layer of the TZ’s religious experience, is based on the premise that the brokenness and longing which we experience and witness in the world, both are, and reflect a brokenness and longing within God. For the TZ, the primary symbol for this dynamic is the relationship between the blessed, holy One (Kudesha Berikh Hu) and the divine Presence (Shekhinah). From an experiential practitioner’s perspective these represent respectively divinity as manifest in the world as it is in every moment, and divinity as manifest in the glory of the vision of the world as it could be, or the true nature of the world which is always hiding within the current moment. The gap between these two divine manifestations is what the Zohar in general calls the exile of the Shekhinah, and following the Zohar, the bridging of that gap becomes the focus of the kabbalist’s religious life.

Kudesha Berikh Hu and the Shekhinah are often presented as two lovers in search of each other, their relationship becoming the secret of divinity hidden behind the love poetry of the Song of Songs. Rabbi Shimeon’s opening teaching applies that symbolism, and connects it to the figures of the ancestors as well. As we saw last week, the physical ancestors from whom the body of the people is derived are described as belonging to “the side” of the Shekhinah, while our Teacher Moshe, the giver of Torah and the vision of who we could become (or who our truest self is) appears in this week’s text standing in for Kudesha Berikh Hu.

As we will see, Rabbi Shimeon also applies the symbolism of God’s name to this relationship, the divine dynamics being portrayed as dynamics between the letters of the divine name.

Layers of the Story

Every line of Rabbi Shimeon’s story of awakening has to be read through all of these layers simultaneously. The lover sleeping in bed is the Shekhinah, and the ancestors sleeping in Hevron, and the people lost in exile, and the individual who is not holding any of this in consciousness, etc. From a literary perspective, the way the TZ tells us that these should all be taken as layers of one story is by mixing all the symbols into one story line. So when, for example, Shekhinah calls out three times to the trustworthy shepherd (Moshe), she is calling out to the holy, blessed One who will be knocking on her door in the next line. It is not so much that the TZ mixes metaphors, as that it allows different layers of this story to surface at different moments, even within the same sentence. For the attentive reader this is a constant reminder to hold all the layers of this story in consciousness as you let the story travel through you.

Part 2

Here the main anchor of the story shifts from the story of the lovers in the Song of Songs, to the internal dynamics within the divine name – YHVH.

Just like the story of longing and awakening, God’s name is also multi-layered. These layers are identified by the movement between different spellings and different numerical values of the name. So for example, the first letter of the divine name YHVH is Yud (י), which carries the numerical value of ten. If however I spell out the name of the letter it would require three letters – Yud, Vav, Dalet (יוד) which combined have the numerical value of 20=10+6+4. The names of these three letters could also be spelled out, giving me a new numerical value, and so on, ad infinitum.

The particular name that anchors this story, is the divine name YHVH spelled out in the following way: יוד הא ואו הא . This configuration has the numerical value of 45 which is also the numerical value of the Hebrew word – Adam (אדם) – a person. By focusing on this configuration of the name, the TZ shifts our focus to the dynamics of the divine as they manifest within the life and soul of a person.

In this section, the main image for the experience of exile, is God’s name broken so that the last letter הא is separated from the first three letters יוד הא ואו .

The numerical value of those three letters is 39, which is also the numerical value of טל , the Hebrew word for dew.

Dew appears both in the verses R Shimeon quoted from the Song of Songs, as the dew in the hair of lover who waited outside all night, and in the verses he quoted from Isaiah in which God’s dew brings the dead back to life.

All these layers come together in the final sentences of Rabbi Shimeon’s statement. Bringing together the “dew” of the first three letters and the last letter lost in exile, makes God’s name whole again and revives and fulfils the person – אדם = 45, who had been lost and alienated.

It brings together the holy blessed One (Kudesha Berikh Hu) and the divine Presence (Shekhinah).

And Moshe and the ancestors of Ḥevron are all awake and sitting together.

In Rabbi Shimeon’s words: “This completes the secret of unification”.

“The secret of Torah” is that Torah, our human interaction with Torah, serves as an arena within which this unification can happen. But the secret itself (sod – numerical value 70, a number that represents completeness) is that the path to unification runs through multiplying possibilities rather than through finding the one true explanation. The mind that is not limited by its own experiences and preconceived notions, that finds and continues to seek in the place it has already found, that can find anew again and again, the person who can find God seventy times in one word is reaching out towards God and creating the consciousness that can experience God in every moment of life and every aspect of being.

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Elijah’s opening statement (which I did not present in detail) evoked God’s presence by reflecting on the mystery of the Sefirot. This is the mystery of the one becoming many, or from the practitioner’s perspective, the puzzle of connecting to a sense of unity from within diversity and division. In an interwoven sequence of images Elijah describes Sefirot as vessels, clothing, body limbs, tree branches and abstract ideas. His description is a celebration of diversity, of many elements coming together in a grand project, of a variety of forms allowing access to the mystery of the One which gives them all life.

In his opening statement, Rabbi Shimeon honors this vision by opening with the verse from 1^st Chronicles, 29. This verse, from a prayer King David offers to thank and praise God for the privilege of preparing materials for his son Solomon to build a temple, is most likely the origin of the traditional names of the main group of the Sefirot.

For Rabbi Shimeon to open with this verse is to offer a hymn of praise in response to the divinity whose presence Elijah has evoked in the room.

But in the next sentence, Rabbi Shimeon speaks for the pain and the power of the world of the living which he represents. Because, from the perspective of the divine world, introducing multiplicity and otherness is what creates love, which is impossible in an undifferentiated unity. But in the experience of the living, otherness also introduces alienation and loneliness and loss, and Heaven forbid, even fear and anger and hate. The shadow side of otherness is what our tradition calls and we experience as exile, whether we are telling the story at the personal (as in the story of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden) the national (when the people are exiled from the land) or the cosmic level.

So, while Elijah had addressed God, R Shimeon, from within the experience of exile, addresses his ancestors.

Exile.

To be in exile is to live in the shadow side of otherness.

To experience the separation and alienation of otherness as the defining element of existence rather than connection.

To project the darkness of otherness on yourself and upon others and to have others project it on you.

Exile becomes hopeless, when you can no longer imagine anything else.

This is what Rabbi Shimeon calls: Sleeping in exile.

Sleeping in exile transforms reality. The Shekhinah, Divinity as embodied in our reality as it is, is asleep in exile with us. At our best, our consciousness of what is, Shekhinah, is connected to our consciousness of the beauty of what is, Tifferet, a beauty that is always the truth, even if we cannot experience it at this moment. But when Shekhinah is asleep in exile, Tifferet is lost to us and to Her. For Shekhinah and Tifferet are the lovers of Song of Songs, always finding and losing and seeking for each other. Shekhinah is the young maiden and the queen, while Tifferet is the young shepherd and the king. It is the role of the righteous person to awaken Shekhinah, so that they can unite again.

Rabbi Shimeon’s teaching, his crying out, his wake-up call, weaves together two different biblical sources, one from Isaiah and one from the Song of Songs.

Both texts express a longing for awakening, and in both cases full realization is delayed. In Isaiah the vision remains messianic, and in SoS the beloved rises too late, when her lover has already left. When Rabbi Shimeon weaves these texts together, he combines three different experiences of “sleeping in exile”. The experience of the Shekhinah, as read through the Song of Songs, the experience of death, and the experience of every individual who is living through the disconnect from the divine presence and from those who have died.

The idea of reaching out to the ancestors who “sleep in Ḥevron” goes back to the Talmud:

“They went up through the south, and he came to Ḥevron” (Bamidbar 13:22) – Shouldn’t it have said “they came to Ḥevron”? Rava said: This teaches that Caleb separated from the plan of the other scouts and went to prostrate on the graves of the ancestors. He said: My ancestors, seek mercy for me, that I may escape the plan of the other scouts.”

(Bavli, Sotah 34b)

In a crisis situation, Caleb remembers that Avraham and Sarah, Yitzḥak and Rivkah, and Yaakov and Leah (and in some versions also Adam and Eve) are buried in in the cave in Ḥevron. According to the midrash, he leaves the group to go ask for their help.

Rabbi Shimeon also reaches out to these ancestors, but we are not told that he travels to Ḥevron to do so. Rabbi Shimeon reaches towards the place where the ancestors live within us, for that is the place where, as he says, they are not dead, but only asleep, waiting to be awakened to sing. The ancestors who sleep in Ḥevron are the parents of the Jewish people, they come from “the side” of the Shekhinah, they are the part within us that is aware of what is, that recognizes that as the presence of God. And Rabbi Shimeon also calls on the faithful shepherd, our Master Moshe, the one who gave us Torah, who is from the side of Tifferet, the true beauty of the world as it is and as it could be.

This is the first lesson of Rabbi Shimeon:

The long dark exile of soul, as it manifests internally, and also externally as a world that seems ruled by fear and anger and cynicism, is real. But it can also be changed – though this requires first and foremost an awakening of yourself, or perhaps more precisely, the God-parts within you that extend throughout the universe. The God within you must cry out to God, and awaken all of you. It is only then that the real work can start.

And that, Rabbi Shimeon teaches, is the project of the Tikunei Zohar.

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The final part of the introduction – next week!

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Elijah’s invitation holds a certain tension within it. His first sentence invites R Shimeon to say something new. The following sentence however implies that he is being given permission to share ancient teachings that previous teachers were not allowed to share, in which case, R Shimeon’s words would be new only to the listeners…

I think the tension is best understood in light of a Classical Rabbinic text that also addresses the issue of innovation:

When the holy, blessed One appeared at Mount Sinai to give Torah to the people of Israel, God spoke the entire sequence to Moshe – Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud and Aggadah. Thus it says: “Elohim spoke all of these things…” (Shemot 20:1) Even what a student asks his teacher was said by the holy, blessed One to Moshe at that time.

(Shemot Rabbah, 47:1)

This teaching appears in various versions throughout rabbinic literature. In some versions the last sentence speaks of “any ruling an experienced student will ever issue” (Yerushalmi, Peah 2:4) or say in the presence of their teacher. In all cases, the teaching promotes the idea, that all rabbinic teachings, including those that seem to be created at historically later times, were actually given by God to Moshe at Sinai.

But the last sentence takes this idea a bit too far. Since many of us have had the experience of asking a question or offering an idea or interpretation in the presence of a teacher, and having it either affirmed or rejected, we know that the phrase “given to Moshe at Sinai” can not be taken literally in any boundary-setting way. I know that when I spoke in the presence of my teacher, I was not always quoting something that I had heard from someone else. At least experientially, there were times when I offered my own ideas or my own best understanding of the text. Notice also, that the idea does not have to be affirmed by the teacher in order to enter the category of “given at Sinai”. Even just the question itself can enter that category… And if that is the case, there is no reason to assume that any statement of the Mishnah or the Talmud was experientially different. According to this teaching, saying that something was given at Sinai, does not necessarily imply that I heard it from someone else.

What this teaching requires for a statement or a question to be considered “from Sinai” is that it be made in the context of a lineage. The person asking the question must be a “talmid”, a student, or a “talmid vatik”, an experienced student. Some versions also want it to be said in the presence of the student’s teacher. According to this teaching, the phrase “given at Sinai” describes a commitment to a process, not to a specific content. To say that a teaching was given at Sinai does not mean that those specific words or even that idea or theological concept were known to previous generations in any way or form. It means that the statement being discussed was generated in the context of a commitment to the ongoing process of Torah which exists in the balance between continuity and innovation.

The same idea is expressed in a well-known and much-discussed story about Moshe and Rabbi Akiva. At the top of mount Sinai, just as God is putting the finishing touches on the Torah about to be given to the people, God tells Moshe about a certain R Akiva who will live many generations in the future and will derive heaps of rulings and teachings from every ornamentation on each letter of Torah. Overcome with curiosity, Moshe asks to witness this person, and God sends him through time to R Akiva’s classroom.

He sat eight rows back.

He did not recognize anything they were saying, and felt great despair (lit. his energy was sapped)

Then, the teacher reached a certain topic, and the students asked:

Our teacher, what is your source for this?

He answered: It is a halakha given to Moshe at Mt. Sinai.

Moshe’s mind was put at ease.

(Bavli, Menahot 29b)

The story-teller has carefully constructed a poignant contradiction. The story brings Moshe from Mount Sinai to hear R Akiva present a teaching Moshe does not recognize as a ”halakha given to Moshe at Mt. Sinai”, and somehow, this makes Moshe feel better. Assuming that Moshe’s initial despair arises from the fear that the Torah he had received has been lost over the generations, why does hearing a misattribution make him feel better?

This story must be understood as part of the same rabbinic strand of thinking that we saw in the previous teaching. Thus, when Moshe hears R Akiva say, “given to Moshe at Mt. Sinai”, he does not understand R Akiva to be making a historical-origin claim, which Moshe knows would be false. He rather understands R Akiva to be expressing loyalty to the process of Torah and halakha that originated with Moshe at Sinai. Within that process, it is totally possible that some of our teachings and practices would be totally unrecognizable to our ancient ancestors. But our ancestors, represented here by Moshe, would not see that as betrayal. They are “at ease” with new practices and teachings as long as they originate with the commitment to the processes of Torah Sh’be’al Peh – the Torah that flows through the mouths of living people (in contrast to that which is written in the scroll). I cannot enter the ocean of discussions about the framework and boundaries of this process in this essay. But it is important to understand that in this understanding, Torah is a generative and creative process, and certainly not an exclusively conservative process.

This is the rabbinic lineage that the Zohar picks up, though it is important to understand this move in the context of the Jewish-thought debates of the 12^th and 13^th centuries. The earliest flourishing of Kabbalah in Spain is in the circles around the Ramban (Nahmanides) in Catalonia. The Ramban has a very conservative attitude towards Kabbalah, insisting that it consists only of passing on that which he had received from his predecessors. And although the Ramban’s decision to publicize kabbalistic teachings is usually understood in as part of the movement against the Rambam’s philosophical interpretation of Torah and mitzvot (particularly “The Guide for the Preplexed”) his attitude towards tradition is similar to that which the Rambam promoted in Mishneh Torah. In his introduction to Mishneh Torah the Rambam articulates a lineage of Torah Sh’b’al Peh, naming individuals over a span of forty generations who are said to have passed this tradition from one to another, reminiscent of the Isnad of Hadith in Islam. Elsewhere he promotes a vision of a completely unified Torah, with disagreements resulting from mistakes in transmission (Introduction to the Mishnah) and the tragic loss of central authority (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Mamrim, Ch. 1). This is a fundamentally conservative approach to tradition, which treats change as a problem.

The 13^th century circle of Castilian kabbalists amongst which the Zohar originated, took a different path. As we have already seen (here) for these kabbalists, “Zohar” meant the radiant font of creativity, the imaginal and visionary mode of engagement with which they discovered ever-new facets of Torah. I would like to propose that in connecting to this internal creative experience of Torah, they are not choosing a prophetic source of authority over tradition. (See Scholem’s essay on this topic in the first chapter of “On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism”) They are rather connecting to the rabbinical understanding of Torah Sh’b’al Peh that we saw in the teachings quoted previously. As the Zohar demonstrates on every page, its visions and imaginings are deeply rooted in the process of Torah, Halakhah and Aggadah beginning with Sinai and through all the generations until their own time. It is because of this that they know that Moshe would be comfortable with them, R Shimeon bar Yohai would speak through them, and everything they said was coming from Sinai. The fact that no one else had ever said what they said before them does not contradict this assertion. These words, spoken into the collective Jewish soul at Sinai are now being heard for the first time as they arise from the personal souls of these practitioners of Torah in Castilia.

And in the Tikunei Zohar, that is exactly what Elijah the prophet is telling R Shimeon bar Yohai to do. He gives him permission to innovate, to imagine and say new words, new forms created by his own hands. And Elijah assures him, that what he says will come from a Sinai, words kept secret until this very moment.

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2^nd Kings, chapter 2, describes the prophet Elijah’s passing not as death, but rather as being taken to heaven on a fiery chariot and horses. Ever since, Elijah has been portrayed as a Hermes-like figure moving between the worlds of the angels and the humans. It is therefore not surprising that Elijah serves as the spokesman for the group of supernal beings, angels and souls, who have come to learn with R Shimeon and his friends.

It is however striking that he does not address the gathered group, earthly or heavenly. He rather addresses the entire statement to God, the word “You” addressing God being repeated numerous times.

This in itself might be the first and most important thing Elijah has to say. The content of Elijah’s statement is a description of God, mostly addressing the challenge of understanding and relating to an infinite presence within a finite universe. It is easy to imagine it as a theology lesson. Indeed, the text of Elijah’s statement is often taught as a lesson in the theology of the Zohar or an introduction to the system of Sefirot. But in the story itself Elijah is not teaching, in the sense that he is not talking to those assembled. He is speaking directly to God in the presence of the gathered assembly.

What kind of speech is this?

I will offer two ways to understand what Elijah is doing.

One of the early rabbinic texts that addresses what comes to be called Jewish mysticism is the mishnah at the beginning of the second chapter of tractate Ḥagigah.

The topic of forbidden intimacy should not be expounded (dorshin) in the presence of three people,

Nor the story of creation (ma’ase bereshit) in the presence of two

Nor the workings of the divine chariot (ma’ase merkavah) in the presence of one, unless it is a wise person who understands on their own.

(Mishnah Ḥagigah 2:1)

Simply put, the Mishnah is setting limitations on the public teaching of particular topics. A great deal has been written in the attempt to both define these topics and understand the limitations, and I cannot enter that conversation here. I will focus only on the last category, “the workings of the divine chariot”. This phrase alludes to Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1) and comes to relate to visions, speculations and teachings on the nature of the divine. There is however something of a paradox in the limitations set on this topic. What is this material that you are only supposed to teach to someone who already understands it, and how does one come to that understanding if it cannot be taught?

Another text from the same period offers an example of what this might look like:

A story about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who was traveling on the road, riding a donkey. Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh, walked behind him, directing the animal.

He (REBA) said: Master, teach me a section of the workings of the divine chariot.

He (RYBZ) said: have I not taught you - “nor the workings of the divine chariot (ma’ase merkavah) in the presence of one, unless it is a wise person who understands on their own”?

He said: Master, allow me to say in your presence something that you taught me.

Speak, said Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, and immediately dismounted, wrapped himself in his robe and sat on a stone under an Olive tree.

He (REBA) said: Master, why have you dismounted from the donkey?

He said: when you expound on the workings of the divine chariot, the divine presence is here with us, and the ministering angels accompany us – how could I be riding a donkey?

Immediately, Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh opened, teaching the workings of the divine chariot. Fire came down from heaven and surrounded the trees in the field, and the trees all began singing. They sang: “Praise HVYH, you who are on earth, sea-monsters and the ocean depths… fruit trees and all cedars… Hallelujah!” (Psalms 148)

An angel responded from within the fire and said: These, these are the workings of the divine chariot. And Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai stood, kissed his (REBA) head and said: Blessed is HVYH the God of Israel, who gave our ancestor Abraham a descendant who knows and understands and seeks out and expounds the workings of the divine chariot…

(Bavli, Hagigah 14b)

There are a few interesting details to notice in this story.

When REBA asks to be taught the workings of the chariot, he is refused. But when he reframes the question, asking to speak in his teacher’s presence, he describes what he wants to say as “something you taught me”. As RYBZ’s response (dismounting, etc.) demonstrates, they both understand that he is about to discuss the workings of the chariot. But if RYBZ has refused to teach this to him, how is his own expounding of the workings of the chariot “something you taught me”?

I would propose, that “the secret of the chariot” is not exclusively a specific content that can be taught by a teacher and repeated by a student. It is rather a quality of learning, the capacity to learn in such a way that actually brings the divine presence into the experience of learning. It may be that the texts of Ezekiel were often used as a base for this practice, but that is not the main point. The main point is the quality of learning in God’s presence, and this cannot be taught as a topic. It is rather learned by the student following their teacher carefully in the way they live daily life, the way they pick up a book at sit down to learn, the way they pray and the way they treat their students. It is in watching all of this that the student learns how to speak Torah in God’s presence. REBA’s words are therefore precise. He is asking to demonstrate something that he has learned by being the student of RYBZ, but that RYBZ has never taught him formally. REBA’s test is not if he can say the words correctly. It is if God will be present in his learning, which the fire, the singing trees and the angel proved to be the case.

This understanding is the basis of the18th century Hasidic story about the first meeting of the Maggid of Mezeritch and the Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht). In this story the Besht asks the Maggid to read and explain a text from the Lurianic Etz Hayyim, which the Maggid does with technical mastery. But when the Besht reads the same text, the Maggid actually sees the angels and divine powers discussed in the text flying around the room, and following this experience he becomes the Besht’s disciple.

It is possible that in the TZ Elijah is doing something similar. In speaking to God, rather than about God, Elijah is evoking God’s presence. And he is not telling God anything God does not already know. In a series of shifting metaphors, he describes the eternal and unlimited nature of God flowing through structures (tikkunim) that exist within boundaries. The challenge for us as learners is not only if we can understand the words and the metaphors. After doing that – can we enter that flow and experience Elijah speaking in God’s presence (as did REBA)?

Another way of framing what Elijah is doing, is to say that by addressing God directly he is collapsing the distinction between the practices of Torah-study and prayer. Elijah’s statement (known as “Patah Eliyahu” after its first words) found its way into prayer books in the 16^th and 17^th century, and at the end of R Hayyim Y.D. Azulai’s Moreh B’etzba (printed in Livorno 1842) there is an instruction to say it immediately upon entering the synagogue before any prayer. The Ben Ish Hai (R Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad, 1835-1909) who is widely followed in middle eastern communities recommended saying it at all kinds of opportunities, and Professor Avi Elqayam has commented that in doing so, the Ben Ish Hai created a practice in which “Patah Eliyhu” functions in the same way as “Al-Fatihah” (the opening sura of the Quran) functioned in the surrounding Muslim milieu.

What makes this text transform so easily into liturgy is that Elijah says these words in a relationship with God. Elijah’s model reflects an understanding of the act of Talmud Torah as both giving and receiving. Whether we learn Torah from a book or from a person, from an ancient or a new source, we are always receiving Torah from God. This is why the blessing for Torah study, included in the morning liturgy, ends with: “Blessed are you HVYH, who teaches Torah to Her people, Yisrael”. To study Torah as a relationship with God is to hold in your consciousness that we are always learning Torah from HVYH. And when we take the Torah that we have received and integrated into our own lives and put it into speech we are offering our lives and the Torah that comes of them to God. This does not imply that you must find something “original” to say every time you speak Torah. Even when you repeat the exact same words that you received, you are channeling them through your body and soul and your life, which are a manifestation of God that never existed before you and will never exist again after you. In the relationship of Torah, we are always both givers and receivers. Even while my teacher or my hevruta is giving words of Torah to God, I, who am listening, am receiving those words of Torah from God, for it is always - “HVYH, who teaches Torah to Her people, Yisrael”.

You do not have to open your learning with the phrase “master of all worlds”, as Elijah does, to make this true. But Elijah opens the learning of TZ this way to remind us that this is the practice of Talmud Torah, the learning that the TZ aspires to.

This then is my understanding of the opening statement of Elijah. He is here to tell us that the learning that happens between the covers of the Tikunei Zohar, the learning that you are invited to join on its pages, is not primarily about accumulating knowledge. The words, spoken, written down, and read, are a structure (a tikkun, as Elijah calls it) meant to evoke and hold the divine presence in your life. Practice listening to the divine voice teaching you through the words of the text and those of your study partner if you are fortunate enough to have one. Offer the words of learning that you say as a prayer, a gift of Torah to God – “for it all comes from You, and from your hand we give to You” (1^st Chronicles, 29:14). Then you too will be sitting at the table along with Elijah, Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai, and all the learners from all the generations.

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As I have mentioned before, in the printed versions of the Tikunei Zohar (TZ) there are two sections titled “introduction”. The first section is longer (16 double-sided pages in the old printings) but except for its opening story, it is difficult to think of it as an introduction in the conventional sense. It moves between topics with no clearly identifiable structure, shifting from one topic to another without warning, and introducing text-blocks that are clearly missing their beginning or their end. To a contemporary literary eye, this section feels more like an appendix, a collection of pieces that the editor cut out but the author felt were crucial for the book, so they were all thrown together in an additional section.

The second section is much shorter (only one page, TZ 17a-b) and is clearly written as an introduction to the book. It offers an origin story for the book in three clearly defined sections. It begins by describing a meeting of two “super-teams” of Torah learners, gathered to create this book. The first group represents the Torah learners of the realm of the living and is headed by R Shimeon bar Yohai, while the second group represents the Torah learners of the supernal halls of study, and is headed by Elijah the prophet. The meeting begins with the opening statement of Elijah the prophet, who after he finishes, calls upon R Shimeon bar Yohai to make an opening statement for his group. When R Shimeon finishes, they are ready to begin their project – working together to create seventy elaborations of the word Bereshit,

In describing the meeting, this (second) introduction to Tikunei Zohar describes the creation of the TZ as an act of joining the divine flow of ancestral voices of Torah. As we have seen many times, the description begins with one of the Zohar’s favorite verses, Daniel 12:3.

When the Zohar’s fellowship, R Shimon and his disciples, gather to learn Torah, they do not do so on their own. The light of their learning shines “forever and ever” precisely because all the generations of Torah, the study halls of angels and souls take part in their learning. Their learning is thus attuned to, and part of the mighty voice that originated in Sinai and never ceased.

In Moshe’s later description of the revelation at Sinai, he says:

“God spoke those words to your whole congregation at the mountain, out of the fire and the dense clouds, with a mighty voice - and no more (v’lo yasaf).”

(Devarim 5:19)

In context, Moshe seems to be setting a clear boundary to divine revelation; the people heard the ten commandments and nothing else. But the ancient (1^st-2^nd century CE) Aramaic translation of the Torah, Targum Onkelus, understood the last word of the verse, yasaf, to be derived from the grammatical root S.V.F, leading it to translate - “a great voice that never ceased”. (Targum Onkelus, Devarim 5:19) The Zohar picks up this interpretation saying -

Other voices cease… but this voice includes all other voices within it and never ceases, it is never less than fully present, in full power. We have learned: This is the voice of all voices, the voice that encompasses all voices.

(Zohar Yitro 2:81a)

The Zohar is asking us to imagine the moment at Sinai as the “Big Bang” of Jewish tradition. Every bit of Torah ever written, spoken, heard, imagined or created from that time until the end of history was present in that one moment when the people stood in the presence of God. And from that moment it started expanding outwards, and it is still expanding to this day, galaxies of Torah speeding outwards through human lives…

This image of cross-generational partnership is even more powerful if we accept that the Zohar, composed in the voices of R Shimon and his fellowship, is written by another group, living in 13^th century Castille. This group reaches out across the centuries to the earlier group, who they imagine doing the exact same thing – tuning in to an a-historical flow of Torah through ancestral generations. This is why they believe that the book they are creating together with Elijah and his company will “lead many to righteousness.” It is created as an embodiment of this learning process, a gateway into the “voice that never ceases”. In predictable Jewish fashion, the gateway to this world is not in a wardrobe, instead it hides behind the cover of a book.

To open this book, to learn Torah this way is a practice, a cultivation of both knowledge and an imaginal consciousness. When I sit or stand to learn, I orient myself towards taking a seat at the endless table where the entire process of Torah is playing out. The more I have listened and internalized the conversation that preceded me, the more my learning conversation is happening in that context, merging with that flow of thoughts, words and sounds. When seen through this lens, studying Torah is not primarily a project of accumulating knowledge and thinking of new ideas. It is a relationship practice, a practice of learning to be in the presence of our ancestors and to be part of the divine voice that flows through them. Like every relationship, this one too begins with careful listening, a slow process of learning the language, its nuances, and the ways it is used. When you have learned to listen, when the listening has transformed you, they will invite you to begin speaking in their circle, and the addition of your voice will shift something, however small, in the eternal life of Torah. You will have become part of the flow of God’s never-ceasing voice.

Bet Hamidrash is the sanctuary of that practice. Its walls are covered with books full of conversations of Torah, evoking the presence of the entire lineage so they will all be present in my learning. The bookshelves of Bet HaMidrash are the equivalent of an altar upon which one might put an icon or pictures of the saints. There are the elders, and the prophets, and the Tanai’m and the Amoraim, and Ba’alei HaZohar, and the writers of codes, and of responsa, and of commentary and of derashot. In these books are also people who were not authors, men and women whose lives shaped and were shaped by this conversation. People who lived 2000 years ago, 200 years ago and people who live with us today. Here is an opening for souls of the future, yet to be born.

But whether you are studying in Bet HaMidrash or in your bedroom, it is useful to have some other books present to evoke the presence of all these generations in your practice of Talmud Torah.

I worry about a generation for whom computer access is so central to the act of learning that they can imagine learning in a room which is not surrounded by books of Torah. How will our ancestors know that their presence is welcome and desired?

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An earlier version of this essay was originally published as part of “A year of Zohar” hosted by My Jewish Learning.

Some of these reflections are ancient and well known. The idea that the temple (or tabernacle in this case) represents a mini cosmos may be alluded to already in the Torah itself, and is recognized by Hazal. (See for example Bamidbar Rabbah 12:13). The TZ teaching we will look at begins with such a rabbinic derasha, which identifies the “Hokhmat Lev”, the wisdom of the heart given to Bezalel, as knowledge of the very methods of creation that were used by God to create the world. Since the world was created by acts of speech, the method of creation involves the combination of letters that create the words that bring the universe into existence. The rabbinic midrash assumes that these letter combinations are not the words we know from the narrative of the first chapters of Bereshit, but are rather, somehow, hidden within them. The TZ wants to find out where they are hidden… For the TZ, this knowledge is part of the knowledge that becomes accessible through the “zohar”, the creative energy it sees evoked in the verse from the last chapter of Daniel, which it goes back to again and again.

In the paragraph just prior to this one the TZ identified “Hokhmat Lev”, the wisdom of the heart given to Bezalel, as knowledge of the 32 paths of wisdom (לב = Lev = gematria 32. Therefore, Hokhmat Lev = wisdom of the 32) through which the cosmos was created (Sefer Yetzirah 1:1). Together with the ten statements with which our world was created (Pirkei Avot 5:1) the numbers reach 42, and thus connect to an ancient tradition that the name God takes on in creation, or the name through which creation happens is a name made of 42 letters. The Tosafot on bavli Hagigah 11b offer an early example of connecting of the name of 42 letters to the first two verses of Bereshit. The TZ identifies the letters that combine to create the world with the name of 42 letters, which includes the 28 letters of the first verse of Bereshit and another 14 letters hidden within them. Later in this paragraph the TZ will identify the internal, hidden layer of creation as the 14 letters of the divine names HVYH Eloheinu HVYH in the first line of the Shema.

The other 14 letters are:

יהו’‘ה אלהינו יהו’‘ה

(HVYH, our god, HVYH. Devarim 6:4)

But the conversation we are discussing focuses on the 28 letters.

The number 28 is the gematria equivalent of the letters כ’ח’, which as a word, mean – power. This creates an opening for the TZ to introduce the verse from psalms 111. This verse was famously applied to the story of creation in a midrash quoted in Rashi’s first comment on Bereshit. Putting all these elements together, the narrative of Bereshit becomes:

We have already seen the idea of “zohar” in Torah as the creative force with which we are invited to partner with God in creating worlds. In seeing the Tabernacle as a prototype for all created structures, including our own bodies, the TZ emphasizes that what we are creating are dwelling places for divinity, or places where creation can happen. Like the better-known teaching that the revelation of Sinai continues through all eternity (Targum, Devarim 5:19) the TZ teaches that creation continues unceasingly as long as people are willing to partner with God in that process. We have been given the power of divine creativity, through which we can create vessels within which divinity can be present and the process of creation can continue.

But what happens if we turn down this invitation?

In the TZ’s understanding, this is the experience of exile. When our way of life leads to the destruction of the vessels that hold the divine presence in our midst, the power to create such vessels is lost to us. Exile is the inability to channel the divine creativity that allows us to become God’s partners in creating the world anew. We become powerless (without כח) slaves, controlled and pursued by reality instead of being its creators.

The practice of reciting the verse “And now, may Adonai’s power (כח) be enhanced” (Bamidbar 14:17) at the beginning of Kaddish is an ancient Ashkenazi practice mentioned in both Mahzor Vitri and the Pardes. (For the history of the practice see Daniel Sperber, Minhagei Yisrael 1, pp.71-77) It evokes Moshe’s desperate plea following the sin of the scouts, that God reclaim the posture of patience and compassion and Moshe’s fear of the loss of God’s presence among the people (See Bamidbar 14:42-43). Mahzor Vitri (mid-12^th century) understands this cry as a way in which Moshe and we support God in reclaiming God’s former greatness, implying that God too experiences loss when the relationship with Israel collapses.

For the TZ, Bamidbar 14:17 is a verse with כח at its center which also has 28 letters. But for the TZ, this cry over the loss of our connection to the divine power of creation is a preparation for reclaiming that power on our own terms. If we have lost the power of the 28 letters contained in the seven words of Bereshit 1:1, we will create our own seven-word, 28-letter phrase, reflecting our commitment to divine creativity – “may the great name be blessed for ever and ever”.

This sentence in itself is an act of human creativity as it does not appear in this form in the biblical texts. The partnership of human and divine creativity is so close and strong that within the flow it may be impossible to distinguish between them. But when the flow is broken it is up to us to take the initiative to renew it. If we put all of our power into the 28 letters of “yehe shmeh raba, etc” we can change reality even if what is, seems “decreed”, and maybe we will see our 28 letters morph into the 28 letters of “Bereshit bara Elohim, etc.” (in the beginning…) and the flow will renew, if only for a moment.

*

People who are introduced to the Kaddish as a prayer for mourners are often confused by the absence of any mention of death or mourning in the text of this prayer. While not explicitly about death, the TZ’s reading of the Kaddish, beginning with a powerful experience of loss and continuing with a reclaiming of agency shares the emotional vocabulary of mourning. Elsewhere, the Zohar brings this interpretation even closer to the experience of the mourner.

In the section called Saba D’Mishpatim, the Zohar offers a teaching on the verse: “All these (Kol Elleh) the twelve tribes (shivtei) of Israel” (Bereshit 49:28). Playing with the double meaning of the Hebrew word “shevet” which means both tribe and rod, the Zohar describes the tribes of Israel as extensions of the Divine Mother into the material world. Together, the Divine Mother and her children spreading through the world, constitute the divine presence in our universe. The opening phrase of the verse is explained as follows:

All These – Kol Elleh – כל אלה

אלה (these) – The Twelve Tribes of Israel

כל (all) = gematria 50 – The Divine Mother (Sefirah Binah)

The Divine Mother (Sefirah Binah) – מי (Mee – who?) = gematria 50

מי = כל = gematria 50

מי + אלה (Mee + Elleh) = anagram אלהים (Elohim)

In short: The phrase “Kol Elleh” is seen as expressing the combination of the Divine Mother with her children spreading through the world. The word Kol can be exchanged with the word Mee, as both have the numerical value of 50 a number which is associated with the Divine Mother. Mee Elleh is an anagram of the divine name Elohim, which is the name used for God throughout the first chapter of Bereshit. In other words, it is the combination of the Divine Mother with her children that constitutes the divine creation of the world, as manifest through the divine name – אלהים.

While the TZ mourned the loss of the connection to the divine כח, the Saba D’mishpatim describes the loss in term of a relationship between a mother and her children. When Mee rises up, the Aramaic word used for rising, “Istalek” is the same word used for dying, the experience is shattering, not only for the mother and her children, but also for the divine name Elohim, the name which holds the very existence of divinity in our world. When the community prays for the restoration of “the great name” We are praying for the divine name that exists in the unification of mother (parent?) with children.

Asking a mourner to lead us in this prayer, enhances the prayer experience of both the community and the mourner. The community benefits from having the prayer channeled through a person whose experience of this shattering is personal and immediate rather than historical and abstract. For the mourner, while the prayer is written as an expression of the pain of loss, it also sets this loss in a larger, communal and universal context, a loss the community has in common rather than one the mourner feels in isolation. And perhaps over a year of mourning the mourner can move from the isolating qualities of the immediate personal loss, to being a voice for the ongoing loss and longing of the entire community, and perhaps within that be-longing is resting in peace.

O, troubledness concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above

And let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name

(Leonard Cohen, Come Healing, 2012)

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A philosopher asked R Hoshaya: If circumcision is desirable, why was it not given to the first Adam? He [R Hoshaya] said… Everything created in the six days of creation still requires action. Mustard needs sweetening, Lupines need sweetening, and Wheat needs grinding. Even humans require completion.

(Bereshit Rabbah 11:6)

What was the philosopher’s question? R Hoshaya’s answer demonstrates that he understood the premise of the question to be that if God had desired men to be circumcised, humanity would have been created that way. The philosopher thus represents an appreciation of nature and an aspiration for the “natural state” of being, or in theological language – the perfection of God’s creation. R Hoshaya’s answer (following an initial polemical response, which I have omitted) is that humanity’s role is not to avoid destroying the perfection of creation, but rather that the world is created for us to actively work on it. Rashi on this story presents this as a midrash on the last words of Bereshit 2:3 - “which God created, to do” – everything in creation requires action.

In addressing circumcision, the Tikunei Zohar (TZ) follows a similar path, but goes on its own journey:

This text appears around half-way through the first introduction to TZ, in a list of six commandments (only five appear in our text) that can be seen through the prism of the first word of Torah and of the story of creation – Bereshit. The TZ returns to the verse from Daniel we have already seen it engage with, and this time it identifies the masters of “Zohar” as those who can perceive the mitzvah of circumcision shining through the word Bereshit. For the TZ this mitzvah appears in an anagram, as the six letters of the Hebrew word בראשית reorganized to spell ברית אש - a covenant of fire.

The TZ then proceeds to explore the mitzvah of circumcision, including the association with fire. We join this discussion about a page later, as the topic shifts to the importance of removing the foreskin – the Orlah.

Continuing its initial drive – to understand the mitzvah of circumcision through the prism of Bereshit, the TZ’s understanding of the foreskin is channeled through the second verse of the story of creation. The letter Yud covered by the foreskin is a graphic representation of the corona of the penis, but it is simultaneously the divine core hidden at the heart of the physical world within which we exist. By shifting the discussion from the penis to the story of creation, and to nuts and fruit-trees, the TZ teaches that the dynamics of circumcision are only one expression of a universal dynamic of covering and exposure.

The description of these shells is taken from the world of nuts and only then applied to the story of creation.

Many nuts share this general tri-part structure (pericarp, endocarp and seed coat), and the outermost layer is often in shades of green and softer than the next inner level.

It is the green (Yarok) layer that creates the association to the cosmic story of creation, through an earlier rabbinic midrash:

We have learned: Tohu is a green (yarok) line surrounding the world from which darkness emerges, as it says, “God made darkness a screen all around Her” (Psalms 18:12). Bohu are smooth stones sunk in the abyss from which water emerges, as it says, “God shall measure it with a line of chaos (tohu) and with weights of emptiness (bohu).” (Isaiah 34:11)

(bavli, Hagigah 12a)

I think that the rabbinic image of the line of tohu is inspired by the thin line of light along the horizon just before sunrise when the entire sky is still dark. For the rabbinic imagination this evokes God hiding behind a screen of darkness, about to be revealed in light. Depending on the atmospheric conditions this line might be closer to green or to yellow, but since the word Yarok serves for both in rabbinic Hebrew, the connection is made.

One way or the other, the TZ depicts the layers of difficulty God encounters in creating the world using the images of the layers one must get through to find the kernel of a nut. In doing so, the TZ expresses an understanding that the difficulties in any process of becoming are not incidental but rather inherent, and of the very nature of our being.

In Jewish mystical discourse these shells are often represented as forces of evil, the dark “other side” (Sitra Ahra) battling against human and divine efforts. But it is worth remembering that the Zohar has other, slightly more nuanced ways of representing these shells as well.

Envision this: In all that the holy, blessed One does, the external comes first. The essential core is prioritized in thought, but in action the external comes first. The shell comes from the other side, and the core comes from the [divine] core. The other side always comes first, and it cultivates and raises and guards the fruit. Once the fruit is grown, it [the shell] is thrown out…

(Zohar 2:108b)

This is far from a positive depiction of the shells. The tone of this story is harsh, it tells of the holy side using and discarding the forces of the shells. But the story itself is not a story of good and evil. It is a story of becoming, of fragile beginnings and growth. A tiny seed of life will not survive without a strong vessel to both protect and sustain it, whether it is the shell of an egg or a nut, or a mother’s womb. But there comes a point when the shell must crack open to allow the seed to grow, or it will die in the shell. Without the shell, there is no nut. But without the shell breaking, the nut can become neither food nor a new tree. If a shell, like any defensive mechanism, does not fall away at the right time, it will suffocate life, and it is probably from this perspective that we see shells as evil. But when the shell cracks at the right moment, even if it is the chick herself who has to break her way out, how can we see it with anything but endless gratitude?

The word “Bereshit” means beginning, and beginning implies process. The process of creation and becoming which God embodied begins with gestation through tohu and bohu and ḥoshekh (darkness) until they crack and fall away and light emerges. But that light will itself become a shell one day, so that a new day can come into being, and it will cultivate and raise and protect that seed, until its own time comes to be discarded. In the TZ’s imagination, in the ritual of circumcision, the removal of the covering foreskin is clearly a representation of a new life which has emerged from the womb. Yet, it must also serve as a reminder to the parents – You are now the shell for this baby, and your role is to protect and cultivate its life and growth. But do not forget that part of your role is also to crack open and be removed at some point so that a new world can come into being.

This is the world “that God created, to do”. Shells must be created, and shells must be shattered.

This understanding opens the possibility for the TZ to see every prohibition related to the number three through this lens. Breaking the shell, attempting engagement before all three levels of the shell have played their role, can also cause death and damage. Eating fruit in the fourth year is a celebration of God. But that is because we have allowed for three years of Orlah (literally – “foreskinning”, or practically speaking a prohibition from eating) and did not break through the shells while they still had work to do. The TZ applies the same principle to the Mishnaic instruction, that the rules regarding sexual sins should be taught only in groups larger than three. The three people become a stand-in for the three layers of shells, and the TZ reads this rule as a warning not to teach this sensitive material to someone who has not already gone through all of the “shell” levels. The TZ then continues to apply this principle to a subject of central importance to it – Torah study and spiritual experiences.

Here the TZ references the well-known Talmudic story of the four scholars who entered the orchard of Jewish mystical experience. Of the four, one died, one lost contact with physical reality, and one became a heretic. Only R Akiva “entered in peace and exited in peace” (Bavli, Hagigah 14b). For the TZ the first three demonstrate the dangers of a person who is not yet ready for the experiences of the mystical journey, and might bite off part of the shell instead of the fruit. Only R Akiva has matured to the point where the protecting shells have fallen away, and he can meet these experiences with the resulting sense of autonomy and wholeness (Shalem) that is not undermined or confused by destabilizing experiences.

The other example is R Meir, the disciple of Elisha ben Avuyah who is the one of the four who became a heretic. R Meir refused to leave his teacher even after his teacher left the world of Torah, a wonderous story that I cannot address in detail in this context (bavli, Hagigah 15a). But from the perspective of the TZ, R Meir had a matureness and wholeness that his teacher lacked, and was thus able to sustain the relationship with his teacher (the pomegranate) learning from him what was of value (eating the inside) without being confused by the parts and attitudes that needed to be discarded (heresy).

The final comment of the TZ addresses the learning experience of the person who is ready to peel away the shells in order to learn and receive the inner core of Torah. Here the TZ addresses the process of learning, not of mystical experience per-se. The TZ describes the process of working through the difficulties in understanding the text; resolving inner contradictions, accessing the essential teaching of the text (reflected in the word ”halakha” – the practical outcome of the learning), etc. as a process of breaking through the shells. In this image, breaking through the shells does not follow maturation, but is rather part of the maturation process itself. In this spiritual practice of Talmud Torah, discerning truth from falsehood, right from wrong and moving from opaqueness into clarity reveals not only the light in the Torah but also the light in the learner herself. R Hayyim Vital describes his own teacher’s practice of studying halakha in this way:

“When he studied halakha, he would engage in the learning with a lion’s strength until he was worn out and sweating all over. And I asked him why he puts so much effort into this? And he answered that this kind of in-depth learning shatters the shells, the difficulties in the specific halakha that block your understanding. This is why you need to invest the energy and wear yourself out in this learning.”

(Shaar HaMitzvot, Parashat Va’ethanan)

The danger with this kind of energetic engagement with the difficulties of the text, is that it is easy to fall into an adversarial relationship with the learning, seeing the text primarily as an obstacle to be overcome…

And perhaps, for a chick trying to break out of the egg, that attitude is useful, but in the last paragraph of this section the TZ reminds us that this is not the only option. It goes back to the Song of Songs, where we learn that within a love relationship even the shells, and the bark of the tree and the branches can be as sweet and as wonderful as the fruit. Is that not the case with the bark of the cinnamon tree, and the sugar cane, and orange peels in chocolate and the sap of the maple tree?

Working through the difficulties can bear both the harshness of battle and the sweetness of love.

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In the description of the dedication of the first Temple (Kings I, ch. 8), when the holy ark is brought into the temple, and a cloud fills the precincts, King Solomon declares:

Yet only a few verses later, in his dedication prayer, King Solomon says:

The inner tension contained in King Solomon’s words reflects a basic difficulty common in monotheistic religion. While we tend to attribute absolute wholeness to divinity, transcending all human limitations, we ourselves can only function within human limitations. Any relation we have with divinity is per-force filtered through our own human limitations. It is not only that our temples cannot contain the fullness of God, any words or images that we use in relation to God are diminishments. Medieval philosophers like Maimonides or Aquinas concluded that one could only speak of what God is not, but even they lived and practiced in communities that prayed, longed and imagined.

The Tikunei Zohar brings this question to the prophet Yeḥezkel. Yeḥezkel is one of the most theatrical of the early prophets, and his visions are rich with vivid imagery. The central vision of the book (described in detail in the first chapter) is a vision that comes to be known as “The Divine Chariot” though the word chariot is not used by Yeḥezkel. Yeḥezkel is one of the exiles who were brought to Bavel before the destruction of Jerusalem, and when he has a vision of “an image of the glory of HVYH” (Ezekiel 1:28) moving around on living beings on wheels, he is not sure what he has seen. It is only ten chapters later, 14 months by the book’s timeline, when he sees the same image leaving the temple grounds (Ezekiel 10. The date is in chapter 8:1), that he understands that his seeing the God of Israel in Bavel is a lesson that God too is wandering, and is no longer connected exclusively to the land or location of the temple. It is this that makes Yehezkel the first true prophet of exile. (In contrast, for example, with the religious outlook expressed in Kings II, 17:24-41) Yehezkel has the same vision one last time at the end of the book, when he sees the same image of God entering the future temple that he has envisioned being built (Ezekiel 43). The vividness and details of Yeḥezkel’s vision of God’s glory, made his description an anchor text for Jewish mystics throughout the generations, and one of the first figures that the Tikunei Zohar calls upon to discuss the power and limitations of images of God.

One of the characteristics of the Tikunei Zohar (even more than the rest of the Zohar which also shares this quality to some extent) is that its conversation is not limited by time, or by life and death. Figures from across rabbinical and biblical history participate in these discussions without any limitations. At the most, figures may have to be woken up or called upon in order to participate. If we add to this list the 13^th century scholars in whose circles these texts originated, we can see in this form an invitation to us, the contemporary learners of the text, to participate as well. As I have mentioned before, the Tikunei Zohar is a later strata of the Zohar, and the descriptions of waking up ancient figures to participate, might be a literary description of the earlier Zoharists embodying the rabbinic figures who are the protagonists and the speakers in the Zohar’s story. In our case it is not actually clear if there is a point where Moshe finishes speaking and Yeḥezkel begins… This prompts R Moshe Cordovero in his interpretation of the Tikunim to write:

The statement “wake up Yehezkel” and the like, are said in order to awaken the soul of that prophet or righteous person to speak or explain their words. Still, there were times when that soul would manifest and come and other times when Rashbi himself was the medium (maggid) and the secret would rise within him from a hidden source. It all depends on the divine decree of that moment.

(Cordovero, Ohr Yakar on Tikunei Zohar, vol. 2, p. 214)

The difficulty of imagining God in specific forms is addressed by presenting Yehezkel’s visions as embodying three distinct layers. But throughout the Tikunim, this is more than a way to read to specific texts. What the Tikunei Zohar is describing (in either the voice of Moshe or Yeḥezkel) is a way of living in the world, a multi-layered consciousness that allows us to live in the world, in God’s presence.

The first level is what we see with open eyes. In a book, that is the text before us, and in Yeḥezkel’s prophecy it is the images of living beings with multiple faces and wheels carrying a throne with a somewhat human image upon it. In life, it is the level of existence we call reality, and everything we understand through observation of reality. Anything that we see or understand must be filtered through reality if it is to be honest and connected to truth, for the holy, blessed One’s seal is Truth (bavli, Shabbat 55a), and there is no room for falsehood in God’s presence.

The second level is what we see through closed eyes, when we close our eyes in order to see deeper into the reality before us rather than turning away or attempting to avoid what is before us. This is our attempt to see reality in terms of the dynamics of divine energies flowing through the world. In the Zohar’s language this is called the image of the king and the queen, but it includes all of our symbols, and one level of understanding all the language we use to talk about God. This is where most of the Zohar’s work happens, including its interpretations of the images in Yeḥezkel’s visions.

The third level is the consciousness that we live within divinity, a wholeness so great and vast that we have no words to describe or forms with which to imagine it. This level is just as crucial as the first level, because it too is a reflection of honesty and truth, the truth that the silence that stretches out before and after our existence is the context of our existence and stretches out beyond anything we can comprehend. The Zohar calls this “the secret of the world” not because anyone is hiding it, or keeping that secret, but because we know it is eternally unknown to us.

This is made explicit by the Tikunim’s reversal of the meaning of Devarim 27:15. The list of curses in the ritual described in this chapter is concerned mainly with activities that happen outside of public knowledge. The curse is therefore not applied to any person who practices idolatry, but rather to a person who does so “in secret”. The Tikunim however, re-reads the verse to apply to a person who applies images to that which is secret, meaning the divinity that encompasses us while being beyond our comprehension. Even the images of the prophets do not contain or even describe that divinity. At the most they are reminders of our living in the context of that which we cannot comprehend. One might therefore say that the second level represents the threads in the weave of our lives that keep us connected to the first and the third levels simultaneously.

In our text, the Tikunei Zohar translates the vision of Yeḥezkel from a first level description of a vision into the second level, describing the divine dynamics between the king and the queen by merging Yeḥezkel’s images with images of letters and of the Sefirot. We will focus on the Zohar’s treatment of verse 26.

[Yeḥezkel saw] the form of an image made of many lights. First – “Above the expanse over their heads was the semblance of a throne, in appearance like sapphire” (Ezekiel 1:26). This throne-shaped sapphire is above, like this:

“And under whose feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire” (Exodus 24:10), looking like this:

(Tikunei Zohar, ibid)

The Tikunim begins by comparing the description of God’s presence in Yehezkel to the description in Exodus. In both texts God’s image is described in relation to a sapphire looking object; In Yeḥezkel a sapphire throne and in Exodus a sapphire brickwork. The tikkunim also notices that Yeḥezkel describes seeing the sapphire above something (the expanse) while Exodus describes seeing the sapphire below something (God’s feet).

Two associations allow for the Tikunei Zohar’s shift from Yeḥezkel’s imagery to a second-level description of divine dynamics. The first is a visual association – the image of sapphire above and below reminds the Zohar of the shape of the letter Aleph which has a block (or a letter Yud) both above and below a center line. The second is a language association – the consonants of the word sapphire are the same as the root from which the word sefirah is derived, sefirot (plural) being the building blocks of the Zohar’s descriptions of divine dynamics. These two connections allow the Tikkunim to see Yeḥezkel’s vision through closed eyes, as describing the flow of divine energy through the world.

Together, it makes a letter Alef:

The highest point is like Ḥolam, alluding to the highest Keter (Crown), Which rides on Ḥokhmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding), whose numerical equivalent is Ḥolam.

“And under whose feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire” – This is Ḥirik, Malkhut.

“And the earth is My footstool” (Isaiah 66:1) Meaning that She is below Vav Heh (וה – ארץ)

Which are the numerical equivalent of Ḥirik.

The form of Alef – Yud, Vav, Yud, is thus equal to Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh.

(Tikunei Zohar, ibid)

The new image constructed by the Tikunei Zohar is made of three main elements.

1. The letter Aleph.

2. The letter Vav.

3. The Sefirotic system.

The Aleph and Vav can share the same graphic structure. When specific vowel marks are added to the Vav it shares with the Aleph the structure of one long line, with a point above and below it.

The dot below is Ḥirik (sound – ee) while the dot above is Ḥolam (sound – oh).

In the Zohar’s imagination these two letters merge, turning the Aleph into a sequence of three letters – Yud, Vav, Yud.

At this point, the image of divinity sitting on a sapphire throne, with its feet on a sapphire foot-rest has morphed into the graphic representation of letter, within which the Zohar recognizes the flow of divinity through the universe as represented in its own symbolic system which it refers to as “Raza D’mehemnuta” , the secret of trust or faith (the following explanation is depicted in the image of Alef inserted into the Zohar text above). This symbol now articulated, includes:

1. The letter Aleph – Being the first letter of the alphabet, it represents beginning, the base level upon which everything else is built. Further, as the Torah and the story of creation begin with the second letter, Bet, Aleph represents the world of divinity that existed even before this universe came into existence, that which holds all time and space within it. As the Tikkunim points out in the last line, when Aleph presents as Yud, Vav, Yud, it has the numerical value of 26, which is the same as God’s name – YHVH.

2. The upper letter Yud – The letter Yud is often represented as a point, the first mark of ink on parchment, a mark with no dimensions. It holds within itself the most conceptual sefirot, Keter, Hokhmah and Binah, the transition from unity to multiplicity, and then being and change respectively. Hokhmah and Binah (being and change) represent the first two letters of the tetragrammaton – Yud and Heh whose numerical value is 15, the equivalent of Holam, the point above the Vav.

3. The letter Vav – Vav, the third letter of the tetragrammaton, has the numerical value of six, representing the six sefirot that stand for divine forces flowing into our existence and the dynamics through which what we know as reality is shaped and functions. (For a more detailed explanation of the individual six sefirot, see my essay here) They reflect the processes through which divinity becomes life as we know it, and as such serve as a bridge between the upper and lower Yuds.

4. The lower letter Yud – This Yud represents the last letter Heh of the tetragrammaton, completing the divine name, and the sefirah of Malkhut, divinity as manifest in the reality of the world as we know it. Like the upper Yud, it reaches into the divine eternity beyond its own existence, these two meeting in that space beyond space and closing the circle of the divine flow. While the sefirot at the two ends of the process we can speak about, Keter and Malkhut, are part of the system of sefirot, they also reach beyond it, and are therefore represented by two points – one just before the first Yud and one just after the last Yud (or the last Heh of the name).

This shift from the imagery of Yeḥezkel to the language of sefirot is important to the Zohar because “Raza D’mehemnuta” the world of the sefirot is the Zohar framework of practice. It is through connecting to flow and dynamics of sefirot that the Zohar seeks out God in text study, in prayer, in acts of mitzvah, in mystical journeys and in everyday life. The imagery of the prophet is not rejected – it is the first level, the reality of the text which anchors all imaginal journeys launched from it and keeps them from slipping into falsehood. The eyes are not closed to the text but rather closed to particular pathways of text interpretation, in order to allow deeper and broader possibilities of textual experience. It is with the symbolism of sefirot that the Zohar carves paths from every experience, textual or other, back into the presence of the Divine.

And in doing this we can never forget the third level…

We have spent a great deal of time and energy in the second level. We have delved deeply into the symbols and explored the relationships between them. We have counted numbers, compared shapes, and explored textual connections, trusting that this would bring us closer to God. But it is all false, if at the end it is not connected deeply to the experience that we never can know, the place where Yeḥezkel throws himself down on his face.

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The Tikunei Zohar (or “The Tikkunim”) opens with two stories that it forges into one. The seams between these two stories are rather rough, and both appear with fuller context in other places in the Zoharic literature (the first story in Zohar Hadash, Ki Tavo 59c, and the second in Tikunei Zohar Hadash 104a) strengthening the impression that the combination is created by an editor in order to tell a new story.

The framework of the first story is well known and describes Rabi Shimeon bar Yohai (Rashbi) hiding in a cave together with his son, Rabi Elazar.

Variants of this story are retold in many classical rabbinic texts. In a well-known version that appears in bavli, Shabbat 33b, Rashbi is forced to flee because harsh statements that he had made about the Roman occupation of the land of Israel were reported to the Roman authorities which sentenced him to death. Out of fear that the Romans would target his family Rashbi and his son hid in the cave for 13 years with no connection to the outside world. They were sustained by only carobs and water and covered their bodies with sand in order to preserve their clothes for prayer times. R Shimeon’s skin and flesh disintegrated to a level that is described as horrifying to witness. Through all this they are said to have spent the entire day learning.

When they were finally able to return to human society their integration was not simple, and fails at first due to Rashbi and his son killing people who are engaged in the activities of everyday life rather than Torah learning. To the end of the story Rashbi is described as alienated from society (when he finally curbs his son’s violence, he does so by saying – “me and you are enough for the world” implying that others are not worth the trouble), burning people with a gaze, and elsewhere in rabbinic literature (bavli, Shabbat 35b) he is quoted as still having little patience for people engaged in providing for their mundane material needs. It is a story of harsh judgement, turned both inwards and outwards. Like the story of the binding of Isaac, this is also a story of a father taking his son to be sacrificed, though in this case the sacrifice is on the altar of Torah, and he himself is also part of the offering.

The much-shortened version the Tikunim tells, leaves out almost all the harsh elements. There is no mention of the reason for Rashbi’s flight or the identity of those who pursue him. There is no mention of how long the stay in the cave lasts, and without the time or the physical suffering, and with Elijah showing up for two daily teaching sessions (instead of once, after 12 years) we are left with the impression of a spiritual retreat that includes a possibly beneficial dietary cleanse. Certainly, it is possible that the storyteller assumes that we are familiar with the longer version of the story, but still, the choices of what to include and what to omit from this retelling create a very different emotional impact. The one dark shadow left in this version is the flight to the wilderness, which initiates the stay in the cave, which the Tikunim now identifies as the location of Rashbi’s seventy teachings on the word Bereshit.

This transformation of the story, even more than the story itself, may be the Tikunei Zohar’s introduction to its main project. The Tikunei Zohar is very occupied with galut, exile, as experienced in both the human and divine realms, and in both body and spirit. It focuses on Shekhinah, the female hypostasis of the divine presence, as God in exile, often compared to a mother bird chased away from her nest. (The Tikunei Zohar’s focus on the Shekhinah is the topic of Biti Roi’s Hebrew book – Love of the Shekhinah) This is the dark shadow still present in the story about Rashbi. But rather than seeing exile only in terms of suffering, and focusing all hopes on a post-exilic time, the Tikunim focuses on the relation between the mother and children even as they wander through exile together. Through mutual love and support and through sharing the difficult experiences together, the children, represented by the kabbalists, and their divine mother the Shekhinah can create a world of beauty and love even in a dark cave. Indeed, that experience can be so compelling that even Kudsha Berikh Hu, the holy, blessed One, the exiling father who also experiences pain and anguish over the separation, can be drawn into the momentary homes away from home created by the mother and her children in galut.

The Tikunei Zohar thus teaches, that the mode of engagement with Torah which it embodies is transformative, creating new worlds within that engagement. This follows the introduction to the first part of the Zohar, in which Rashbi articulates the project of Torah as creating new worlds.

For as the new heaven and the new earth that I make shall endure by My will —declares YHVH — So shall your seed and your name endure. (Isaiah 62:22)

It does not say “that I will make” but rather “that I make”, for I am constantly making [new heavens and new earths] from the innovations and secrets of Torah. This is the meaning of the verse: “I have put My words in your mouth and sheltered you with My hand; to plant the skies and create foundations for the earth, to say to Zion: you are My people!” (Isaiah 52:16)

… Do not read the verse as saying “amee”, you are my people, but rather “emee”, you are with me, you are my partner. As I created heaven and earth with words, as it says, “by the word of God the heavens were made” (Psalms 33:6) so also can you.

(Zohar 1:5a)

The very structure of the Tikunei Zohar merges this Zoharic teaching with a well-known midrash which teaches that there are 70 different facets to Torah (Bamidbar Rabbah13:16). The Tikunim takes the first word of the story of creation, Bereshit, and turns it seventy different ways, allowing a new world to be created with each turn. These worlds come into being in the space between the haverim – the comrades of Rashbi, the Shekhinah, and all the ancestors and the figures that join them from supernal worlds. Seventy times they start the world from “the beginning”, and together they create a temporary nest in which the Shekhinah and her children can take refuge, alternative universes amidst the darkness of galut.

What is the source of the power inherent in these Torah gatherings?

It is in response to this question that the editor of the Tikunim introduces the second part of the story.

This piece is taken from a description of such a gathering, told in full elsewhere in the Zohar (Tikunei Zohar Hadash 104a). The section that appears in our text, omits the opening teaching of Moshe, the faithful shepherd, and begins with Moshe’s invitation to Rashbi to offer his own “opening words” in response. Rashbi opens with and opens up one of the Zohar’s most beloved verses, the verse from which the Zohar takes its name, the shining glow-zohar, that suffuses all its teachings.

In an essay dedicated to role of “zohar” in the Zohar, Yehuda Liebes wrote:

“Zohar” is the creative force pulsing through the soul of the creator and giving life. This meaning explains the unusual usage of this word in some central parts of the Zohar. These are sections written in ecstatic excitement, in which the word “zohar” is repeated again and again like a heartbeat at the beginning of each sentence. Its role in these places does not seem to be dependent on syntax or content, serving instead as a call, or an announcement (In many manuscripts and printings of the Zohar, the word “zohar” appears in these texts in larger letters). It seems that in these cases the word “zohar” appears for the purpose of awakening and energizing the one creating the derasha (teaching), as the supernal worlds awaken along with the human spirit. These texts (largely belonging to the Sitrei Torah strata of the Zohar) describe processes of creation and emanation. “Zohar” is a call of encouragement and empowerment, cheering on the process which is occurring through the practitioner who is describing it. In some cases it is also understood in musical terms: “zohar” is the tune, the Torah-trope that guides the words and gives them life and enthusiasm. This may be evidence that certain parts of the Zohar were created with the accompaniment of music and feeling as we know from Hasidim who sing along with their teachings in the third meal of Shabbat. In any case, this “zohar” most certainly played a role in the creation of the book that describes it – the mighty creation known as the Book Zohar.

(Yehuda Liebes, Zohar and Eros, p.4. Only in Hebrew, updated version, here)

In the same essay, Liebes talks about “Zohar” as similar to Plato’s eros, a life force of creativity, connection and love (of which sexual eros is only a sub-category). In the Tikunim’s reading, the capacity to “shine (yazhiru) like the glow (kezohar) of the heavens” describes the human capacity to participate in the divine eros, and to allow their lives and creativity to be conduits through which divne creativity and life flow through the world. We can do this through our connection to Torah, studied and practiced as the Zohar practices it, and as we saw before - “I have put My words in your mouth and sheltered you with My hand; to plant the skies and create foundations for the earth, to say to Zion: you are My people!” – you are my partners. The song the tikkunim uses in its introduction, the power of life shining and flashing through the entire cosmos, its sparks glittering in the souls sitting around the table where we sit engaging in Torah.

This then is the project of Tikunei Zohar – seventy tikkunim, seventy structures to hold the life and force of the zohar of the universe, so that our world can be created anew, again and again.

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Once I stepped away from my regular rhythm of writing, beginning again was more difficult than I had anticipated. Some of it was just life filling up available time spaces, but there was also the internal struggle about the meaning of the kind of writing I am doing. This is a time of social, political and ethical upheaval in both countries I am connected to, The US and Israel. I admire the people who are addressing the various crises we are addressing directly, in activism and in writing, and in comparison, my own writing can feel at times like it is ignoring what is actually happening.

This is an old and often discussed tension and I do not have much to add to the discussion beyond saying that at this moment it is an emotional reality in my life. And that while there is certainly an aspect of luxury in having the time and the capacity to engage in the mythology and text exploration that I engage in, I believe that it is also long-term work, crucial to our survival. When facing an administration that holds both a cynical worldview that the world operates only in “big fish eat little fish” mode, and the “war ministry” promotes the belief in a holy war “with God on our side”, explaining the rational and practical shortcomings of these positions is sadly, not enough. We need to reconnect to our own envisioning of the world, a counter-image in which God is connection rather than crushing power, and in which human striving for peace and love is a transformative power rather than naiveite. World-envisioning is a project that requires the engagement of both our intellect and our imagination, and living in relation to such visions requires commitment of both thoughts and emotions. We must become activists, but also story tellers, channels for ancient wisdom to flow into our lives. If we are to live our lives and shape our behavior in care and consideration for future descendants that we can only imagine, we must make room for our ancestors in our own lives. One of the lessons of ancient religions is that when we experience our own existence in ongoing dialogue with the ancestors, and constantly impacted by their decisions, it is easier for us to imagine ourselves in the same role and take responsibility for future generations. The lack of such consciousness is one of the elements that allowed us to create the environmental crisis we are now experiencing.

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Which is why I return to the literature of the Zohar. The Zohar, which commonly begins discussions with – “Come, let’s envision…” and which is likely the most powerful laboratory of Jewish imagination. The Zohar which is to Jewish tradition what science fiction is to science. The Zohar which was most likely founded by 13^th century rabbinic figures in Spain, cosplaying mythical rabbis from the second century and going together on amazing adventures in the land of Israel of that period. The Zohar whose secret is that the goal of every journey, the truth of every path and maze, and the treasure at the end of every quest, is the presence of God. The Zohar that teases apart endless verses and rabbinic teachings, that does not leave a single Jewish practice unturned as it asks, again and again – can I see God here? The Zohar is the training ground of Jewish imagination that we need to come back to.

Not exactly the description I would have offered at an academic conference, but no less true…

Within the Zohar literature, the Tikunei Zohar writings take some of those tendencies to the extreme. The Tikunei Zohar is a later strata of the Zohar literature composed somewhere around the turn of the 14^th century. The Tikunei Zohar happens in a space beyond time, where the second century rabbis, Elijah the prophet, Moshe the loyal shepherd and you the learner, sit around the same table and trade imaginal journeys in Torah. These journeys move from image to image and from one association to another quickly and without warning, creating sequences that can, at times, be difficult to follow, exploding like colorful fireworks in a dark sky. The entire book is structured as seventy (more or less…) riffs on the first word of the Torah – “bereshit” each journey, or tikkun as they are called in the book, setting out from that word in a different direction.

This particular character of the Tikunei Zohar led Gershom Scholem, the founder of academic study of Jewish mysticism to write: “Their literary merit requires little comment; it is poor indeed and far inferior to that of Zohar… It frequently happens that instead of the systematic development of a train of thought characteristic of the Zohar, we find nothing but confused meandering from one association to the next”. (Major Trends, p. 180)

But it was deeply beloved by kabbalists, and very influential in the development of later kabbalah, including Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidut. Unlike the Zohar, the Tikunei Zohar made its way into liturgy with the custom of reading the entire book in the forty days from the first of Elul to Yom Kippur. The earliest mention of such a practice that I could find is in “Or Tzaddikim” by R Meir Poppers (died 1662 in Jerusalem, editor of Etz Hayyim and Peri Etz Hayyim which became foundational books in Lurianic Kabbalah) who wrote in his section about the ten days from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur – “in the name of the rav (Luria): happy is the one who finishes the book of tikkunim in these days”. The most commonly quoted source comes from the introduction of R Shalom Buzaglo (died 1780, Morrocco–London) to his commentary on the Tikunei Zohar – Kisse Melekh. R Shalom Buzaglo explains that he was motivated to write the commentary “because during the month of Elul, everyone’s hands are all over the book of the Tikkunim… and they want to understand the holy words of R Shimeon bar Yohai. I therefore created a resource for the community, including references, and a short explanation, explaining hard words to make it easier for the learners”.

Many reasons have been given for the focus on this book during this period of the year. My own feeling is that it is connected to the imaginative power discussed above. The forty days from the beginning of Elul through Yom Kippur are a period of teshuvah and transformation. Although much traditional literature meant for this period focuses on the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, and identify that which you are doing wrong, the ability to enter a process of transformation is fundamentally dependent on your capacity to imagine your self and your life different than they are at this point. Spending time with “the Book of Tikkunim” is an excellent way to cultivate flexibility of thought and imagination, and to develop trust in what is possible and not only in what is.

Probably most influential in the spreading of the practice is the creator of the second printing of the Tikkunei Zohar (R Hayyim Alfandari, Constantinople 1714) who in listing the benefits of his new edition, wrote – “and to benefit in the community, I set [in the book, markers] for each day, through the month of Elul and until Yom Kippur, sections for each and every day, for it is known among the wise that the book of the Tikkunim is useful for working on the soul”. This division of the book into forty sections for the forty days is reprinted in most modern editions and followed by practitioners to this day.

It is my plan for the coming to year to follow the structure of the liturgical formula, and write forty reflections on sections of the Tikunei Zohar. I will work with the text in the same way I worked with the calendar- using the resources I have to understand it, think about it as a practitioner, enter into its world and bring it into mine. Some clarifications:

• I do not plan to write about the entire book. I will choose a small section from each of the 40 sections to translate, explain, and write about.

• I do not plan to work with the 1714 division. It is uneven, the size of sections shifting between half a page and twenty pages, and cumbersome to work with. In the 20^th century, the Toldot Aharon recommended that his hasidim study 4 pages a day instead of the traditional division, which would also allow them to finish the book within 40 days. I will choose a section to write about from each four-page unit.

• I believe deeply in spending time learning and engaging with a single book, rather than moving between books, gathering little bits that serve my specific needs and desires. While the latter creates a utilitarian relationship to the book, in which it is an object serving my needs, ongoing commitment to a particular book allows for the book to become a subject rather than an object, and for the cultivation of a relationship between myself and the book and the ancestral figures who live within and behind the book. (This is inline with what Palmer Parker called learning as “a community of truth”. He describes this mode of learning in The Courage to Teach, pp. 91-144) I hope that this ongoing engagement will encourage more people to share their own thoughts and responses, so we can become a community of learning on Substack.

• I plan to post one section every week or week and a half.

As always, I am grateful to everyone who is supporting this project, by reading, by responding and by offering financial help. I hope this will be a fruitful process for us all.

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Dear Friends,

Breaking out of my break from this platform to mark my 57th birthday.

This week (Monday was my birthday on the Jewish calendar, and Tuesday on the general US calendar) marks the beginning of my 58^th year of life. 58 is the numerical value of the Hebrew name Noah, a biblical figure who feels like a needed presence in these days of so many different kinds of deluge…

So I offer this little teaching on an old word play that the book of Bereshit already plays by reversing the sequence of the letters in Noah’s name – “And Noah (נח) found grace (חן) in the eyes of God” (Bereshit, 6:8)

I offer it as both a blessing and a prayer that I, and all of us, practice the capacity to make room for the vision of grace (ḥen) to change the world.

ונח מצא חן בעיני ה’

“And Noah found grace in God’s eyes”

The verses immediately preceding this one describe God as experienced by the people of Noah’s generation. Immersed in their own world of evil, hate and sin, the only God they could envision, and experience was a God of anger, disappointment, retribution and sadness.

But Noah found grace in God’s eyes, meaning that Noah saw God differently than the rest of his generation. When Noah looked into God’s eyes, he saw the anger and disappointment that everyone else was seeing. But he also found love and grace hiding behind the anger and disappointment.

And the fact that Noah could find the love and grace in God’s eyes, allowed the blessed One to find that place of grace within Herself, to remember that she was also the “merciful and compassionate God”. It did not change everything, but it allowed the blessed One to remember Noah with love, and the flood did not terminate all life on Earth. Imagine what might have happened if more people saw the way he did…

And the same is true in relationships between people. This is what R Nahman taught (Likutei Moharan 1:282) regarding the verse “in just a bit, evil will be gone” (Psalms 37:10) - if you can see that tiny bit of good that still exists in another person, the experience of being seen in that way is transformative, and can create within that person possibilities of good - “and when you look at the place it (evil) was, it will be gone” (ibid).

I am copying below the Hebrew version of this teaching which I wrote some years ago.

I am also glad to share that I recently discovered that the Degel Mahaneh Efraim, R Efraim of Sudlikov, the grandson of the Besht, offers a very similar idea in response to the same verse. Blessed is the holy One who has guided me to the paths laid out by the holy and luminous R Efraim. May I always merit to follow thus in the footsteps of my ancestors.

And may it be an easier year for all of us.

ונח מצא חן בעיני ה’

שבכל הפסוקים שקדמו לזה הפסוק מתואר הקב”ה כפי שחווהו בני דורו של נח. שמפני חטאיהם ראו בקב”ה רק כעס ועצבות ואכזבה.

ונח – “מצא חן בעיני ה” דהיינו שכשהסתכל נח בעיני הקב”ה הצליח למצוא שם, מעבר לכעס ולאכזבה גם חן. ועי”ז שמצא נח חן בעיני הקב”ה, איפשר נח לקב”ה למצוא בעצמה מקום חנינה שנקראת בו “אל רחום וחנון” ולזכור את נח באהבה, ועי”ז לא היה המבול סוף וחורבן לכל מין האדם. ואילו היו עוד אנשים רואים כמוהו...

וכמו שהוא בין אדם למקום כן הוא בין אדם לחבירו וכן מצינו בליקוטי מוהר”ן קמא רפב’ עה”פ “ועוד מעט ואין רשע” שע”י שרואה בו חבירו מעט טוב, ע”י זאת הראיה נהפך, וכבר איננו רשע, “והתבוננת על מקומו ואיננו”.

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A year ago, approaching Pesah, I began writing on Substack.

As many of you know, writing has not been a significant part of my life. I did it when necessary, or when asked to for one purpose or another. I was privileged to learn the craft of translation from my teacher, Art Green. Still, the way I saw and experienced it, my learning, my practice, my sharing of learning with others, happened in live interaction with others – my hevrutot, my teachers, my students, my friends and anyone else.

Changing life circumstances led me to this experiment with writing as a discipline, and I am tremendously grateful for the open-heart and generosity with which you, the readers, have accepted this attempt.

I am grateful to everyone who has read some of these essays, and especially to those who subscribed to receiving these emails, which are more or less weekly. The list of subscribers (currently about 450) allows me to imagine a community of readers for whom I am doing this writing, and which motivates me to return to this project, again and again.

I am grateful to everyone who has responded to any of these essays, whether by emoji, by commenting on the post, or by reaching out to me in email or personal discussion. This writing has a certain quality of “sending your bread upon the waters” (Kohelet 11:1) and though I truly believe that “after many days you will find it” (ibid), it is very comforting to know that someone has actually picked up this bottle with the note in it.

I am especially grateful to everyone who has been moved to support this project financially (currently about 70). The financial support is very meaningful, and helps me justify, at least to myself, taking the time to work on this project. I am very glad that with your help I am able to make time for this writing in my schedule.

Thank you all very much.

When I started this project a year ago, I said that I would take one year to write about the Jewish year-cycle. I treated it as a week-by-week project, without an overarching theme or a large picture and I posted 66 entries following the year cycle. Some are large-vision-of-the-calendar pieces, and some are about specific details. My early posts tended to be longer, while the later posts were relatively shorter. I enjoyed pairing pictures with the essays and began to develop a wonderful dialogue with Gary Cohen and his photography. Some of the essays were reworkings of things I had written or taught in the past and some were new. All of them are available in the archive section of my Substack site.

I hope to go back to them in the summer and read through the entire cycle. I am curious to see if a particular identifiable voice emerged in this writing and if there is a big picture to be seen through the accumulation of the individual posts.

I am very curious to know what you, the readers, have seen in these essays. Was there an overall theme or quality that was meaningful to you? Were there specific essays that stood out? Was there something meaningful you took from this reading? Do you have advice or ideas you would like to share? Anything general you would like me to know?

I will be very grateful to every person who can take even a minute or two to respond to one or some of these questions. You can respond as a comment on this post, or message me through the Substack app/site, or any other way you usually contact me. I am thankful for everyone who gives their time and thoughts.

Having finished my year-cycle project, I have to decide on my next Substack orientation. I plan to take 2-3 weeks off from writing and think about what the next project is. I have thoughts about writing 40 reflections on sections of the Tikunei Zohar, structured in relation to the practice of reading/chanting the book during Elul and the HH, but I will take some non-writing time to see what else might float up.

I look forward to continuing to engage with you all.

With gratitude,

Ebn

And he wrote a prayer that he said before “Nirtzah” at the end of the Pesaḥ Seder in which he apologizes for not knowing. For only having what he had learned from books, and for never receiving divine affirmation that he was indeed right. And he puts his trust in God’s love, and asks that God correct whatever he has gotten wrong, so that his kavanot align with God’s desire.

Pesah has the amazing ability to bring out the feelings that whatever we do is never enough. But of course, Pesah is only one of the constant triggers that make us feel that we are not doing enough, that we do not have the capacity, that we will never get it right.

So I offer the Rashash’s prayer for all of us, along with the apology that I only had time to translate the first half…

The complete Hebrew text can be seen here.

And I offer also the prayer of the High Priest, our master Leonard Cohen of blessed memory, who wrote:

Dedicated with love and prayers of swift and complete healing for HaRav Gita Dalya bat Reuven v’Yaffa.

Rashash Prayer for the End of the Seder

Please, HVYH,

In your great compassion, accept all of our prayers, and all the details of the kavanot towards which we have oriented ourselves, and all the details of the inner forces that we have oriented ourselves towards on this night.

May they rise as a pleasing smell to you.

And if Heaven forbid, in orienting towards these kavanot we have made any mistakes that go against your will, please, HVYH, do not hold us accountable.

Our thoughts and our intentions are exposed and known to You, and you know that we desire to do Your desire with all our heart, soul and might. You know that we want to orient ourselves towards the details of drawing out the inner power that is within every single mitzvah with the greatest truth and clarity possible.

But there is none amongst us who knows the full extent of these matters with clarity. We no longer have access to Ru’aḥ haKodesh (the holy spirit) or the appearances of Elijah the prophet of blessed memory. All we have are a few books, a blessing left to us by the holy Ari of blessed memory and his disciple, R Hayyim Vital of blessed memory, but we have books and not the authors… It is only based on our minds’ limited capacity to understand these books that we have lain out this entire Seder and enacted all these kavanot…

Still, we trust that in Your tremendous love and compassion You will not allow us to return from Your presence empty handed.

May our actions and intentions be acceptable to You.

May they rise to Your presence as a pleasurable scent.

And may You, in your great compassion, fix them with your kindness so that they are indeed appropriate and correct.

In the words of David, whose songs brought you pleasure, “may the sweetness of HVYH be upon us, and may the work of our hands become our foundation, may the work of our hands be upheld by the One”.

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Of the seasons of the year, only Spring has its own blessing.

It is first mentioned in The Talmud in the context of blessing to be said over good-smelling plants.

“Rav Yehudah said, One who goes out during the days of Nissan and sees blossoming trees, should say: Blessed is One whose world lacks nothing, who created good beings and good trees which humans can enjoy.”

(bavli, Berakhot 43b)

This blessing stands out in the bavli’s discussion as the only blessing that has a time qualification. It also stands in contrast to a similar blessing described later, in another discussion: “If you see good beings, or good trees, say – blessed is the One who created a world like this”. (bavli, Berakhot, 58b) Unlike this latter blessing, Rav Yehudah’s blessing is a response to a specific experience defined both by time, the month of Nissan, and by space, outside. It is a blessing in response to the human experience of Spring, to the experience of walking outside after months of cold and witnessing the blossoming trees coming back to life.

The uniqueness of this blessing was noticed by the later codifiers (the Tur, followed by the Shulhan Arukh) who dedicated a chapter to this blessing (Orah Hayyim, 226), separate from all other groups of blessings. Further highlighting the connection of this blessing to the season, halakhists also debated the application of this practice in climates where Spring and blossoming do not coincide with the Jewish month of Nissan and largely came down on the side of assigning primacy to the experience of Spring over the set Jewish calendar.

There is however a tradition of kabbalists who felt strongly that the blessing should be said during the month of Nissan. An early proponent of this opinion was the Ḥida in the 18^th century:

One should make an effort to make the blessing over trees in the month of Nissan. The scrupulous are very strict about saying this blessing only in Nissan, over two trees, and we go out to the fields to say this blessing.

You should say this blessing with intense kavanah, as it serves the rectification of souls incarnated in trees and grass during this time of year, and you should seek compassion for them.

(Hida, Moreh B’etzba, 7:198-199)

The connection between Spring and incarnation goes back to Lurianic kabbalah. One of the fascinating elements of the Lurianic doctrine of gilgul (reincarnation) is that in its original articulations, it is not focused on preservation of individual identity. At the innermost level of identity, our deepest self, we are all part of the cosmic force of life, a cosmic soul – Nishmat Adam HaRishon. Humans, animals, plants and minerals all participate in that soul, and take part in its great drama of restoration and self-perfection. The soul of every individual being is a unique composite of spiritual elements brought together – never to be repeated. Within each individual soul, some elements are those that need work and improvement while others are stronger and well established. Every life has a goal – to strengthen and rectify a specific element for which that particular configuration was created. (Though this may change during one’s life if the original goal has been achieved)

At death, the various elements which made up that soul are dispersed, to be used again in multiple other configurations throughout the universe. The implication of the verse “nothing is ever lost” (Samuel II, 14:14) is that like energy or matter all parts of the soul are preserved. The soul takes on new forms not unlike the body whose material components take on new forms. A life well lived has advanced the universal evolution while in the opposite case it may have impeded that development. In either case the individual form ceases to exist at death.

As noted, the components of any soul (In the Lurianic texts they are called sparks) can wind up in any form of being – human, animal, plant or mineral. This connection of soul and nature, both animates the natural world and subjects the soul to the dynamics of nature. (See Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdamah 22) Souls move between forms when these forms are consumed, so for example, soul-sparks in the grass will become part of an animal or human that eats the plant, and soul-sparks in an animal become part of the human who eats it. The migrations of soul-sparks are seasonal as well – soul-sparks move from plants to living forms only during the Spring and early Summer, the months of Nissan through Tamuz. Somehow, some kabbalists seem to have understood the divine calendar of soul-spark migration as transcending the connection to the actual natural cycles.

It is the author of Sefer Hemdat Yamim (The Month of Nissan, Ch. 1) who first connects the blessing on the blossoming of the trees to the migrations of souls, and who is probably the Hida’s source. As he describes it, the awakening of life force in the Spring draws out the soul-sparks who are ready to commence their journey. Our blessing then, is not said only in appreciation of the tree blossoms, but rather as a way of investing our own energy in the movement of life force throughout the world, which is reinvigorated, once again, with the coming of Spring.

In parashat Koraḥ, tree blossoms become a symbol of divinely chosen leadership. Following the violent repression of Koraḥ’s rebellion, God offers a gentler way to affirm the divine choice of Moshe and Aharon as leaders.

GOD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and take from them—from the chieftains of their ancestral houses—one staff for each chieftain of an ancestral house: twelve staffs in all. Inscribe each one’s name on his staff, there being one staff for each head of an ancestral house; also inscribe Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi. Deposit them in the Tent of Meeting before the Pact, where I meet with you. The staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout, and I will rid Myself of the incessant mutterings of the Israelites against you.

Moses spoke thus to the Israelites. Their chieftains gave him a staff for each chieftain of an ancestral house, twelve staffs in all; among these staffs was that of Aaron. Moses deposited the staffs before GOD, in the Tent of the Pact. The next day Moses entered the Tent of the Pact, and there the staff of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted: it had brought forth sprouts, produced blossoms, and borne almonds.

(Bamidbar, 17:16-23, JPS 2003)

R Leibleh Iger, a 19^th century Hasidic master, offers the following connection between the symbol of the blossoming staff and Aaron’s personal qualities:

What was the main reason that Aaron was chosen to be the priest? Aaron knew that the blessed One had chosen him to serve in the priesthood. However, he was so humble and unassuming that he had no confidence that he would always be the one chosen for this service. He did not assume that his deeds would merit the role of High-Priest even from one moment to the next. He was forever in a state of longing and hoping that the blessed One’s love would be extended to him in the next moment as well. He lived as if he had never been chosen before. It was clear to him that he was not chosen because he deserved it, but rather because of God‘s desire, and who is to say that God will have that same desire tomorrow, and that he will be granted the strength and the power to continue to serve in the high priesthood?

This is the meaning of the verse: “it shall be the person whom I will choose” (Bamidbar 17:20). This means a person who always hopes that I will choose him in the next moment as well. “His staff will blossom” – the staff is a finished object, a branch that will no longer grow. Blossoming, on the other hand, is the beginning of existence. This is why the blossoms signify Aron’s holiness. Aaron does not treat his holiness like something finished, Rather, it is always new for him. He lives as if he is beginning this service at this moment, as if the service is just now blossoming. This is the meaning of the verse, “the righteous blossoms like a palm tree” (Psalms 92:13).

This is also the reason that Aron was chosen to offer the sacrifices of the Israelite people. The point of the sacrifice (korban) is that a person who feels distant can come close (karov) again. And even though the priest knows their whole history and everything they have done up until this point, despite all this, the priest can connect this person to the possibility of beginning anew in holiness, allowing them to come close to God and the people again. This is the practice of korban (sacrifice). Aaron and his sons can do this because that is how they live their own lives, as we explained before. Of them the verse says: “how lucky is the one you choose and draw close to you” (Psalms 65:5).

(Torat Emet, Parashat Koraḥ)

R Leibleh’s description of Aharon can sound both inspiring and terrifying. He describes Aharon as a person who never relies on past achievements, who has no sense of entitlement, who lives in longing, for whom each moment is blossoming, but never harvesting fruit. In describing Aharon, is R Leibleh thinking of the halakhah (Shulḥan Arukh, OH 226) that once the tree gives fruit, the Spring blessing can no longer be said?

R Leibleh teaches that the radical humility of Aharon is the antidote to the feelings of guilt and shame that can overwhelm us when we are too deeply enmeshed in the past. It is the person who has never relied on the past who can guide you on the path of leaving the past behind and starting over again.

R Leibleh’s teaching brings a cluster of Spring symbols together. The Mishkan which is dedicated on the first day of Nissan is the place where the person who cannot free themselves from the yoke of the past comes, to meet the person who allows every moment to blossom, so that hey can learn from that person to be like the trees who blossom in the Spring, leaving the cold and darkness of winter behind.

May we all merit new beginnings.

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