Torah - Before & After Sinai

 On the second day of the Holiday of Shavuoth, I read an interesting parable in the discourses of the second Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Dov Ber, on the passages of the Torah recounting the experience at Mount Sinai. The parable is meant to help us understand what was the difference between the Torah, as humans grasped it, before the experience at Mount Sinai and after it.

The parable relates that there was a teacher who had two phases of interactions with students. One phase was when students asked him questions to find enlightenment in his learned answers. The next phase was when the teacher prepared classes and actually formally taught.  

In the first phase when the students are simply asking questions, this may call forth concepts and ideas which were previously embedded into the fabric of the teacher’s sub/unconscious mind. With his/her fresh conscious awareness of these notions, the students have in a sense enlightened the teacher (or have at least become the stimulant which caused the enlightenment).

However, this exchange on its own no matter how beneficial it is to both the students and the teacher, represents what the teacher ultimately wants to give over. The teacher’s fuller self is not invested in such an exchanges. They’re mere pastimes compared to the teacher’s real desire, to formally teach classes. For only in classes, will the students really transform into the human products the teacher is passionately enflamed to produce.

In the parable, the teacher is God and the students are the Jewish People. The pre-Sinai Torah experience was like the phase when the interested students assail the teacher with their urgent questions. Similarly, in the pre-Sinai phase the Jews could enter into prophetic states and garner information, as relevant to their situations. Depending on their level of holiness some possibly had more access than others. Based on how the most recent Lubavitcher Rebbe explained the situation (Shavuoth 5731), it seems possible that even when they received an answer, it was offered in spiritual terms - not on earthly terms. The answer first needed to be translated into earthly terms to be useful. In the parable this might be compared to the teacher answering the questions in academic language; not clearly understood by the common folk.

In contrast, the giving of the Torah at Sinai was like students in a classroom intently paying attention to their teacher. In the classroom moment, the teacher is really delivering from the depth of his/her heart! So too, God, so to speak, invested Himself much more deeply than He had previously.  He taught what He wanted each Jew present to know, regardless of personal learning capacity. Unlike previously, He brought the main teachings downs into earthly terms - plain do's and don’ts.

I see something interesting in the parable. Kabbalistically speaking, “God’s Mind” is the worlds of “Atziluth” and “Briyah”. Perhaps when our pre-Sinai ancestors “asked their questions”, they drew down spiritual lights into these worlds from yet higher worlds - which would be the Kabbalistic cosmic parallel of the human sub/unconscious. The reason for this understanding is because the second Lubavitcher Rebbe himself explains that such questions from inquiring students brings forth into the teacher’s conscious mind concepts and ideas which were previously embedded into fabric of his/her sub/unconscious.

Now if a teacher had so many inquiring students, wouldn’t this stimulate his/her desire to organize the concepts being asked about into a proper series of classes? So, it’s possible that the pre-Sinai involvement with Torah actually stimulated what was revealed at Sinai.

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Pleasuring Names & Attributes

On one hand, we’re taught that God does not need anything. The creation of the world was a pure act of benevolence. On the other hand, “Etz Chaim” teaches that God created the world to give meaning to His holy names and attributes. For example, what's the purpose of His compassion if there's no one to be compassionate to?

These two teachings seem to contradict each other. Either God needs nothing or He needs self-actualization? Seemingly, both cannot be simultaneously true.

However, they do not contradict. God truly needs nothing. What is in need for self-actualization are His names and attributes, not Himself. True to His benevolence, He’s doing a kindness to His names and attributes by allowing them a generous measure of self expression.

Think about it. If God placed you and I in a supportive environment where we could each self-actualize, bring our best versions of self into creative and healthy self expression, wouldn't we be amazingly grateful?

Similarly, that's what God’s doing for His names and attributes, which are far more alive than we are; as they're on a much higher level of consciousness. If we would consider such an opportunity to be a kindness for us, then it's certainly a kindness for them.

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Da’ath Elokim

Recently a near and dear friend suggested that I translate the work “Da’ath Elokim” into English. This work summarizes Lurianic Kabbalistic cosmology by presenting a basic outline without getting bogged down in the details. It’s designed to help Kabbalah students see the overall forest without getting lost among the trees; to focus on the broad strokes without too many of the details.

At first I felt inwardly resistant about embarking on such a task. Mainly, because the book is written in such a way that one can easily confuse the map for the territory. This is actually an issue shared by many classic Kabbalistic works, including Lurianic ones. If one doesn’t know differently, one can come away thinking that the higher cosmos houses ghosted versions of physical structures; maybe, even ghosted versions of human bodies as well. Truthfully, not even is one’s very own soul a ghosted duplicate of his or her body. So, obviously applying such imagery is highly misleading.

Therefore, I didn’t feel that  “Da’ath Elokim” should be a central primer on a student’s reading list, not at least without a good teacher. Translating it into English could really elevate it to such a position.

My personal vision of what studying Kabbalah accomplishes (for the masses) is guided by two teachings:

(A) The Zohar’s guarantee that by studying it, the Messiah will arrive with compassion ~ sweetly, without attendant birth pangs.

(B) The Messiah’s words to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov that his mystical teachings will usher in the messianic era.

To me, it seems likely that (A) and (B) are intertwined words of guidance. The Zohar or teachings from the Zohar should ideally be taught to the masses in the style of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov’s teachings. This combined approach is the best way to lay down the educational groundwork for the Messiah’s smooth arrival.

What does the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings add to the earlier Kabbalistic teachings? The answer is rather simple, a model for the masses to understand them. He psychologicalized the earlier concepts. When it came to mystical teachings which were conveyed cryptically in either the language of anatomy or geometry, he substituted such descriptions with new metaphors drawn from human psychology. For example, instead of identifying the “sefira of chesed” directly like the Zohar does “as the right arm”, he prefered to identify “chesed” as “feelings of love”. Obviously, feelings of love are not physical, like an arm is. Emotions,like love, are spiritual forces which souls outside of bodies can participate in and maybe even feel more strongly than an embodied soul can.

This is not to say that the Baal Shem Tov’s predecessors were not aware that their teachings transcended physical form. If they weren’t aware, their credentials as Kabbalists would be called into question. The physical descriptions were intended as mere coding, to protect the teachings from the unworthy. In those times, such teachings did not automatically come with clear models from the world to draw upon and compare to. Therefore, exceptional levels of spiritual purity were required to properly and safely absorb such concepts. Initially, most of these teachings  could not be taken in intellectually. They required a holy intuition called, ruach hakodesh, i.e. the spirit of holiness.

The Baal Shem Tov innovated using models to explain such concepts to the masses by drawing from the subject we would call today psychology. Using such models, he was able to make Kabbalistic teachings much more widely accessible. With his guidance, the simple folk were able to identify samplings of the higher spiritual realms within their own psychological dynamics. This worked on the concept that the microcosm (the human being) is rally built from samplings of the macrocosm (the larger universe). This was not only true of the physical universe, from which the body is derived, but also and perhaps, more importantly of the spiritual universes, from where the soul and all her attendant psychological forces are derived.

However, the psychological terminology that he and his successors employed often differ from contemporary usage. For example, as of this writing, it’s unclear to me how the term “will of the heart” matches up precisely with the terms we use today to describe our own psychological states. There are other such terms which could use contemporary clarification. And even when we have a general idea of what was meant, we don’t always have it down precisely.

Upon reflection, I think that it is possible to write a useful commentary to accompany an English translation of “Da’ath Elokim”; one with which the student gets a sense of what the Kabbalistic mapping really refers to. However, it is a two stage process; which is outside of my abilities at the present moment.

The first stage would be to make an organized study to gather the psychological terms used by the Baal Shem Tov and his successors. Then do the research to match these terms to contemporary terminology. This effort alone would open the gates to these teachings to many in a way which they have not been open in a very long time. Of course, the subject of contemporary psychology is a moving target. What’s considered good psychological theory today is outdated tomorrow. To work around this limitation, the Baal Shem Tov needs to be considered the ultimate psychological authority, because the effort is really about reconstructing his own theory of psychology, as it were. It’s just trying to make his theory more relatable in modern terms.

The second stage would then be to craft these teachings into a commentary on “Da’ath Elokim”. This would bring the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings back to the source material they were originally intended to illuminate. It would answer very important questions, such as: What does “tikkun” look like inside of  the human psyche? What inner psychological forces match up with what holy names? What’s a person’s inner version of the worlds “Atziluth”, “Briyah”, “Yetzirah” and “Assiyah”?

Though I do not see myself today as qualified to carry out this project, I wish I were. It’s definitely something for me to work towards or to play a supportive role to those already working towards it. I wish to know who they are. Based on Jewish mystical tradition, as I understand it, the person who manages to accomplish this and/or related projects will have not only seriously advanced the messianic process, but, also the way in which it occurs.

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