God’s Language

This evening was interesting for me. It's the 19-20th of Kislev. Normally it's a time I celebrate with others the inner mystical teachings of Torah being freed to radiate throughout the world. However, there was no celebration in my locale which spoke to me. I've been bored and overdosed on the repetitive messages, stories and food of these local celebrations in the past, with their sadly too predictive no to low mystical dose.

So I decided that regardless, I'll do something positive in the spirit of this evening. I prayed that God should teach more of humanity His language. I mouthed the prayer before I understood what I requested.

Then I backtracked and processed what I just prayed for. I work as an accountant. I flashed back to my very first accounting class. The Professor, Lucille Genduso, asked her class, "What's the definition of accounting". Various students opined creative answers. When she heard enough, she flatly stated, "Accounting is the language of business."

Then I thought to myself, if accounting is the language of business then the Torah's mystical teachings must be the language of God. By studying it, we are probably forming the basis of a language not only to communicate with each other about God, but more importantly for God to communicate with us.

However, there's a complication. The present popular styles of mystical thought being taught are probably more akin to that language's alphabet rather than it's functional vocabulary. That's why contemporary study does not automatically translate into understanding God's messages. A baby who can recognize alphabet sounds alone, "aaah"-"baaah", does not yet understand language. Yet, this rudimentary stage eventually does leads to language development. Similarly, I believe that teaching what's presently and popularly available in the field of Jewish mysticism will eventually lead to becoming receptive to Divine communication; maybe not now, but certainly sometime in the future.

When I dream of a universal messianic age, I dream of the return of prophecy. I dream of a time when each human being will be in full communication with God.

Net Pleasures, Growing Relationships

Is a paradise beyond one’s level to absorb pleasure a paradise at all? Maybe, it’s actually the opposite of a paradise? The reason I bring this up is because the texts I study often discuss levels of paradise. They say that there are those who enter lower levels and those truly worthy who enter higher levels. Yet, do those on a higher level actually receive more spiritual pleasures or have they simply built up their their capacity for receiving spiritual lights to such a pitched level that their tolerance for divine lights has also increased? Therefore, maybe it takes more spiritual lights to provide them with the same pleasures as lower leveled souls experience with less lights.

We see similar phenomena in this realm. I was thinking of using drug addiction and tolerance buildup as my example, but let’s stick with a healthy example. A middle class person enjoys an occasional fine dine as a treat. Maybe, two to four times a year, on special occasions, s/he’ll visit a restaurant offering fine cuisine and really take in the flavors, textures, fragrances, refined atmosphere and company. To a fairly wealthy person, visiting such a restaurant might be something s/he does every week or two. Clearly, the very wealthy person does not derive the same pleasure per visit as the middle class person does. To derive the same pleasure, the wealthy person needs to visit a much more exclusive restaurant; one even more refined and cultured.

Whether or not I am correct, I don’t fully know. However, following the principal “the heavenly kingdom is like the earthly kingdom” or “as below, so above”, it makes perfect sense to me that the same pattern applies to pleasures in paradise. As the levels of pleasure we receive on earth are largely shaped by our capacity to receive pleasure, so too, with the pleasures offered in paradise. The more developed one’s capacity to receive, the more spiritual lights are needed to achieve the same level of pleasure. This reminds me of the saying, “Little children little toys, big children big toys.”

If this is the case, why grow, when the same net pleasure can be provided for less just by being less? Perhaps, an answer can be found in the phenomenon called, “Been there, done it!”. After enough repetition the old level gets boring and loses its capacity to provide pleasure. Constant pleasure is not pleasure at all. The lights it provides cease to excite. How many times can a studious first grader find excitement in the ability to put together the letters “c”, “a”, “n” and spell “can”?

When the old level is worn out, listless and boring, new capacities need to be built to receive new lights. This is what gets the growing going. This all explains why the “pleasured” wants to grow. However, it does not explain why the “Pleasurer” creates the need for growth to begin with, if there’s not necessarily a net increase in pleasure at all.

Think about it. In such a scenario, the only thing really increased is the dispensing of the substance which creates pleasure (i.e. spiritual lights), but not the pleasure itself. Perhaps, that’s exactly the point. Ultimately, what the Creator seeks is a relationship. The pleasure is only one factor in the relationship. What the relationship really centers around is the “substance” which creates the pleasure rather than the pleasure itself. The first set of ten commandments offered a deeper relationship than the second set. The ten commandments are a “substance” or spiritual light around which a relationship with the Creator is formed . The higher Garden of Eden represents a deeper relationship with the Creator than a lower one. Again, the revelations in each Garden form the substance which the relationship is formed around. They are mediums of relationship, not unlike an activity shared by a loving couple.

Interim levels of pleasures just create the incentives to grow and build up soul/body units to the levels where their relationship with their Creator deepens. The more developed the person, the more of the self is invested and involved in the relationship. So while pleasures are important, they’re largely in service of the actual goal, the relationship.

This also changed the way I understand one of the central teachings in Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s “The Way of God”.  He assures us that the Creator only wants to impart goodness and benefit humanity. I usually understood this to mean that the Creator wants to endlessly pleasure us. However, now I understand the Creator’s “doing good” in a different way, i.e. building an ever growing and deepening relationship with us.

An excerpt from my Thanksgiving prayer this morning:

"Thank You for this opportunity to commune with You. Thank You that I live in a country where everyone takes a day off to thank You. Today, I thank You along with many, many people. It’s not that I necessarily believe that the country I live in is the final fulfillment of the messianic hopes spread by the Biblical prophets nor is it even an ideal place for living an diaspora based Torah lifestyle. It’s simply that compared to the long legacy of persecution my People have suffered, this place is absolutely amazing!

"I am certainly not original in thanking You for this. Reverend Gershon Mendez Seixas preceded me by more than two hundred years when he made this exact point to Congregation Shearith Israel in a Thanksgiving address right after the United States became a country. I guess the miracle is that in a temporal world filled with such constant change, I can still thank You exactly the same way he had more than two hundred years later.

"You are Eternal and Infinite. So You don’t change. However, because Your creations are finite, they are all constantly moving and changing. Yet in this case, the reasons underlying Thanksgiving have held up for so long. Maybe, it’s because a day designed for so many to thank You actually does get blessed with a touch of Your permanence.

"So with a full heart, I thank You for the religious freedom I am allowed in this country. Please keep things this way until we are privileged to behold the 'redeemer's arrival in Zion'. Thank You..."

A Drop of Rashab

Last week was the birthday of the Rebbe Shalom Dov Ber of Lubavitch, the 5th Rebbe of the dynasty. He's known by the commonly used acronym of his name "Rashab". 

In a discourse on last week's Torah portion he quoted a Midrash which stated that three people had their prayers responded to immediately: Eliezer (Abraham's servant) when seeking a wife for Isaac, Moses when asking the earth to swallow Korah and Solomon when praying for a fire to descend on the altar of his newly built Temple. Of the three, Eliezer's prayer was responded to fastest - even before he finished praying.

Rebbe Shalom Dov Ber asks why did he have this merit, when spiritually speaking he ranked lower than the other two in saintliness? The digest version of the answer is that swift response did not occur on Eliezer's own merit, but only because he was on a mission to help Isaac (find a wife). So in reality God was responding swiftly to Isaac, who certainly was in a comparable spiritual ranking with Moses and Solomon.

I learned a lesson from this teaching. Dedicating one's actions to help those whom God favors might open up special and unexpected doors.

On the Orthodox Spectrum

I am sure that in matchmaking in Jewish circles the question of where one fits on the Jewish Orthodox spectrum constantly arises (watch out for that frumometer! - for those who get my drift).

Recently, somebody asked me where I fit on the spectrum of Orthodox Judaism. Truthfully, I find the question uncomfortable because I was brought up with an Orthodox Judaism which wasn't so firmly pegged, although it tended a bit more to the black hatted side. Regardless of my discomfort, the following was my response to the person who asked:

"As you probably know, most people don't have identities that fit into neat cubicles. On the one hand, I believe in the Torah and on the other hand I believe in being very interactive with secular society (I don't think they contradict). I also feel very religiously comfortable in a variety of crowds: Modern Orthodox, Yeshivish, Chassidish, Sephardi, Chabad, etc. I am not stuck in one place on this particular issue. Maybe, it's because my real driving force religiously is Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy. For me the various "groups" are all Torah and all good."

The Authorship of the Zohar

My response to a FaceBook friend who asked for my understanding on the authorship of the Zohar:

Dear ... ,

You pose an excellent question.

I hope I am not disappointing you, but, truthfully, on the logical surface level I have found the academics' arguments more compelling. They point to things like language style and that the Zohar did not seem to be written by someone who used Aramaic as his first language. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, in "Meditation and Kabbalah" tries to make an argument in favor that it was literally written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. However, he admits that the relevant pages from Rabbi Isaac of Acco's investigation into the matter are missing from the manuscript. He accepts Rabbi Isaac's conclusion without the benefit of being able to examine how he came to that conclusion.

Therefore, I think that it's likely that either:

(A) The Zohar, being part of the oral tradition, came to the Spanish Kabbalists in oral form. They merely gave it, it's written format, with possibly a bit of embellishment. This would be no different than Ravina, Rav Ashi and later Rabbanim Savurai giving the Talmud it's basic current written format.

Or ...

(B) They channeled the saintly figures of the Zohar. This is not entirely unheard of. For example, Rabbi Chaim Vital speaks of learning Torah from past sages by placing oneself on their graves while performing certain meditations. In fact, Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Bagdad did this while on the grave of Benayahu ben Yehoyada and that's why so many of his Torah treatises bear some version of this saintly individual's name.

I hope this helps you out.

Best Wishes,
~Choni

Sung on my Tongue

As I gave away my bottle of sake to a neighbor, I recalled why I purchased it in the first place. My memory returned to the summer of 1999, Miami Beach. A Japanese restaurant had just turned kosher. A friend who worked behind the counter tipped me off. I was eager to try authentic Japanese cuisine; if for nothing else, at least to enjoy what for me was an exotic the cultural experience.

Somewhere blended in between the seaweed, miso soup and sushi flowed miniature ceramic cups of warmed sake. The way the sake sung on my tongue, helped me savor every drop as a fresh culinary experience of rare artistry. I left the restaurant unsure whether I should drive. So I waited a while.

Longing for this experience to enhance my Sabbath meal, I recently visited a local liquor shop and purchased what seemed to me like a representative bottle of standard sake. I tasted a bit between the fish and salad. It was downright vile! There was barely a distant echo of what I remember enjoying all those years back. I swiftly downed some sweet liquor to mask the taste.

As I handed my neighbor the bottle, it occurred to me how I got set up for such disappointment. Apparently, sake tastes best within a certain context. Complementary cultural foods and warmed to the correct temperature, bring out a song in the sake, which it in other settings it simply won’t sing; perhaps, can’t sing.

There’s a lesson here on the value of supportive contexts. Sometimes a child and even an adult needs a certain setting to discover talents and success. A person whose latent talents remain submerged in oblivion for years can suddenly come to life if only present in the right environment. Many times, we don’t know what our true abilities are or what environments can release them. Besides prayer, this may require feeling one’s way around, sensing which people and places resonate best.

For myself, I came away with an additional lesson, an understanding of why I find a sweet taste in certain Mitzvahs (loosely translated as “Divine Commands”). Some of these acts in other contexts may be seriously boring or at least not particularly exciting. However, since they come to me within the context of my relationship with my Creator, they come across with a whole different flavor. They resonate differently. For example, I am intensely excited to wave my palm frond and citron in the sukkah booth very soon. However, I know that there’s nothing inherently exciting about waving around plant and produce. It’s just brought alive by the context; namely, the Mitzvah.

Maybe, the surroundings of a sukkah booth itself represents a supportive surrounding context designed to bring out something special, latent within ourselves. It’s good to conclude with some food for further thought.  

Happy Sukkot!