Sefirot”: Perceiving God (Part One)

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LESSON NINE BASIC CONCEPTS IN KABBALAH THE “SEFIROT”: PERCEIVING GOD (PART ONE)

TEXT ONE -- A. Sifrei, V’zot Ha-berakha 5 B. Zohar III, 113a

A. So you are My witnesses, declares the Lord, and I am God. (Isa. 43:12) When you are My witnesses, I am God. And when you are not My witnesses, I am not God.

B. Why is it written Va’asitem otam (“You shall do them,” i.e., the commandments; Lev. 26:3), after it is written, If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments? He who fulfills the mitzvot of the Torah and walks in His paths creates Him, as it were, above. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: It is as if he created Me.

TEXT TWO -- Shnei Luchot ha-Brit, Sha’ar Ha-gadol, sect. 20.

The tzaddik below arouses the tzaddik above. Both are established and make the supernal Glory and increase its strength, one from below and one from above. The tzaddik who is above becomes strengthened when there are tzaddikim below who increase His power, in accordance with the secret of Ascribe (literally, “give”) strength to God. (Ps. 68:35)

TEXT THREE -- Tikkunei ha-Zohar 17a-b

Elijah opened his teaching this way: Master of Worlds, You are One but are not numbered. You are higher than the highest, hidden within all secrets, utterly incomprehensible!

You generated ten perfections (tikkunim), which we call the ten sefirot. Through them You govern secret worlds which are not revealed, and revealed worlds. In them, You are concealed from human beings, but You are the one who binds and unites them. Since You are within them, whoever separates one of these ten from the others, it is as if he divided You.

These ten sefirot flow forth in order: one long, one short, one in between. You are the One who guides them. But no one guides You, not from above, not from below, nor in any direction. You have prepared garments for them from which souls fly to human beings. And You have prepared various bodies for them; they are called bodies but only in contrast to the garments covering them.

These bodies are named according to this arrangement: Chesed is the right arm; Gevurah is the left arm. Tiferet is the trunk of the body. Netzach and Hod are the two legs. Yesod, the completion of the body, is the sign of the holy covenant; Malkhut is the mouth, which we call the oral Torah. Chokhmah is the brain, inner thought; Binah is the heart, of which it is said: The heart understands. (Talmud, Berakhot 61a) Concerning these two, it is written: The concealed things belong to the Lord our God (Deut. 29:28). The supernal Keter is the crown of royalty (Keter Malkhut), of which it is said: It declares the end from the beginning (Is. 46:10). It is the head-piece of the tefillin, within which are the letters of the ineffable Name of God: Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, which is the path of emanation, the sap of the (cosmic) tree, spreading through its arms and branches, like water drenching a tree, which then flourishes.

Master of the Worlds, You are the Cause of causes, the Reason for all reasons; You irrigate that tree with that flow, a flow that is like a soul and life for the body. You have neither likeness nor image of anything within or without. You created heaven and earth, bringing forth from them sun, moon, stars, and constellations. And on earth: trees, grass, the Garden of Eden; animals, birds, fish and human beings. All

so as to know through them what is beyond, and how above and below are governed, and how above and below become known.

About You, no one knows anything. Besides You, above and below, there is no union. You are known as Lord over all. Each of the sefirot is known by a name, by which the angels are called, but You have no Name we can know, for You pervade all names even as You are the perfect completion of them all. When You withdraw from them, every name is left like a body without a soul.

You are wise but not with any wisdom (that can be) known. You understand but not with any understanding (that can be) known. You have no known place, except that which makes known Your power and might to human beings, showing them how the world is conducted through judgment and compassion, which are righteousness and justice, in accordance with human action.

Judgment (Din) is Gevurah, justice is the central pillar, righteousness (Tzedek) is holy Malkhut. Scales of righteousness are the two true pedestals. An honest measure (Lev. 19:36) is the sign of the covenant. It is all to show how the world is conducted. But it is not that You have a known righteousness which is judgment, or a known justice which is mercy, nor any of these attributes at all.

TEXT FOUR -- Zohar III, 10b

The Yud of the Holy Name is tied with three knots. Therefore this Yud has one point above, one point below, and one in the middle, since there are three knots tied in it. One point is above, supernal Keter, the highest of the high, the head of all heads, and it stands above all. One point is in the middle, and this is another head, since there are three heads and each one of them is a head in its own right; and so the middle point is another head that emerges from the point above, and it is head of all the other heads in the construction of the Holy Name, and this head is concealed from all. Another head is below, the head that waters the garden, a water spring, from which all the plants quench their thirst. This is the Yud with three knots. It is therefore called a "chain," like a chain that is interlinked, and all is one.

TEXT FIVE -- Zohar I, 15a

In the beginning (Gen. 1:1) -- At the head of potency, the king made engravings in the luster on high. A spark of impenetrable darkness flashed within the concealed of the concealed, from the head of Ein Sof, a cluster of vapor forming in formlessness, thrust in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. As a cord surveyed, it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow, splaying colors below, concealed within the concealed of the mystery of Ein Sof. It split and did not split its aura, was not known at all, until under the impact of splitting, a single, concealed, supernal point shone. Beyond that point nothing is known, so it is called reshit (beginning): the first command of all...

TEXT SIX -- Moshe de Leon, Sefer ha-Rimmon 66

Everything is linked with everything else down to the lowest ring on the chain, and the true essence of God is above as well as below, in the heavens and on the earth, and nothing exists outside Him. This is what the Sages mean when they say: When God gave the Torah to Israel, He opened the seven heavens to them, and they saw that nothing was there in reality but His Glory; He opened the seven worlds to them and they saw that nothing was there but His Glory; he opened the seven abysses before their eyes, and they saw that nothing was there but His Glory. Meditate on these things and you will understand that God’s essence is linked and connected with all worlds, and that all forms of existence are linked and connected with each other, but derived from His existence and essence.

TEXT SEVEN -- Moshe Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, 4:4, 17d-18a

In the beginning, Ein Sof emanated ten sefirot, which are of its essence, united with it. It and they are entirely one. There is no change or division in the emanator that would justify saying it is divided into parts in these various sefirot. Division and change do not apply to it, only to the external sefirot.

To help you conceive this, imagine water flowing through vessels of different colors: white, red, green and so forth. As the water spreads through those vessels, it appears to change into the colors of the vessels, although the water is devoid of all color. The change in color does not affect the water itself, just our perception of the water. So it is with the sefirot. They are vessels, known for example as Chesed, Gevurah, and Tiferet, each colored according to its function, white, red,

and green, respectively, while the light of the emanator--their essence--is the water, having no color at all. This essence does not change; it only appears to change as it flows through the vessels.

Better yet, imagine a ray of sunlight shining through a stained-glass window of ten different colors. The sunlight possesses no color at all but appears to change hue as it passes through the different colors of glass. Colored light radiates through the window. The light has not essentially changed, though so it seems to the viewer. Just so with the sefirot. The light that clothes itself in the vessels of the sefirot is the essence, like the ray of sunlight. That essence does not change color at all, neither judgment nor compassion, neither right nor left. Yet by emanating through the sefirot--the variegated stained glass--judgment or compassion prevails.