Exile and Exodus 2 The Kabbalist Haggadah: A Handbook of the Seder The Exile of Da’at – Knowing In order to understand the meaning of Passover, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, we must be clear about the meaning of the Egyptian exile. It was, to use the terminology of the Kabbalah, ‘The Exile of Knowing.’ The Hebrew word for ‘Knowing’ is Da’at - ,gs. Of all the trees in the Garden of Eden, one was forbidden to Adam. In the text of Genesis (2 :9), it is named the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of Da’at of Tov and Ra. In the simplest of terms, eating of the Tree of Knowledge precipitated a crisis in the world - it became and remains impossible to separate good and evil absolutely. Since the time of the eating, good and evil are mingled, confused and often indistinguishable. An example of the confusion that prevails: In Ger- many between the years 1933-45, cruelty toward animals was considered a hei- nous crime, and progressively harsher laws were passed to punish it. What can one say to such a statement? Is any part of it good or bad? Is the good not inex- tricably confused with the evil? Maimonides, in his monumental work on Jewish Law (Hilchoth Teshuvah 5:5) discusses ‘Knowing’ both in the divine and human spheres. If you ask: Since God knows everything, does He have prior knowledge of who will be virtuous and who will be evil, or does God not know? If God knows someone will be virtuous is it possible for him not to be so? If you say that God knows the person will be virtuous but the possi- bility remains that he will be evil, is there not something confused about God’s knowledge? Know, the answer to this question measures longer than the world, broader than the ocean. Many radical basics and axiomatic princi- ples depend upon it. However, you must first know and understand the following that I tell you. As we have already explained in the second chap- ter of the Laws of the Fundamentals of the Torah, God’s knowledge, unlike human knowledge is not separate from God; the way human ideas have an existence independent of the people who think them. God and His knowledge are one, and no human can grasp this idea without confu- sion, just as humans are incapable of grasping God’s essential truth, as it is written; ‘For no man shall see Me and survive.’ Similarly no one has the power to grasp God’s Knowledge, and this is what the prophet meant when he said: ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, My ways are not your The Exile of Da’at – Knowing 3 ways.’ It being so, we have not the ability to know how God knows every- one and everything. Without doubt though, we know that every human acts with complete autonomy and without God decreeing it so. This is not merely a religious tenet, we know it after proving it philosophically with words of wisdom. This why the prophets assert that humans are judged for their actions and by their actions, good or evil. This is a basic upon which all prophecy depends. If you remain confused, dear reader, after reading Maimonides’ explana- tion of Knowledge of Good and Evil, don’t fret. It’s paradoxical. Knowledge and Confusion are synonymous. This is what eating of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil did for the world. Human behavior and rational philosophy are but tiny facets of the cosmic whole. The universe is a big place and confusion reigns throughout. Modernity is premised upon acceptance that the time, place or se- quence of events can never be established with absolute certainty. Confusion is the central theme within Kabbalah too. In the Kabbalistic system of Sephiroth used to describe all interactions and events in the created uni- verse Da’at – Knowing is a ‘virtual’ Sephirah. If one were to imagine the Kabbalis- tic Sephirah of Da’at – Knowing, exemplified in the human mind, we would have to postulate its momentary existence at the interface between the two hemi- spheres of the cortex at the front of the brain. The Hebrew word ,gs -Da’at translates as ‘Knowing.’ Nevertheless, everywhere in literature this word is accepted as having other meanings. In the broadest sense, where heaven and earth meet is Da’at - Knowing. Where man and woman meet is Da’at - Knowing. Where the past and the future meet is Da’at - Knowing. Knowing is the place where inside meets outside. Da’at - Knowing is the inside of the outside. To imagine the inside of the outside we have to imagine a crown sitting on a head, encircling the skull and resting upon the brow. Obviously the crown is outside the head, but where is the inside of the crown if not inside the head? The inside of the outside, the central point in space within the crown resting on the outside of the head, is actually a point in the middle of the brain. This Sephirah of Da’at – Knowing is central to our un- derstanding of Passover and the Exodus. Uncertainty, confusion, lack of knowledge: most of us are confused much if not most of the time, but at least we are sure of our confusion. There’s no confusion about that. The Exile of Knowing – Da’at only begins when we become confused about the very fact of our confusion. Officially, the Exile of Da’at is covenantal and begins with Abraham. In Genesis (15:13), God said to Abram: “Know surely that your descendents will be strangers in a foreign land for 400 years.” Yet where we read the verse as, 'know surely,’ the Hebrew text uses the words gs, gsh -Yodoa Tayda, which are both forms of the root gs -Da, ‘to 4 The Kabbalist Haggadah: A Handbook of the Seder know.’ It is as though Abram were told, ‘You will know that you know that your descendents etc.’ But because the Egyptian exile was an exile of Da’at - Know- ing, we, Abram’s descendents in Egypt did not know that we did not know. In order for the wound inflicted upon the cosmos by the eating of the Tree of Da’at –Knowledge to be healed, there has to be separation of good from evil. This involves a process of discernment, a long process, stretched over hu- man history. The Exodus from Egypt described in the Torah is a paradigm of this discernment process. It was not only the process whereby a family of sheep- herders became a recognizable nation, whereby God became the One God, the Lord and whereby good had discernment from evil. It was at every level, as we shall be learning, a discovery, a revelation, a determination and enlightenment of ‘Knowledge.’ It was the first big fixing of the damage caused by the confusion of Da’at - Knowing. In order to properly understand the Exodus, we need to understand the reasons and circumstances surrounding our descent into Egypt. A simple reading of the text of Genesis tells the story of Joseph and his brothers. They were as confused about him as he was about them. They sold him as a slave into Egypt where his sexuality – Knowing was tested. In prison he was recognized as a Knowing man. Pharaoh, after using him to interpret dreams realized that Joseph was a man who knows things, someone with divine knowledge. Joseph tortured his brothers and they knew him not. Eventually the whole family descended into Egypt. Joseph and his brothers died. A new Pharaoh governed Egypt, one who knew not Joseph. He oppressed the Hebrews and enslaved them. Moses was born. He stood before Pharaoh and demanded he let God’s people go. “Who is God? I know him not,” exclaimed Pharaoh. (Exodus 5:2) “You will know,” said God to Moses. (Exodus 6:7) “We don’t know,” said Moses to Pharaoh. (Exodus 10:26) We were brought forth out of Egypt, and now we know. If the Exodus were a simple historical event we would not be preparing for the Passover Seder as though it were a major life-event each year. The Exo- dus continues to resonate and repeat and retell itself as a current event each and every year. Seder night - Giluy Shechinah - Revelation of the Divine Presence The Exodus from Egypt is not merely an historical event. It is not the story of the migration of a people. It is a personal story about regaining our ability to achieve intimacy. At the macrocosmic level our capacity for intimacy describes our ability to become vehicles for the Shechinah - Divine Presence. One way of seeing how we have lost our capacity for intimacy is to realize we no longer have Giluy Shechinah - Revelation of the Divine Presence. The night of Passover in Egypt was the first night of Giluy Shechinah - Revelation of the Divine Presence, as will be described at length in the text. It was an historic and remarkable event through which we were changed instantaneously from serfs to The Exile of Da’at – Knowing 5 nobles, from being mired in blackest ignorance to the enjoy the ability to enjoy as commonplace breathtaking visions of the Divine. Together, let us explore some of the eternal verities and profound mysteries hidden in the story told in this Haggadah. Let us re-enact the exodus in our own lives, that we be healed of the damage we suffer as a result of our own eating of the Tree of Knowledge – Da’at of Good and Evil.