Toldos - Transcending to New Realms

you're listening to the weekly paraa podcast recorded with hashem's never ending assistance in R Israel 5775 2014 this week's para is para toos in the para this week we have the story of the sons the twins of Y and Rifka Isaac and Rebecca have two children asov and yov Esau and Jacob and we begin to see that from the very beginning yakob and ASA these two individuals are very different ASA is body who likes to go out into the world to hunt and yob Jacob was someone who liked to sit in the tents to study Torah to be involved in the spiritual life the Torah tells us that as as Isaac came to a certain age and we'll see soon what the age was and the significance of that age but as he came to a certain age so he felt that his end was coming his his death was coming soon and so he decided to give over the blessings the blessings of of Wellness of prosperity of of goodness in the Physical Realm to asov to Esau Esau was someone who is involved as we said going out to the field hunting he was involved in the Physical Realm yobu Jacob was someone who was involved in spirituality and so saw fit to give those blessings to ASV to Esau now I don't want to focus so much on this part of the story this aspect of the story what I do want to focus in on is something very interesting which is nog very much I think and I know been doing doing a lot of talking about what's going on in current events and I don't want to talk so much about what's happening right now but I do want to talk about and think about what you know on a more global perspective on a more um from a from a higher perspective what's going on and where we're we're up to kind of in in the Messiah process in the process of getting to the end of days the times of the Messiah so there's a medish here on this p on this P that speaks about the the the fact that y was worried that perhaps was about to pass away and therefore he started to give he wanted to give the blessings to to asov so there's a me that says as follows I'd like to share with you it's very interesting and and there's a lot of depth in this m there's a lot of things that we can see and we can learn and we can begin to get a picture of or a little bit of a picture of what's going on in the world and where we're up to the me says as follows I'm says when a person gets to the same time that his parents had passed away five years before and five years after so person should be worried he should be aware of the fact that it might be his time to go how do we know that this is true sh says says said you know he had reached as the mafor over here say he had reached 23 years old at this point he was 123 he knew that his mother Sarah IMU Sarah had died at the age of 127 so he was within 5 years of her age so he was worried that he might pass on he doesn't know he didn't know when he was going to go so even though his father AB Abraham had lived to the age of 175 and indeed y would go on to live to the age of 180 but still because he came into the the within five years of the age the the length of the life of his mother Sarah Sarah so he felt that it was it was appropriate to be concerned that perhaps he might pass on from the world and he wanted to give these blessings now so he said I I've become old I don't know when I'm going to pass away so now the M tells us that there are seven different things just like y Isaac was not aware couldn't know when he was going to pass on from the world there are seven different things that are impossible for person to know and now What's significant about this and thinking about this whenever we look at a medish we always need to know when a medish puts things in the same category when it says that these seven things are on the same level these are things that can't be known so it's also coming to compare those things it's it's coming to say that there's some parallel between each of these items so let's keep that in mind as we read T we learned there are seven things that are hidden from a person and these are they the first thing is the time when he's supposed to pass on from the world the second thing is the day when we're going to be we're going to be consoled by God when all of the things that have gone on throughout Jewish history are going to come to a culmination andm is going to show us that all of this was done even though it was difficult and challenging that it was all done for our good so the day of consolation is a reference to when Mia the Messiah is going to come the depth of judgment that's something that we can't know about so one of the here says a certain but I'm inclined to understand it as that it's speaking about the the death of a person's judgment whether it's after a person passes away he comes up to the next world and they review his life and they determine you know if he's going going to have to spend some time in a place which is unpleasant as a result of his deeds to burn off some of that ego that he developed through his life or if he's going to go to a place of gun Aiden because he had burnt it off while he was still alive that judgment that review that working through what had happened is something that he can't understand it's something which is beyond him it's not we can't know how that how the depth of that judgment is going to apply another thing which is out of the range of a person's knowledge is what he's going to do that's going to actually make him money a person will try this particular item he'll sell this thing he'll try another thing right my father had a store he has a store and you know they'll buy a few different items new items for their store and they're never they never know which is the item that people are going to be interested in so that's something which is it's almost like trying to look at the future what's what's the the item that is going to benefit people that people are going to be interested in that's something that a person can't know what he's going to make his money from another thing that's out of the range of a person's awareness is what's inside of the heart of his friend what's inside of someone else's heart and thoughts sh is a person doesn't know what's inside of the stomach of a woman meaning it's not possible to really know obviously we're speaking about the times of the medish but there's a significant understanding of it even if you know we could be talking about today there's there's a depth to this we'll get to it really soon but a person can't know what's going to be as far as a child which is hidden inside of the mother inside of the womb and a person also can't know when the gulus when the Exile of the Jewish people is going to end when the forces of evil the evil kingdom is going to end such that the Messiah the Messiah can come now so each of these different things represent different aspects different concepts which a person can't know about I can't know when Messiah is going to come I can't know when the Messiah is going to come I can't know what's in the heart of someone else I can't know what the nature is of a child that's inside of its mother's womb I can't know all of these different things now in order to have a depth of understanding of this M I want to share with you a cabalistic concept an idea which don't be afraid of the word cabalistic it's not something which is out of the range of our understanding it's something which is a straightforward idea which has very deep ramifications and will help us to understand what's going on in the medish the the concept is like this the theal the cabalists speak about the they speak about the brains of the human being and we have an idea ofma Bina and kerma means wisdom Bina means intuitive understanding and CER means a crown now these three different aspects have to do with a person's understanding a person's intuition a person's knowledge and the concept of the crown we'll see soon what that has to do with understanding and wisdom but just let's let's look at this on a very simple level we can relate itma is on the right side but being as the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body it's important to know that kma is related to the left brain as opposed to Bina which is intuitive understanding which is related which is really on the left side but it's related to the right brain so we all know that right brained people are more intuitive are more creative so that aspect of of that intuition and creativity are related very much to beina which is intuitive understanding which is also related to the female side and the concept of kma which is wisdom is related to the male side and it's the left brain it's the more practical and the more sensing you know what's in front of me that's the left brain and that's the aspect ofma now when we look Atma and Bina these two ideas both are things that you know a person looks at the facts he looks at reality and he gets certain things that he can understand let's say I'm learning a piece of gamar so I have the words of the gamar I have the concepts of the gamar of the tal and I'm able to to learn things and understand ideas now Bina the the concept of intuitive understanding I can take the the words or the concepts that I've learned and the the word Bina comes from the word ban which means between or to to understand meaning I can take the information and I can read between the lines I can create intuitive ideas that will help me understand things beyond the facts that are in front of me but in both the case of and the case of Bina these two ways of understanding are simple straightforward based on what I can understand and see through my senses now the concept of kesser and this is really important the concept of kesser is something which is transcendent a kesser is a crown a crown sits on top of the head so just like a just like a crown is on top of the head so Kess represents knowledge which I access which is beyond anything that I can sense with my mind or with my senses or even in it it's something that I get it's information that I can only access by somehow accessing a Transcendent a realm which is beyond me which is beyond my senses which is beyond my brain and and here it's very much this concept of ker is very much connected to the concept of beina beina is intuitive understanding I'm putting the pieces together and I'm trying to understand what's happening without having all of the information right so I'm getting something by by playing around and and and trying to understand what's going on on a deeper level that's beina but kesser is even higher than beina kesser is beyond beina kesser is something which is like it's like information that I couldn't even get by trying to read between the lines it's information that I can only get from a higher perspective from from Hashem let's say from God or from like like a navi a prophet who has this ability to see Beyond Time who's outside of time let's say or who's who's beyond the picture he's able to see the broader picture from outside not by trying to put together the pieces from the inside now the question is how does one access kesser how does one get into a higher realm a higher understanding a Transcendent Place such that he can have that deeper understanding so now the the magish here says that there are seven things that a person can't access and really all of these different things each of the seven different things that are mentioned in this BR are things that are in a Transcendent realm they're in what we could call a place of kesser they're outside of anything they're Transcendent they things that are outside of our realm really they're entering into a new realm a transcended place you know if you want to get to the world of Messiah you want to get to the the times of Messiah of Messiah you want to know how to get there you can't you can't even think about when that's going to happen in a certain sense that place is beyond time or that the time of when that's going to happen is beyond time it's it's getting out of our current understanding of time and our current understanding of physical reality so it's something which because it's in a place of ker in a Transcendent place we can use our we can use our be we can use our wisdom we can use our understanding our intuitive faculties we can try to put the pieces together but we can never actually nail exactly when it's going to be or what it's going to look like is the first thing that we have in this list the day of a person's death that can't be known what happens when a person dies is that he sheds the physical reality within which he has lived he sheds his physical body and it's like he's taking off his clothes so to speak and and now his soul which was inside of the body moves on to a higher realm indeed passes through the Realms that we spoke about last week he goes through the masas through the Cave of the Patriarchs and that's a that's a channel into the higher realm it's that light at the end of the tunnel that you may have heard people speak about whove had near-death experiences that light at the end of the tunnel as the person gets into that light he comes out into a place of ker he comes out into a Transcendent realm that's something that because I live within this realm I can't understand I can't even know about the day of my death the day when hashm is going to console the Jewish people the Messiah is going to come that's a new realm a new time it's beyond our time it's beyond our physical reality we can't know when it's going to happen the the depth of the Judgment of a person you know we don't see the way the world really is we don't relate to the world as it truly is we don't have that that all-encompassing ability to see that that the way that Hashem sees it from a higher perspective so we can't know what the Judgment of us is going to look like because we don't relate truly to our actions and the effect that they have in all of the upper Realms and how that ricochets back into our realm we can't know about that person can't know about what he's going to do to make a living making a living as we Al also mentioned in the past has to do with hashem's shefa the influx that Hashem brings down into the world for a person that's coming from a much higher realm and so where is that channel going to come through I can't know that I can't know because it's something really in the future that I'm not going to find out until it actually happens now I'm not going to go through each and every one of these seven but I just want to go through one more which is I can't know what's inside of the woman the woman who's pregnant I can't know what the characteristics are of that child I can't know everything about that child even today I can't know everything many times the the sonograms that are done that they're inaccurate they say certain things and the baby comes out and it's completely different they see certain weight or I've heard stories where they said that there was something wrong with the baby and there was nothing wrong with the baby and so you can't really know you can't really sense what's going on in a a child who's inside of the womb it's in a place which is beyond our reality and indeed and this is the significant one here when that baby is going to come into the world so in a certain sense that baby is moving into a new reality in the place where it is that baby that child is in a place of complete darkness we could call it even a place of andina place of a certain level of of knowledge of reality but that baby inside of its mother is in darkness that baby doesn't it hears faint sounds it senses you know faintly the light that might be penetrating but it's in a place of complete darkness it's in one realm and then the baby comes into the world and now it's in a new realm the bottom line here and the idea that I want to bring across is that we exist in a certain realm we exist in a certain time and the way that the world progresses the way that time progresses is that we experience successive movement from one time period to another time period And as we go out of one time period just like a child is born out into you know into the world and then it takes another N9 months for that child to start to be more involved in the world to be able to walk to be able to start speaking and there are there are successive movements there's successive processes that are part of the world that we exist within and that's expressed in not knowing what's going to be the time of the death which is the the moving on to the next stage of a person's life so to speak we don't know when that's going to happen but the point is that there are successive movements from one stage to another and I think that it's very significant at this point in the story y Isaac is about to give a blessing to asov and what happens is he doesn't give that blessing to ASV instead yob Jacob takes the blessing and now what happens is y is is he thinks that he's moving on to a successive stage and there's a truth to that he's not moving on to his death he's not going to die for another 60 years or so and but still what's happening is there's a new stage a significant new stage that's about to happen in the life of the Jewish people yakobo is now going to steal those blessings he's going to have to go to to run away from asov and he's going to have to experience the 22 years of hardship and challenge in his interactions with L with laan and then he's going to come he's going to go through all that 22 years of experience then he's going to enter into a new stage which is going to come back and the whole story with Yosef the 22 years of him being away from his father from yob from Jacob is going to happen there are successive stages and moving into new places that occur that we can't know what's going to happen Yak couldn't have known that at this moment there's going to be a brand new reality that he's going to enter into as a result of him stealing these blessings he didn't know that that was about to happen that was outside of his knowledge it was in a place of ker in a Transcendent place in time and in in in conceptual space the next 22 years he couldn't have known that that this other thing is going to happen and the idea here is and the bottom line of it is for me and for you perhaps that in our lives and in reality there are success stages and as we complete a stage There is almost I mean you see it in the story clearly as you get to the end of that stage there's a traumatic experience that blows a person into the next stage the next challenge the next place and blows them beyond the the reality in which they exist you know we could think of what happened about 70 years ago with with the Holocaust as as being a a Transcendent you know movement from one stage to another paralleling what happened with yakob where yob experienced this intense craziness with his brother ASA who was ready to kill him and then he moved on to to be able to start creating the Jewish people and he had the the 22 years of that you know that was a whole stage a new stage the Jewish people over the last 70 years has gone through another stage of of Rebirth of returning to Israel yes there was return that was happening before you know in 1948 there were 600,000 Jews in Israel already but now we have 6 million Jews in Israel at this point so so there are stages in the growth of the Jew Jewish people that we see occurring and what's fascinating and worth thinking about is this parallel between the I the birth of a child where it's the child is in one stage and then comes out into the world to another stage which takes nine months and there are many parallels between the nine months we've mentioned this in the past but there are many parallels between the nine months of the eor of the of the development of a child inside of its mother and the concept of the number of 70 the 70 years and and there are different places the supplies I've spoken about this in different places in the mesiah podcasts but the the 9 months this development this movement forward this going from one stage to another we have this 9month period every time we have a leap year from a of the previous year until till the second there's a 9month period which the Mar in sanin speaks about on page 12 worth looking at that worth seeing more about it but you have these stages these consecutive stages these movements forward that produce new realities and bring us through to challenges and then the challenges break through break us through into a place of ker into a place of transcendence and as we go through the challenges it feels like literally like birthing pains you know what happened this week with this this incredibly tragic situation the attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem it was a place that was the same street I lived on that street for 3 years and that Sho I I didn't dve in there regularly I didn't pray there often but I did pray there at times I've actually there's a hall underneath the Sho I've sang in that place numerous times and you know this is something is it's a tragedy which is unspeakable it's unspeakable but we need to know and we will see just like the tragedy that occurred in the summertime where where it was like intense where these three three boys were kidnapped and murdered and it created a new reality inside of Israel where we saw miracles happen we saw that there was an attempt there was a there was a plan to for there to be an incredible attack on rashash Shana and that was uncovered and prevented because of the the loss the intensity I believe the intensity of these types of experiences for the Jewish people is something which moves us into the next place into the next realm and and protects us and creates a new reality for us the intensity of it the to the degree that we feel it intensely and and when we have these experiences these are things that that make us grow that if we have the right perspective on them they can produce humility within us and I heard a lot of that the speaking about you know this shabus being a time where we have a you know free giving out free love so to speak and a time of of forgiving others a time of moving past the anger that we've had with others this is how the Jewish people approaches this type of challenge this type of situation we don't get angry we don't we don't lash out at at the the International Community there there's people who are responsible for for making sure that we don't you know we don't get misrepresented but our job as individuals each of us is to look at how can I be better how can I be more humble how can I improve my relationships with those around me with myself with Hashem with God we can't know when death is going to strike we can't know when the day of hashem's ultimate consolation and we'll see we'll be able to reach that Transcendent perspective where we see all of those things how how it truly in the end was good and it moved us forward in our Redemption process but what we can do is know we can look back at all the different stages of our history and we can look back and we can say we can use our Bea we can use our understanding our intuitive understanding we can use our our wisdom the the looking at the facts we can read between the and we can start to get a little bit of a picture and we can start to to realize that all of this is like the I is all of this is like the process of birth of moving beyond the reality within which we exist entering into a new reality into a greater world where we'll look back one day and we'll see that it was all for our best that all of the challenges all the hatred all of the anger all that stuff all of the things that we've experienced that look so bad ultimately we will see see we will be able to experience experientially we'll be able to feel that it was truly for our best hem should bless us to be able to have this understanding this depth and Hashem should help us to indeed be able to move through these situations difficult situations and be able to reach that day the day when the all the forces of evil they're all broken and we have that ultimate consolation hasem showing up his light and his goodness and we have that spirituality for all times thank you so much for listening have a wonderful chabas this podcast was made possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you for more podcasts like this please visit www.wag.com or search on iTunes Ari goldwag [Music]