Breishis - Return of Transcendent Light

You're listening to the weekly para podcast with Ari Goldwag recorded with Hashem's never ending assistance in Ramsh Israel 5787 2026. This week's precious bracious we get to begin from the beginning. It's a time of new beginnings. It's a new year and it's a new time a new cycle around the Tyra. And we begin in the beginning with the creation of the world. created the world in six days and on the seventh day Hashem rested. Torah describes I'll just read from the beginning of the second chapter of braces. Hashem completed the heavens and the earth and all their hosts and on the seventh day God stopped. He rested from the work that he did. It wasn't that it was tiring. It means he came to arrest from the work. The work was arrested. God blessed the seventh day. He blessed it. He sanctified it. For on it he stopped from all the work that God created to do. And we also in our times we work six days a week. Shabas is a day of rest. Next P and this is the P we're going to focus in on says the verse after telling us about creation what was created on each day what the sequence looked like the Torah says these are the toos the word is an interesting word these are the effects of or the way things unfolded as far as the creation of the heavens and the earth. When God created the heavens, the the earth and the heavens reverses it. Okay. And then it talks about the fact nothing had yet come into the world. Nothing had yet started to grow. Everything was waiting for the prayers. Not yet brought the rain. There was no human being yet to work the earth. It's called and a cloud was coming up from the earth and it was watering the whole face of the earth. So I'd like to focus in on the on a medish. The maj talks about the creation of heaven and earth and how there was something that was created that we didn't see right away. The says these are the results right can mean you see by it says told us these are the generations or the stories of Noah told us we we the Torah describes events with the word toos the Torah also describes a an unfolding That's how I like to refer to it. An unfolding of events, unfolding of intent, right? When Hashem creates the world, so there's an intent. Torah starts off with that gives the Torah gives us the intent. Shem is creating and then we watch there's a description of specifically how it unfolds. The maj says that there's something else that the puss is referring to when it talks about the unfolding the tolos to can mean generations. But if you think about what generations means, it means the events when a person has children. So the the the individual's life unfolds through the events of their children and then there are further generations and further unfolding and further events. But there's an implication here that something something was created in concept which did not yet come to fruition. says he says if you look at the word which means as we said the unfolding of events toos generally you can write the word tolos in different ways toos the way it's written here is tough vavval vavv tough so that vavv those those letters vavv can be left out you can just make a dot and you know it's tolos if you don't have the VVs in there. So points out that generally when it says the word toldos which means unfolding of generations or unfolding of a story or unfolding of a creative process. So it's written without vavs or without av except for two places. There are two places where the Torah writes it with two vavves to do vavv lavv. Why are there two VVs? We're going to see. But what are the two places? One is here and the other place is it says in Russ in the book of Ruth which describes the lineage of King David says parets. These are the generations the unfolding of Perets. Perths was the son of Yehuda was Tamar and ultimately he was the great great-grandfather of King David. So in regards to King David, it says the word toos which means a full unfolding, right? If you have extra ves, it means it's a full expression of this idea. It says it here to the unfolding of the heavens and the earth. And it says it by King David's lineage that there's a full unfolding. Now why do we find why do we find a concept of told us which is which is missing a letter? Why do we find that it's sometimes written without those ves without of av and then we'll try to understand why over here and over there it's written with a vavv says it corresponds to six matters the letter which is missing the letter has you have six so there are six things that When you are missing the VV, it expresses the fact that they are not present in the unfolding. They may have been present in the original creation or in the original concept, but as they unfolded, they seemed to be missing or not fully expressed until a later point. There were six things that were taken away from the first man. Adam Marishon originally was created with these things but because of his sin they were taken away. These are they zo he had a shine. When you looked at Marisha when you looked at that first man and his wife there was a certain shine a spiritual light that was emanating from them that was lost. It was originally created there but it was lost. You're supposed to live eternally. He lost eternal life. So that's the second thing that's missing as the generations unfold. He was also originally of greater stature. It says that his he was able to see from one end of the earth to the other. He was very tall which is a the way the kazal described that he had a certain spiritual power and it says that he could see from one end of the world to the other. It indicates the ability to know things spiritually through divine inspiration. He knew things intuitively that you could only know if you were connected intimately with Hashem. And so he was called he had a certain stature a physical stature which expresses spiritual stature. He lost that the fruit of the earth the fruit of the tree which as the mafor explained originally all trees even what we wouldn't call fruit trees today even the regular trees had fruit. They were fruitbearing originally as they were created which was no longer true after the sin of Marishon. And the last thing that changed is that the light the light of the of the sun and the light of the moon was damaged. And I would I believe what it's saying is that there was originally a powerful spiritual light which was manifest in the sun. You would when the sun would shine, you wouldn't just get its physical warmth, the physical rays, which of course do give life to all of creation, give life to all of the earth, but there was also a spiritual light which was more manifest. Hashem's light was more manifest through the sun and the moon. We express this in the in the uh when we sanctify the moon after which we're going to do next next mi shabas. When we sanctify the moon, we express the fact that it's going to return to that as we're going to see soon. The moon is going to have seven times the amount of light. It's going to be as bright as the sun. But it expresses a spiritual reality that's going to be manifest. We're going to see a new expression of godliness in the world as manifest in the in the in the sources of light that we have. Okay. And then the medish goes through each of the different things. And I don't want to go in detail into each of these different things, but I do want to look at the issue of the light. That very light that Hashem created the world with the first manish was able to see as we mentioned before from one end of the earth until the other end of the earth there was a certain light a spiritual light which was a a an ability to have spiritual insights. You could be on one in one place, but you know what's going on somewhere else. You could you had all of these spiritual powers, spiritual intellectual powers that was described oral referred to it as spiritual light. So it's very interesting because it sounds like a contradiction to what we said earlier but perhaps we can reconcile it says that when Hashem saw that there will be sinners who will sin is referring to the fact that there'll be idoltors who will come to serve instead of serving Hashem himself they'll serve idols They'll they'll make a human being into a god. They'll make uh pieces of wood into gods. They would the powers the the celestial powers, the stars, the moon, the sun, the angels, human beings instead of going straight to the source, they felt God wasn't interested in them or it was too difficult to access Hashem. So they sinned in that way. Then there was the ma the people of the generation of the flood that they did terrible sins that caused the destruction of the world. The doraflaga was where the the they were trying to fight against God. They were uniting as one building this tower. Hashem saw all of this. He said I can't I can't allow this light this intense spiritual light. If they have access to this light, they'll cause great damage with their sins. So, Hashem, he got up and he hid it away. Hashem prevents the wicked from accessing their light. The light that could have been used by them for spiritual acquisitions, for serving Hashem, Hashem saw that they were going to use it for destructive purposes. So he hid the light. We said before why did Hashem hide the light? Because of Marish sin the sin of of his. But of course his original sin that first sin that he did by eating from the the the the tree of knowledge of good and evil brought all of the evil the possibility for evil into the world. It's not really a contradiction. We're really unfolding, right? We're witnessing and we've witnessed throughout history an unfolding of the mistakes that he made but we're going to get back as we're going to see to a different state. So what happened and of course we're going to get back to the puk which said that there are two toos. Let's hold on to that thought. Don't forget about that. There's two places where it says the word toldos with vavs. That means that the vavves are there. The six things that were lost originally were there. They were lost because of the sin of Adam Marisham. But they will be returned when they will be returned by the offspring of King David. Right? That's where it says to us with a fulv referring to the toos of per Messiah is going to come from King David. He's going to be one of the toos, the offspring of knows the medish something which we may all know. But that original light, that spiritual light that gave human beings incredible spiritual power and knowledge and understanding, intuitive knowledge. So it was hidden away. Why was it hidden away? Hashem hid it away for the righteous for the future. Right? If it falls into the hands of the wicked, so they'll use it for destructive purposes, to fight against God, to separate from God. And the purpose of the light, that spiritual knowledge is for us to connect Hashem. that it was good. Find elsewhere, right? In referring to the light, he uses the word. And we find elsewhere the word t is also used in the context of the righteous. Say to the righteous that it is good. So originally intended it for the righteous. How do we know that he hid it away for them? We bring a different verse. The way of the righteous is like a shining light. It's a verse in Mish in Proverbs 4:18. The way, right? If you have a way, a path, so that means you don't you're not there yet, right? The path of the righteous is like a shining light. So it's something that's hidden away for them. It's interesting idea of a path. It's not clear. Is it saying at the end of the path you get the shining light or is it saying that the way itself is the shining light? So for the righteous, we don't really separate the process and the product. The righteous are living in the space of Msiah already. Now we can all strive for that. We're thinking about When Hashem saw the light that he hid away for the righteous, Hashem was joyous. He says uh the AC says in explaining this when Hashem saw that there would be righteous who would be able to receive that light ultimately that caused him to rejoice because when he created the world it wasn't yet in a state where the world could receive that light. It wasn't yet because of the sin of Marishon, we had a fall from that perfect space of righteousness of of being able to receive that light. It would take many generations and it's still we're still in the in the process. Hopefully, we're getting to the end of that process soon. But Hashem saw the end of the process. So, even at the beginning, Hashem was joyous. Listen to this. It's just beautiful said in the name of Shamas. There were 36 hours that the light that the light was the word shim means it it was performing its purpose. It was being of use. sinned. But the light didn't didn't disappear right away. It took Hashem made a little delay so that Adam would perceive and experience that light. So for 36 hours that light was still functioning 12 hours on Friday of creation 12 hours of the night of creation of of of Friday night of Shabas the first 12 hours of Shabas and 12 hours of the day of Shabas [snorts] when wanted to put away that light right as we read right these are the verses that were right before our right it's important to see that the places these two concepts next to each other shabas is right next to told us there was a fullness that's the word told us with two vavves there was a fullness in the creation that was there for shabas wanted to take it away but in honor of Shabas this. Hashem said, "We're going to we're going to keep that light. It's going to still function then." Which, by the way, gives us a hint that of course we don't have that light today, but we can access that light more on Shabas. It was ingrained into Shabas even after the sin. Right? That's what the maj seems to be saying. Hashem gave honor to Shabas. Hashem blessed the seventh day and he sanctified it. What was the blessing with this light? It means on Shabas you can access the light the the transcendent spiritual light which helps you have access to unbelievable information transcendent information. It's a day of Tyra. It's a Dave studying Torah. So we get back that light on Shamas. Even the first Shamas when it should have been extinguished, it was there already. So it's it's that's the everything that happened in the first days of creation were a foreshadowing or in this case light, the light instead of shadows, right? There was a foreshadowing of what would occur every subsequent week, every subsequent year, right? This is the told us, this is the conception. So what happens? Friday night, the the light was still there and the sun set, but there was still this incredible spiritual light. So the sun set it was dark but it was still light. So they started to praise Hashem called he says under all of the heavens they will sing to himu means to say his praises they will sing to him because of the light that's on the corners of the earth. Right? And when we speak about the corners of the earth, it means it's an all-encompassing light. It was a spiritual light with which he could see from one end of the earth to the other. It's the same language as right there's a we talk about Hashem gathering in the Jewish people from all of the corners of the earth. It means to say that there's a a transcendent type of situation that's represented by a unification of the Jewish people from the physical realm to becoming more spiritual. That's what we're witnessing today. So now what happens? They they they praised praised Hashem. They sang to Hashem. Of course, song is also indicative. It's something that brings you to a higher space. helps one transcend. That light shine, that light shone all day and all night. So now the sun set again but the light also disappeared. That spiritual light was gone. What happens? was afraid. He was afraid that maybe the forces of evil which had already caused him to sin. And now Hashem had said he's going to he the the snake will try to bite you and you will try to kill it. It will be an ongoing battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. He was afraid that the light had disappeared because the forces of evil were now taking over. Says unto him, King David says, "I was afraid. I said darkness will will bite me." A beautiful thing. there was no light but it means there's no spiritual light. Hashem gave him two stones to to a flint stone to be able to create a fire which really means to say on a spiritual level and we do this every mishab because it represents the spiritual aspect of the fact that now we need a new fire. Now we need a new fire a spiritual light. We have to somehow find access to that spiritual light even though it's hidden. Even though we're in the dark, Hashem gave him access. Right? King David continues and says in chapter 119 of Psalms that although the darkness is seeming to bite me like a snake, but in the night there is there is light for me. That's why we it comes out. This is like who says why do we make this blessing of of the creation of the of of fire? Because this is when it was created. But again, it doesn't mean a physical fire only. It means access to a a spiritual fire that somehow allows a person still not to have that full-fledged um broad spiritual vision from one end of the earth to the other but still somehow I can still find light in this darkness brings us back to our original point and and sums it up for us and he says that even though originally the world was created in a perfect spa state, the human being was created in a way where he could see spiritually, he could see the the big picture. He had access to full knowledge. We weren't stuck in only seeing the 180 degrees that are in front of us. We could see everything. We could see the big picture. It wasn't. So, so what happened? That's how it was originally made. [snorts] Those aspects were lost when sinned. Parrots. When will this return to the way it was supposed to be? It's going to return to its original state when Msiah comes. The grandson, the great great great great grandson of Parrots. Parrots was the son of Yehuda. Parrots was the great great grandfather of Danl, King David. told his parents mole. Right? The meas finishes off with what we've said before that the Torah specifically wrote it in this way with an extra VV a full VV to teach you that in the beginning things were created fully perfectly all six aspects. The human being was fully spiritually conscious. more spiritual. If you looked at the Ramal says when he was created, you would see a you would barely notice that there's a physical being there. You would only see the spiritual side. You would mostly see the spiritual side. It's the opposite of the way it is today. Today, we look at ourselves and we see a human person. We see a a physical being mostly. If you look carefully, you can discern that there's a spiritual aspect to the person, which you got to put the pieces together. But originally man was created fully spiritual and that's how it's going to return. That state will return when Messiah comes. That is the the job of Perets, his great great grandson, Yehuda Damel, King David, his great great grandson, Mashiach. So it started then in a perfect state. We lost that perfect state. We lost that spiritual access and we will regain that access hopefully soon. But Hashem brings Msiah lesson. The lesson all of us, we all have our moments of inspiration. We all have those times where we suddenly glimpse the the curtain is pulled back and we have a glimpse of a higher reality of of Hashem in our lives. And that moment is ecstatic and it's awesome. And then we lose it. Maybe we sin or maybe Hashem pulls it back for whatever reason. But we need to know that it's not lost. It's accessible and it's accessible and it stays. We have access to it on Shabas especially on those days and times when we have more ability to focus on spiritual matters because we set aside we stop we rest from all of our involvements in the physical realm. We have access to that. And Shabas, we remind ourselves that even as we return to the week, that light is still there, but it takes a little bit extra effort. You got to get those flintstones to spark up that light to create that fire, that spiritual light within. I want to bless you. I ask you to bless me. Hashem should help us that we should indeed we should merit to see that spiritual light in our lives even in the state we are now. But really ultimately we should merit to see Mashiach the great great grandson of Parrots speedily and in our days. Thank you so much for listening. A wonderful Shabas. This podcast was made [music] possible through the gracious donations of listeners like you. For more podcasts like this, please visit www.rigoldwag.com or search [music] on iTunes Ari Goldwag.