Chasidus and the "PaRDeS"

okay welcome back this is our fifth class and tonight's section is uh is short it's just chapter eight this is as apportioned in the weekly hyena of course we want to remind our viewers that this class encounters is a partnership between kaino the weekly torah journal and soul words so we want to acknowledge that partnership and thank gayno again very much for providing the text and for bringing so many of their readers over the soul words to participate in this this class okay so we were speaking about siddhis as uh related to mashiach and that siddhis like mashiach is the idea of again you know there's a word that's hard to translate we can translate it as essence but then essence needs to be explained as well what is essence but the way we're using the term or essence here in in this discourse is basically that which is no particular thing and yet at the same time or perhaps precisely because of that is present in everything um it can't be pinpointed can't be nailed down and yet at the same time or again perhaps precisely because of that it is ubiquitous it's just everything and everywhere and siddhis is like that and mashiach is like that and that's why both siddhis and meshiach which are connected ideas um both have a lot of qualities that sort of uh derive from them but those derivative qualities or outer manifestations are are precisely that they're just derivative qualities or outer manifestations and that's the nature of an essence an essence does reveal itself in various different ways but the essence itself isn't a revelation and therefore isn't can't be held to or or or limited to any of the um the trappings of any of its manifestations so uh and we and and then in in the previous chapter chapter seven we spoke about oil shaming oil as the uh as the metaphor for this idea of essence there's no particular place in the olive where the oil is or isn't um and yet again or you know however or precisely because of it not being in any particular place it's in all places so continuing now with chapter eight we're going to talk about how siddhis interrelates with torah and with the different forms of torah we've we've spoken about this briefly before earlier in the mimer a couple of times that in toyota you have four levels and site and we'll just very briefly talk about what they are we're gonna be revisiting these concepts over and over again actually so we're not going to explain it at length here but just a little bit shocked is the simple or straightforward literal meaning of an idea in the torah is means allusion meaning it's a little bit oblique it's not clear or explicit but it's not that far of a leap drosh literally means to dig deurish is to like to expound it means to get in there and um the sages would would uh employ uh drush that's the same uh etymological root as the word madrush right madrish is the same concept digging deep we sometimes call the homiletical meaning of the verse and then there's soy literally means secret that's the esoteric and that refers to kabbalah okay so you have four levels of torah and each have their own trappings their own uh and again we have to speak very very carefully you have to tread lightly because we're talking about toyota and toyota as holy every level of tata every form of toyota every motive expression of tata so i don't want this to be taken the wrong way but these four levels have their own uh stylistic features can we say it like that they all have different uh again i i hope this isn't a disrespectful term but they have their tropes no i don't mean drop like sarco tropes they have their you know certain signatures certain uh features that are um that are a characteristic of of their of their style okay let's let's jump in chapter eight the vitality that siddhis brings to the world both the microcosmic world of the person and the macrocosmic world meaning the world what's the macrocosmic world the world okay anyways the vitality that's this brings to both the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the universe that actually derives from the vitality that siddhis brings into torah why why is that so colin because everything in the world in the creation derives from torah right stakeholder but alma like the zarya says hashem looked in the theater and created the world try it as the blueprint for creation and everything that's in the world comes from torah so if siddhis brings a new vitality into man and we spoke about how it it it allows just to very quickly uh touch back on the ch on chapter one right so it allows us to uh what was the first thing uh go beyond the letter of the law right or another effect another effect it has on man and uh it allows us to change the nature of character traits okay um and then there's the effects that this has on the world like that uh it uh roused the jewish people from their slumber right we're talking about the four features of citizens that were talked about in chapter one so these features all derive from the effect that siddhis has on torah what is the effect that siddhis has on tata let's read further site in toyota you have four levels we will not translate them anymore because we already explained what they were and frankly is you know homiletical an easier word to uh associate the meaning with than you know drush no okay so we're just going to use the hebrew brings a new vitality into all of those four levels a share namely and now there's like sort of a parenthetical statement here um this what we're about to say is in addition to the fact that siddhis brings explanations into all the four levels of torah okay this this is not what we're talking about this is an addition to this feature that yes siddhis gives biodim gives explanations of ideas that appear in all four levels of the theta s which by the way this idea that see this explains shattering side also is shiloh negates a popular misconception that siddhis is a viewer on side and kabbalah okay this is like a a parenthetical statement within a parenthetical statement so i just want to unpack this properly we're saying sid is has an effect on all of the four levels of toyota now that's in addition to this is not the same thing as it's a separate thing from it and it's an additional thing too the idea that siddhis gives interpretations or explanations of things that appear in all the four levels of tita okay that's that's the first parenthetical statement now parenthetical within parenthetical is and by the way having mentioned that citiz adds explanations to all four levels of toyota that you should know is in direct um contrast with the popular misconception that sid this is a viewer on and kabbalah okay it's not first of all see this explains all of the four levels of tita not just sight second of all to call siddhis a viewer of kabbalah that like siddhis is an explanation of of kabbalah you know like like like rashi is an explanation of hamesh right that would be inaccurate the rabbit ashab actually said that siddhis isn't a beer and kabbalah kabbalah is a big siddhis now what does that mean what does it mean to call something a commentary or an explanation so what's the difference between see this and kabbalah one way of explaining would be a physician someone who practices healing has to study biology and chemistry and anatomy but the actual art of healing isn't any of those things those things are used in order to practice healing and in fact the physician as physician is only interested in those sciences inasmuch as they allow the healer to heal likewise kabbalah is very interested in the anatomy so to speak of the divine okay and of course that's a whole explanation into itself the idea of the audeman and the anthropomorphic configuration of the sphere ice um but there's there's there's a model for understanding divinity that is related to the the anthropomorphic uh configuration of spherus which everyone's probably seen is familiar with that um with that idea at least if you're you're studying in this class you i'm sure you've seen this you know the idea of the the human body and it's uh corresponding to the different spheroids we say it in the impossibly oh every head of shabbos right the the the hasid amina right the the hess it is the right arm and the voters the left arm the whole anthropomorphic thing okay so kabbalah is so to speak the anatomy so it helps you to understand to pinpoint to locate where various different aspects of godliness can be found where in cedrishtauslas which which sphero but there's nothing actually practical about that siddhis is concerned with practical implementation now in order to pursue practical implementation see this will employ the language of and and even the the the the knowledge of kabbalistic concepts but only just like the healer will use anatomy but only in order to heal okay um it's interesting because just a little i don't know what he called the soapbox i'm getting on my soapbox here i remember 20 years ago when i was a very very young rabbi and uh somebody asked me about the kabbalah center i wonder if i'm going to get a lawsuit for this and they they told me they were studying the kabbalah center and is it kosher and they started telling me some of the stuff and i said i don't know if it's kosher or not but it it probably not kabbalah they said well how how are you saying that we have a we have a we have a we have a zohar here we have they they scan the pages they look at the pages of the tsar right uh i said because what you're describing is way too practical i said cabola is very abstract very theoretical and what you're talking about is very practical it's probably just a bunch of self-help like you know dal carnegie and stuff uh repackaged with you know uh spiritual spooky sounding language and then i found out that was pretty much accurate so i had a good guess anyways but how did i know because kabbalah is i'll give you another analogy it's pretty much the same analogy as i just said but like kabbalah is calculus see this is engineering an engineer studies calculus but he's only he's only interested in as much as he can build a bridge and at the end of the day you know can i walk across the bridge or not and if i can't then calculus isn't all that interesting to me okay so siddhis is interested in kabbalah in as much as it is practical now since i'm having fun i'll tell you a story i heard this story actually from joseph and tolushkan there's a whole backstory why he told me that story some time at a fabric and i'll tell you why he told me this story but anyways he told me that uh herbert winer uh the author of nine and a half mystics studied at the hebrew university in jerusalem and he was actually in gershon shalom's kabbalah class kabbalistic studies and if you don't know gershon shalom you know was like the academic master of kabbalah he studied kabbalah as an academic discipline but you know at least purportedly outwardly said he didn't believe a word of it right he was just studying it for its i don't know historical significance cultural significance anyways there was a chassid who appeared one day in this class um avraham yehuda they used to call him hershel chernagover and uh anyways he made aliyah in the end of his life and he had a son of rum yehuda so rolls into gersh and shalom's kabbalah class in the middle of hebrew university and herbert weiner is sitting there and whole cast of characters anyways uh this hain starts saying to gershon challenges what's the difference between a hosset and a kabbalistic studies professor what's the difference i don't know what's the difference between a hosted and a kabbalistic studies professor he says you know the difference the difference between a bala boss and an accountant a business owner an accountant see the accountant spends his whole day in numbers and he knows every number every number is a penny and he knows to the penny how much money came into the company how much money left the company but then he goes home and he doesn't have any of those numbers meaning he looks at the numbers all day but the money that they represent it's not his money he goes home he doesn't have access to that money the the the owner the business owner he uh he doesn't check the books every day maybe he doesn't even check the books every week and he doesn't know exactly to the penny how much is coming in how much is going on he has a rough idea but it's his money it's his money he owns the money so he says that's that's the that's the same difference between the kabbalistic studies professor and the joseph the kabbalistic studies professor he knows every letter in the zohar but it's not his he doesn't own it he didn't make it his own and the khasid does he know everything in this you know maybe he knows like golovkin you know like something that you know that's okay don't get impressed that's the first line of zarya that's like my extent you know if it's a dibra moscow of a mimer you know or kigana or possibly you know one of those things so he knows that right but uh it's his like the business owner he may not know every penny in in the he can't account for he doesn't know the books so thoroughly but but it's his money meaning he made it his he owns it he made it his life so that's the difference between kabbalah and this is the is the theoretical and the practical so we were in the middle of a parenthetical statement lest you think the siddhis is a beer on kabbalah first of all it's not and if anything kabbalah is the beer on siddhis and second of all siddhis explains all the other kalkia as well okay anyways let's let's move on in the text so in addition to the fact that siddhis gives interpretations or added explanations to ideas that appear in all four levels of torah in addition to that see this makes everything in all the other four levels of toyota come to life in a totally new way with an essential life the usa this life this life that this brings one of the results is it brings about greater clarity or greater understanding of the ideas so it's not just that siddhis comes and gives commentary on the other four levels of toyota you know when siddhis touches the other four levels it makes them come to life in a totally new way so that they themselves are changed what does that mean and don't get worried if you don't understand this so clearly yet because we're going to speak about this at length i mean that's what the whole discourse is about okay here's an example in the revealed parts of titan in okay not a kabbalistic concept a very down-to-earth grounded concept in halacha about how one thing can affect other things so so that those other things are changed so when siddhis explains the other four levels of toyota it's not just see this is is giving its explanation no see this is making those those four levels come to life in a new way that they hadn't before see this shined through them okay but where do we find an example in where one thing can change those other things so that they themselves become uh new here's the example of this yeah make you put in and cashed us a little bit because all of the aveda in the basement and the kipper can only be done by the king god now here's the thing there are a lot of things that are done on yum kipper that are only done on yum kipper so that understandably could only be done by the by the korean goggle but what about those parts of the aveda which are not unique to yim kippur like the tumid the comet is done twice a day every single day so why does that only have to be the crane goggle and yet when it's in kipper only the kangado can do the aveda even the things that are done on other days of the year commission in kipper aveda the power of him kipper actually changes the regular daily things and even if him keeper falls on shabbos the shabbos avoider that also is elevated to to a new level where only the king gobble can do it so it's an interesting thing the holiness of yim kippur doesn't just affect the things that are unique to yim kippur but everything now what's what's the parallel in our day and age by the way you know again four levels and then the fifth which is not a level at all so yeah you know you have nephi and then which is not a fifth level but it's the essence of all in kipper you have five to fearless it's the only day of the year you have you dive in five times okay regular day you dive in three times if it's reshredish or khalamoid or shabbas you'd have them four times only yom kippur daven five times but it's not just that fifth prayer of nila which represents yahida all the prayers of yin kippur even the other four are also the level of because when when there's a when when enters the picture it doesn't just affect itself it affects everything which is why yin kippur by the way is referred to as a yoima day on which we dive in five tvs it's not just that the fifth fila has the aspect of the day itself is a day on which you dive in five fellas and since the whole day is a day of five fillers so that affects all the tvs not just the fifth fila of nila but all of the trellis and same thing here that on the deviant kipper the king goddale has to do all of the avedas because even the things that are normally done on other days as well they are lifted up to a level of yum kippur that's the effect that yakida has and so too what we're going to say is see this affects the other dalai lama so that they become lifted up in a new way okay let's finish it just like kim kippur is called the shabbat shabba sang the sabbath of all sabbaths of time see this is the shabbat shabbat of torah el is he because it has that same type of effect on all the levels of twitter the four levels are just like never also are uplifted that they also become completely different so this doesn't just explain ideas in the other areas of tata sid this once it's revealed makes the other areas of traitor themselves renewed in a completely uh in a completely different way than they were before now that's a very strong claim so to back that up we're going to continue with illustrating one by one how this has this effect on the other uh levels of tata and that's what we're going to be doing in hashem in the next lesson next week thank you good night