Kabbalah Secrets: The First Sin, Sinai Revelation & The World to Come - It's All 1 Story

What is so special about the holiday of Shavuot? You know, it's not as famous as Passover, so not even as famous as famous as Hanukkah. It's a less widely known holiday, especially among the more secular Jews. Um but Shavuot, which means the holiday of weeks, um what is so special about this day that it's a holiday, and uh hopefully we'll appreciate. Another question is this. What many of us do know is that Shavuot is the day that we received the Torah from God. Right? The Jews leave Egypt, they count 49 days, which makes the 50th day, the day of Shavuot. And Moshe goes on the mountain, and of course, we see that there's this 10 Commandments that were given to us, etched in stone, carved into the to the two tablets. And so this is the day of the giving of the Torah, the Sinai revelation, as it's widely known as. So there's a huge question here to for us to to appreciate and understand is this. The Torah exist before Matan Torah? Which is sounds weird. The Torah exist before the Torah was given. So The ideas of the ideas of Torah of of Torah were there, but not the actual I guess document. Okay, good. We have one answer, in case it didn't reach the microphone. The ideas of Torah did, but the the actual document of Torah didn't. Excellent answer. Let me let me clarify what I mean by this question. We know from the sages that the Torah existed before the world. Thousands of years before the world, the Torah existed. But that's that's not what I mean is that was there Torah before the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai. What I mean is was there Torah here in this world before the giving of the Torah? That's what I mean. And and the answer to that question is going to be a surprising yes. So if there was Torah before the giving of the Torah, what makes the giving of the Torah so special? It's if it's not the day that that that Torah began to spread in the world. The sages tell us that Abraham, Abraham, he taught Torah to many many people. His his his home was open on all four sides. I don't know how he dealt with the mosquitoes and these there's these there's these like flying ants around here that are just terrorizing us in our house right now. He must have had divine protection. And today we have bug spray, you know, so okay. So anyway, Abraham brought many many people to to appreciate, understand, and serve God. Sarah also did. In fact, the verse says that Sarah and and and and and and Abraham, they both brought many souls, and it says that they created souls. Ha nefesh asher asu ba Haran, the the soul that they that they created and made in a place called Haran, which was a very dark and and and you know, not a place of Torah. So they brought Torah to that place, and the and many many flocked and accepted to follow the ways of Hashem, and it's an amazing thing. And in fact, the sages, when they divide the 6,000 years of creation into three different parts, the first 2,000 years are called years of darkness and bewilderment. The second set of 2,000 years are called years of Torah. And the third set of 2,000 years are called the the days of Messiah. And the Midrash tells us, if you're not sure where to put the the lines in the timeline, and when does the time of Torah begin? From the verse that says the soul that Sarah and Abraham made in Haran. From that moment, we have years of Torah. And the beautiful takeaway is that as soon as they started teaching Torah to people, to other people, that was the beginning of Torah. Okay? So this is part of why we have the question. So if Abraham had Torah, and in fact, the sages say the timeline of the years of Torah begin with Abraham, so what is the Matan Torah all about? What is the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai, which was, you know, many many years later? What is that all about? Okay? Now, I'm going to share with you a different question. This question is not necessarily a question we may on our own think of. Some people think in a whatever strange way, so they might come to it on their own. But we're going to have help today. There's a question, when you look at the Torah itself, so if we look at our Sefer Torah that we have, it starts with the letter bet. And the word Bereishit, in the beginning. So, believe it or not, one could ask, and I'll share with you in a moment who asks, why does the Torah, which is the beginning of of all things and the blueprint of creation, why does it choose to begin with the second letter of the alphabet and not the first letter of the alphabet? Essentially, I'm asking, why doesn't the Torah begin with the letter aleph? Why with bet instead of aleph? Now, it's a whole question to maybe appreciate, but at the end we will hopefully appreciate it. Who asked this question? So none other than the the holy Ari Zal, Rav Isaac Luria, the great Ari Zal, which was one of the greatest Kabbalists that ever lived and revealed secrets of Torah that that that you know, revolutionized the study of Kabbalah. Today, learning Kabbalah without his teachings would be like only learning half of a book. He he he revolutionized and Kabbalah, the the insights, the idea of reincarnation, the idea of holy sparks that that are latent in the world and and and just waiting for us to elevate. All of these beautiful chidushim that change our lives and change the world, he revealed many of them in the 1500s. A beautiful time period, a great revelation. In fact, since we're coming off of of of of Lag B'Omer, it's because of his his, you know, supporting the custom to go to Lag B'Omer in Meron, which is what made it the holiday it is today. Without the Ari Zal going and and he basically he made this holiday one of the most famous holidays because of his stature, and he went and he strengthened and explained Kabbalistic things behind it, so that's why the holiday of Lag B'Omer is what it is today, thanks to him. So so again, the question is why does the Torah begin with the letter bet and not aleph? Okay? The first answer I'm going to share with you in in in brief is a Kabbalistic answer. This is based on Kabbalah of the Ari Zal, and this is brought by one of the great Kabbalists from the 1700s and 1800s, the Ben Ish Hai, Rav Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, a saintly holy man, a Jewish leader, a Sephardic Jewish leader, and a Kabbalist. He explains b'shem ha Mekubalim, he he explains in the name of the Kabbalists. It's a beautiful interpretation. I'm going to share it with you right now, but this is only uh what we call it like a dessert. We'll have the dessert before the meal in this case. So, the p'shat is like this. Spiritually, in Kabbalah, we speak about four worlds that exist. Spiritual worlds, four worlds that exist, one higher than the other. And they are, from the bottom up, they are the world of Asiyah, which means action, the world of Yetzirah, which means formation, the world of Beriyah, which means creation, and the world of Atzilut, which means emanation. Okay? Now, these four worlds, there is a fifth world called Adam Kadmon, which is very high and very lofty, not as often talked about in the Kabbalah in the of the Ari Zal, but it is talked about and it does exist as a higher level. So the Ari Zal explains like this. The world of Beriyah is the second world from top to bottom, and it begins with the letter bet. And the Torah we received today is also from this realm, this world of Beriyah, which is the second world, which begins with the letter bet. Interestingly, the world above it, Atzilut, which is the world of emanation, is a higher level and begins with the letter aleph. The word Atzilut starts with an aleph. And he says that the Torah of Messiah, the Torah that we will merit when Messiah comes and we reach a higher level, will be a Torah that begins with the letter aleph. It will be a new Torah, or at least one can say a deeper dimension, which will make it like a new Torah, with that aleph. Now, the the great difference between the aleph and the bet is is is is like darkness to light. Right. Aleph is the numerical value of one. It represents oneness. Aleph is the first word of the letter light, or or and we know that Adam Rishon, the first day of creation, was privileged to this light, the the light of the first day of creation that he saw from one end of the world to the other. So the letter aleph is light, it's oneness, it's actually three components that make up the letter aleph. You would think, logically, before obviously we see what Hashem has in mind, we have also things in mind, we have to know when to differ our thoughts from Hashem's thoughts, but the letter aleph, you would think it should have been made out of out of one unit, one one entity. But but not so. The letter aleph has within it three components to make of the letter that represents one. You the ultimate letter of one should have been maybe one one a dot, maybe. But not so. So what is the aleph made of? It's made of two, so to speak, dots and a letter vav in the middle. The two dots are two yuds and the letter vav in the middle. This is the gematria of 26. Vav is six, and yud is 10, so two times 10 is 20, and the vav is six, 26 is the gematria for God's name, Yud and Hey and Vav and Hey. So the name of God, Yud Kay Vav Kay, is in fact the gematria of the letter aleph itself. Why? Because all of creation comes from Hashem, and all of creation is here to become a revelation of Hashem. That's all hinted to in the aleph, which helps us appreciate on the level of Atzilut, which is the level that we are journeying toward, which is the level that Messiah will bring us to. It will bring us to a level not of creation, because when we speak of creation, there is creation and creator. The creator is not creation, and creation is not the creator. So on the level of Atzilut, right, the unity and oneness of existence takes is will be taken to a whole new level, where we will will be revealed that God is really everything, and we exist within God. A part of that. That's why it's a it's a very very outrageous type of statement until you learn about it, but it says that the souls of Israel have within them a part of God, a chelek Elokim imal, a part of the divine above, a part of divinity, which is manifest within every single Jew. The point is that the the unity of Atzilut is a an entirely different level of unity than we can experience right now. It's It's like the ultimate of oneness and the revelation of it. So, the letter bet, which is only one more than than one, creates an entirely different world in essence, in nature, in everything. Because bet is the world we live in now, Bereshit, and that that's multiplicity. That's two. And that's why the Torah we have today comes from the level of creation, which is considered a separate entity than the level above of Atzilut. It's separate separate. Two things. Now, not not that the God doesn't unify with everything, but but it's in a revealed sense, it we we seem to exist all all to ourselves to the point we can even question, is there a creator? Is there a divine creator? People ask that that question. The crazy thing is some people conclude, "No." I don't know. But but that's But but the question is still asked by people unfortunately today. So, now we understand the difference between aleph and bet and the difference between a Torah and a world that is existing on the level of that aleph versus the level of bet. So, now we can appreciate the question, why does the Torah begin with bet is because we're talking about a Torah that was created and revealed after the first sin. When Adam Harishon was created, he was on the level of before the sin. There was this unity between him and and the world, between God and the world. There was a There was a There was an absolute unity. And again, he had this light, a special light. He saw from one end of the world to the other. After the sin, he created what we call the division, separation, and that's when the letter bet comes in. And that's in fact why the the the Torah tells us the Chazal tell us why the Torah doesn't start with aleph instead bet because aleph is the first letter of another word. I talked to you about positive words, light, oneness. I told you about the gematria in the letter aleph of Hashem. But, the letter aleph is also the first word for curse. And after the sin, there was introduced an a whole new element into our existence, our reality, and that is the concept of negativity, concept of a curse, concept of suffering, the concept of of of of evil. And once there was a world where the the negative and the positive had to coexist, so we can no longer have that letter of aleph. We cannot have the light from the first day. We cannot have the tree of life. We have to deal with the tree of knowledge because we have to work through the knowledge of good and evil to get back to the tree of life. That's our journey right now. And so, that's the difference between the aleph again and the bet. And we'll see, it works in twos. Everything in this world right now works in twos. You have one day, but there's day and night. We have things that are permissible, things that are forbidden. Things that are evil, things that are good. We have light, we have darkness. We have pure things, we have impure things. We have holy things, we have unholy things. Everything is in this this double multiplicity, and that is the result of the first sin. Okay. So, now we can appreciate the Torah begins with the letter bet because that's where we are right now. There's a separation between heaven and earth. There's a separation between body and soul. There's a separation between us and God. There's a separation because of all of the evil, all of the negativity, and the choice we have to follow a good path and a bad path. With this choice and unfortunate choosing of the negative side, we we increase negativity and increase separation. We're taught by the sages that the first seven generations after the sin, Adam included, pushed the divine presence further and further away from this world. Adam's sin pushed it from this world to the the the spiritual world above. And subsequent sins from the the generation of the flood and the dispersion and other wicked generations sent the divine presence the the godliness that that dwells within this world to the seventh heaven. And it wasn't until Abraham Avraham that began to bring Hashem, the God that wants to dwell here, from the seventh heaven to the sixth and fifth and fourth through the the leaders of the generations of the Jewish people, the formation of the Jewish people, and the beginning of Torah was Avraham Yitzchak Yaakov and Levi, the seven seven tzadikim, Moshe being the seventh who brought Hashem back to this world with the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai. Okay. That's a process. That's what we're involved in. Yes. What is the relation when it says the seventh heaven after we just said there's four? There's four worlds. There's another concept of seven heavens. Okay. That's the the two different concepts that that simultaneously exist and are true. Uh not the time for a deeper discussion. God willing, I can look into it and try to get you more of an answer on that topic. Yes. Who are those seven tzadikim then? Okay. So, again, uh unfortunately, my memory isn't isn't perfect. I know I'm not one of them, but there's there's Avraham, Yitzchak Yaakov, I believe Levi, um and then Amram. Yosef, no? I don't think Yosef. Yosef I have to check, but again, I think if I'm going to think it's This is me embarrassing myself in this video, but I know for sure Avraham. Okay. Yitzchak, I'm not so sure about him. Yitz- Avraham Yitzchak Yaakov, I believe it's Levi, maybe Yosef, but but I believe it's it's Levi, and then Amram, and then Moshe. Would that make seven? Yeah. Okay. That's the seven, I believe. Uh because again, Shevet Levi was the tribe that learned, and he was the leader of that tribe. So, I believe it's Levi. But, I will have to check. Okay. Anyway, the Midrash clearly says there were seven wicked generations that pushed God away and seven righteous generations that brought God back. When? At Har Sinai, of course, was the was the the the the preview of that. And then later on in the in the Tabernacle, the Mishkan, when we when Hashem came back in a more permanent way. Okay. So, this is where we're at right now. So, now we can appreciate this teaching and question from the Arizal, why does the Torah begin with bet and not aleph? The answer is because aleph corresponds to Atzilut, which is our final destination, and bet represents the world after the first sin, which is our starting point. So, it's interesting. The world was in its inception and beginning, it really was on the level of aleph. And when Adam sinned, it went from aleph to bet. It went from oneness and goodness and light and none of the opposite, none of the reverse. There was no There was no antithesis to it. It went from perfection almost, just a small test of of of Adam and Eve, to a level of two, which represents this entire messed up world that we see. Because our whole purpose in this world is to fix and to bring order to the confusion and the disarray. And that is really ultimately, in my terminology I'm going to use right now, is we want to bring the bet, the two, the multiplicity, back to the aleph. So, it looks beautiful now on a timeline. There was aleph, then we fell to bet, and the job of mankind right now is to come back from the bet and reach the aleph. Reach the oneness through the duality, through the multiplicity, through the negativity, through the challenges, through the fall. And through getting back up and climbing, we will rise up to a even higher level and receive the ultimate good that Hashem is giving us, wants to give us, and waiting to give us. And so, this is the story of creation is this aleph and bet. Why the Torah begins with bet and not aleph is because we had aleph. And we fell. And our job is to get back to the level of this aleph. So, there's an obscure Midrash that the Zohar begins with in the in the in the Hakdamah of the Zohar, one of the main books of Kabbalah from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the main teacher of the Zohar. It says that before creation, all of the letters of the Torah, all of the 22 letters of the aleph bet, the ABC of of creation, remember in Hebrew the aleph bet they're the they're the DNA of creation. Okay. They're This is the language a holy language that God himself created and used to create worlds, not just a world, but worlds. So, all of the letters came before God in reverse order from tav to shin to resh to kuf and so on, tzadi, all the way back to the the the first letters and asked to be the letter that God chooses to create the world, which simultaneously means the letter that God uses to start the Torah with. They all wanted to be that letter. And Hashem had reasons to tell each one no. When the letter bet came forward, Hashem chose the letter bet. Again, we're in reverse order, so the letter aleph has had did not come. Chooses the letter bet, which is the first word the first letter for the word bracha, and chooses the the letter bet to be the the first letter of creation. Because with the blessing that it in that it that it that it that it connects with with that blessing, we will have a better chance of succeeding in our task. Now, the Midrash does not touch on what we spoke about before about the duality and the multiplicity and the evil and and good There's bad There's been good and evil, but that's also included. The bet represents all of this this struggle that we're involved in right now. And what comes out of this teaching is that the letter aleph never came forward, never even had a chance to ask to be the letter of creation. Hashem turns to the aleph and says, "Aleph, don't be disappointed." I'm paraphrasing, of course. "Don't be disappointed that you have been left out, but because you were humble on some level and you did not complain, you did not come forward, I have saved for you a special special We'll call it a consolation prize. When I give the Torah to the Jewish people at Har Sinai, this this once-in-a-lifetime event of where God says, 'I'm here. I'm here. This is my world and I'm here to take it back. I'm going to start with you, with the letter aleph.' As it says in the verse, 'Anochi Hashem Elokecha.' I am the Lord your God. And I'm back. And that means trouble. I mean, that means good things. So, this is the the end of that obscure Midrash, where aleph is given a position to start the giving of the Torah. The Aseret Hadibrot, the Ten Commandments, begin with that first letter aleph. Now, are we puzzled? I'm a bit puzzled. Maybe you are also. Yes. What type of constellation is that? In the end of the day he was passed over for being the letter of creation. So how does that help that he's the letter that we start with the giving of the Torah? How does that help? Okay, so we're going to try to appreciate that now. With everything we've said, we can appreciate the aleph could not be the beginning of the Torah and could not be the letter of creation because of the separation that exists in the world right now. The aleph is the destination, but in order to get to the aleph we have to go through the bet. So Hashem created the world with bet because that's what we have to go through. But how are we going to get back to the aleph? We didn't really address how we're supposed to accomplish this. How do we go from from from from good and evil, darkness, sin, punishment, suffering? How do we go from all of that from the from the from the bet? How do we get back to the aleph? So the truth is we asked the question in the beginning. There was Torah before the giving of the Torah. So why do we call it the day the Torah was given? Because we had a level of Torah that before it was given. And we have to appreciate what that is and then we'll understand why the giving of the Torah is so special. So we're told that the sages themselves fulfilled the Torah. No, I'm sorry. We're told that the avot themselves Avraham, Yitzchak, fulfilled the Torah. Even Noach had Torah. Adam had Torah. There were righteous people throughout the generations that had Torah. In fact, Noach was the rosh yeshiva. Abraham himself came to learn by Noach and his son Shem. Yaakov, Yitzchak, and many learned from the yeshivot the the the the the the places of study the houses of study of Noach, Shem, and Ever. So there was a lot of Torah before Matan Torah. The Jews in Egypt learned Torah. There's a famous idea from the sages that before Yaakov would step foot in Egypt, he wouldn't step foot in Egypt unless Yehudah came first and built a beit midrash. Without a beit midrash, we couldn't bring the Jewish people to Egypt. So there was a a study hall before there was even a Jew in Egypt except for Yosef and his two sons. But before the Jews came and settled in Egypt, there was a already a beit midrash. It's interesting. They didn't build a synagogue. They built a beit midrash. And that was the mistake when the Jews left Europe and came to America, they built synagogues and not enough not enough places of study and in the end we have empty synagogues. Many of them were turned into churches because without study, you don't have a Jewish people. That's the point. Now, so so what's so special about Matan Torah if we had Torah before? So the answer is this. We had a preview of Torah. We had a taste of Torah. We had we had a sample of Torah, but we didn't have the full power and awesomeness of Torah. That's why in in in in in the writing holy writings they compare the actions of the our ancestors like as a beautiful fragrance. Now, in the olden days you had oil that gave off a fragrance. Right? So you had this type of idea of an oil with a fragrance. And when the olden days you had concept of the smell of the oil, the fragrance, or the oil itself. And on some level, the commandments that were fulfilled optionally by the Jewish people before Matan Torah are compared to this beautiful smell. But at Matan Torah, it's compared to we were given the oil itself. And there's a obviously a not comparable the oil with the fragrance versus just the fragrance. And this points us to the power of Torah. How do we take two and make it one? Only with the power of Torah. With the power of Torah, that's how we're going to get back to the aleph. And that's how we're going to go back to Atzilut. That's how we're going to reveal the oneness of this world and the oneness that this world has with its creator through the letter aleph that we started the giving of the Torah with Anochi Hashem Elokecha because that's where Hashem revealed the point and gave us the tools and the power to get there. Without Torah, we cannot change this world. We cannot change ourselves. But through Torah, when we do the actions of Torah, when we do the mitzvot which are the divine will as prescribed by the Torah itself which is the the divine wisdom, we have the power to change our own essence, our own physical world, our own physical bodies, and our souls. And we have the power to make them one because God is one and his wisdom is one and his knowledge is one and it's unlimited. So we can huff and puff all day long and we cannot take the bet and make it an aleph. But with the power of God that he instills in us, then we can take the bet and turn it back into an aleph. And that aleph will be greater than than than it was before because if we only go back to where we were, then what was the point? When we go back to the level of aleph, when we go back to the level of Adam before the sin, we will reach a higher place than that was because we'll have worked for it, we'll have earned it, and we'll become partners with that accomplishment and it'll be ours in a way that it could never have been ours had we not fallen, had we not have had to come through the bet and rebuild and get back to the aleph, then nothing would be ours in the in reality. Nothing would be ours in the end. But through the fall, through the darkness, through the struggles, through the perseveration, and through our ultimate triumph, the unwillingness to die, we we we cannot die. That's why we're still here. We will never die and the soul within never dies. It sleeps unfortunately, but it doesn't die. Through that challenge and and and rising to that challenge, we will make this world the world that that Hashem wants it to become and we will become partners with him in that new perfect world and we'll have our place that we helped build in the world to come which is going to be that level of aleph again. And that new Torah that Hashem is giving us when we get there, it's a Torah that makes this Torah look like only the precursor, only the sample because the Torah of aleph, according to the kabbalists, that first level of p'shat will be all the kabbalah that we have been waiting to learn. And there'll be more and more levels to it. And so we haven't even begun to learn the true depth of Hashem's Torah yet. All this has just been the idea of through darkness trying to find, you know, some light, you know, breaking through. But when Hashem reveals the true light, the light of the first day of creation, which we only have a sample of, the tzaddikim and sometimes refer to it, we will see the true light of Hashem, the true light of emet, and then with no other option, the world will become the one entity in a perfect unity harmony with its maker. Bimheira beyameinu, amen. Amen.