Kabbalah for Everyone - Lesson 11: The Map Behind the Map What Kabbalah Really Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Matters

After ten classes exploring the language and ideas of Kabbalah, we finally step back and ask the most basic question: What is Kabbalah?

In this lesson, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath traces the inner tradition of Torah from Avraham and Sinai through the Zohar, the Ramak, the Arizal, the Baal Shem Tov, and Chabad Chassidus. More importantly, we uncover the common thread running through it all: Kabbalah teaches us that reality has an inside.

The visible world is real, but it is never the whole story. Torah has an inner dimension. A mitzvah has an inner dimension. The soul has an inner structure. Creation itself carries hidden Divine meaning.

This class brings the entire Kabbalah for Everyone journey together and gives you a simple framework for recognizing what makes an idea truly Kabbalistic and how to bring that wisdom into ordinary life.

Key Points

Kabbalah means “received wisdom”an inner Torah transmitted through generations.

Jewish mystical tradition reaches back to Avraham and Sinai, and unfolds through the prophets, the Zohar, the Ramak, the Arizal, the Baal Shem Tov, and Chabad Chassidus.

Kabbalah teaches that reality has an inside. What we see on the surface is real, but it is not the whole story.

Kabbalah asks how the Infinite relates to the finite, how Divine unity appears as multiplicity, and how G-d can be hidden while remaining fully present.

Kabbalah gives us the architecture; Chassidus teaches us how to live inside the building.

The concepts we have studied throughout the series all share one movement: hidden becoming revealed, soul entering body, meaning entering action, heaven entering earth.

The ultimate goal is not to escape the physical world, but to uncover the Divine depth already within it.

The simplest definition: Kabbalah teaches us to see reality from the inside out.

And the practical question remains: Becheyn? What changes in my life because I know this?

#KabbalahForEveryone #Kabbalah #jewishmysticism #chassidus #chabad #zohar  #Arizal #baalshemtov #Tanya #JewishWisdom #Spirituality #InnerTorah #Nistar #Atzmus #DirahBetachtonim #Tzimtzum #sefirot #soul #divinepurpose #Becheyn #Rabbiyisroelbernath #JewishLearning #Torah #spiritualgrowth 

Rabbi Yisroel Bernath's New Book The Forgiveness Experiment is Available now:

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Forgiveness-Experiment-What-Would-Your/dp/1069217638

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2QNJL6

Audiobook: https://bit.ly/4tPFZhV

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Good morning, everyone. It is a beautiful morning. I received a question after one of our recent classes. So for those of you who don't know, we have this beautiful platform. You can go to kabbalaforeveryone.org and if you donate even a dollar, you get onto it. And we've been having these wonderful conversations about what we've been learning after the classes. And one of the conversations that we had recently was it was one of those questions that I couldn't help but but smile. Because the question was essentially, Rabbi, I have loved the past 10 classes that we've had explaining these Kabbalah concepts. And here we are, nine, ten classes in an introduction to Kabbalah, but I'm still not sure I could answer the most basic question, which is what is Kabbalah? And I said, You're right. We never we've been talking about this introduction to Kabbalah, but we never asked what is Kabbalah. And it's a very fair question. I was thinking about like taking 10 weeks of French lessons. And you can order a croissant and you can find a bathroom and you you can conjugate a verb, and then you finally raise your hand and say, Excuse me, but what exactly is French? So today I want I I don't want to just teach another piece of Kabbalah. I want to do something different. I want to show you the map behind all of these pieces, behind everything that we've learned. Because over these classes, we've used words like hawbasha, havshata, bachin. Maybe some of these words are familiar to you now. Memales, sovev, ratzon, tainug, atzmut. And eventually, perhaps, and this is what you're asking, is it's lovely Hebrew and all these words that maybe are becoming ideas and concepts, but what is it? What is all of this? What is Kabbalah? So I'm going to try to piece it apart here. People often say that Kabbalah is the mystical side of Judaism. It's not exactly wrong, but I don't find it very helpful. Because what does mystical mean? I think mystical, I think uh strange, I think secret, supernatural. Very deep Yiddish or Hebrew spoken while holding a glass of vodka in a dimly lit room. I mean, that describes, I think, an atmosphere, but it doesn't tell us what Kabbalah actually does. So I'll give you the first definition. Kabbalah is the inner dimension of Torah. The inner Torah. Great. So now I've simply replaced one unexplained phrase with another unexplained phrase. Because what does inner mean? So let me give you what I think is the simplest example I can give you. You have a body and you have an inner life. I can see your face, but I can't see your love. I can hear your words, but I can't directly hear your intention. I can watch your hands give someone twenty dollars, but I can't see from the outside whether you gave it because you cared, or because you felt guilty, or because somebody was watching, or because you were hoping that God would return you forty dollars. So the the visible action is real, but it's not the whole story. So there's an outside and there's an inside. And sometimes, sometimes the inside explains the outside. And that is our first doorway into Kabbalah. Kabbalah says that reality has an inside. Torah has an inside. A uh a mitzvah has an inside. Human beings have an inside. Nature has an inside. History has an inside. My emotions have an inside. Creation itself has an inside. And I think maybe if I could say this, this is the great mistake that we make is assuming that because we could only see the outside, the outside is all that exists. And so Kabbalah looks at us and says, Great, but look again. And even the word tells us something. Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew root word meaning to receive, mekabel, to receive. Something received, something transmitted, something passed from teacher to student. And I think that that's why, if I can be so bold to say this, the Jewish tradition does not understand authentic Kabbalah as somebody sitting under a tree one afternoon and inventing a new spiritual system. It understands Kabbalah as part of the inner wisdom of the Torah that was received and transmitted through generations. And that means that I think we need to pause and ask, where did this all come from? Because all of these ideas and these teachings, I didn't make them up. Kabbalah has a history. And maybe even more accurately, it has a chain. That's what we call it. His tau Schulut. We call it a chain. I'm going to try to give you the story in a synopsis without turning today's class into just a history lesson. Don't worry, you don't have to memorize the dates or the people. But I want to at least give you some of the background. And if you forget whether somebody lived in the 13th century or the 16th century, when you're repeating this to someone else, God will still continue sustaining the universe. You're okay. But what I want you to understand is the movement. So we begin Kabbalah or Jewish mystical tradition very early. We begin with Abraham, with Avraham, the first the first Jew. There's an ancient Jewish mystical work called Sefer Yetsirah, the Book of Formation. There are uh English versions of this today that are authentic. Rabbi Aryah Kaplan of Blessed Memory translated Seifer Yetzirah that's available. And Jewish tradition associates this work with Abraham. Now, just to because I know there's skeptics in the room, it doesn't mean that I'm telling you that Abraham sat at a desk with a laptop and typed the edition of Seifur Yetsirah that you can purchase today. When Jewish tradition attributes an ancient teaching to a biblical figure, it can be speaking about the root, about the transmission of the original wisdom that's associated with that person. And I think that academics may ask set you know to separate literary and historical questions when I think there are, I would say, legitimate questions, but but inside Jewish tradition, there is an attempt to understand that the hidden architecture of creation is not considered a late foreign addition to Judaism. It's understood as reaching back to the earliest, the earliest spiritual consciousness of the Jewish people. And what's Abraham famous for? Abraham is famous for looking at a world of multiplicity, looking at the sun and the moon and the stars, looking at nature, at forces, at kingdoms, and discovering one, one source, one God. And that movement alone, that concept alone of oneness is deeply Kabbalistic. Look at the many and discover the one beneath them. Think about my life. Look at the many and discover the one beneath them. Then comes the central event of Jewish history. Mount Sinai. The giving of the Torah. That's important because the Torah was not given as just a list of laws or a list of rules. Sinai was an experience. The people, actually, according to our tradition, every single one of us, every soul was at Sinai. And at Sinai we encountered God. We experienced not one person experiencing a revelation, but six hundred thousand experienced a revelation, and we call those six hundred thousand master souls that experienced the revelation. These ideas emerged from an encounter with divine reality. And so Kabbalistic tradition sees the inner Torah not as separate from the Torah or not as, let's say, invented later, but as the inner dimension of the same Torah that is given at Sinai. And the materials that we have been speaking about explicitly frame Kabbalah as received wisdom handed down through the generations from Sinai. The example that I that I'm thinking of that I can give you is imagine you have a wedding ring. There's the ring, and there's what the ring means. You can, I guess, weigh the gold, you can measure its diameter, you can calculate its value, and those facts are real. But if that's all you know about the wedding ring, then you've missed the wedding. So Torah has commandments, Torah has words, it has laws, it has stories, it has details. But if that's all the Torah is, then we've missed the wedding. We've missed that relationship. Because at Sinai, the metaphor is that we married God. And in that marriage, we are the metaphorical female, and God is the metaphorical male. We can talk about that a different time because there are other traditions that see it opposite. And if you look at that those particular uh, let's say, archetypes, you'll notice that the metaphorical or or or the male's role is to protect the female. And so we see God as the protector, and imagine if God was the female, we would have to protect God. Different conversation for a different time. Now, after Sinai, Jewish history enters the age of the prophets, then later the kings, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, others. And when you read these prophetic visions, you realize very quickly that we were never embarrassed of transcendent experience. Ezekiel sees these extraordinary visions of divine glory. There's a tradition that speaks of teachings called, you know, it's called Ezekiel's vision, the Misa Merkava, which means the mysteries associated with the divine chariot, which is directly associated with the Sinai experience. I'm just laying some seeds here for you. I don't want to go through all the history, but hopefully maybe you'll you'll have opportunity. Today we have we live in a world of which you can find out anything you'd like to find out very quickly. And so you don't just need my class. Maybe this will inspire you or give you a little more curiosity to explore more beyond this. Now, at that time, these more mystical teachings were not generally taught to everybody. The main reason why is not that necessarily they were secret, but powerful ideas require a vessel. If you remember, we we learned about Orot and Calim about light and vessel. And so if I give a five-year-old the emotional burden of a 45-year-old, that's not generosity. I would call that irresponsibility. And so deep teachings require a certain uh intellectual maturity. They require a certain uh emotional stability, a spiritual grounding, a context, a study beyond. So for much of Jewish history, the inner Torah was taught carefully and often teacher to students, and still to this day. I mean, that's why these lessons or any lessons are so important, because really this is a receiving, this is a Kabbalah, this is a receiving, and receiving means not receiving it necessarily from a book, but receiving it from a teacher who received it from their teacher who received it from their teacher. Which is why I was talking to uh a rabbi recently who was listening to these classes, and the first question he asked me, which was a correct question, is he says, Who are your teachers? Because if you're teaching this, you had to be taught it. And that's a very important part of Kabbalah is who are your teachers? Because this needs to be the chain, the unbroken chain of transmission. Now, at this point, we arrive at one of the great names in the story, Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, often called the Rashbi. He's a great sage, he's all over the Talmud, uh, second century. And Jewish tradition associates the foundational teachings of the Zohar with Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai and his circle. The Zohar becomes the magnum opus of Kabbalah, the central classical text. Zohar means something like uh radiance or glow or illumination. And so the Zohar takes the Torah we know: Abraham and Sarah, Egypt, Moses, Shabbat, mitzvot, the biblical verses, and says that there is an inner universe here. That the Torah is not just telling a story, but it's describing a spiritual reality. It's talking about uh divine energies, the soul, creation, the relationship between the higher and the lower, the hidden meaning behind each of the mitzvot, the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, exile, redemption, uh, concealment, revelation, unity. So the Zohar becomes the central language of the inner Torah. The Torah itself repeatedly encourages us not to confuse the garments of the Torah with the Torah's entire reality. That the garment matters, and we've spoken about this with Haubasha and Avshato, if you remember that class, that you don't throw away someone's clothing in order to appreciate the person. So the clothing reveals and it conceals. And this should be very familiar, right? Haubasha the clothing, that the outside is not false, but the outside is carrying the inside. Then we'd have to go forward. I mean, there's a lot of different cabalists and different traditions after the Zohar. I would say I would, I'll just, I'm not focusing on all of them, but I'll focus on a couple of main moments. Um we reached Svat, Safed, 16th century. Svat uh becomes one of the extraordinary centers of Jewish mystical life. And one of the major Kabalists was Rabbi Moshe Kodavero. He was known as the Ramak. And in his major work, which is called Pardis Rimonim, it becomes one of the great systematic works of classical Kabbalah. And it belongs on the shelf together with Sefrayyatsira, and maybe you've heard of a work called the Bahir, which I didn't mention, and the Zohar, of course. I think I would say that the Ramak helps organize the vast mystical tradition into a lot of the ideas and concepts that we speak about. Talks about Sefirot, talks about how do divine attributes relate, uh, how do higher and lower spiritual realities connect? What is the um he he asks, well, how does unity produce multiplicity? And then other figures arrive in Svat, and Svat becomes like this kind of mystical center. One of the most, I would say the most notable one, and the one that is most important to our teachings, is Rabbi Isaac Luria, who is known as the Arizau. He lives a very short life. He passes away in his 30s. But his impact, especially through his main students, Rabbi Chaim Vital, his impact on Jewish mysticism is enormous. The Arizau gives Kabbalah a new conceptual vocabulary. And a lot of the words that we are using are part of the Ariza, what is today called Lurianic Kabbalah. Tsimtsum, right? We spoke about the concealment or the contraction. Before we spoke about light in vessels, orot and kalim, shvirata kalim, the breaking of the vessels. Tikkun, the word tikkun, repair, or nitsutzot, sparks. And a lot of he he sets a lot of what is going to become the initial great framework of Kabbalah. The infinite divine light, um, a process allowing finite existence to emerge from the infinite. And how does that work? Through Tsimsom, through vessels, through the shattering of vessels. Uh sparks that are embedded throughout reality. The fact that human beings, that we as humans can participate in the repair. I think that this is perhaps a distinction that is important because this is Kabbalah, but this is not the definition of all Kabbalah. This is what we call Lurianic Kabbalah. And the Ariza later gives Jewish spirituality a whole new grammar for understanding, exile, fragmentation, mitzvot, a holiness, human purpose. And then we arrive into the 18th century. And we have Rabbi Israel Balshemtov. A fascinating person. We can go through. His life story is really unbelievable. He he arrives shortly after the Chemonitsky pogroms, what is called Geserot Tachvetat, 1648-1649, a terrible massacre that that that that killed off a third of European Jewry, and people were just people were devastated. They lost everything. And what the Balshemtov does is he takes Kabbalah, he takes the inner Torah and says something that nobody had said before. That the ordinary people me, you, all of us, that this is for us. That we need this. Today, I can't imagine, I'm just speaking for myself, I can't imagine living my life without these ideas. They're so much part of my life. And he took these Kabbalistic ideas and made them existential. He made them personal, emotional, joyful. And I would say most of the materials that we work with start from really the Baushemtov and understanding the parables, the metaphors, the idea of bringing profound Kabbalistic ideas to us without diluting them. And that's that's enormous. Because Kabbalistic ideas alone are going to ask what happens in the upper worlds. And what the Balcemov started, which is called Chasidut or Chasidus, began asking what's happening inside me. You want to understand everything is intentional. There's divine providence. The Balcemov would say, look at a leaf falling from a tree. Look at the worm beneath it. Look at your Wednesday morning. You want to understand the spherot, look at love, look at restraint, look at compassion, look at ambition, humility. You want to understand concealment, look at the moment that your own life, when God feels absent in your life. You want to understand exile, the Balcem says, look at the parts of yourself that have forgotten who they are. And that begins in a fascinating transmission that continues with Rabbi Dovbear of Mesrich, the Maggad of Mesrich. And I would say the most important element of our tradition and our teachings would be Rabbi Sneer Zamun of Liyadi. So the Balshemtov, Rabbi Israel Balshemtov, the Rabbi Dovbear of Mesrich, and then Rabbi Shner Zamun of Liyadi, known as the Altarebba, who is the founder of the Chabad Hasidic movement. And I think with the Tanya specifically and the Al-Tarabah, this is really where the project of taking Kabbalistic ideas and making them palpable for me and you really, really becomes real and deepens. For example, the word Chabad is an acronym for the three intellectual Sephiroth, the three intellectual faculties, Chachma, Bina, and Dat. The ideas of Atanya are absolutely, for today, I mean to think about it so many years later, that the deepest truths of God don't have to remain vague. That we should try to understand them. And not necessarily because we want to put God inside the human brain. We can't. But because the mind can become a vessel through which divine truth changes the heart. Just the idea that we use the heart and the mind, and there's a synthesis between the heart and the mind. The mind makes a decision, and the heart acts on the decision the mind makes, which Rabbi Schneerazaman calls Moach Shawat Awalev. The mind makes a decision, and the heart acts on that decision. Which, if you think about at least before this, thinking about my life, that's not what it was. It was often trust your gut, especially since I'm an emotional person. So that was that's a huge learning, and that that is something that Rabbi Snarazalman brought us. And so much of what we have called in our conversation Kabbalah for everyone is actually Kabbalah through the lens of Chasidis, especially through the lens of the Tanya and the work of Rabbi Schneerzalman. Rabbi Schneerzalman took all of these incredible ideas and then asks, What does it do to us? What does it do to my mind, to my heart, to my anxiety, to my marriage, to my prayer? What does it do to my ego, to my purpose? And that beginner-facing movement from concept to inner experience is exactly what I am trying to teach. So, here's my short answer. Now that I've gone through the history. Kabbalah asks, how does the finite relate to the infinite? How does the infinite relate to the finite? How does divine unity give rise to a world of multiplicity? How can God be present while appreciating or appearing hidden? What is a soul? Why do the mitzvahs I do, the mitzvot that I do, matter on a cosmic level? What does the human being participate in? How do we participate in the purpose of creation? Why do we exist? How does the visible world relate to realities we can't see? Okay, I'll make it even more simple because I see that you're having a hard time grappling with this. What is Kabbalah? Kabbalah teaches us to see what is happening beneath what appears to be happening. Kabbalah teaches us to see what is happening beneath what appears to be happening. One of the easiest ways to understand this is the body and the soul. So I'll use the body and the soul as the metaphor here. There is revealed Torah, what Jewish tradition often calls nigla, and then there is hidden or inner Torah, which Jewish tradition calls Nistar. So Nigla, the revealed Torah, asks, What is the law? What do I do? When do I do it? How do I do it? Which is very important. And for most of Jewish tradition, this has been really the focus, right? I have to know that Shabbat this week is going to be at 7.13. And that's when I have to light the Shabbat candle. So there's a very uh mechanical element. Now, for me, I don't know if I would continue doing the things that I do if it was just mechanical. And so then that is the reveal, that is the nigla. And there's a Talmud, and there's code of Jewish law, and there's so much, a vast, vast teaching. A beautiful, beautiful teaching. And then there is the Nistar, the hidden. What's happening inside the law? Why does this matter? What divine reality does this action embody? And I've used this structure throughout our lessons, the body and soul structure, the revealed dimension giving form and practice, while the hidden dimension supplying inner meaning, uh spiritual architecture. Like think of the Shabbat candles. So this is just the example that came to mind. Nigla is gonna say, light the candles, make sure that it's at this particular time, this week 7, 13, or wherever you have to find out. You know, what and today it's so easy to find out. Just ask Rabbi Google. And, you know, light the candles, make sure it's before Shabbat. Here are the laws. This is how you how you honor the Shabbat. Very important. What is Kabbalah going to ask? What is light? What is darkness? What does it mean to bring spiritual illumination into a physical home? Why does a physical flame become connected with a spiritual reality? Now let's add another dimension. Chasidos is gonna ask, and what part of me needs light tonight? And then if we want to go a step further, because we need the Bachin, because we know what Bahin is, and therefore, fine. What time are you lighting your candle? When are you gonna light your candle? So Jewish mysticism without actual Judaism becomes very misty very quickly. And that's I think what's happened is we kind of have these two worlds. And if you look even out online and you look around, you're gonna find two worlds. You're gonna find the niggle, like a lot of it is mechanical, and then you're gonna find, oh well, this is mystical, but they don't meet. And it's so important that we have both, because it will become very misty very quickly. Now I want to give you a framework. From now on, whenever someone says a Kabbalist would explain this, I want you to know what that means. Because Kabawa tends to ask four kinds of questions. I'm gonna go through each of the questions. How are we doing? We're okay. Okay. Question one, and I put this in your in your worksheet, so you don't have to write it all down, but I really wanna I want to go through this if I if I may. Question one. What is the hidden source? What's behind it? A tree. A tree exists. What gives the tree existence? A human being. A human being loves. Where does that love come from? A mitzvah. We do a mitzvah. A mitzva is usually either an action or a non-action.

unknown 36:21

Right?

SPEAKER_00 36:21

There's a positive commandment or a negative commandment. So what spiritual reality is embodied in the act? I become angry sometimes. It's an emotion. Kabbalah wants to know what deeper faculty is expressing itself through my anger. So the first question is: what's the root? Because the anger is just a symptom. So what's the root? Question two. How does the source become expressed? So let's say I have a brilliant idea. And the idea exists in my mind. And now I need to explain it to a five-year-old child. Now, if you listen, take this class and put it on for a five-year-old child. I don't think they're going to last very long. So if we want, we can't dump this entire idea into a child's head. We need language, we need examples, we need stories. Children love stories. Even big children like us love stories. We need simpsom, we need contraction, we need garments, we need vessels. So the same question can become cosmic. Like how does infinite divine reality become related to finite creation? Now, we already have some language for this, the firotes. We have worlds, we have simpsome, and slowly through these metaphors, they begin making sense. They are attempts to describe how what is beyond becomes expressed within what is limited. And that's what we're trying to do. How does the source become expressed? How does what is beyond time and space become expressed in a world like our world that is limited to time and space? Question number three. Question number three is what is revealed and what is concealed. So for example, we use opposites, revealed and concealed opposites. For example, the first class, if you go back to class one in this series, you'll see how Basha and Havshata, right? The clothing and the unclothing, revealed, concealed. Mimala and Sovev, internalized and transcendent, revealed, concealed. Makif Pnimi, surrounding and then inwardly integrated, revealed, concealed. Nature and miracles, we went through that as well. Revealed, concealed, visible and hidden. And I think this is one of the deepest ideas here, because hidden does not mean absent. My soul is hidden, but it's not absent. Oh, very apparent. Love can be hidden beneath clumsy communication, but not absent. Just I'm a bad communicator. God can be hidden within nature, not absent. Meaning, purpose can be hidden inside an ordinary mitzvah, but it's not absent. And I think if I can be so bold to say this, that this may be one of the most important spiritual skills that a human being can acquire. Stopping to confuse I don't see it with it isn't there. Just because I don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And then there's question four. Question four is the hardest but the most important. What am I supposed to do about it? What am I supposed to do about it? And this becomes our favorite word, a word that has become the key word in all of our lessons, Bachin. So what? Therefore, now what? Because you can spend 40 years learning descriptions of upper worlds and still be unbearable at dinner. And if that's the truth, if that is who we are, then something has gone wrong. Because if these ideas do not affect change within us to the positive, then I think we're missing the point. We can learn about divine compassion, and as a result, we should become more compassionate. If we learn that God is present even when concealed, then maybe we can become less terrified by moments of spiritual dryness. If we learn about vessels, then we can stop dumping truths on people that can that cannot receive them. Not everybody has the vessel to receive what we're saying. And asking ourselves, does the person I'm talking to right now have the vessel to be able to receive what I'm saying? And not every random person on a bus is our therapist. If I learn about Simpsum, maybe I learn that sometimes love means making room for someone else. Maybe there's not enough space in my life for the person I love. I need to make more space for them. If we learn about Atzmut, another class of ours, maybe we can stop looking at for God only in spectacular experiences. The point of all of this is not information, it's transformation. It's it's clicking. Oh, exactly. Boy, is that true in my life. Boy, is that true in my life. It clicks. Making it all make sense. So now I want to show you something that I think is beautiful. Because let's look backward at everything we've studied. And you're gonna see it becomes one story. Are you ready? Lesson one, how Basha Havshata, clothing and unclothing, that an inner idea puts on an outer garment so it can become expressed inner, outer. That's Kabbalah. Nigla Nistar, the revealed Torah and the hidden Torah, that the visible form carries an invisible meaning, outer, inner. The body and the soul. The invisible becomes embodied. The body gives the soul a place to act. The soul gives the body meaning. The body gives the soul a place to act, the soul gives the body meaning. This is your dessert. The inner and the outer must meet. The secho and the mido, the mind and the emotions that we've spoken so much about. An idea begins in thought, it develops, and it becomes personally meaningful. And eventually produces a feeling. The hidden becomes expressed. The Bahrain. An idea is not complete when you understand it. It must become part of life, part of my speech, part of my behavior, part of my actions. This principle that has become so much a theme in all of our studies, the Bahrain principle, is exactly that. Hidden truth has to gain an address in actual conduct. Mimale and Sovev. We asked, how does divine light relate to you and me, to creation? So Mimale, a divine vitality that becomes expressed according to the capacity of each vessel. Save is the divine light that remains beyond the measure of the vessel. You see? Inner outer. But the inner outer with male and save, that question becomes cosmic. Ratson and Tainuk, remember, will and delight. When we want to go deeper into the soul and ask, what do you want? And beneath what you want, what gives you a deep delight? My will tells me that I'm moving, but the deeper delight tells me something about where the soul feels at home. Again, the invitation to not stop at the surface. And then I think we reach an even deeper question. And that is that even Mimala is a revelation. And even Save is a revelation. So what do we need? That even the infinite light is still called light. So what do we need? What about God? Period. And this is where we introduced Atmut, the essence. Then we went into Dirapatachtonim. Remember last week? One of my favorite lessons. Where's this all going? And the answer to me is shocking. Not away from the physical world, into the physical world, that God desires a dwelling in the lowest realm. And not because the lowest realm is secretly less physical than we thought. But because the deepest divine truth can be expressed specifically where godliness is not obvious. So here's the pattern. This is what I want to show you that we're doing, we've done so far. Hidden, revealed, soul, body, idea, emotion, light, vessel, infinite, finite, heaven, earth, meaning, action. It's one movement. We're not ten random classes here. This one movement here. So I want to make this all practical. A lot of good theory, a lot of good ideas. Now we have a better idea of what is Kabbalah. But you know I can't finish a class without having the practical elements. What is the Bahain? What is the Bahrain of the Bahrain of the Bahrain? So suppose Suppose you give $20 to charity. What happened? So a legal perspective might ask, were you obligated? How much should you give? To whom should you give? Great questions. An ethicist may say, are you generous? Have you become less selfish? It's wonderful. A philosopher, a philosopher may ask, why is generosity morally good? Important. Very important. Great question. What is Kabbalah going to say? Let's look deeper. We're putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. What is money? Is what Kabbalah asks. Physical money represents your time. Physical money represents your work, your energy, your intelligence, your effort, your choices. And now something physical that could have served only your own delight, that could have served only your own comfort, has become aligned with divine purpose. That matter itself has changed function. That my hand becomes a vessel for generosity. That your hand becomes a vessel for generosity. That my money becomes a vehicle for holiness. And according to this language that has become so familiar to us, we might even describe the act as participating in the elevation and the repair of something within creation? Now, what is Chasidus going to ask? What is Rabbi Schnerzalman going to ask? What happened inside you while you gave? Did you resist? Were you looking to make sure people noticed? Could generosity become part of who you are rather than something you occasionally perform? And then the Bahrain. What is Bahrain? What is the therefore? And now what? And now what? Who needs your twenty dollars? And that's the full journey. I want to even use a less mystical example. Let's say someone's irritating you. So my nervous system says, Wonderful, wonderful. You have been preparing for this moment since you were a child. The Freud, psychology, is going to ask, what triggered you? Very useful. The ethicist is going to say, What's the right thing to do right now? Very important. Nigla, right? Halacha, Jewish law may ask, what are you permitted to say? Important. Essential. What is Kabbalah going to add? What inner forces are moving? Is there love here? Is there fear here? Is there ego? Maybe we need some boundaries, gvura? Maybe there's not enough chese? There's not enough loving kindness? Is there kindness without enough boundary? What is the visible garment of the anger? What is the deeper need underneath? What is revealed? What is hidden? What spiritual structure is this moment reflecting? And what is Chasidis going to say? This is beautiful. You have now identified three sephirot. Two soul powers and one childhood wound. Congratulations. And what is the Bahane? The Bachin is, and what sentence are you going to say next? So you can have all the philosophy inside of you, but if you still didn't change the words, there's no Bahrain. Now I think we need one final distinction. What is the difference? Since I brought it up, I think it's important. What is the difference between Kabbalah and Chasidut? I'm going to try to oversimplify it, but I think it's helpful to do that. Kabbalah gives us the architecture, and Chasidut or Chasidus teaches us how to live inside the building. Kabbalah talks about worlds, and Chasidus is going to ask, where are those worlds inside your own consciousness? Kabawa talks about light and vessels, and Chasidis is going to ask, what happens when you receive more inspiration than you can integrate? Kabawa talks about Simtsum, and then Chasid is going to say, can you make room for another person? Kabawa talks about Mimala and Sovev. And then Chasidis is going to ask, which truths have you act have actually entered you? And which ones are hovering above you? What have you left in your subconscious and what is actually coming down to reality? Most of us instinctively imagine. At least I, at one point in my life, not long ago, instinctively imagined spirituality as a vertical ladder. Down here, earth, physicality, uh, bills, laundry, traffic. My three-year-old, actually now four-year-old, who couldn't find his shoes, his shoes this morning. And then there's up there, up there, heaven, angels, mysticism, God. So naturally, I assume spiritual growth means climbing upward. Less earth, more heaven. Less body, more soul. Less ordinary, more extraordinary. And definitely we're talking about spiritual worlds here on spiritual levels, higher worlds, lower worlds, it's true. But what I think is amazing, and this is where Chasidas really does a magnificent reversal and says, dear betachtonim, last week's class, that the entire purpose of creation is a dwelling for God in the lowest world, that the goal is not to escape physicality, but it's to reveal what physicality can carry. And now let's go back to the class before that, to Atzmut. Because I think here Atzmut becomes essential. Because if God could only be infinite, but could not be expressed through the finite, then infinite would itself become a limitation. If God could only exist in heaven, but not in the kitchen, then heaven would become God's prison. If God could be encountered only in meditation on a mountain, but not in finding my son his shoes, then finding my son his shoes would have defeated infinity. And Chasidis says, no. I know. Asmut is beyond the opposition of finite and infinite. It's beyond the hidden and the revealed. It's beyond the spiritual and the physical as categories that could limit God. And so I think that's why we've now come to a crucial point. That the lowest world is not too low for God. That the physical world can become a dwelling for essence. How? Through mitzvah, through connection, through actual embodied life. So the journey of Kabbalah is not world, escape, God. No. It's world on cover, God was here all along. And I think this is maybe the most important sentence of this entire class. World on cover, God was always here. The hidden, the revealed. Taking the hidden and revealing it. So let me make this as simple as I can. Question: What is Kabbalah? Answer. Kabbalah is the inner dimension of the Torah that explores the hidden divine structure of reality, the relationship between God, creation, the soul, and human action. It asks how the infinite becomes related to the finite, how divine unity appears as multiplicity, how God can be concealed while remaining present, and how our lives and mitzvot reveal the deeper unity hidden within existence. That's the long version. Here is the short version. Kabbalah teaches us to see reality from the inside out. Kabbalah teaches us to see reality from the inside out. And here's the shortest version. Look again. If you see something, if you experience something, take a step back, look again. Look again. So how do I summarize all this? Thank you for for spending this time with me and and uh It's beautiful. Beautiful be together, it's a beautiful day. I think I think one of the dangers of studying Kabawa is that it can become very exotic. We learn about the upper worlds. Sephirot. We learn about infinite light, about divine sparks, about angels, about souls, about cosmic repair, and suddenly we become tourists in heaven. We have photographs. I bought the t-shirt. Simpsum. Can see it right there. Yeah, it's nice. I can pronounce Simpsum, but have I become kinder? Have I become a better person? Pronouncing Tsimsom is not the goal. The great purpose of the inner dimension of Torah of Kabbalah is not to make ordinary life seem boring. It's to make ordinary life become transparent. My cup of coffee, my dollar given to another person, my blessing, a disagreement, my Wednesday morning, my body, my work, marriage, loneliness, joy, my kitchen. All of those things. There's an outside and there's an inside. There's a body and there's a soul. There's a garment and there's what the garment carries. There's nature and there's the divine vitality that's hidden inside nature. There's what I do, and there's what my soul becomes through what I do. There's a world that appears fragmented, and there's one beneath. Beneath all of it, there's a oneness. Abraham looked at a world of many forces and discovered one. At Sinai, we entered a covenant with God, a marriage with God. The prophets, they they encountered divine mysteries beautiful. The Zohar opened the inner radiance of Torah. The Ramak organized that radiance. The Arizau gave us a new grammar of concealment, of shattering, of sparks. The Balshemtav brought those truths to the heart of the ordinary human. And now we understand them. And now we have an opportunity and an invitation to internalize them, to let them affect our mind and our heart, and finally to become Bahin, to bring them home. And that's what I'm doing here. That is Kabbalah for everyone. Kabbalah for everyone is not because everyone needs to become a Kabbalist. But because everyone already lives inside the reality Kabbalah is describing. The question is whether we notice. Whether we can go from knowing to noticing. And so maybe here's the best definition I can give you. Kabbalah is the Torah that teaches you that the outside is real, but the outside is never the whole story. Look deeper. Look beneath. Look within. And then bring what you discover back into this world. Because the deepest purpose of Kabbalah is not to get you into heaven. It's to bring heaven here. It's to bring heaven right here. It's to help heaven become visible right here. In my life, in my home, in my body, in my choices, in my world. And that is how the world becomes, as we studied last week, a Dira Betachtonim, a home for God. So my blessing to you today is may we take these messages, these ideas, these beautiful teachings, and may we bring them home into our hearts, into our lives, into our families. May they affect us. May they inspire us to become better people. May we look at ourselves and say there was the before and there was the after. And now I'm less anxious. And now I'm happier. And now I feel lighter. And now even when it's not a beautiful day, it's still a beautiful day. Because it's always a beautiful day. And I have an opportunity. I may not be able to control others, but I can definitely control my response, my attitude. And I can definitely control how I show up in this world. And with that, I thank you for the question. I I love so much the discussions, and I look at the platform now every single day. I make sure to make time in my day to answer the questions, be part of the conversation. So uh for those of you who are not using it, please uh become part of our conversations. This class was formed and shaped from those conversations, and I hope that that we can continue to deepen and to reflect and to become part of one another's life. I've if I just taught this class without your input, okay, it'd be nice. But the thickening of these ideas and this is beautiful, and and this is what it's all about is the ability for us to be able to go back and forth, for you to process it and come back, ask the questions. Questions is curiosity, and for me to be able to then take those questions and ask them myself and really, really be able to deepen these ideas. And I hope that there's many, many more classes that come out of our discussions, and because our discussions in this group will become conversations that other people can have, and that's how together we can change the world. So I wish you a beautiful day, a beautiful week, and a beautiful Shabbat until we meet again. Recording stopped.