Insights into Rabbi Ashlag's Kabbalah podcast

The Torah is not a history book. The outer events of our forefathers’ lives are recorded in the Torah, but the meaning of these events and the intentions of the protagonists are recorded in the inner aspect of the Torah, the Zohar. It’s when we put the inner intentions together with the events, we can begin to understand why these stories are important for us today in living our own lives. In this shiur  we look at one example in which Yaakov teaches us how to handle our own selfishness and egoism. We discover that before we plan to do a mitzvah, our own yetzer hara comes to us as an inner voice telling us that since our work is not perfect it’s not worth doing. This is the voice of Laban, who claimed all Yaakov’s work for his own. “The daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the animals are my animals, and all that you see is mine.”( Gen.33:43)   What does Yaakov teach us to say to this inner voice?He says “I dwelt with Laban yet I kept the Torah and mitzvot.” We need to ignore it. We need to raise ourselves up with pride in the fact that we are the children of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and have faith that God takes pleasure in our work, in whatever form it takes. But then “Yaakov sent messengers to Esau.” This action of Yaakov takes us by surprise. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? But here again Yaakov is teaching us an important lesson. After we have done the mitzvah we need to go to the opposite extreme, and consider how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are really the basis of our work. What is Esau’s response? He sas, I have plenty my brother, Keep what is yours!” In other words, here our inner voice of the yetzer hara is saying exactly the opposite! it says,”you are so righteous, you have nothing more to do!” It wants to convince us that our work is perfect, so that we rest on our laurels and don’t prgress another inch! What does Jacob do? He entreats Esau to accept his gift and humbles himself before him. In the same way, we also need to realize how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are involved in our service to God. We need to ignore the inner voice of Esau , and separate from it going our own way into the Land of Yisrael, the consciousness that is in affinity of form with God until we merit to come to Beit El, the house of God. This podcast is dedicated lilui nishmat my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem haLevi Material taken from Birkat Shalom ” Al HaTorah, Parhsat Vayishlach, and the Zohar with Perush haSulam Parahst Vayishlach, beginnning Picture by Menachem Halberstam

I live in tsfat but today I am traveling to Jerusalem. I am  looking forward to seeing my sisters ,  my daughter-in law and my little grandchildren, who all live there. I hope to travel on the buses and enjoy the new light rail. Today Jerusalem is a city filled with life just as the prophet Zecharia prophesied 2000 years ago. Thus says the LORD of hosts: There shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his walking stick in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing Zecharia 8:4-5 Yet, this coming  Sunday, the fast of Tisha b’av falls and I, with other orthodox and religious Jews will be sitting on the floor, mourning the destruction of the Temple —an event which took place on this day 2000 years ago, One cannot help asking,  Doesn’t this seem like an anachronism? It seems as if I, together with other religious Jews are stuck in a time warp and we are still behaving as we did for centuries, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. We seem to be acting as if we haven’t noticed the miraculous return of the Jews to Zion and the incredible rebuilding of Jerusalem. Indeed could our behavior be considered as ingratitude?  If we consider only the physical, the external, then we can still say that the redemption isn’t complete because Jews still have difficulty ascending onto Temple Mount and praying there, and the Temple is still not rebuilt. On the other hand , if we apply the principle of Dayeinu, being thankful for every step to redemption, then our Tisha bAv mourning does seem hard to justify. However, when we look at this period of the year through the lens of the inner teachings of the Torah and the inner work we need to do on Tisha BaAv, the picture looks very different.   The Zohar teaches us that the meaning of Jerusalem is the innermost aspect of our heart. It is the soul within us. Jerusalem is the point of holiness, the Divine presence that dwells within each and every one of us. Therefore, on Tisha b Av we mourn for the fact that the Divine aspect of ourselves is still hidden from ourselves. Our Divinity and the Divine potential within our fellow beings is hidden. Furthermore, when we look at our relationship with the Divine spark within us, we see that in the minute details of our thoughts, our words, and our actions, we don’t often place our relationship with God as the highest aspect of our priorities, as it should be.    By looking at the present through the prism of the past, we may gain an understanding of the tikkun we need to do in the present in order to rectify and correct the way we relate to our inner Jerusalem. On this day, as we know, tragedies took place throughout history to the Jewish people, the main ones that we relate to being the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent bitter exile and dispersion of the Jewish people from this land. But there was one that was prior to that and indeed is the root of them all. This was the rejection of the Land of Israel by the spies.  The Zohar relates the land of Israel as the consiousness of being in dvekut with God, in Oneness with the Creator. Just as He is compassionate so must we be compassionate. But that also means refusing to listen to the demands of our egoistic selfish personalities, which manifest as our will to receive for ourselves alone, and which is called the yetzer hara. On Tisha B’Av, the Children of Israel rejected the physical land of Israel. Today, are we committing the sin of rejecting the consiousness of the land of Israel? If we look at the state of ourselves and the state of the world we cannot say that the Divine consciousness is at the top of our agenda. On the contrary, our inner Jerusalem is still in exile, weeping and mourning, for we are not paying attention to Her. By each of us spending this Tisha B’Av in contemplating our inner reality and mourning the loss of godliness in our lives, we can start to take responsiblity, and thus create a vessel for the light of Divine consciousness, so it may permeate our lives and the lives of all who share our existence with us. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory of my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem Mendel a”h

When we first look at the Haggadah, it seems to be a collection of somewhat disconnected paragraphs, with the overall motif being the story of the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt. However, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai teaches in the Zohar that the Torah is not a history book. Rather, it is a book of instruction that deals with our present day relationship with the Divine. Just as a person wears clothes, so does the Torah itself wear a garment. The garments of the Torah are the stories we find within it. But just as nobody is silly enough to mistake the garment for the person, so we need to look beneath the surface of these stories to find the real essence of the Torah. To take the stories at face value and think that they are all the Torah is, is just as silly as relating to a person only from the outer clothes that he or she wears. So when we sit down on Seder night to read the Haggadah, our purpose is not to tell a story of what happened 3000 years ago, but to examine in what way we are in exile now from ourselves and from our Creator, and to discover what redemption from that exile comprises. Packed within the words of the Haggadah is both the soul’s experience of exile, and our joy in redemption, in the reconnection that God uniquely grants us on Seder night, the holy night of freedom. Only when we recognize our own exile we can value the freedom that God gives us the opportunity to gain. These motifs are very well portrayed in the section of the Haggadah on the four sons. It is a section that seems baffling, even silly when regarded in an external manner, but when we explore it using our knowledge of the language of the Zohar and the insights we gain from Kabbalah as taught by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag we discover that this is a section that clearly defines what constitutes redemption and what constitutes exile, and also examines our sometimes unexpected responses to the light of redemption.

Before the story of Joseph and the brothers, brotherhood does not seem to have been an important value in family life. In the selling of Joseph as a slave to Egypt, both Joseph and his brothers discover they have lost something precious and now have to work hard to regain it. But the gain is far greater than they imagined. In discovering brotherhood they lay the foundations of discovering the common humanity that binds us all together.

The story of the two brothers Cain and Abel is written in Genesis. This is what it says: “And Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruits of the land, whereas Able brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat. And God paid attention to Abel and to his offering, but to Cain and his offering he paid no attention. “   Genesis chapter 4 And we all know the tragic ending. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, the great master Kabbalist, relates to the stories in the Torah as depicting elements that are within ourselves. This comes from the fact that every single human being is an entire world in himself or in herself. Therefore everything that is happening outside in the world is also happening within ourselves. The Cain within us is the human intelligence which a person can use in order to try to acquire revelations of the light of God. as Eve said’ With this man I have acquired God, and she called his name Cain, which means acquisition. Cain knows that he can only receive the light of God if he occupies himself by giving, so he humbles himself and offers to God the fruits of the ground , “the ground” representing his outward humility. But he is really deceiving himself, because his desire is really to receive. God pays no heed to this offering . The desire to receive in spirituality is the largest of the desires to receive for ourselves alone. But we also have the element of Abel within us. The word Abel signifies the heart. Abel wants with all his heart to give unconditionally to God even if the offering is small. As we try to give unconditionally we discover our true egoistic nature. So the Abel within us goes in and out of the framework of holiness. Abel is represented by a shepherd, he gathers up his little lambs of faith. As we stumble all we can do is offer our first steps in faith that God will forgive us and help us come toward Him.. This is the offering that God heeds and thus the Abel within us helps us to feel blessed. The Cain within us can never really be happy because it is always looking to see what God owes him for his work, whereas the Able within us is happy and feels privileged , no matter how small the offering is. This podcast is taken from the book HaShem Mamati Shimecha, Vol 3 Pnai Moshe. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

On the night of Shavuot 1948, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag the great Kabbalist gave this teaching: When we think about the giving of the Torah which took place at Mount Sinai, we’re not talking about a historical event, which took place only at one time and is not taking place now.   But according to the principle that once a spiritual event has happened in spirituality, it is eternal, and all spiritual events that seem to replace it, are in fact only additions to it. So the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai is an eternal event which has never stopped, for God is continually giving. The only changes that occur take place from the side of the receivers . So the fact that we are not receiving the Torah now as we did at Mount Sinai, is not because God is not giving it to us but that we are not at present fit to receive it. HaShem Shamati Shimecha vol. 2 article 86 So we need to examine ,what was the special virtue that the Children of Israel had at the time when they stood at Mount Sinai which enabled them to receive the Torah . What was their  spiritual state and how did they achieve it? We learn from the Scripture: “On the third month following the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, on that day, they came to the wilderness of Sinai. They journeyed from  Rephidim and they came to the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. And Israel (in the singular) camped there under the mountain.” Exodus chapter 19 verses1-2) The sages noted that all the verbs in in the sentences describe the Children of Israel in the plural, except for when they encamped at Mount Sinai, There they encamped as one. Rashi, the great commentator on the Torah, quoting the Mechilta, says all their other encampments were with contention and strife, but here they encamped as one man with one heart.  How did they  reach this elevated stage? What changed for them? The Rashi on these verses is illuminating. They journeyed from Rephidim:  Why did [Scripture] have to repeat and explain from where they had journeyed? Did it not already state (Exod. 17:1) that they were encamped in Rephidim? It is known that they journeyed from there. But [it is repeated] here in order to compare their journey from Rephidim to their arrival in the Sinai desert. Just as their arrival in the Sinai desert was with repentance, so was their journey from Rephidim with repentance. — [from Mechilta] Ah, here we are on to something. The journey from Rephidim to Sinai was conducted with repentance. Does the Torah tell us what the Children of Israel were repenting for? The consequence of their repenting was that they became united as one man with one heart. In a state of unconditional giving to each other and with faith in God.  So it is likely that they were in the opposite state when they were in Rephidim.  Let’s take a look at the Scripture, Exodus Chapter 17 there. .The entire community of the Children of Israel journeyed from the desert of Sin, on their travels, by the word of the Lord. They encamped in Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Exodus 17:1 In other words, this was not a random stumbling across an arid place in the desert. They were deliberately taken there by God. And there is no water. The Scripture continues.  2 So the people quarreled with Moses, and they said, Give us water that we may drink. Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? There were many things they could have done. This was the generation that had seen the miracles of God in Egypt , they had seen how they called out to God and He parted the waters of the Red Seat for them. They had faith in God who led them out of Egypt into the wilderness. Why didn’t they do any of those things? The next verse give us a clue.  3 The people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and they said, Why have you brought us up from Egypt to make me and my children and my livestock die of thirst? In other words they seemed to have been concerned for themselves alone.  They are talking about me, my children, my livestock. What about the concern for my brother’s children and his livestock? Even though this is the literal sense of the Scripture and there may be other deeper meanings There is a clear hint that here they are operating from their wills to receive for themselves alone. Even if we look at water,  not as physical water, but water as referring to Torah as the Sages of the Talmud and of the Zohar do , nevertheless they are functioning from the will to receive for themselves alone. Following their next question,” Is God in our midst or not?” Amalek attacks Israel and they need to defend themselves. Only when Moses help up his hands in faith did the people prevail. The lesson was learned and the people repented fully. They reached such a degree of self- awareness and responsibility that their Teshuvah (repentance) was so complete, it brought them to the ultimate level of faith and giving. They became united as one, and were in such affinity of form with God, that they could hear His voice deep within themselves and experience His goodness directly as He spoke to them giving the ten commandments on Mount Sinai. In exactly the same way, we also, in the here and now need to experience the eternal voice of God speaking directly to us, as the prophet Jeremiah describes. 32 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; 33 and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the LORD’; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. {S} Jeremiah 31: 32-33 Thus the injunction of the Baal Shem Tov, that every person needs to hear the ten commandments everyday, will be fulfilled, when we also will come to be, both within ourselves and with our communities, as one man with one heart. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

Most of us try to push away the dark side of ourselves by denying that it even exists, or we cover it up with fear, shame, and guilt. Feelings that are too painful for us to penetrate. We feel that we are somehow split in two. We often feel that the face we show to the outer world has very little to do with our inner world. When receiving praise or appreciation, we think to ourselves, “if only people really knew what went on in me.” And so we cover it up until sooner or later our darker side comes to the fore again. But in a letter written by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag we find him taking a very different approach, an approach that I personally found, at first, very surprising, and then, very healing. It’s in this spirit that I want to share this letter with you. The Kabbalah teaches that all the elements of the exodus from Egypt also occur within ourselves. We have within us the Pharoah, who is the darkness within us, and we have the possibility of redemption, which the Passover Haggadah tells us is carried out by none other than God himself who takes us out of our own Egypt. Believing in that possibility is a crucial part of our redemption. We need to know that God, and only God is involved. It was God who put the darkness within us in order to create a need for the help of the Divine. Rabbi Ashlag teaches us that when God tells Moses, “Come to Pharaoh” he’s telling him, “Come to uncover the desire for the holy Shekinah!” And it is that desire that helps us find God within ourselves. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

Why is it important for ourselves to know what we are made of? What we really are?  Can such knowledge help us live our lives in an authentic way, and not just live our lives on a superficial level? The truth is, if we don’t know which aspects of ourselves are positive, supportive to our path, and helping us to fulfill our potential, or conversely, which are holding us back and are self-destructive, we cannot know what parts of ourselves to place our focus on. Even more important, we cannot recognize our true worth and fulfill our ultimate potential if we remain ignorant of what we really are. Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, wrote an essay on this very question, ” What is our essence?” as his introduction to the Zohar the central text of Kabbalah. At first sight, this seems strange. The content of the Zohar deals with the intentions of our forefathers and foremothers; the reasons for the mitzvot; and the dynamics of light and vessel. These topics are described in the Perush haSulam in a complex language of root and branch, the language of Kabbalah, the language of Sephirot and Partzufim, as taught by the Holy Ari. As an introduction to the Zohar, we might therefore have expected Rabbi Ashlag to have concentrated on these elements. To our surprise, however, he focuses on this one question, “What is our essence?” By doing so, Rabbi Ashlag is teaching us that the question, “What is our essence” is actually the focus of the Zohar itself! Through the details of the inner wisdom of Kabbalah, the Zohar is teaching us what our own nature consists of. And it is in this context that it shows us our purpose in life, demonstrates the correct relationship between ourselves and God and teaches us how to serve our Creator. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. The inspiration for this podcast came from the students who are learning A Tapestry for the Soul: the Introduction to the Zohar by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag with me. If you would like to join the group learning, please contact me, Yedidah Cohen, through the website on www.nehorapress.com The picture is “One Together” by David Friedman of Tsfat . His work may be seen at https://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/

Drawn to the study of Kabbalah from a very early age, Rabbi Ashlag understood the Kabbalah’s unique integrating function of heart and mind, of feeling and thought, of faith and of service to God.  He penetrated the technicalities of the Torah of the Ari, showing that the Sephirot and their pathways are simply the pathways of love between God and ourselves. Kabbalah is a part of the oral tradition, the Torah shel baal peh, and was always a part of the whole Torah. Thus our greatest sages were also Kabbalists. Rabbi Ashlag was one such a great sage his work in opening up Kabbalah was welcomed by the other great sages of his generation: Rabbi Avraham Yizhak HaCohen Kook, the Sage of Gur, Rabbi Dessler, and others. Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag (1886-1954) lived in an age in which the Kabbalah had become forgotten or frowned upon in the Ashkenazi Jewish world, and furthermore he saw that the increasing materialism and secularisation in the world did not pass Jews by and many were being lost to assimilation. Receiving permission from his teachers and with an inner knowing that the time was right, he opened up Kabbalah to those who wish to study it, bringing a new flowering and vitality to his generation and to ours… the generation for whom the redemption is very close. Rabbi Ashlag’s Yahrzeit falls on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. It is in this 66th year since he died that three new books have been translated of his work into English, so in this podcast I have tried to express something of what I feel his great contribution to Jewish thought and practice of our time has been. For me, it is his demonstration that at the core of Judaism lies the love between the Creator and ourselves and the love we are able to give back to the Creator and to each other. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotlerz”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Note: In this talk, the importance of the connection between the practice of Torah and mitzvot and the study of the Kabbalah is emphasized. I would like to add that if we are secular or not Jewish this still applies to us: The seven mitzvot of the children of Noah apply to everyone and we can all work on “Love your neighbor as yourself”. May you all be blessed with a sweet New Year and a perfect sealing in the Book of Life. Yedidah

Our world, both politically and culturally, is in turmoil. Our value systems are being turned upside down. Freedom of speech in the West is no longer guaranteed. Our economic systems serve only a few with the majority suffering under huge burdens. And, in more than one country, democracy itself and the freedom of the individual are under attack. All this was true before, but now added to that are the Coronavirus crisis and the latest riots in the US and the world. Where are we heading? Times of chaos are definitely uncomfortable for us: and we are the individuals who are destined to live through them. But such times also provide opportunities for us to reassess our values and to make new decisions in the directions that we, as individuals, as families, and as communities want to go in. The truth that Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, the great 20th century Kabbalist, pointed out in his writings is the fact that just as we need to obey the laws of gravity in this physical world, so there are natural spiritual laws that we also need to obey if we don’t wish to suffer the consequences. For the longest time, humanity has been heedlessly consuming satisfying its self- gratification with no or little thought for the ethical constraints we all need to take heed of. We have allowed our appetites for power, greed, and entertainment to take control of our political, cultural and economic systems until we no longer know how to put checks on them and they have turned into monsters controlling us. Our basic nature, which is our will to receive pleasure comes to us from the Creator at the very act of creation. However, if we use this will to receive pleasure in its primal fashion we separate from God. o prevent that and to convert our limited vessels for selfish pleasure into unlimited channels of goodness for all humankind we are obliged to transform our desires to receive pleasure into the will to give unconditionally. But since such a transformation goes against our basic nature it isn’t easy for us to see how we may do that. The Torah, the divine wisdom that God gave all humanity through the Jewish people, constitute just the wisdom we need. And indeed its wisdom was never needed more than at this time. All the excerpts in this podcast from RabbiAshlag’s writings were taken from original translations of his texts as published in: In the Shadow of the Ladder: the Introductions to Kabbalah by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag, translated by Mark and Yedidah Cohen A Tapestry for the Soul: The Introduction to the Zohar explained through excerpts collated from Rabbi Ashlag’s other writings, by Yedidah Cohen The Master of the Ladder: The Life and Teachings of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag by Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Gottlieb, translated by Yedidah Cohen This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon and Sara Kotler, May their memories be a blessing for us.

I remember when I still lived in my parent’s house in London, my father, who was a religious man, taught us that it was forbidden to learn Kabbalah. Because at that time the Kabbalah was still concealed from the general community. But now we can find Kabbalah everywhere. What has changed?  Rabbi Ashlag in his great introduction, the Panim Meirot uMasbirot, writes: The general opinion is that the four parts of the Torah known as the Pshat —the written Torah, the Remez — from which we derive the Halachot, the Drush — the Midrash, and the Sod — the Kabbalah, should be learned in that order.     However, the great Sage, the Gaon of Vilna, taught: “The beginning of our attainment in Torah begins with the Sod, the Kabbalah, the innermost aspect of the Torah, and only when we have attained that part of the Torah which is the Sod, is it possible to attain the part which is the Drush, and subsequently the part which is the Remez. Only when we have merited to be complete in those three parts of the Torah then we may merit to attain the Pshat!” The Gaon of Vilna uses the term השגה. This word means attainment in Torah. So he is not talking about pure intellectual understanding, but about a connection with God, about attainment of the light of Torah which shows us our own negative acts and thus can lead us to become closer with the Creator. As we can only correct what we can see. Thus this great light helps us to become closer to the Creator as we learn to desire to become more giving and less self-centered. Eventually, we can come to dvekut, unity with God through the practice of the Torah.  Since the Sod, the Kabbalah, is concerned entirely with the reason for the mitzvot,  the intentions of our forefathers in their actions, and the intentions behind the Creator’s acts, we also learn how our intentions in our own actions matter and have great effect on outcomes. Since this is the case, why was the Kabbalah concealed for so many generations? What does its revelation at this time tell us about our own generation and the times we live in? The Sages of the Talmud wrote two thousand years ago: “In the generation of the footsteps of the Messiah, the chutzpah will grow, the cost of living will greatly increase, the vine will give of its fruit but wine will be expensive, the government will be concerned with sexual matters, there will be nobody to reprove, even the house of the sages will be a house for whores. … The wisdom of the sages will stink, those who fear sin will be despised and truth will be lacking from life. Young men will shame the elderly, and the elderly will give respect to the young. A son will despise his father, a daughter will rise up against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. The members of a person’s household will be his enemies, the face of the generation will be as the face of a dog. A son will not be ashamed before his father. On whom can we rely on? Only on our Father who is in heaven.” On the other hand, the Sages of the Zohar stated: It is in the time of the footsteps of the Messiah, this wisdom will be revealed, even to the youngest. How can we reconcile these two opposing statements? And how can the study of Kabbalah help us in these troubled times? These are questions addressed in the accompanying podcast Listen here: This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon and Sara Kotler, May their memories be a blessing for us. Much of the material for this podcast is taken from the new biography of Rabbi Ashlag just published on Nehora Press website. The Master of the Ladder: The Life and Teachings of Rabbi Yehudah Lieb Ashlag by Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Gottlieb. Now available as a digital download or as a book.

The code of Jewish law, known as the Shulchan Aruch, states that we need to prepare the prayers of the High Holy days in advance so that when it comes to the actual moment to pray on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are fully prepared and familiar with the prayer. Of course, this sounds totally reasonable. After all, when preparing for an important meeting we often go over in our mind precisely what it is we wish to say. So that when we come to the pivotal moment when we ask for what we want or what we envisage for the next year, we need to have thought about it in advance. Since the prayers of Rosh Hashanah differ from those we say the rest of the year it would be good to familiarize ourselves with them. But Rabbi Ashlag takes this requirement of the Shulchan Aruch in a different direction. He asks us to be clear that what we say with our mouths is what we really mean with our hearts. We have to really want what we are asking for. And the chief prayer that we say is ” Write us for life” . Why wouldn’t we mean it? When we cry out, “Write us in the book of life,” surely we mean it with all our hearts?! But Rabbi Ashlag teaches us that hte prayer “Write us in the book of life” is not referring to our physical life but to the desire to be connected in affinity of form with the Source of all Life. This involves letting go of our will to receive for ourselves alone, our egoistical desires, and living a life of unconditional giving. This certainly is a proposition that we need to consider and discover honestly what we feel about it! So Rabbi Ashlag encourages us to prepare in advance, to think about it, realize where our resistances are and to habituate ourselves to the idea of living a life of unconditional giving that will bring us to the untold delight of a life united with the Creator but which involves entering a different paradigm for our existence, giving up our egotistical desires. We need to get used to the idea now in the month of Elul so that when we reach Rosh Hashanah we can say, ” Write us in the book of life ” with all our heart and soul! This podcast is dedicated to the ilui nishmat of Feiga bat Rivka z”l and Aharon and Sara Kotler z”l Material taken from HaShem Shamati Shimecha vol. 2 (Or Baruch Shalom) article 15