Leviticus, 6:1-8:36

This Week’s Torah Portion | Mar 22 – Mar 28, 2026 – 4 Nisan – 10 Nisan, 5786

In A Nutshell

The portion, Tzav (Command), deals with rules of sacrificing, especially those related to priests. The portion mentions the commandment to donate the fertilizer, the gift offering, sin offering, guilt offering, peace offering, and the prohibition to eat animal fat.

Tzav also mentions punishments for those who eat non-kosher meat, as it is written, “The soul that eats from it shall bear iniquity (Leviticus, 7:18). One who eats fat from the offerings, “The soul that eats shall be cut off from its people” (Leviticus, 7:25), and one who eats the offerings’ blood, “That soul shall be cut off from its people” (Leviticus, 7:20).

Subsequently, the portion deals with the seven days of filling, and the inauguration of the tabernacle. The Creator commands Moses to assemble Aaron and his sons the priests, and the whole congregation at the door of the tent of meeting. Moses washes Aaron and his sons and dresses them with the clothes of priesthood. Moses puts the anointing oil over the tabernacle and all that is in it, and sanctifies Aaron and his sons, showing the priests—following the Creator’s command—what to do with the various organs of the offerings.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The Korban (offering/sacrifice, from the word, Karov [near]) is the way to draw near the Creator. There is nothing but the offerings. Today we are in the worst state. There is nothing worse than this world and our current state. We must come out of that state and advance toward the Boreh (Creator), from the words Bo Re’eh (come and see). We will discover the Creator according to the changes and corrections in us because the upper force, namely the upper light, is in complete rest, and all the changes occur in us, as it is written, “I the Lord do not change” (Malachi, 3:6).

Nearing the Creator depends on our qualities. Therefore, we must all change ourselves and correct all the negative and egoistic desires in us, according to the order the Torah narrates. The word Torah comes from the word Horaa (instruction) how to correct our egoistic desires, turn them into aiming toward bestowal and love, and shift from unfounded hatred to absolute love.

The bad global crisis is happening due to unfounded hatred among everyone. There is abundance in the world, but we cannot share it among us. We cannot establish social justice, connection, unity, and arrange ourselves and our lives better because of our characters, as it is written, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis, 8:21). To correct the heart, which symbolizes our 613 egoistic, corrupted desires, we need the Torah.

The Torah is the “light that reforms.”^[1] One who treats the Torah properly discovers one’s wickedness, as it is written, “The world was created only for the complete wicked or the complete righteous.”^[2] That is, we must discover that we are completely wicked, created with an evil inclination. Then, “I have created for it the Torah as a spice”^[3] because “the light in it reforms them.”^[4] Then we come to a state of complete righteous. This is how we must see it.

The word Tzav means commandment. We can go through the process by a path of suffering, taking blows. This way is neither respectable nor desirable in the eyes of the Creator or the creatures. But there is another way. We can go through the process recognizing and understanding that we are being led to discover the upper force, and we are being raised to a higher dimension. The crisis and the suffering we feel in this world were intended to push us to develop to a higher level, the human one, which resembles the Creator.

There are many stages in this work. Some stages are called “the nations of the world,” and in them we scrutinize our desires and slightly correct them on the level of “nations of the world,” in whom there are seven Mitzvot (commandments). Only then we reach the degree of Israel, meaning Yashar El (straight to the Creator) where we can already direct ourselves toward the Creator.

Keeping, or observing Mitzvot (in Hebrew it is described as “making”) means performing corrections on our desires. From the 613 desires that belong to the work of Israel we achieve the degree of Levites and the degree of priests. Thus we go through the Yod–Hey–Vav–Hey from below upward, from Malchut through Zeir Anpin, Bina, Hochma, and Keter until we achieve Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator.

This is the entire order of the work that the Torah describes, and is presented in the Babylonian Talmud. The offerings are a more complicated issue. It is in fact our entire work. Making an offering means nearing the Creator through consecutive corrections on our desires. We gradually approach the Creator with corrections that begin with the easiest desires and continue through the hardest, heaviest, and most egoistic ones.

These are desires that we sort within us and determine how to correct them. This is why the text mentions body parts, oil, time, movement, places, and a mention of the force by which we correct, and in what state. We must also keep in mind that it all concerns only our inner structure.

We are immersed in an ocean of upper light, which is the Creator, as it is written, “The upper light is in complete rest,”^[5] and all the changes appear only to us, who are inside the light. If we do not feel that the light, the Creator, is filling the whole of reality, it means we are in “double concealment.” That is, we have no sensation that something is hidden from us. The first degree we reach is the sensation of concealment, that something is hidden from us.

Today the whole of humanity is beginning to perceive it. Scientists and psychologists are beginning to see that the world is round. They speak of a single force that closes in on us and controls us, that there is a unified guidance and governance, and the world is tied in harmony by fixed laws.

It is written, “He has given a law that shall not be broken” (Psalms, 148:6). Like it or not, we will eventually have to approach that law, study it, replicate it to ourselves, and keep it. If we want it, good. If we do not, we will be forced to accept it by blows, as many stories in the Torah describe.

The Torah tells us about bad things that will ostensibly happen if we do not do what we should. It is necessary to have the recognition of evil and its disclosure. It is written, “I have created the evil inclination,”^[6] so each time the evil inclination must appear, and we must correct it. We can discern the evil inclination only if we fall into it. But if we come prepared we will not mingle with it or fall under it, but control it and correct it. This is actually why we were given the Torah.

The whole world is approaching that recognition. Many scientists already maintain that we exist in a circular system, that there is one force of nature that is acting on us and demands that we adapt ourselves to it in a global and integral world, in harmony and balance with nature. They are already talking about holism and other such phenomena, so there are already some excitement and impressions, and approaching the truth.

First we must obtain the recognition that there is truly something hidden from us. This is considered “concealment,” and it is good; it is the sensation of exile. When we are in exile, we feel it by the contact with the upper force that controls us and acts on us. It is so although we do not feel how it works or how it controls us; we do not understand its commands nor know what it wants of us. In fact, even if we did, we would not know how to do its will, we would be incapable of improving our situation. Internally, we recognize that if we do not know it, it will be a terrible loss. The whole world is gradually advancing toward this recognition and understanding.

Questions and Answers

When we say “Him,” are we referring to a superior law or to the Creator?

We are not referring to an image, but to a comprehensive quality that governs us—the quality of comprehensive bestowal and love. The closer we come to it, the better we can detect it.

We draw near it by establishing good connections between us, as it is written, “From the love of man to the love of God.”^[7] If we establish groups for teaching the higher nature, in order to become closer and be in brotherly love, we will begin to feel the upper force according to the law of equivalence of form, namely equivalence of qualities. Then we will discover that we truly are in exile. This is the beginning of the process. Hence, when we read the story of Esther we discover the concealment, which is the first step.

As we approach Passover, a state where we feel we are in Egypt, exiled from the revelation of the light, the upper force, we have the “great Sabbath,” which stresses the importance of the sensation of exile, as it is impossible to achieve redemption without that feeling. The difference between Galut (exile) and Geula (redemption) is in the letter Aleph, representing the Aluf (Champion) of the world, in which the Creator appears. Exile is the desire to discover Him, that it is Him we must attain.

When we want to discover the Creator, we bring all our desires to a state where they do not stand in the way of the upper light, as it is written, “His glory fills the world.”^[8] He fills everything without our interruption. When we restrict our sense of self-importance—the ego, independence, and sense of uniqueness, our entire “I”—we feel that the Creator passes through us. Thus we discover Him.

But first we have to be “transparent” and avoid being a partition, interfering with the quality of bestowal and love that prevails in the world. Then we discover that we truly are immersed in the upper light that fills everything, and we are in it. This is the degree we should achieve. It is the first stage of redemption.

The nearing happens in our feelings. We come to feel we are inside the upper light that fills everything and does everything, as it is written, “He did, does, and will do all the deeds.”^[9] This is our salvation from all the crises, despair, and confusion in our lives.

The offering is to the Creator. We burn it, and thus seemingly give something. Why do we not offer to each other in order to draw closer? This way we could really say that through love of others we obtain something higher.

It only seems that way because of how we use our language. In the work of the offerings, a person needs to work with each egoistic desire that repels others, desires with which one wishes to exploit others and be oblivious to them. The sacrifice is to stop that desire from hindering our approach to others.

As we approach others, we create a system of mutual bestowal and discover the upper light. The upper light is between us, not in us individually. We draw it and discover it precisely by creating the quality of bestowal between us.

Does this nearing take place among the friends in the group?

The nearing is between people, not within us. Within us we can only feel egoistic phenomena. This is why we currently feel only this world through our five physical senses.

How does one offer a sacrifice from the group to the Creator?

It is the same whether one corrects one’s desires toward others or toward the Creator. We all perform the correction together, among us, to reveal the comprehensive quality of bestowal and love that prevails in the world.

The quality of bestowal is the Creator. It is a quality, the thought of creation. We do not aim toward a certain entity. It is difficult to explain it because in our world everything is very “down to earth,” clothed in matter, while in the wisdom of Kabbalah there is no substance, only forces.

It is written in this portion that if the children of Israel do not make the offering properly they will be punished. What is the punishment?

The punishment is that we will do it regardless, as it is written, “For no banished shall be cast out from Him” (Samuel 2, 14:14), and everything will return to its root.

It is written in the portion, “that soul shall be cut off from its people” (Leviticus, 7:20). What does it mean?

It means that a person is cut off from one’s degree. If that person was already on the level of “Israel” (Hebrew: Ysrael), meaning Yashar El (straight to God), and falls from it to the degree of “nations of the world,” that person will suffer because he or she has moved away from bestowal, love, revelation, understanding, and awareness. Hence, one must spend more time searching in an unpleasant way, and only then will he or she return. This is the punishment.

When one cannot process the information properly and quickly through working on the desire with the mind, as the Torah invites us to do, it still happens but on a path of suffering. That person will do the same work but it will take longer and will be unpleasant. Similarly, if children listen to what they are told and do what they are asked well, they benefit. If they do not, they still do their chores, they have no choice, but they suffer.

How can we use the topic of offerings in our approach to education?

There is no difference. If a person is born lazy and stubborn, can he or she turn to the parents and tell them, “You have made me this way; I don’t want to study; I don’t want to listen to you; all I want is to play, that’s the way I am. Did I ask for these qualities? No, there is nothing I can do.”

Is it the parents’ fault or the person’s? What that person can do is form an environment that will help him or her be smart and successful. The environment can help us understand the purpose of creation, how to achieve it, and how to diminish suffering. Everything depends on the environment. If we work in a proper, good, supportive environment, it teaches us how to be givers, like it. This is how we approach bestowal and love. This is the work of the offerings that a person performs.

The portion speaks of priests, which indicate a very high degree. Can matters be attributed to education on this level, too?

We begin from zero, from the degree of “nations of the world. Everyone is destined to achieve it. The purpose of creation is for everyone to come into this work, correct themselves, and reach the complete end of correction, called “complete redemption.” In the First Temple, the people of Israel were already at the level of redemption, Mochin of Haya. In the Second Temple we descended to the level of Mochin of Neshama. Now we must come to the Third Temple, the highest degree on the ladder of spiritual degrees, where we include the whole of humanity.

If the sacrifice means coming closer to society, do we incorporate education in it, or is it a separate matter?

You cannot be educated alone, only in a society. A person is taught to connect with others in a relationship that is similar to the quality of the Creator. We discover this quality between us because it is only between us that He is revealed. It is akin to changing something in a radio receiver so it receives the wave outside.

From The Zohar: NRN of Week Days and NRN of the Sabbath

A wise disciple should see himself equal to all the students of Torah. This is how he should consider himself from the perspective of the Torah, from the perspective of the noetic NRN. But from the perspective of the organs of the body, the perspective of the beastly NRN, he should regard himself equal to all the uneducated people, as it is written, “One should always see himself as though the whole world depends on him.” For this reason, he should aim his mind, spirit, and soul to make those sacrifices with all the people in the world, and the Creator adds a good thought to the act. By that, “Man and beast You deliver, O Lord.”

Zohar for All, Tzav (Command), item 71

The upper light is intended to reform everyone—those on the animate degree, and those on the human degree. This is why no one can say, “It’s not for me.” There must be a study of the wisdom of Kabbalah because cannot draw the light without it. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “Torah of light,” “internality of the Torah,” the light that reforms.

Is it only the light that corrects? Will we never be able to correct our relationships?

Never. The world is beginning to realize it. It may take some time but we are already approaching it, beginning to agree with it.

It is palpable that the world is on the verge of giving up on most everything else.

It is felt, and they are in the right direction. They already understand that the change has to happen within us, regardless of whether one is Jewish or not, secular, or orthodox. The change has to be substantial and equal for all—begining to correct human nature. It is fine if one follows what is called the “practical Mitzvot (commandments), but it is just as fine if one does not. In relation to the inner change we are all the same; we must all do it.

Is the direction toward which the world is heading considered sacrifices?

Not yet. Sacrifices begin only through the light that reforms because this is what corrects us. We are all on the worst degree, though we have yet to recognize it as the worst. We are still unaware and unconscious in regard to the evil.

^{[1] Midrash Rabah, Eicha, “Introduction,” Paragraph 2.
[2] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Berachot, p 61b.
[3] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Kidushin, 30b.
[4] Midrash Rabah, Eicha, “Introduction,” Paragraph 2.
[5] Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, p 521.
[6] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Kidushin, 30b.
[7] Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man,” p 482.
[8] Part of Tefilat Amidah (Standing (18) Prayer).
[9] Said after the morning prayer (Tefilat Shaharit), the first of Maimonides’ 13 tenets.}

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Leviticus, 1:1-5:26

This Week’s Torah Portion | Mar 15 – Mar 21, 2026 – 26 Adar II – 3 Nisan, 5786

In A Nutshell

The portion, VaYikra (The Lord Called), deals with rules of sacrificing and the priests serving in the tabernacle. Some offerings are optional; some are mandatory. Some of the offerings are burnt to ashes on the altar, and some remain for the priests and the giver of the offering.

The rules of offerings speak of a “burnt offering” that a person brings voluntarily from the cattle, flock, and poultry. There is also a “gift offering,” which a person brings voluntarily from the flora. Also, there is the “peace offering,” which is an offering that a person brings from the cattle, sheep, and goats. The “sin offering” is an offering brought by one who sinned by mistake. That person makes an offering to atone for the sin.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The portion, VaYikra (The Lord Called), teaches us about the work of the offerings, which are also the main topic in the Talmud. We learn all the works from the works of the Temple.

People are nearing the purpose of creation and Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator, to the human level, a life in a totally blissful world, and experiencing all the worlds and the sensation of nature as complete and eternal, as it was prepared for us. That nearing is called Korban (offering/sacrifice) from the word Karov (near).

We are approaching it step by step by correcting our nature. There are 613 desires in us, which we must correct one at a time, each desire with all of its parts. Our desires divide into four levels: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. The work of the offerings teaches us how to sacrifice and correct them so they are in bestowal and love. The rule in our work is to correct our nature and achieve the state, “love your neighbor as yourself; it is a great rule in the Torah.”^[1] By that, we become similar to the Creator and achieve Dvekut with Him.

The correction of the egoistic desire from receiving for myself into bestowal upon others is called an “offering” that a person offers. The offering may come from several sources. It may be from the still, as it is written, “On all your offerings you shall offer salt” (Leviticus, 2:13), or water or oil. It can also be from the vegetative or processed plants, such as the showbread. From the animate, only a certain kind is offered. The priests’ and the Levites’ daily work in the Temple is to sacrifice the flock and the cattle.

There are offerings that one must make on a daily basis, similar to our progress from day to day according to the plan of creation, on a predetermined pace. When we do not follow suit, we suffer a thrust from behind, from the negative forces.

The offerings we cannot make—namely the desires we cannot correct into aiming to bestow upon others—become negative forces that manifest as problems that push us from behind through suffering. These desires accumulate until they break out as crises, similar to the comprehensive crisis we are currently experiencing.

The crisis is not a negative state, but a result of neglect. It is happening because we are so engrossed in materialism instead of rising above it, because we are so obstinate and refuse to listen to the guidance of Kabbalists.

In fact, the crisis is a point of new birth. It points to our inability to live according to the old paradigm. Our perspective on life and the attitude toward values in our lives break and fall apart, as it manifests in education, family relations, and so forth.

The order of the work of the offerings is very important because it explains how we advance in life. If we follow this order, our lives will flow in order too.

The general nature is built so that if each moment we correct more and more pieces of the egoism into altruism and love of others, into connection with humanity, with nature, we draw nearer to the Creator—the only force that exists in reality. In this way we are in balance with it, and there is no better state for us than that. After all, in that state we do not need anything and reside in a world of utter bliss.

VaYikra details the order of correction of all 613 broken, egoistic desires into connection with others, and through it, connection with the Creator. It is written about it, “From the Love of man to the love of God.”^[2] However, before we connect with others, we must be properly built within. We must prepare ourselves for it internally, as well as externally.

Assume that a person must be “married,” meaning have a deficiency. A woman is a deficiency next to the man, a deficiency adapted to the ability to correct it. The feminine part of a person is as a deficiency, the left side, while the masculine part is the right side, which complements. In a state of collaborative work, a person is considered “married.” The man—which is higher than the woman and wants to advance and correct the deficiency—makes an offering. The offering is also for the feminine part in the person. The same applies to the rest of the people.

The work of the offerings is the work in the Temple, the common Kli of the world where a person expresses one’s attitude toward the Creator. There are many details to this work: how to slaughter, burn, and how to discern all the parts in the offerings.

There is a part in us that enjoys, and a part that is as “smoke.” The word “smoke” is an acronym for Olam, Shana, Nefesh (ASHAN [smoke]) by which a person transcends the limitations of our world, thus advancing toward the purpose of creation.

When one begins to connect and approach the Creator through the offerings, one becomes more suitable for the Creator. Each time, one of the 613 desires becomes more suitable for the Creator. This way a person begins to feel that the system within is becoming more similar to that of the Creator. Then the person begins to understand Him since one contains a partial sample of Him, which gradually expands. The more one’s desires close in on a similar structure to Godliness, the more the Creator “clothes” in the person. Thus one becomes more similar to the Creator.

Through one’s internal system, where there is already a part of the Creator, a person begins to understand and know Him. Such a person can picture and imagine that system, thoughts, desires, and approach of the Creator toward him or her. Thus one can increasingly understand one’s attitude toward the Creator. The model that one builds within allows one to be in mutual connection with the Creator, and this is how a person becomes man (Adam).

From the beginning of creation through its end we undergo a process by which we must correct ourselves and rise from our world to the world of Ein Sof (infinity). We must do it internally, in our inner structure, so that each time we become increasingly similar to the upper force. This is the work that this portion deals with.

The Creator is inviting us to this work hoping that humanity will respond. The whole work is of the part of us called “Israel,” and of which it was written, “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus, 19:6). The priests are the ones who manage the work at the Temple, bringing the rest of the nation to this work so the whole nation may able to correct itself.

All of Israel are regarded as priests in relation to the rest of the world. VaYikra (The Lord Called) is first and foremost a call to Israel because Israel are obliged to teach the rest of humanity how to approach the Creator. It was written about it, “they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them” (Jeremiah, 31:33), and “for My house shall be called ‘a house of prayer’ to all the nations” (Isaiah, 56:7), once it is built.

This is why VaYikra is a call to the entire nation of Israel to correct itself as quickly as possible, thus also correcting the global crisis, the world’s problems, and abolishing anti-Semitism. Then everyone will truly be as one group, a single nation.

Questions and Answers

We sacrifice to the Creator, but the sacrifice is actually nearing between people. What is the connection between bringing people closer and drawing closer to the Creator?

There is an act here, and there is the intention. To perform correction we must draw closer to others. We cannot draw closer to others unless we have the intention to draw closer, and unless the common force of bestowal that exists in the world, namely the Creator, appears between us. Through mutual nearing, we build an opportunity, a place, a space of mutual desire where the mutual force of bestowal appears, meaning the force of love, which does not exist in our world. That force does not exist in our qualities unless we exert to make it, to make room for it. The place where the force of bestowal appears is called “dweller” or “the revelation of Divinity.” It requires three conditions in order to exist: you, me, and the Creator.

What is the order between them? It seems reasonable to say, “Give me this type of Temple and I will sacrifice my cow there.

It is all within us, the cow too.

It follows that we must approach the Creator so He may give us the strength to love others. So one does not reach the Creator through others, but from the Creator to others because the problems are between us and not with the Creator?

True, there is no other way. We begin from hating each other; we have no desire whatsoever to draw near. Only through troubles and problems, when we ask how and why, what is the meaning of life, what is happening in the world, do we understand that we must correct our nature and start looking for a solution. Our correction is from reception to bestowal, from hate to love, from understanding that the hatred is destroying the world and our lives.

Today the whole world is dealing with correcting human nature because it ruins everything, including this planet. Many scientists are warning about these problems, which are already causing our collapse.

The problem is that we cannot restrain human nature. We are marching as sheep to the slaughter, unable to stop ourselves. Baal HaSulam wrote that the angel of death comes with a drop of poison on the tip of his sword, and you open your mouth to it because there is a last bit of pleasure on it, and you die. You cannot see past yourself, and even if you do, you simply must have this drop.^[3]Go to the craftsman who made me, Just so, we are advancing blindly, following our nature into wars and troubles, ruining everything along the way because it is all done without higher guidance.

We need the upper force. This need arises from the sensation of troubles and problems that are already appearing in the world, but it should come with an explanation. There must be a system that provides information that we, the children of Israel, must pass on to the rest of the world. This is the meaning of being a kingdom of priests. The priests are those who teach the people, as it is written, “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus, 19:6).

We must make the reason for the crisis known, as well as the means for correcting human nature, in order to bring the whole of humanity to balance with nature, or we will not survive.

Although the conditions for it have all been prepared, we have to do our share in this work. This is why we are witnessing an increase in global anti-Semitism, which will only increase unless we make the method of correction and its use known in due time, and promote its implementation the world over.

It is therefore clear that we ourselves must be connected to the Creator, study, and demand the revelation of the Creator in order to allow ourselves to advance. All we need is the sense of lack and our drive toward it, since the moment we need His strength, we will ask and receive it.

What does it mean that we sacrifice a cow, a sheep, or a goat?

The Book of Zohar explains that these are not cows, sheep, or any other kosher animal. Rather, it is a person who needs to correct, to discern the animal part within, the speaking part, which is the priest, Levite, and Israel. A person offers and sacrifices part of the animate, which is all the animate within us. Actually, it concerns the desires within us, which divide into still, vegetative, animate, and human.

Why is it so difficult to offer the sacrifice?

A person cannot perform correction without first knowing what to do, without internally distinguishing good from bad. Currently, we do not know what to correct. You might say, “Yes, sometimes I lie,” but how can you tell that this is what you must correct? Anyone can say that, at least to oneself. However, even then it is not a sincere confession. So how will you know what is stopping you from approaching the goal? For this, we need the revelation of the Creator, the light that reforms to illuminate for us the desires we can sacrifice.

From The Zohar: One Who Did Not Marry a Woman Is Flawed

“When any man of you brings an offering” means excluding one who did not marry a wife, since his offering is not an offering and there are no blessings in him, neither above nor below. This means that when it writes, “When any man of you brings an offering,” and he is different, not a human and not included in man. Divinity is not over him because he is flawed and called “maimed,” and one who is maimed is removed from everything, all the more so from the altar, from offering sacrifices.

Zohar for All, VaYikrah (The Lord Called), item 63

If one knows and feels that one is flawed, namely still has an egoistic intention, how can one sacrifice it? How can one move closer to the Creator?

Such a person must first be whole.

Ask most people and they will tell you, “I’m fine with the Creator; I get along with Him. How do they know? Do they feel this way? Is this how the Creator is depicted for them?

They feel so because the Creator is hidden from them, so they are sure they are OK with Him.

If the person is OK with the Creator, why is He hidden?

We do not ask ourselves this question. We say, “I pay my taxes, I’m friendly to my neighbors, I even put the garbage in the right bins. I’m just fine.”

How do you explain to people that there is a connection, that we must discover the quality of bestowal within us, that this is the Creator? How do you explain that VaYikra means that the Creator is calling us to approach something very different?

We determine our own situation, the scale, according to the upper force, which is benevolent, whole, in which there is no hate but only love. We measure in comparison with it how similar or different we are from it, from the Unique one from whom everything was created and to whom everything returns. First we must see and feel how different or similar we are to Him. We must also engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah, or we will have no chance of nearing Him.

This is how everyone thinks, which is why it is impossible to turn to anyone in this manner. We need to measure people compared to the Creator, and then it will be possible to see how obligated we are, and how the Creator has made us so. We could say, “Go to the craftsman who made me,”^[4] since He has made me this way, and only through bringing the upper light will anything be resolved.

Our qualities have been designed since childhood by our parents, education, the environment, the Creator, genes, grandparents, and previous generations. Then there are our own additions. Over that part which we add to ourselves, which we could avoid adding, too, or add negative traits to ourselves, over that part we have choice and can say, “This I need to correct.” This is the initial scrutiny. It is a very special work, which is why we do not immediately arrive at the offerings.

During all the previous portions we advance toward this work, discovering the Creator—the upper force—at the level we are in through the quality of Moses in us. We measure ourselves compared to them, and only then can we correct our qualities and know how many of them we should fix, and how. After all, we have many qualities that need no correction because they are corrected by themselves, as they are not ours.

^{[1]Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Nashim, Masechet Nedarim, Chapter 9, p 30b.
[2] Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Love of God and the Love of Man,” p 482.
[3] Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot (Shining and Welcoming Face),” p 149.
[4] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Taanit, p. 20b.}

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Exodus, 30:11-34:35

This Week’s Torah Portion | Mar 01 – Mar 07, 2026 – 12 Adar II – 18 Adar II, 5786

In A Nutshell

The portion, Ki Tissa (When You Take), begins with a request of each one of the children of Israel to donate half a shekel for the building of the tabernacle. The portion mentions some other details about the tabernacle such as the anointing oil, the table, and the menorah and its vessels, appointing Bezalel, son of Uri Ben Hur, as chief craftsman, Ahaliav Ben Ahisemech as his assistant, and commanding the children of Israel to observe the Sabbath.

Later, Moses ascends to Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the covenant but delays in his return, so the children of Israel seek proof that the Creator exists and demand of Aaron to build a golden calf. Aaron agrees, takes their gold vessels, melts them, and builds the golden calf.

When Moses returns from the mountain and sees it, the tablets of the covenant break. The Creator wishes to destroy and ruin the entire people of Israel, and Moses pleads for their souls.

Moses speaks to the Creator “face to face,” and wishes to conceal himself.

At the end of the process, the Creator agrees and makes a covenant with the people of Israel. The Creator also promises Israel that they will enter the land of Israel, and repeats the commandment of the three Pilgrimage festivals (Shalosh Regalim) and the prohibition of idolatry.

Moses stays with the Creator on Mount Sinai forty days and forty nights, writes on the tablets, and comes down from the mountain. It is written, “And it came to pass when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses’ hand … that Moses did not know that the skin of his face beamed while He talked with him” (Exodus, 34:29). It was so much so that he had to hide himself from the people once more because they feared speaking with him.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Those who do not know the language of Kabbalah will find it hard to understand that the text actually discusses a person’s inner development. It concerns our nature, which is the will to receive, an egoistic desire that requires correction. The Torah speaks only of the correction of the desire, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice”^[1] because “the light in it would reform them.”^[2]

The purpose of the correction is to transform our evil (egoistic) inclination, which aims only toward self-gratification and exploitation of the entire world for itself, and turn it into love of others, as in “love your neighbor as yourself.”^[3]

The Torah speaks of a process that is not simple, but which all of us experience. The general crisis we are in will cause us to come out to the light, to correction, similar to the exodus from Egypt. Today we are all standing before Mount Sinai with a huge ego, with all the Kelim (vessels) we have taken from Egypt. During the millennia of development, humanity has accumulated a massive ego; now we have no clue what to do with it, other than escape it.

When we are drawn toward Mount Sinai we discover a mountain of hate between us. Only the point within us, called Moses, pulls us forward toward connection with something higher, a higher degree—human degree of similarity with the Creator.

We are all still as beasts,^[4] operated entirely by egos, our nature. Instead, we must be as a free nation in our country, free in its will. “Such is the way of Torah.”^[5]

To do that, one who wishes to ascend to the human degree, and discover the Creator and the worlds around us must follow the unique line known as “half a shekel,” meaning neither to the right nor to the left, but the joining of the two. The will to receive, too, takes part because it is “help made against us” (Genesis, 2:18), and against it you need the reforming light.

We have two lines: on the left is the will to receive; on the right is the light. The more we combine them, the more we correct the will to receive to similarity with the light—working in order to bestow. It is written, “And the night will shine as the day; darkness as light” (Psalms, 139:12). This is how we advance. This is the first correction—no more and no less, but precisely half. We advance when we achieve that correction, that method of advancement.

Subsequently, the tabernacle and its vessels must be prepared, including the oil and all that comes with it. The role was given only to Bezalel. Bezalel within us is that which is Betzel El (in the shadow of God), under the shadow of the Creator. Bezalel replicates the qualities from the Creator, who appears to him, and this is why he is called “wisehearted.” He knows the right combination between the heart, the desire, and the wisdom, namely the intellect. Bezalel properly combines the right with the left, and has wisdom of the heart. This is why he is the one who can establish the tabernacle.

The tabernacle is the arrangement of the soul that we build within us from our 613 desires. It is built according to the right qualities, in which all the parts are connected in synchrony with the Creator. This is how we become similar to Him.

Our evil inclination has 613 qualities we must aim in order to bestow, toward love of others. Only those who have the quality of Bezalel—copying the qualities of the Creator onto oneself and becoming as His shadow—can do it.

Achieving this is done by connecting to the Shechina (Divinity), Malchut of Atzilut, who begins to replicate these qualities from Zeir Anpin of Atzilut. Zeir Anpin has six Sephirot: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod, where Malchut comes last and replicates. This is why our work is to replicate these six qualities from Zeir Anpin—called HaKadosh Baruch Hu (The Holy One, Blessed Be He), or Zeir Anpin of Atzilut—in the appearance of the Creator on all the workdays.

The wisdom of Kabbalah presents our goal—the revelation of the Creator to the creatures in this world. Through our senses, when the Creator is revealed to us, we join and increasingly attach ourselves to the Creator.

When we conclude replicating the six qualities comes the concluding seventh quality, the Sabbath. The Sabbath concludes itself by itself from above. This is why it is considered “awakening from above.” A special light comes and sets the six qualities in the right order, and there is nothing more we need to do.

This is why the prohibition on working during Sabbath is tantamount to intervening with something that belongs to the upper light. We work for six days setting up the right and left lines, directing the will to receive and the light, the mind and the heart. Finally, we present our work, and then “The Lord will conclude for me” (Psalms, 138:8). This is when we receive the completion of the degree. This is the process we must undergo through the correction of the entire soul, week by week until we conclude the six thousand years.

We must also consider that our soul consists of desires from the evil inclination that cannot be spotted by ordinary scrutiny. They require special examination that only the golden calf can make.

Although the Torah presents it in this way, the golden calf does not represent a fall or a decline, nor does it blame anyone. Any person who experiences this process must go through all the descents and falls, just as it happened with Pharaoh in Egypt, and with the children of Israel in the desert after the events of Mount Sinai.

Even when we move from Mount Sinai to the forty years in the desert we will continue to experience states that seem negative. Each time uncorrected desires surface, we “fall” into them, so we have no choice but to discover them and correct them. It is written, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does good and will not sin” (Ecclesiastes, 7:20), or “A person does not comprehend words of Torah unless he has failed in them.”^[6] Thus, first we must fail, scrutinize the failure and correct it, and then we are guaranteed to not repeat it. We are guaranteed to be kept because that desire has already been corrected into having the aim to bestow through which we progress toward love of others.

When we discover that despite the work we have done, we have not revealed the Creator, it is considered that Moses did not return from Mount Sinai. That is, we are drawn back to the intention to receive, the egoistic desire, called “the golden calf.”

Our corrupted desires are called “mixed multitude.” They ask, “Where did Moses go?” They claim we must keep going as we understand it, within us, following our reason and intellect, instead of above reason.

When we return to working within reason we are delighted. It seems to us that this way we understand and feel everything. We may not be ascending to higher degrees, but at least we are in a world that suits our egos. It is a very appealing state. We can see for ourselves how difficult it is to explain to people what nature is compelling us to do now, what is the method of correction and how we can rise to the next level. The Creator, nature, Elokim (which is nature in Gematria) is pressing us and wishes to raise us, and we are seemingly resisting it with a golden calf, celebrating and rejoicing.

When the point in the heart appears, it collides very powerfully with the egoistic desire that has broken out once more. That collision is the shattering of the tablets.

The collision is between the point in the heart—through which we desire to rise and cling to the upper one, to a higher degree, to discover worlds, infinity, and be in a realm of bestowal—and the revelation that we are actually at the point of being a golden calf. We cannot tolerate that contrast, and as a result, all the elements in which we were previously in Kedusha (holiness) shatter.

Those who sinned in the calf were sentenced to death. Subsequently, Moses called, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” (Exodus, 32:26). This is the correction of the desires that have appeared now, that are connected to the golden calf, and with which it is impossible to continue.

Following the correction of all the other desires—the three thousand discernments that Moses killed—he ascends to Mount Sinai yet again. Internally, it means that that point within us rises once again and we receive the tablets of the covenant once more. We rediscover Godliness, the Creator, and begin to come down with the second tablets.

Yet, there is a big difference between the first tablets and the second tablets—Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). The first tablets and the golden calf took place on the ninth of Av (11^th month in the Hebrew calendar). The occurrence of the first tablets happens from Shavuot to the ninth of Av. Those of the second tablets take place from the ninth of Av to Yom Kippur. Forty days plus forty days are the time frame of correction from which it is possible to continue.

From The Zohar: Half a Shekel

Half a shekel, half a hin, means half a measure. The Vav is the middle between the two Heys because the Vav is the middle line, called “scales,” which weigh the two lights, right and left, being the two Heys, so the left will not be greater than the right. This is why he diminishes the left, so it will not shine from above downward but only from below upward.

Zohar for All, Ki Tissa (When You Take), item 4

Our big will to receive, the ego, is on the left side. The light, which we can draw if we work correctly, according to the instructions of the wisdom of Kabbalah, is on the right. These are the two Yods, as in the letter Aleph, with the diagonal in the middle as the Parsa (partition) []. We must join the light from above, the upper Yod, with the will to receive from below, namely the lower Yod (sometimes written as Dalet, which is Behina Dalet, the Malchut in us, instead of the Yod). The diagonal line keeps the balance between them, thus creating the line.

This is why Aleph is the first letter in the alphabet. The portion, Ki Tissa (When You Take), is the beginning of the actual Torah because it engages in the building of the tabernacle and its filling. This is why we must constantly maintain that half, so the right is not more than the left or the other way around. If there is a surplus of desires to receive that we did not correct to the fullest possible extent, then we are not in the desire to bestow. If we take from the will to receive more than we can correct, we are in a state of recognition of evil. It has to be a very precise operation.

Once we restrict all our desires and avoid using the desire in order to receive, but only in order to bestow, we can continue sorting out those small parts of our desire from light to heavy, and join all the corrections to the light.

This is the letter Vav with the punctuation marks, Holam, Shuruk, Hirik, or Kamatz, which is as the Parsa. The light has to be above it because all the corrections are in ascent. In our world—our situation—we will never achieve the revelation of Godliness. There might be various psychological phenomena, but the revelation of Godliness can happen only if we rise above the Parsa.

Following the restriction, once we have the middle line, when we join a group and act in it—as Kabbalists suggest we should—when we try to come out of ourselves and be above reason, above the diagonal Vav, from below upward—we receive the revelation of the spiritual world.

Questions and Answers

Beresheet (Genesis) speaks of the creation of the world. In the desert, things take a long time to unfold, with numerous details along the way, as the portions describe. What do those details symbolize?

The Torah cannot tell us about all that we are going through. It only explains the milestones. It is similar to driving on a road where each mile or several miles are marked by signs.

Why are various garments and a description of the altar mentioned in the desert?

It is the correction of our soul. We have received a system of 613 desires, and each of them consists of all the others, and all are connected. That system is completely broken. It is as though we were given an electronic or mechanical device that is completely broken and we have no clue how to fix it. We would look at it dumbfounded without knowing how to approach it.

This is why we are taught how to do it: “Look at this, fix that, than this, but first that.” There are so many details in our soul, and all of it must become similar to the Creator in its inner structure, in how it works. And although it is the opposite substance from the Creator, “existence from absence,” it must come to resemble the “existence from existence.”

We cannot understand how important our world is, with all its complexities and myriad connections, every atom and every cell in the universe. This is why there are so many details in the correction of the soul. One who walks this path takes part in it and discovers it, and it arouses immense excitement and a sense of harmony and fulfillment.

How do you explain that everything exists and happens simultaneously—the point in the heart is on Mount Sinai, the highest connection, while other desires in me are building a golden calf?

This is the detachment within, where the Moses in us disappears. When Moses disappears we lose contact with the Creator, as this is the only point that connects us with Him. As soon as we disconnect, we find ourselves immersed in our desires, falling into the golden calf. These are the Kelim (vessels) we have taken out of Egypt, Kelim that want the light of Hochma (wisdom), namely pleasure for ourselves alone.

How come the desire obtains contact with the upper force and promptly afterward falls into connection with the golden calf?

There are no delays. There is either Kedusha (holiness) or Klipa (shell/peel). There are no in betweens. We must get used to constantly being in one of the two states; there are no others in our world.

Are Moses’ ascents and descents on Mount Sinai the ups and downs we are talking about?

It is about alternating revelations and concealments. It is similar to the festival of Purim and the story of Esther, who is also revelation in concealment. There cannot be revelation if it is not preceded by concealment. Had Moses not ascended Mount Sinai there would have been no golden calf. But without the golden calf we would not know what to correct. This is how we always progress, on two “legs.”

^{[1] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Kidushin, 30b.
[2] Midrash Rabah, Eicha, “Introduction,” Paragraph 2.
[3] Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Nashim, Masechet Nedarim, Chapter 9, p 30b.
[4] Psalms 49:13
[5] Zohar for All, Pinehas, item 247.
[6] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Gitin, p 43a.}

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Exodus, 10:1-13:16

This Week’s Torah Portion | Jan 18 – Jan 24, 2026 – 29 Tevet – 6 Shevat, 5786

In A Nutshell

In the portion, Bo (Come), the Creator—through Moses—tells defiant Pharaoh he must let the people of Israel go. The Creator casts two more plagues over Pharaoh, Locust and Darkness, and Pharaoh says to Moses, “Go away from me! Beware; do not see my face again for in the day you see my face you shall die” (Exodus, 10:28). Moses replies, “You are right; I shall never see your face again” (Exodus, 10:29). Indeed, Moses keeps his word.

The Creator tells Moses that after the final plague Pharaoh will let the children of Israel go. The children of Israel begin to prepare for the tenth plague, the plague of the first-born, and borrow from the Egyptians silver and gold vessels, as well as garments, preparing for their release.

The Creator outlines to Moses the rules of the Passover offering that the children of Israel will need to meet: slaughter a lamb in the twilight, spread its blood on the doorposts (Mezuzot) and on crossbars, and eat the lamb that same night together with Matzot (unleavened bread) and Maror (horse-radish). The children of Israel follow suit.

At midnight, when a great cry rises in Egypt at the strike of the Plague of the First-Born, Pharaoh urges the children of Israel to leave Egypt in haste. The children of Israel leave taking the mixed multitude along with them, and flocks and cattle in great numbers.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The exodus from Egypt described in this portion is both very significant and dramatic. Each moment in our lives is a remembrance to the exodus from Egypt. This is the point at which the human in us is born, when we come out of our egos, of the will to receive.

We all begin selfish, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination.”^[1] The evil inclination grows within us and causes us to be increasingly egoistic. Throughout human history we have been developing in this manner until we have come to a state where we feel that our entire nature is evil and we must exit it, get rid of it, and so we look for a solution. It is a process that unfolds in both individuals and in the entire human society.

When the Pharaoh in us grows, meaning our evil inclination, it does not let us live. The point in the heart, Moses in us, escapes from the ego in order to gain strength, then returns in order to fight it. Only once we understand how this “game” unfolds in us do we return to fight against the ego, much like Moses returns to Egypt to fight against Pharaoh.

When a person begins to discover the upper force, even a little bit, he or she discovers that everything happens from above, that “there is none else besides Him” (Deuteronomy, 4:35), and that includes Pharaoh, the Creator, and Moses who is between them. In this struggle, our inner Moses must decide who will rule over him, Pharaoh or the Creator.

The Creator teaches Moses to face the ego, fight, and rise above it. He always sends Moses to Pharaoh because “I have hardened his heart” (Exodus, 10:1). If we know, through the wisdom of Kabbalah, how to draw the “light that reforms” ^[2] and pass through the ten Sephirot of our evil inclination, the ten plagues, the process will not be so hard. This process is called “hastening,” as opposed to the way, “in due time,” which is paved with torments, wars, and other unpleasant events.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is appearing in order to let us through the states easily and pleasantly. The first to experience them will be the people of Israel, followed by the rest of the world, as it is written, “They shall all know Me from the least of them to the greatest of them” (Jeremiah, 31:33), “For My house shall be called ‘a house of prayer’ for all the nations” (Isaiah, 56, 7). This is why everyone will face the exodus from Egypt, and the first to do it are the people of Israel because it is our task to be “a light for the nations” (Isaiah, 42:6).

The struggle against our ego, Pharaoh, who will not let us unite and achieve a state of “Love your neighbor as yourself; it is a great rule in the Torah”^[3] —by which we must connect in Arvut (mutual guarantee)—leads to the three final and hardest plagues. These plagues are the GAR of the degree, the first three: Locust, Darkness, and the Plague of the First Born.

In the final plague, when we feel how wicked is our evil inclination, how it detaches us from life, we detach ourselves from it. This is why Pharaoh warns Moses that if he should approach him even once more he will be put to death, since this inclination truly puts us to death.

Moses in us is ready for this plague because he knows that through it he will be born; he will come out of Egypt and rise to a level of connection among everyone, and find within him the quality of bestowal. He will attain the sensation of the next world, the sensation of eternity, perfection, and the upper force that resides in him.

When one attains perfection through this complicated process, that person makes a sacrifice. The Hebrew word sacrifice is Korban, from the word Karov (near). When we offer a sacrifice we draw closer to the quality of bestowal. The Passover offering expresses our efforts to reach the good inclination, which is above the quality of reception, above the evil inclination. We pass over the ego and approach the desire to bestow. That move is done with the Passover blood, similar to the birth-blood. We are born in blood, as it is written, “In your blood, live” (Ezekiel 16:6).

We advance this way until we reach the night of the exodus from Egypt. In that state we “borrow vessels from the Egyptians,” taking from them desires. Instead of the intentions to receive, we have only the intentions to bestow. We take the desire to receive along with the desire to bestow, and go out of Egypt with both. All that we leave in Egypt are the intentions to receive, which are the evil. That is, we take the inclination, but we leave the evil behind. Subsequently, we add to the inclination, the desire, the intention to bestow, thus making it a good inclination. This is why we entered Egypt to begin with—to bring out of the Egyptians the desires to receive, with which we were all born initially.

Afterward comes the Plague of the First-Born to all the Egyptians in us, to our entire evil inclination. This is the final blow, by which the light that reforms arrives and hands a final blow to the domination of the evil inclination over us. This is when we rise above it toward connection between us.

In that connection we begin to feel the exodus from Egypt, from the evil inclination, which was interfering with our connection, with being in the Assembly of Israel, which assembles us together. Only through connection between all of us do we discover the Creator, the upper light, the spiritual world, our perfection and eternity.

When we come out of Egypt there is a festive eating of the Passover offering with the evil. We come out with the bread, the bread of the poor, Matzot, and we are born anew when we rise above our egos, above the will to receive, and into the desire to bestow. Henceforth we will be ready for the spiritual ascent.

The first degree we attain upon the exodus from Egypt is the spiritual birth. This is the hardest transition, in which we cast away all the habits and customs by which we perceived reality, the world, and our relationships. In this transition, we rise above all the elements that built us, and by which we developed in our world. We move from there into a world that operates entirely on bestowal, on Arvut, on connection. It is truly an opposite world.

When we cross we begin to experience nature in the opposite manner, following the laws of bestowal instead of those of reception. We begin to act differently, follow different rules, and reality appears different than before. We continue to develop with the same Pharaoh we had left behind; we only took the vessels from him, as it is written, “afterward they shall come out with great substance” (Genesis, 15:14).

When we are surrounded by a society, studies, and the light that reforms that we draw, we draw in the forces that pull us out of Egypt. Therefore, even in very difficult situations we need not fear standing up to our egos.

Questions and Answers

When do we feel that we have come out of Egypt?

Only when we come out of Egypt. It happens suddenly, in the dark. We feel nothing before it happens; we are dazed, disoriented, just as in birth. We come out to a new life we do not know, and take only what we need—the desires that have no intentions to receive, without the bad intentions, called the “big vessels” that we take from Egypt. The children of Israel are the ones who take them, the ones who want to be Yashar El (straight to God), straight to bestowal, to love of others.

The exodus from Egypt happens at midnight. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this is when the building of the Kelim (vessels) begins toward the dawn. In that state we feel bad because of the darkness and the disorientation and confusion. We do not understand what is happening to us. But one point in us tells us, “Do it,” and we are willing to do it, following the preparation that does not let us remain in our egos—which are really putting us to death, so we get out and escape.

From The Zohar: A Lamb for a Household

“Israel did not come out of Egypt until the government of all their ministers was broken above.” This is called all of the ten Klipot (shells/peels), the ten plagues by which Egypt is broken. “And Israel departed their domain and came to the domain of the upper holiness,” called “bestowal,” “love of others, “in the Creator, and tied to Him … that, ‘I brought [them] out from the land of Egypt’; I have brought them out of the other authority and brought them into My authority.”

Zohar for All, Bo (Come), item 165

The idea is to move from the intention to receive to the intention to bestow, from a state of constantly thinking of ourselves—how to profit, succeed, and exploit the whole world—to the opposite state. It is truly an internal revolution in a person who still does not understand there is another way to live—in bestowal, love, rising above the self—though there are constantly desires to receive within us.

During the forty years in the desert, the children of Israel experience events such as the golden calf and the division of the Red Sea. These events are not easier than the exodus from Egypt, but the exodus is the detachment from our ego.

Following the exit are descents and ascents, and our will to receive keeps showing more and more of itself. The children of Israel do not exit by themselves. Along with them come the mixed multitude: people who are drawn after them, who also want to reach an enlightened world, but without correcting their egos. They are willing to keep Torah and Mitzvot but without correcting the ego.

What is the difference between the exodus from Egypt for those with a point in the heart, and those without the point?

There is a big difference between them. Israel is called Li Rosh (I have a mind) because they do it consciously, being aware of what is happening to them. We perform these actions and experience these them on ourselves with the Creator. We draw the light that reforms, and this is called “working on Galgalta and Eynaim, as it is written, “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus, 9:6), meaning everyone in bestowal.

Conversely, those who do not need it—because they lack that type of connection to Godliness, the point in the heart—are called “the nations of the world.” They do not feel they must correct the evil in them, their egos, that they must rise and be in Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator.

We are living in a very special time. The whole world is in crisis; everyone must be reborn, whether they want to or not.

True, but the rest of the world is pushed from behind through suffering. They do not, and will not have the pull from before. The rest of the world feels the necessity to get out of the troubles, while we, Israel, feel a necessity to draw toward bestowal, love of others, and through it achieve the love of the Creator. It is a fundamental difference. We are advancing through the positive force of bestowal, the pulling force, while the rest of the world is advancing through the pushing force that prods them. It is very different, which is why they cannot advance by themselves.

We must connect to them as Galgalta Eynaim toward the AHP, and pass on the bestowal to them through us. We must be their “light for the nations.” Although they will not understand what they are doing, they will connect to us, as Isaiah says, “And the peoples will take them along and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them as an inheritance in the land of the Lord” (Isaiah, 14:2). This is how they will be corrected.

What is the great cry that was in Egypt at the time of the Plague of the First-Born? Is it the cry of the Egyptians to the ego?

The Plague of the First-Born stands opposite the Keter; it is the conclusion of all the plagues. With each plague, it is as if another slice of the intention to receive is cut off from the will to receive. The intention to receive is a Klipa that is sorted and separated, and the will to receive remains bare and unused.

Malchut, Yesod, Hod, Netzah, Tifferet, Gevura, Hesed, Bina, Hochma, and Keter correspond to the ten plagues. The plague corresponding Keter is the hardest because it is as the Rosh (head) in relation to the rest of the blow, and also because its Aviut (thickness, will to receive) is the biggest. Of the degrees of desire—root, 1, 2, 3, 4—Keter is the strongest egoistic desire.

This is how we detach from the ego and seemingly “kill” Pharaoh. Precisely so does the ego begin to understand that there really is existence in order to bestow, and it asks the children of Israel to bless it.

It is not simple because we still have not fully grasped all of it. In the end, “There is none else Him”; a single force of the Creator that everything. Pharaoh is an angel that seems to be against us, but it, too, is in the hands of the Creator; it is how they work together. For now, this is how our correction takes place in the right-and-left we work with. But afterward we will learn how to work with both, in three lines. We learn it in relation to the Masach de Hirik, in the big corrections.

From The Zohar: And It Came to Pass at Midnight

Even “All the firstborn.” A firstborn is considered Hochma, and “All the firstborn” indicates that even the higher and lower degrees were broken from their dominion. All those degrees that rule by their power of Hochma, which is the wisdom of Egypt, as it is written, “All the first-born in the land of Egypt.”

Zohar for All, Bo (Come), item 118

Our ego suffers each degree on the highest level. Our will to receive is in us, and nowhere else, not even in Egypt. Everything unfolds within because man is a small world. We are beginning to feel that the angel of death is destined to join, as it is written that the angel of death will be a holy angel. This is why Pharaoh asks for a blessing because he still cannot connect by himself. And yet, he understands that a new era has begun.

Today’s Egypt is also showing signs of it. There are the pyramids that the children of Israel built, and there are pyramids that the Egyptians built, and they are built completely differently.

In relation to the process within us, it seems like a split personality. Do we have within us the plagued Pharaoh on one side, and Moses delighting in the exodus on the other?

Yes, these two forces are within us. We usually feel them when we ascend or descend. When we are egoistic, or when we do not know what to do with our ego, when we are in the dark. Conversely, when we are elated, working in order to bestow, like the Creator, the light shines for us. A beginner is like Moses returning from Jethro: he already discovered the Creator, so now he is retuning with both forces.

Do we experience the two forces?

In a struggle, we experience both the force of Pharaoh and the force of Moses. We already know how to make the force of bestowal reign over the force of reception.

Is this why it was said, “Come to Pharaoh”?

Yes, and each time the Creator makes the will to receive heavier, harder. He increasingly opens up the will to receive within us, and we must overcome it and continue.

^{[1] Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Kidushin, 30b}

^{[2] Midrash Rabah, Eicha, “Introduction,” Paragraph 2}

^{[3] Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Nashim, Masechet Nedarim, Chapter 9, p 30}

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Genesis, 44:18-47:27

This Week’s Torah Portion | Dec 21 – Dec 27, 2025 – 1 Tevet – 7 Tevet, 5786

In A Nutshell

In the portion, VaYigash (Judah Approached), Joseph asks his brothers to leave BenjaminJanuary 1 – January 7, 2016 – 3 Tevet – 9 Tevet, 5777having discovered the silver goblet that he himself hid in his belongings. Judah explains to Joseph that he cannot leave Benjamin behind because he is responsible for him and he promised his father to bring him back safe. Judah tells Joseph that they had already lost one brother, not knowing that Joseph is the one managing the event behind the scenes.

Joseph decides to expose himself to his brothers. He tells them how his selling for slavery turned out for the best, and that now he can support his family because he is in charge of all of Egypt. After the reconciliation, Joseph sends the brothers to Jacob with carts and goods, and asks Jacob to come to Egypt.

At first, Jacob cannot believe the story. But once the brothers present him with Joseph’s gift, he is delighted and wants to go to Egypt to see Joseph before he dies. On the way to Egypt, Jacob stops and offers sacrifices. The Creator appears to Jacob and promises him that his descendants will be a great nation in Egypt, and that eventually they will all return to the land of Israel.

Jacob and the brothers arrive in Egypt, in the land of Goshen, where Joseph meets them. He bursts in tears when he sees his father after all those years. Joseph tells them that Pharaoh wants to meet them.

To prepare for the meeting Joseph tells the brothers and Jacob to say that they are shepherds and wish to live in a separate place from the Egyptians, in the land of Goshen. Joseph introduces his father and brothers to Pharaoh, who agrees that they will live in the land of Goshen.

The hunger continues and Joseph provides for everyone. The Egyptians and all the others give up their money and eventually themselves as slaves to Pharaoh.

At the end of the portion Joseph establishes a system of taxation by which Pharaoh holds all the assets; he provides the Egyptians seeds for their crops, and they give him one fifth of the crop.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The portion describes both the internal process of man’s development, and the general process in the correction of the world. Man and the world are one, the particular and general are equal.

This is a special portion, which is still pertinent. It deals with the spiritual force entering an ordinary person and beginning to correct that person.

For the purpose of connection, a person needs both the physical force and the spiritual force, like heaven and earth. The two forces—of the Creator and of the creature—conjoin, and the human will grow out of them. This is really the purpose of our development, to connect the material substance with the human form, which is similar to the Creator.

It is not simple to make those two forces meet. Creation consists only of these two forces—the giving force, the Creator, and the receiving force, the creature, which the Creator created on purpose as a replication of Himself.

The two forces have to join so the creature becomes included in the Creator, and the Creator becomes included in the creature, where there is understanding, a connection between them. In that connection, the creature can present requests to the Creator, who understands them and bestows upon the creature through the mutual connection, through the part of the Creator that is in the creature, so the creature, too, can understand the Creator.

It is similar to relationships between people. Assume that we have no connection between us. But when we begin to tell each other about ourselves and sympathize with each other’s feelings, each of us receives a part from the other. The connection between us was made through the parts we share in common.

In the material world, too, we must regulate instruments to make them work on the same wavelength, so they “understand” one another. For example, for one computer to “understand” another, there needs to be a modem with certain limitations, certain registrations, and so forth.

It is likewise with the connection between the Creator and the creature. The whole purpose of creation is for the creature to ascend in Dvekut (adhesion) to the degree of the Creator. They achieve Dvekut according to their equivalence of form, equivalence of their qualities. In the end, the human must have the qualities of the Creator.

“The inclination in a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). We are Pharaoh; it is our nature, our “self.” The first quality of the Creator that appears in us is called Abraham. This is why he is called “the father of the nation,” meaning the quality of bestowal in a person.

Subsequently, out of the line of Abraham, the right line, the line of Hesed, emerges the quality of Gevura, Isaac. Finally, the quality of Tifferet—which is Jacob—comes out.

Jacob is the beginning of the formation of the right connection between Abraham and Isaac; this is what makes him the most special of the fathers, the senior one. He can combine the two forces, bestowal and reception, and arrange them within him in the middle line.

However, it is not enough. We must learn by ourselves how to implement these three lines that comes to us from above, from our creation. The portion describes how the upper force gradually permeates us like water percolates into the ground to get to the place where it is dry, to Egypt.

The heart of the problem lies in Jacob’s qualities, which are in his sons. With the exclusion of Joseph, they do not understand what they must do. Joseph understands that there is a need to unite all the sons. He tells them: “You will all bow to me because I am the Yesod, the foundation that unites all of you.” But they do not understand.

Although we contain all the qualities, and begin to connect them together, we do not understand how to do it. This is why the selling and buying teach us how to work with those qualities within us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah does not deal with historic events. Rather, it deals with man’s correction from within. Our whole process of work is about correction. First we absorb the quality of bestowal, love, affinity to others. Accordingly, we draw nearer to the Creator, we change, and we correct ourselves.

The portion tells us how things unfold, beginning with the selling of Joseph to Egypt. Joseph is the force of bestowal, while Egypt is our vessels of reception, the desires to receive. The desires to receive can work only as simple farmers, but Joseph is a quality that already knows how to exchange tools with others, how to sell and buy. He gives crops and receives something from the outside in return, from people who produce, such as instruments.

Through negotiation, giving and receiving, it is possible to connect, to gain wealth, and to ascend in degrees. The quality of Joseph enables it because it knows how to connect egoistic parts that cannot otherwise connect. This is what happens in the Egypt within us; this is also what happens in the physical Egypt.

We can see it throughout history. Jews who lived among the nations worked and operated in education, culture, but especially in commerce, which is a connection of all the nations. Once they developed commerce, they began to develop industry, just as it happened in Egypt, which suddenly began to thrive. Along with prosperity came a problem—the more you grow, the more you are prone to decline, to fall, to reveal the new evil.

This is where the years of abundance and the years of hunger come from. Only the force of bestowal within us can manage them. The more we advance in our correction, the more we go through the process in a good and proper manner. In this way, all the previous qualities of bestowal, the house of Jacob, move into Egypt, into the will to receive, which is enriched by them to the point that when Jacob comes with his family to Egypt, Pharaoh understands how much he gains by it.

When we begin to work with the vessels of bestowal—I help you and you help me—our ego develops. One who knows how to connect with others and exchange with them, similar to what happens within us, knows how to work with the force of reception and the force of bestowal together.

At first, this work is called Lo Lishma (not for Her sake), since a person is still profiting and thinks that all is going well, and therefore works with both forces. When the upper forces are included in a person, one begins to discover the development of the process, which leads to the sensation of exile and the exodus from Egypt.

This happens despite the fact that for the time being the two forces—force of bestowal and force of reception—work in us in favor of the ego, and Pharaoh is gaining riches. In other words, the part of Malchut, the fifth part of out of Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut, is truly being filled.

Our ego receives twenty percent of the general profit, and thus grows. It is the same for all the Egyptians, our egoistic qualities—they live and grow. The house of Jacob grows, too. It multiplies by adding to itself more of the Egyptian’s ego, the will to receive.

We add to the ego, growing and advancing, as preparation for the process of correction. A person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah while still in this world enjoys this world as well as the spiritual world, gaining from both. While in this world, a person comes to understand and to feel what is happening to him or her, and seemingly rises above others. Such a person gains also from the wisdom of Kabbalah, thus feeling that one has profited from both worlds. However, it changes after some time.

For now, however, both the house of Pharaoh and the house of Jacob are gaining riches. The profit goes to the qualities of the Creator and to the qualities of the creature; the will to receive and the desire to bestow mingle and work together. There is a great connection between them until they come across a crisis point that does not let them continue.

This is where the whole world currently stands. Until now we have been using the force of bestowal to develop technologies, techniques, instruments, and so on. We are in a global network of industry and commerce in almost every realm. And yet, we have reached the recognition of evil—the understanding that we must be better connected among us in order to advance further. But our egos prevent it from us.

This is what the children of Israel discovered in Egypt—the point that was to push them further, to a higher level, to the land of Israel. Our world, too, will have to emerge from this crisis and into the level of the general land of Israel, for everyone.

The world is now moving into the years of hunger, yet the majority of people refuse to recognize it. Where is today’s quality of Joseph, the quality that says we must collect during the good years so we have something to keep us through the years of famine?

At the time of abundance everything was great. Joseph was in Malchut, in Egypt. But when the hunger begins, begins the second half of the exile and in Egypt, and we are feeling the exile. This is when Joseph completes his role, he is no longer here.

The nine Sephirot—Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod—are the descent of abundance from above downward. Joseph is the ninth; he collects the previous eight Sephirot and brings them to Malchut. This is why he is called Joseph (from the Hebrew word Osef [collecting]). Malchut is our entire ego, the will to receive, the quality of the creature, us. Joseph includes all the previous qualities, the qualities of the Creator, abundance and light for all.

What does it mean that “a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8)?

It is the beginning of the process toward Moses. There are several stages in the process: first, the children of Israel discover that they are in Egypt. There is a difference between one’s personal work and the general process in the world; they are very different.

What is happening in the world today?

The current situation in the world is that we are at a tipping point. We must understand that henceforth Pharaoh takes control, so we will experience states of hunger and states of abundance. Joseph comes and says to Pharaoh that he has no choice but to establish a new order in Egypt, where everything is under his complete control. However, he must give them seeds and take twenty percent in taxes from them, and divide it so that Israel are poor.

In other words, our egoistic desires need to feel poor, that they have nothing other than belonging to the ego, for their mere survival, and what maintains them is the connection with Joseph. Joseph gives them seeds, the sustenance, life, and receives from them the tax. This is how we, too, must feel—that only our force of connection throughout the world unites us into one and allows us to advance, live, revive our souls, and that otherwise we are doomed.

First we must study these things. We must go through this entire process and advance toward the revelation that we must correct ourselves, including the Pharaoh in us. We must rise above him and escape from Egypt. The whole process aims toward escape.

The correction of Egypt entails two states: if we want to correct a certain quality in us, we must first stop working with it completely. Afterward we can advance toward it and work with it in a new way; perhaps less than before. For example, if we are forbidden to eat salt for health reasons, we first avoid salt completely, then resume eating small amounts of it.

We must escape Egypt so we can truly and finally unite. We cannot unite while in Egypt. Within Egypt, only the children of Israel can unite, and only in a certain manner. When we are in our egos and we try to build ourselves properly, to be in accord with nature, we suddenly discover that we are building Pithom and Raamses. Everything we build is swallowed up in the ego, the will to receive, so we never gain anything. Today we are seeing how everything we have built throughout the world is under a threat of tsunamis that will leave no trace of our work, and we have no guarantee as to the future of our children and grand children.

Can we know where this will lead?

Yes. After all, we can learn from studies that there is no point having children anymore. If there were no plan from above in that regard, one that we trust, it would really be so.

Joseph gave a special treatment to his family. He planned what they should say and how. This shows that he cared for them personally. In the spiritual world, is there such a thing as being “the favored one”?

Egypt cannot exist, and the world cannot exist without the children of Israel. Likewise, we personally cannot exist without contact with the upper abundance, and we are truly about to feel it. Only by joining everyone together, including the Egyptians, meaning the entire world, will we be able to advance.

Joseph says that the children of Israel should live only outside of Egypt, in the land of Goshen. It is so because to advance, a person needs to separate one’s vessels of reception from the vessels of bestowal. Otherwise, one might find that one is working only for the ego and will never be able to come out of it.

To manage Egypt properly, the qualities of bestowal must be outside of Egypt. This is why the children of Israel, who are in the land of Goshen, outside of Egypt, work in jobs that seem undignified in the eyes of the Egyptians, such as shepherds, since with them they seemingly nurture the qualities of bestowal in the qualities of reception. The Egyptians work in such a way that all the qualities of bestowal are good to fill the qualities of reception in them, the ego. For the Jews, the work is different; their entire ego, the qualities of reception, work to develop the qualities of bestowal.

It seems as though Joseph favored his family, as though he gave them preference.

This is correct, but even Pharaoh understood that it was for his own good, until the moment when they separate. As long as they are both in the will to receive, it is worthwhile for a person. It is a period called Lo Lishma. You have a part, and I have a part. You may have some more and I may have a little less, or the other way around, but we get along. We cannot do without each other.

This is how we advance until we reach a crisis, a barrier we must cross with effort. That transition will happen at the foot of Mt. Sinai, where the human is born.

From The Zohar: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama

“Then … approached him” is the approaching of world in a world, the approaching of the lower world, Nukva, Nefesh, Judah, to the upper world, Yesod de ZA, Ruach, Joseph, so that everything will be one. Because Judah was a king and Joseph was a king, they approached each other and united in one another.

Zohar for All, VaYigash (Judah Approached), item 22

There are many discernments throughout the process of Joseph, beginning with his selling, his arrival in Egypt, the sending away of the brothers and the reacceptance. In this process we connect within us the two qualities, that of the Creator and that of the creature.

The problem of connecting the qualities of bestowal with the qualities of reception in a person is not so simple. We see it in our friends, especially among beginners. We see how difficult it is for them to accept these spiritual qualities, which they have never felt before. They begin to feel that there is bestowal, love, and connection here, a new way of perceiving the world, through new “spectacles,” and it is not so easy.

Read the Original Portion Here »

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Genesis, 41:1-44:17

This Week’s Torah Portion | Dec 14 – Dec 20, 2025 – 24 Kislev – 30 Kislev, 5786

In A Nutshell

The portion, Miketz (At the End), begins with Pharaoh’s dream about seven healthy and well-fed looking cows coming up from the Nile, followed by seven meager and malnourished looking cows. In a second dream, Pharaoh sees seven plump and wholesome looking ears of grain, followed by seven ears that were thin and scorched, and the thin ears eat the plump ones.

None of Pharaoh’s counselors could solve his dreams. The chief cupbearer, who was saved, remembered Joseph and his gift for deciphering dreams. He took the opportunity and asked to bring Joseph out of prison. Joseph came and solved Pharaoh’s dream. He said that there would be seven years of wealth and abundance in Egypt, immediately followed by seven years of hunger, and that Pharaoh should prepare for them.

Joseph also suggested how Pharaoh should prepare for them. Pharaoh appointed Joseph in charge, second only to the king, so he would set up the warehouses.

Indeed, the seven plentiful years were followed by seven years of famine, and the entire nation turned to Joseph to relieve their hunger and help them through it. Everyone, including Jacob’s sons, who were in the land of Israel, came to Egypt due to the hunger.

Jacob’s sons came to Joseph and did not recognize their own brother. At first, Joseph thought they were spies. Afterward, he sent Simeon to prison and said to his brothers, go back, but without Simeon. Joseph hid a goblet in Benjamin’s belongings and declared that if the thief who stole the goblet is caught, he will be put to death, and everyone will be punished.

The brothers returned to Jacob and told him of Joseph’s request that their brother Benjamin should go down to Egypt with them. Initially, Jacob refused to send Benjamin back to Pharaoh because he has already lost Joseph and Simeon, but he finally agreed to let him go.

The portion describes the different predicaments that Joseph puts his brothers through, causing them to separate, but the brothers reinforce their unity.

The portion ends with everyone being in Egypt, Benjamin is accused of stealing the goblet, and Joseph decides to keep him as a slave.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

These stories represent different states that we must go through as we advance in the correction of our souls. The Torah tells us how we must perform the correction.

There is no need to correct our bodies because they are part of the animal kingdom and exist as do all other animals. Our souls, however, we must beget out of the current state, and this portion narrates how we should approach the correction and achieve the birth of our souls.

It is written, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice.” In other words, our foundation is the evil inclination, our ego. When we recognize the ego and begin to work with it, we experience first hand the entire process the Torah describes.

The previous portions dealt with the point in the heart that awakens and develops in a person. This portion deals with how that development takes place. We all come from a broken Kli (vessel), which must be corrected, connected. This is the correction by which we achieve the rule, “love your neighbor as yourself; it is the great rule of the Torah,”^[1] inferring the connection of all of us into a single Kli, when all the people are as one.

First, the people of Israel will achieve unity. Subsequently, it will serve as “a light for the nations” and will connect everyone to that Kli. Thus, “They shall all know Me from the least of them to the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:33). Knowing means attaining, as it is written, “And the man knew Eve, his wife” (Genesis 4:1). This is the goal we must reach, and it is achievable only through unity.

When we connect, we discover how wicked we are, how undesirable connection is to us, and how we prefer to avoid it. Who among us thinks these days about brotherly love, about “love your neighbor as yourself”? Although it is written in the Torah, although it is the great rule on which the entire Torah stands, no one engages in actual implementation of it.

We have virtually forgotten that single rule without which the whole Torah is meaningless. The portion explains how we should approach the correction stage by stage. All the Mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah are but internal corrections of ourselves toward achieving the principle that is the great rule of the Torah, and shift from love of man to love of God, as Baal HaSulam wrote in Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah) and The Arvut (the Mutual Guarantee). Love of man is the Kli within which appears the Creator’s upper light, and the revelation of the Creator to the creatures is the purpose of creation, as it is written, “And they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.”

Whether we want to or not, we go through states in which we descend to a state called Pharaoh. In that state, the ego appears. Pharaoh, the ego, appears precisely when we want to unite, when we understand that the purpose of creation is to obtain the connection, the unity. The more we try to accomplish it between us, the more we discover Pharaoh within us. Pharaoh is a great and important degree in our progress toward attainment of the spiritual degree, the human level.

Life as we know it is on the animate level. To reach the human level we must be connected like Adam HaRishon (Adam, the first man) who included the whole of humanity within him. Adam’s soul divided into 600,000 souls, which then multiplied so that in each of us there is a spark of Adam HaRishon. The human level is the level of collecting those sparks in each of us. However, we are still on the animate level and must elevate ourselves by ourselves from the animate level to the speaking level.

The portion explains that we can rise to the speaking level by recognizing Pharaoh within us, with the egoistic desire that wants only to receive, and to give nothing. We approach it and come to know it precisely when we are in a state that he “feeds” us and we are helpless against him.

It is the same in our lives today: if we leave our egos, we will have nothing to eat. If, for example, we abolish all competitiveness between us, the envy, lust, and pursuit of power and respect, the world will stop developing. Therefore, we need these forces, as it is written, “Envy, lust, and honor deliver man out of the world.”^[2] These forces deliver us from this world, and into a higher, more spiritual world.

We must come to know Pharaoh, our ego, in a deeper sense. We must bring ourselves to want it although we naturally do not. That desire contradicts our natural inclination.

If we aim toward connection with people, understanding that the purpose of creation is to achieve love and connection, we seemingly oppose it. Therefore, the ego necessarily appears in us. On the other hand, the ego understands that we must use all of our good qualities.

This situation instigates a split into two forces—the force of Jacob and the force of Pharaoh, or the force of Joseph and the force of Pharaoh. Gradually, we learn to discern between those two forces in us and understand how they complement one another, how Joseph mingles with Pharaoh, and how Pharaoh mingles with Joseph.

Joseph is “the righteous Joseph.” He is Yesod, who collects all the good, all of our good qualities of bestowal—the giving and the love. Pharaoh is the correction of all the bad, egoistic qualities. These two qualities must unite in order to complement one another so the bad qualities become as good ones, so the evil inclination becomes as the good inclination, as it is written, “The angel of death is destined to become a holy angel.”^[3]

These processes happen within us. We notice that we are confused, like to Pharaoh, who is confused by his dream. A dream is a very high degree in one’s progress. It occurs when a person is confused and disoriented. In the transition from state to state, a person does not understand what is going on, having left the previous state but not yet reached the recognition, the new understanding, and therefore one is confused.

Anyone who engages in self-scrutiny, or even in more superficial research, experiences periods where one is still not in control of the new perception. At the same time, the researcher must leave the previous perception or he or she will not be able to rise to the new level. This is why that state is called “a dream.” Similarly, in our world, between each two days there must be night, darkness, departure of the intellect, reason. The dream comes to help us prepare to perceive what the new day holds in store for us.

Here we can see the mingling that exists between spiritual qualities, the qualities of the Creator and the qualities of the person, the creature. The qualities of the Creator, who aims only to bestow, are called “the right side.” The qualities of the creature, who aims entirely to receive, are “the left side.” The connection between them occurs when Jacob and his entire household go down to Egypt.

Jacob is in Egypt and mingles with the Egyptians in order to later elicit from there all the Kelim (vessels), to elicit all the power from the ego, except for the ego itself. This state is called “And afterward they shall come out with great substance” (Genesis 15:14).

The entire portion deals with the descent into that state. A person may have good desires but will still be unable to progress with them because these desires are too thin.

When we begin to study, we uncover a desire to advance and understand ourselves, to know the reality that governs us, the upper reality. On the one hand, we feel we do not have this power. On the other hand, we feel that the process we are going through is preinstalled in us, so it is inevitable that we should discover the evil inclination, Pharaoh within us. Our good qualities are included in our egoistic qualities, and this is called, “for the famine was in the land of Canaan” (Genesis 42:5). Therefore, we have no choice but to go down to Egypt.

When we do not see spirituality as a strong foundation, we become included in our will to receive. The will to receive then grows and becomes crueler and more intense, to the point that it seems as though it is about so swallow us. But when we advance in the right direction, we find Joseph that already exists within our will to receive.

Joseph is already in Egypt, and through it, a person becomes included in the ego. This is why there is always a kind of partition between the qualities of bestowal and the qualities of reception.

Joseph says to Simeon that the brothers are spies, and sends the rest of the brothers to their country. However, they have no choice but to return to Egypt. It happens because we have no choice but to work with the ego, the will to receive, or there will not be any progress.

Our ego is help made against us. If we do not invert it to work in order to bestow, we will not be able to enter creation and discover the upper world.

In fact, we work only with our own qualities. This is why this wisdom is called Hochmat HaKabbalah (the wisdom of reception), since we nonetheless receive within the vessels of reception, the Kelim that were once cruel. We will feel the spiritual world only after we correct our Kelim.

As just said, the brothers return to Joseph for the second time. However, this time Joseph gives them a Kli, his goblet. What he received from Egypt, the goblet, he hands over to the house of Jacob, thus pulling all of them back, and all the children of Israel go down to Egypt. Joseph connects to Egypt in a special way—in the quality of Yesod that characterizes him. This quality concentrates within it all the upper qualities that enter Malchut—our will to receive—through it.

Joseph marries the daughter of one of Pharaoh’s spiritual advisors, Osnat, and has two sons, Ephraim and Menashe. This means that with the entrance of the children of Israel to Egypt, Pharaoh begins to change. It seems as though a connection is made that works in Pharaoh’s favor, since the whole world comes to him, to Malchut—the only one who can provide nourishment. But this nourishment is actually received from the first nine Sephirot, not from Malchut.

The first nine Sephirot are included in Malchut because they first have to be included in Pharaoh, Malchut. A person absorbs these qualities as one who acquired new good qualities and good behavior, and uses them in order to receive. Such a person uses what he or she has acquired in one’s own favor—deceiving people, penetrating good environments and stealing wherever possible.

We must go through such a period when our the good qualities are “captive.” And although we use them for our own pleasure, they still gradually work on us, just as with the children of Israel in Egypt. When the children of Israel came to Egypt, they connected to Pharaoh so that afterward, when the plagues would come over Pharaoh, they would still feel that they can no longer stay with the general will to receive and work in favor of their egos, and then they would run with great substance.

The connection is between the qualities of the Creator and the qualities of the creature. The nine Sephirot of the Creator enter the tenth Sephira (singular for Sephirot), Malchut, the quality of the creature, our ego, but it does not happen instantaneously, but gradually.

In this portion, Joseph tests his brothers, separating them. They overcome it and reunite, then he separates them again. It seems that currently the world is in a similar situation: we understand that we have to connect, but we can’t, due to our egos. What can we learn from this portion about the direction that the world should take today?

This portion serves as a big warning sign, especially to the people of Israel. The people of Israel have to come down to Pharaoh. That is, we must go out to the world and help it rise. If we fail to do it, it will be bad because this is not the way of Torah.

We must direct all of our teaching, all the light, toward disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah throughout the world. It is called the “Messiah’s horn.”

It is written in The Zohar that only through the power of The Book of Zohar will the children of Israel come out of exile. However, we are still not in exile; we must first enter it. Exile is a state where we want to connect but do not know how to do it because something is stopping us. We search for the ego, which is stopping us, and we must find the Pharaoh within us and between us. This is why we must first connect among us as much as we can, as in “all of Israel are friends.”^[4]

We must circulate the Integral Education of “love your neighbor as yourself,” throughout the nation and explain in a scientific manner everything that Kabbalah discloses—that we must obtain unity and mutual guarantee or our situation will truly be desperate. We must convey to the world the same message, too, or the whole world will come to us with demands. They will not even know why, but they will be right because it is according to the laws of nature. This demand of the world is “the war of Gog and Magog,” the war of the end of days.

This is why the house of Jacob goes down to Egypt, and this is what we, too, must do. We should begin with connecting among us, with feeling our inner Pharaohs, and begin to tend to them. Through the light that reforms we must study the Torah in such a way that it becomes to us a reforming light. In other words, we will draw light through our desire to unite.

When we study Torah, we aim only for connection. We do not aspire for knowledge or wits, but only for unity among us. It is the rule that the Torah requires of us, “love your neighbor as yourself; it is the great rule of the Torah.” It is the only reason why the Torah was given.

“I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice because the light in it reforms it.” We must observe it, and today the whole world demands it of us.

Thus, we will finally arrange our nation. Our nation was founded on the unity of exiles from Babylon around Abraham. Maimonides writes that they connected based on the rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” and that this is why they became a nation. Once we have lost that principle, we have stopped being a nation. Instead, we have become a collection of exiles. We are still in exile, in a kind of collection, so we must circulate these words and notify everyone as quickly as we can.

If we circulate through all the nations the method for connecting everyone in mutuality, as nature requires, as the current crisis is demanding, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will see how differently everyone begins to relate to us. They will be willing to connect and to help.

What do years of abundance and years of hunger mean, and why is the number seven mentioned twice?

It is a process we must go through, in ascents and descents, once on the animate level and once on the vegetative level. It is similar to the shattering of the two Temples. In a descent from above, from the degree of Jacob, we need to descend once on the level of Mochin of Haya, and once on the level of Mochin of Neshama. It is the same as with the two Temples, the first Temple and the Second Temple, the same as the ruin that happened to us in the spiritual world, the world of Nekudim.

Will every person have to experience it personally?

To an extent, each and everyone experiences this process. But when we advance together toward connection it is not a problem; we can go through this entire process with joy.

If we disseminate the wisdom and the world hears and understands, will it still be necessary for the world to go through this process?

It is the recognition of evil. This is how we come to know our disease. Just as a physician uses diagnosis to determine a person’s illness and prescribe the proper medicine, we rise to a higher degree. Therefore, we need not be afraid. If we all march toward mutual guarantee, toward unity, we will have no problems along the way because even things that will seem undesirable will work toward our attainment of the degree that has been prepared for us— Yashar El (straight to God), toward unity.

Read the Original Portion Here »

^{[1]“love your neighbor as yourself. Rabbi Akiva says, ‘It is a great rule in the Torah’” (Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Nashim, Masechet Nedarim, Chapter 9, p 30b).}

^{[2]Mishnah, Seder Nezikin, Masechet Avot, Chapter 4, p 27.}

^{[3]Mentioned in The Writings of Rabash, Vol 1, “What Is Torah and Work in the Path of the Creator?”}

^{[4]Mishnah, Shekalim, Ikar Tosfot Yom Tov, Chapter 8, Mishnah 1.}

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Genesis, 37:1-40:23

This Week’s Torah Portion | Dec 07 – Dec 13, 2025 – 17 Kislev – 23 Kislev, 5786

In A Nutshell

In the portion, VaYeshev (And Jacob Sat), Jacob dwells in the land of Canaan. The protagonist of this portion is Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son. Joseph was gifted with a knack for prophetic dreams. In one of them, he sees himself ruling over his brothers. He tells them about it and turns their envy against him.

His brothers lead the cattle to Shechem to graze there, and his father sends him to them. On his way he meets a man and asks him about his brothers: “I seek my brethren” (Genesis 37:16). By the time Joseph finds his brothers they are already conspiring to kill him because of their envy. Reuben manages to prevent them from committing the murder and the brothers decide to throw Joseph in a pit, instead, in order to sell him to the Ishmaelites. A convoy of Midianites that passes by takes Joseph with them down to Egypt.

When Joseph arrives in Egypt, he hides in the home of Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph but he refuses. She avenges by saying that Joseph tried to force himself on her, and he is thrown to the dungeon.

In the pit, Joseph meets Pharaoh’s two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. He also discloses his gift for prophetic dreams. He predicts that within three weeks the chief cupbearer will be released, and the chief baker will be hanged. Joseph asks the chief cupbearer that upon his release he will go to Pharaoh and tell him that he, Joseph, is jailed for no reason and that he should be released.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

This portion contains a profound spiritual message. It narrates the correction of the soul, which is man’s purpose in life, and the reason why the Torah was given. Initially, the evil inclination appears, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created for it the Torah as a spice,” for “the light in it reforms it.” “Reforming” means returning to a state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” That is, it brings a person back to the quality of bestowal, similarity with the Creator. This is what we should achieve, as it is written, “Return, Oh Israel unto the Lord your God” (Hosea 14:2).

The Torah demonstrates how the ego, the will to receive, keeps changing until it is corrected. In the example shown in this portion we see how all our qualities connect, then separate, manifesting imbalance among them until they beget more advanced qualities, closer to bestowal.

Jacob is the beginning of the quality of bestowal within us. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the three patriarchs. Jacob is actually the senior, containing both the desire to receive and the desire to bestow within us, as it is only possible to elicit the middle line using both. The middle line, Jacob, is still not attributed to the level of execution in us, but to the level of decision making.

The expression of Jacob’s execution level is his sons, from Reuben, the eldest, to Joseph, the youngest. And precisely in this hierarchy do the qualities within us hang down. This is how our ego, in all its (still incorrect) forms, is corrected. The one who completes them is Joseph, the righteous. He gathers all the previous qualities into the quality of Yesod (foundation), which is called “the righteous Joseph,” or “a righteous, the foundation of the world” (Proverbs 10:25).

On the one hand Joseph is using all his previous qualities—Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod—but on the other hand he needs to lead them into Malchut. Malchut is the egoistic will to receive, Pharaoh, Egypt, symbolizing the entirety of our ego.

Once a person has reached a state of discovering within these qualities of bestowal—from Abraham, the quality of Hesed, through Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and through Yesod, who is Joseph—it is time for one to part from the fathers and belong to the will to receive. First, one needs to permeate the will to receive, and then the will to receive permeates the person.

Once we are permeated with both qualities—reception and bestowal—we must see that first the quality of bestowal enters the quality of reception and begins to correct it. Only then does it begin to take out of the quality of reception, the part of the will to receive that can be corrected.

It is similar to an educator working with a band of criminals. He can take several of the more advanced members of the group, who are willing to work with him, and bring them out to correction. In other words, when entering the will to receive, it is exile. And when exiting it, one comes out with “great substance,” meaning with several “felons” who desire correction and consider it redemption. Once they are corrected, a person has “great substance” because one has acquired additional power in the general quality of bestowal.

Thus, through all those exiles and redemptions we correct the entire evil inclination. This is also how we understand the whole process, how we come to know the plan of creation, and how we become similar to the Creator. Joseph the last of the qualities of bestowal, goes through many processes in order to detach from the quality of bestowal and prepare to enter the quality of reception, i.e. Egypt.

This is the reason for his contention with his brothers. They hate him and reject him because they cannot understand what he wants. They do not understand how the youngest son can be the greatest. But Joseph is different from them.

Banim (sons) is threetimes Yod–Hey–Vav–Hey, in three lines. These are the twelve sons. Not only is he the greatest because he is willing to connect with them, but they also bow to him, surrender to him. As long as they do not enter Malchut, while he is already mingled with Egypt, they accept it because they see how that situation will later be realized in the will to receive for the purpose of correction. It follows that we go through stages that seem to us completely incorrect and bad, just as we do not understand the brothers’ conduct with Joseph.

Jacob is suffering but is helpless. The brothers wish to kill him and lie to Jacob, and strangers save Joseph from the pit, albeit their intention is to sell him. This is how we become detached from our previous qualities. We accumulate those previous qualities within the qualities of Yesod, the quality of Joseph, and we separate ourselves from using them. Put differently, we leave the land of Canaan and enter Egypt.

In Egypt, when we come in contact with the will to receive, when the quality of bestowal enters the will to receive, the will to receive immediately senses how much it can gain and profit from it. If it were just another form of reception it would not matter all that much. But if you can bestow in order to receive, as well, then you are like a merchant. You calculate every manner of bestowal that you add to the will to receive by connecting to everything, and through negotiation you can gain profits from them for yourself.

In this manner we discover that the quality of Joseph can be very lucrative to the will to receive. Such a person feels that he or she becomes shrewder, more powerful, more useful, and more successful than others. One does not behave aggressively in order to receive, but rather obtains by deliberation: “I will sell you this and you will sell me that.” It is a development of the ego.

This is why when the quality of Joseph mingles with our will to receive, as Joseph mingled with Egypt, it brings great profits to those who are with him in Egypt, according to the story, or to the person, meaning to one’s self-centered form.

In fact, the profit is so great that a person develops a desire to use it in order to receive, but the human in us cannot agree to it. This is what happened when Joseph arrived at the house of Potiphar. When he arrived at his house it was fine, but with his wife it was past the limit because here the human in us sees there is a desire to exploit it in order to receive, meaning to cut the person from one’s foundation, and this is something to which one cannot agree. When a person disagrees with it, one feels helpless, imprisoned, incarcerated.

That sensation lasts a long time and grows through the alien “forces,” the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, in the state of being in prison. These qualities within us are in touch with the Joseph in us. They bring him to Pharaoh and accompany him. The quality of the chief baker is destroyed because it belongs to the ego’s forces of bestowal, with which Joseph understands he cannot work. But the ego’s forces of reception—the chief cupbearer, which is tantamount to wine—are the ones that awaken. The chief cupbearer does not save Joseph right away, but only after a person awakens from the fall, from the descent.

In order to rise from one degree to the next, we dream. A dream is a state of losing the previous state and attaining a new one. A person needs to be inverted, to be reborn.

There are three states in a person: laying down, sitting, and standing. Laying down is the state of dreaming. When in that state, the head, body, and legs are all on the same level, indicating that a person has neither intellect nor wisdom. But it is precisely in this form that one acquires the Kelim (vessels) of the next degree and becomes inverted, just as a newborn baby emerges from its mother’s womb: while in the womb it is with its head up, toward birth it turns upside down, and once it’s out, it turns upward once again.

Laying down means losing all the Mochin (light of Hochma, wisdom) within a person. It is in this way that one should transfer from one state to the next. On the one hand, the previous degree is lost, and on the other hand, one begins to acquire the next degree, which becomes a whole new world for that person. This is the inner vision with which one begins to understand the meaning of “tomorrow,” the next degree to which one enters.

It is nothing like the dreams in our world. Rather, here the Torah is telling us about the entrance to a higher level. In the dream state, one sees oneself in more advanced forms, knows how to use such qualities as the chief cupbearer, the chief baker, and Pharaoh, and can advance with them because they are already formed within.

In the end, when Joseph is incarcerated because of Potiphar’s wife, he discovers within him the qualities of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. Precisely because he kills the chief baker and nurtures the quality of the chief cupbearer, he arrives at the house of Pharaoh.

Throughout the evolution of the generations there is hatred between brothers—between Cain and Abel, between Isaac and Ishmael, and between Jacob and Esau. This hatred is defined as Klipa (shell/peel) and Kedusha (sanctity/holiness). In this portion, there are twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons, which are man’s qualities, but there is such hatred among them that they are willing to kill the quality called Joseph.

However, the hatred is only toward Joseph. They understand one another. Each of them represents a different quality within us. We have many qualities, but no knowledge how to integrate them together in the middle line. We cannot understand how to work with the various qualities together, meaning with our egos, our will to receive.

The interesting thing about Joseph is that he tells his brothers, “A person has an egoistic desire, not the qualities of bestowal that you have. That is, I can connect your qualities to the egoistic desire; I know how to do it.” Therefore, each one who represents a certain quality knows that through bestowal he will achieve something, from the right or from the left—to Hesed, to Gevura, to Tifferet, to Netzah, to Hod, except for Yesod.

The entire structure of twelve brothers, twelve sons of Jacob, is that they all work above the ego, above the will to receive, bestowing in order to bestow. It is so because the middle line, Jacob, who still belongs to the Rosh (head), to the degree of the patriarchs, begets all the qualities of the brothers except for that of Joseph, and they are all in bestowal, too, from below upward.

Questions and Answers

So why did Jacob understand it and even love Joseph?

Jacob loved Joseph because he was a continuation of him; they were both in the middle line—Jacob in Tifferet and Joseph in Yesod.

What does it mean that each brother represents a certain quality?

The twelve sons of Jacob are qualities that relate to bestowal. Actually, they are eleven because Joseph has no quality; he is merely a collection of those qualities.

The idea behind the quality of Joseph in us is that one can take all those qualities, merge them in different combinations, and use them with one’s ego. In other words, one can begin to work with the ego so it would work with those qualities, as well, so it would support them. In this manner one can correct oneself. These qualities do not understand how it is possible to steal in order to bestow.

What is a quality? Is stealing a quality or are anger and laziness qualities?

Hesed, for instance, is the quality of bestowal. In a state of Hesed, a person is in Hassadim (mercy). Such a person gives, contributes, and does all that he or she can. This begs the question, “How can one’s ego join one’s Hesed?” A person can give but only if it is in order to gain profits. In fact, this is how Joseph is used in Egypt, first in Potiphar’s house, then with Pharaoh.

Joseph brings them the quality of Hassadim and they use it. Egypt becomes rich and thriving through Joseph because all the egoists understand that bestowal makes everyone benefit egoistically.

However, the qualities of bestowal themselves do not understand how it is possible to use the ego in order to support them. This is the essence of the contrast between Abraham and Isaac, who loved Ishmael because the pure quality cannot maintain its clean form and at the same time connect with Malchut, the will to receive.

There is a very special and complicated process here of hatred and misunderstandings between them. But Joseph can connect the qualities of bestowal to the will to receive so that eventually it will benefit the qualities of bestowal. The brothers—qualities of bestowal within us—do not understand how this is possible, so they object. We, too, do not understand how this is possible.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to use the qualities of bestowal correctly in order to correct our egos. Besides Kabbalah, no one deals with it because no one has the three-line method. All religions, faiths, and methods are seemingly above the ego; we ostensibly rise above the ego as though we are not selfish and are all in bestowal.

Does that mean that the “self” lives between the two lines?

Yes, only the qualities of Joseph and Jacob. Jacob is in this quality in the middle line in the Rosh, and Joseph is at the end of the middle line, at the entrance to Malchut, because he is Yesod. In Joseph there is contact with the house of Pharaoh from the start, and then with Pharaoh himself. This is why he is misunderstood; the brothers cannot feel what he wants to do. They think that his contact with the ego, the will to receive, will harm them.

We, too, are the same inside, and so is human society. We can see that everyone hates the wisdom of Kabbalah. No one understands what it does, and no one even knows what it’s for because Kabbalah deals with strange things—man’s correction, the correction of the soul. It seems unreasonable for one to take those sublime qualities—bestowal and Godliness—and connect them to the ego, to the desire to steal, rape, to the worst levels of the ego. But it is for this reason that this method is called “the wisdom of Kabbalah (Heb: reception),” as it teaches how to use the worst will to receive in order to achieve love precisely through it.

All other methods cannot achieve man’s correction, a state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is why everyone forgets this rule of the Torah and do not deal with it. Only the wisdom of Kabbalah corrects us. We must remember that all those who work “above” the ego, every kind of religion and faith, do not understand how it is possible to correct man’s ego, so they perform superficial gestures without diving into the ego and genuinely tending to it. They do not deal with the essence: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice.”

In this portion we see for the first time how difficult it is to deal with it. Henceforth there will be a reason to all the ruins, transgressions, the problems in the desert, and all the wars. The problem that still remains is how to properly join the qualities of bestowal with the qualities of reception in us—to correct our egos.

Can we deduce from that regarding what is happening in the world today? After all today the world is also in a type of slavery—we are slaves to our egos. Who is today’s Joseph?

Today’s Josephs are those who have the method for correcting the ego, which is appearing in the world through the upper force. In other words, it is those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah, as it is written, “I have created for it the Torah as a spice” because “the light in it reforms it.” The method of the light is the wisdom of Kabbalah, and it is very difficult to explain it to the world. It is also difficult to accept that there is a way to correct the ego, the mutual hatred, the crisis we are experiencing, which is a result of our egos.

Joseph was not trying to explain anything; he was simply sold to slavery, went into Egypt, and mingled there. Why do we need to explain it today?

Today this is what we need to do—explain by disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is called “the Messiah’s Shofar (horn).” We must circulate it and spread it throughout the world because by that we become included in the nations of the world like Joseph in Egypt. In this manner we sow the sparks of bestowal that will make everyone begin to understand the reason for all the troubles until they, too, can rise.

The troubles are intensifying and there is no way to avoid them because our hanging down, our evolution, is continuing. There will be many more troubles we will not be able to avoid. The present state of affairs is a cause for war. The war of Gog and Magog stems from the same reason, as do all our wars. We are standing at a tipping point, and this portion is very pertinent and meaningful.

The focal point of the problem is hatred among brothers (unfounded hatred), and this is the state we are in today. On the one hand, it seems as though there is nothing we can do; hatred exists among people, as well as toward the wisdom of Kabbalah. Moreover, it is expected to intensify because it is hard for people to understand the wisdom of Kabbalah despite all the explanations. On the other hand, this very point reveals the two opposites within us: the soul and the body. It is impossible to disconnect them, and Joseph is the point that connects them.

Read the Original Portion Here »

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Genesis, 32:4-36:43
This Week’s Torah Portion | Nov 30 – Dec 06, 2025 – 10 Kislev – 16 Kislev, 5786

In A Nutshell

In the portion, VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent), Jacob wants to make peace with Esau after running away from him and being with Laban for many years. Esau sends angels to Jacob, and they inform him that Esau is headed toward him with four hundred men.

Jacob is alarmed by the looming encounter, and at night, an angel appears before him. Jacob struggles with it and defeats it, but is hurt in the thigh sinew. The angels alert Jacob that his name has changed as of that moment from Jacob to Israel. When Esau comes, they embrace and make peace, and Jacob moves to the area of Shechem.

Later, the portion speaks of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, who is abducted by Shechem—the son of Hamor, the Hivite—who wants to marry her. Jacob’s sons allow the marriage on condition that all the men in the city perform circumcision. Once they perform the circumcision, Jacob’s sons kill all the men, bring Dinah back, and loot the city.

The Creator instructs Jacob to move to Beit El, where the Creator blesses Jacob with many descendants and the inheritance of the land. At the end of the portion Rachel dies when she delivers her second son, Benjamin. Isaac also dies and is buried by his sons, Esau and Jacob.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

This portion deals with very deep scrutinies that one makes within the soul in order to correct it from the intention to receive, from its egotistical form. We need these scrutinies for the soul because it was broken in a process known as “the breaking of the vessels,” the ruin.

Once a person achieves the degree of Jacob, which is still a degree of Katnut (infancy), a person discovers that it is impossible to move forward. Having risen above the ego, above the will to receive, and having reached a state of Katnut, called Galgalta and Eynaim, leaves one nothing with which to advance. In order to advance, one must find within oneself additional inclinations, additional broken Kelim (vessels). Upon their correction, the person will be able to rise along with them. In other words, whenever we are in a certain state, we must first descend, mingle with the negative, and only then rise to the positive.

The portion speaks of precisely that state. That is, a person who reaches Jacob’s state and cannot advance further must reconnect with the Esau within—the evil inclination that is still not corrected. Such a person heads toward it despite fearing that the egotistical desire might suddenly overpower, that perhaps he or she will not be able to come out of that state.

This calls for a special preparation. The text narrates that Jacob divides everything, the women, the children, and all the people with him. In other words, one sets one’s desires straight, arranging all of one’s qualities in an internal preparation for the disclosure of the flaws within, in order to properly cope with them.

Questions and Answers

It is written that Jacob comes out with a gift, a prayer, and with war. He prepares every tactic.

True, he divides his entire household. He is told that Esau is headed toward him with four hundred men. Four hundred is a complete measure, four Behinot (discernments), and each Behina (singular of Behinot) is a hundred fold its power.

On the one hand, Jacob fears such power. On the other hand, he knows he has no choice. To advance toward Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator, he must go through those stages.

At night, Jacob struggles with Esau’s minister and undergoes a special correction, which seems in him as a flaw in the thigh sinew. But he discovers that that flaw actually keeps him. For this reason, he receives a blessing that all the revelations he will have from the part of Esau in him—symbolizing his negative qualities—will appear only in a manner of cause and consequence, to the extent and in the form he can correct without failing. Although additional failures await ahead, such as with Dinah, he is guaranteed that in the end it is precisely the big ego that the Creator has created in him that will assist his progress.

Therefore, following the meeting with Esau, Jacob moves to Shechem equipped with greater forces, and is now about to rise from the degree of Jacob, which is the Katnut of the soul, having only vessels of bestowal, to Gadlut (adulthood), to Israel.

Israel means that all of one’s desires, all the qualities that have appeared thus far are aiming straight to the Creator. One who aims to resemble the Creator, to cling to the Creator, and therefore performs actions in Jacob’s Ladder, reaches a state called Yashar El (straight to God), Ysrael (Israel). Going by another way will be as it is written, “They are all as beasts” (Psalms, 49:13). If we do not engage in correction of the soul using the wisdom of Kabbalah, we are all as the “nations of the world,” as Esau, uncorrected.

Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, is already connected to the next degree. This is why Shechem finds her so attractive. There is rape here, coercion, which means that vessels of bestowal come under the vessels of reception. Although she is in Din (judgment) as her name, Dinah, implies, this great will to receive comes over her. This is why there are only two corrections that Jacob’s sons can perform: the first is the circumcision of Shechem’s sons; the second is killing them, meaning departure of the upper light from within those Kelim, which renders them dead.

What does the looting of the city imply?

A city is a place of the will to receive in Kelim that compel you to detach the will to receive from the light of life. Otherwise you will not shift into correction of the will to receive. In our world, if you kill someone it is considered a felony. In the spiritual world, when the upper force takes all the pleasures from our desires, from our Kelim, removing the sensation of life and vitality, and we feel as though we are dead, that sensation of death helps us achieve life. In this life we connect to the upper light and fill ourselves with eternal pleasures, in attainment of Godliness, and we feel our eternal, complete life.

The killing mentioned in the portion relates to the question why we are killing. It is similar to a person with cancer. That person fights to kill the tumor. Therefore, it depends what type of killing we are talking about, to which discernments within us we relate. In this case, the killing of the city is in one’s best interest; it is a correction.

Would it not be enough to settle for the circumcision?

No. Circumcision is when you divide your desires into good and bad. If after the circumcision there are still desires that cannot be corrected, you must detach them for the time being from the light, and this is the killing. By that you save Dinah, who must be connected to the middle line for the time being, to Jacob, by which he ascends to Beit El (the house of God).

The Creator says to Jacob, “Now you are ready to rise to the next degree, called Beit El.” When Jacob comes there he receives the blessing, vessels of bestowal, the forces with which he can maintain the degree and achieve the revelation of spirituality on that level.

Jacob receives the blessing that the whole earth, the entire desire, will be his. That is, in the end he will gradually be corrected, and then “the whole earth is before you” (Genesis, 13:9). Thus, even if the desires are by and large dominated by other nations, meaning they are not connected to bestowal and love of others, it is still possible to correct them into having the aim to bestow.

The end of the portion speaks of the death of Rachel and Isaac.

Both Esau and Jacob take part in Isaac’s burial. This is the correction of the previous degree, which must be buried. Burial is the construction of the next degree atop the previous one.

Jacob and Esau are conflicting qualities; what does it mean that they embrace?

There are many levels of connection between qualities, even among conflicting qualities. Nearing means an embrace of the right, an embrace of the left, a kiss, a high Zivug (coupling), and a low Zivug, such as “His left is under my head, and his right shall embrace me” (Song of Songs, 2:6). In other words, there are many kinds of correction of the evil inclination.

Jacob is willing to embrace with Esau, to come in contact with him after the corrections he has undergone at night. One who goes through these corrections—in very complicated situations, at night, with Esau’s minister—is ready to cope with the evil inclination, to sort it, and to correct those parts that one can now correct and rise to a higher level.

There are always exits and entrances, like Jacob who leaves and returns to the land of Israel, who escapes Esau, has experiences, and is now strong enough to cope.

What did Jacob go through in Laban’s house?

This is how we come out, degree by degree. If a person is on a certain degree and needs to climb up to the next spiritual degree, that person must take some more of the ego, of one’s will to receive, and correct it into working in order to bestow. The newly corrected desire joins the soul, and thus a person ascends a degree. In the degree that has now grown, a person receives additional revelation of Godliness, greater connection with Godliness, and the ascent continues until a person reaches the final state, where one’s entire soul is corrected.

Why is Jacob certain now that he will have the strength to cope with Esau?

Jacob received a blessing from Esau’s minister; he connected to that force in a similar manner to the story with Laban. He received that strength from the left, and he can correct it into working in order to bestow. It is called a “blessing.” A blessing means that alongside the revelation of the ego comes the upper light, helps a person sort out the will to receive, the new, corrupted desire, and scrutinize which part of the desire can be added to the new state, and which part cannot. Then, with the new addition, a person achieves a new degree.

The Creator blesses Jacob with many children. What does it mean in spirituality?

Many children means that the Creator blesses a person with correcting all of one’s desires, which will rise out of the big Malchut, Malchut of Ein Sof (infinity), out of the entire creation, so one may correct them into working in order to bestow. This is why he is called “Israel,” Yashar El (straight to God), actually dominating the whole of creation, in a tendency toward mutual bestowal.

You Shall Not Plow With an Ox and an Ass

“The only desire of the degrees of impurity is to attack the holy degrees. They all lurked and attacked Jacob, who was holy, as it is written, ‘and Jacob came whole.’ First, the serpent bit him, as it is written, ‘he touched the hollow of his thigh.’ It is said about Esau’s minister that he was riding a serpent. Now the Hamor [ass] bit him, Shechem the son of Hamor, which is the Klipa of the right.”

Zohar for All, VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent), item 146

We must always consider the negative forces as an opportunity to rise to the next degree. There is no evil in the world, not even now with all the troubles and problems that are emerging. The important thing is to know how to use these forces correctly, as the Torah teaches us. Our problem is that we are not working according to the Torah. If we acted according to what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains regarding how to perform these corrections, we would see the world as nothing but opportunities for better states.

Who makes the correction, the Creator or the surrounding light?

The surrounding light makes the correction but the person needs to draw it. Why did we receive this instruction? After all, Torah means instruction. Although the light in it reforms, it follows our drawing, according to our understanding of how we need to be corrected. We must do all the acts of scrutiny, division, and sorting with ourselves and with the general reality, and then ask for the correction. Although we do not have the power of correction, we, like little children, must constantly exert to understand and sort things out as they should be. This is our work.

If angels are forces, what does it mean to struggle with an angel? Is it a person fighting gravity, magnetism?

A person is told—as is written in the abovementioned excerpt from The Zohar—that an angel comes to a person either from the right or from the left. There are different angels that a person must deal with in a certain manner in order to add them to the middle line, called Adam (man).

The important thing is how we relate to the states, correct?

What else is needed? We are in Nature, which in Gematria is Elokim (God). The laws of Nature or the commandments of the Creator are one and the same. The Torah teaches us how to use everything within us, all the elements, qualities, the internal, as well as the external.

Especially now, we are in such a confused world that no one knows what to do; we have no idea what tomorrow will bring and it seems vague and threatening. If people knew what is written about it in the Torah they would understand that we have an opportunity to rise to the next degree, to a completely different level, to the revelation of Godliness. The world is already quite close to a great and special correction.

Is it up to the Creator or up to us?

It is up to us. There is one goal before us, and two ways to get there: the left way is the path of suffering. The right (side) way is the path of Torah, the path of the light that corrects. The left way means going with the rod that develops us and compels us to advance. The right way means drawing the light that reforms.

In any case, our ego, the will to receive, the evil inclination in us, must be corrected. How it will happen depends on the way we will choose and on our understanding that everything that appears is only so we may correct ourselves, meaning to make us draw the light that reforms.

This brings us back to the wisdom of Kabbalah, which we must use because it is the interior of the Torah, the law of truth, the law of the light. And precisely by using it correctly, we can draw the light that reforms. This path will spare us blows because we will advance nicely and easily from degree to degree up Jacob’s ladder.

And Jacob Sent Angels

“‘For He will give His angels charge over you, to keep you.’ When a person arrives in the world, the evil inclination immediately comes along with him and always complains about him, as it is written, ‘sin crouches at the door.’ Sin crouches—this is the evil inclination. ‘At the door’—the door of the womb, meaning as soon as one is born.”

Zohar for All, VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent), item 1

This is how we are born, with a small, self-centered will to receive. Even after we develop, we are still little animals, as it is written, “They are all as beasts” (Psalms, 49:13). Although it appears to us that there are very wicked people in the world, this is not considered wickedness. Wickedness appears when a person truly wants to harm the public, to harm humanity. An ordinary person is neither good nor bad; he is inconsequential. Such a person is operated by Nature, and there is nothing that comes inherently from the person.

Today this evil inclination is appearing throughout the world because Elokim, which in Gematria is Nature, is showing us that the whole world is interconnected, therefore we, too, must be connected. Through this connection we will reach equivalence of form, Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator. If we resist that connection and act to the contrary, egotistically, becoming more closed within and removed from others, this is precisely how we become wicked.

The evil inclination first appears when the world begins to manifest itself as circular, connected, integral, global. Yet, we have not “jumped in”; we have not united and have not connected. We are still immersed in our egos, in the evil inclination, the exact opposite of the condition that the Creator is presenting before us.

We are at the threshold of destruction, yet people will not change their views.

This is the problem. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is surfacing after thousands of years in concealment. The idea is that through it the people of Israel will understand that it has a very important role to play, being “a light for the nations” (Isaiah, 42:6), and that it must correct itself. We are merely a transition for the correction of the entire world. If we do not realize the correction in time, the whole world will demand it of the Jews without even knowing why, and hatred toward Jews will intensify. Therefore, we should act fast.

What exactly is it that we need to correct?

We need to be a society that is conducted in mutual guarantee, living by the conditions that existed at the foot of Mount Sinai, where all are ready to unite “as one man with one heart.” Thus we will become a nation, and only under that condition will we continue to exist.

For now, we truly exist by the grace of God, “on probation,” until we implement it, as mentioned in Baal HaSulam’s essay, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar.” But our time might run out and we will receive no further extensions, and then we will not be able to live in the land of Israel; we will have to flee because this land will reject us once again, as it is written in the Torah, in The Zohar, and in many other places.^[1]

Today we have a great opportunity, when we all demand the correction in the world. Although we do not know what it is, we, as owners of the method and as the ones in possession of the Torah, must reveal it to everyone, but first and foremost to ourselves. This is why we must unite, be “as one man with one heart,” connect together as a nation, connect to Yashar El, and be “the nation of Israel.” We need to grip to the middle line and begin to rise with it toward Dvekut with the Creator, toward greater and greater bonding between us in “love your neighbor as yourself,” brotherly love. Once we have lost that love, the Temple was ruined, so we must return to that state and pull after us the rest of humanity.

So is Jacob connection and Esau separation, and is our task to overcome separation through connection?

Precisely. These are two conflicting forces, and we need to “enthrone” the Jacob in us over the Esau in us, and do the same in our society. People need to understand the message, the essence, the purpose of this conflict, and act accordingly.

If You Faint in the Day of Adversity

“But one out of a thousand is the evil inclination, which is one of those 1,000 damagers, which stand at the left, because he rises up and takes permission, and subsequently descends and puts to death. Hence, if a man walks on the path of truth, that evil inclination becomes his slave, as it is written, ‘Better is he that is a lowly one who has a servant.’ At that time, he rises and becomes an advocate and speaks before the Creator in favor of the man.”

Zohar for All, VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent), item 185

Read the Original Portion Here »

^{[1] “When Israel do not engage in Torah, the left intensifies and the power of the idol worshipping nations grows. They suckle from the left, rule over Israel, and inflict upon them laws that they cannot endure. Because of that, Israel were exiled and scattered among the nations” (Zohar for All, BeShalach (When Pharaoh Sent), item 306).}

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Genesis, 28:10-32:3
This Week’s Torah Portion | Nov 23 – Nov 29, 2025 – 3 Kislev – 9 Kislev, 5786

In A Nutshell

The portion, VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), begins with Jacob leaving Beer Sheba and heading for Haran. He stops for the night and in his dream he sees a ladder “set up on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis, 28:12). The Creator appears before him and promises him that the earth on which he is lying will be his, that he will have many sons, and that He will watch over him. The next morning, Jacob sets up a monument in that place and calls it, Beit El (House of God).

Jacob comes to a well near Haran, where he meets Rachel and her father, Laban the Aramean, who offers him to work for him for seven years in return for permission to marry Rachel. At the end of the seven years Laban deceives Jacob and gives him Leah instead. He compels Jacob to work for him seven more years, after which he gives him Rachel and Jacob marries her.

Leah has four sons from Jacob, while Rachel is barren. Rachel gives to Jacob her maidens, who give birth to four more of his sons. Leah delivers two more sons, until finally Rachel conceives and gives birth to Joseph.

Jacob asks Laban to pay for his work. Laban gives him some of the flock, although they had a different agreement. Jacob shows the flock the troughs, and they conceive and deliver. Some of the lambs are born striped, some are speckled, and some are spotted.

Jacob feels that Laban is not treating him as before. At the same time, an angel appears before Jacob and tells him to return to the land of Israel. He leaves without notifying Laban, and Rachel steals the idols. Laban chases them in search of the idols, catches up with Jacob on Mount Gilead, and rebukes him for fleeing and stealing the idols.

Finally, they make a covenant on the mountain. Jacob is preparing to enter the land of Israel, he sees angels accompanying him, and he calls the place, Mahanaim (two camps).

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Kabbalah always interprets stories as stages in a person’s inner growth, according to man’s purpose in this world—to discover the Creator, to achieve His degree, meaning to achieve Dvekut (adhesion).

Thus far, all the portions related to man’s initial point, Abraham, which is scrutinized through study, the group, connection with the teacher, and the books of Kabbalah. Subsequently, a person discovers the next stage, Isaac, followed by Ishmael, and then by Esau.

The portion, VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), speaks of Jacob, who is the middle line. Abraham is the right line, and Isaac is the left line. Jacob is special in that the middle line contains all the qualities, the good, as well as the bad. In the middle line, the evil inclination and the good inclination merge in order to achieve the degree of the Creator, our goal.

The work in the middle line is done entirely in faith above reason, in bestowal, above the ego. This is the quality of Jacob in a person, and this is how it develops. Jacob leaves Beer Sheba, meaning a certain place, an inner state, and heads for Haran, which is another stage along the way. On the way there he must shift from state to state through the day and the night. In other words, Jacob experiences internal, spiritual ascents and descents.

Each ascent means that a person rises above one’s stony heart, above the stone he had placed under his head, and performs a special operation known as “sleep,” which means raising MAN. Subsequently, in a dream—in connecting to one’s higher degree—one discovers the ladder, “Jacob’s ladder,” which is the ladder of degrees. The ladder consists of 125 degrees that a person climbs up to the house of God.

While one still cannot see the entire ladder, one sees that it reaches the heaven. This is the discovery of the beginning of the way, obtained in the middle line. This is why the Creator appears before him and tells him that He is giving him an Eretz (land), meaning Ratzon (desire), with which he will now begin to work.

In other words, the whole of the desire will be sanctified, in order to bestow, to approach the Creator, and Jacob is guaranteed that he will achieve it. This is why Jacob sets up a monument in that place, at the foot of the ladder, and determines that this is the house of God (Beit El). Henceforth, he ascends directly to the purpose of creation.

As always, when a person begins to work with the desire, he or she begins to change. On the one hand, more of the evil inclination appears. On the other hand, the person corrects it through the good inclination.

An empty desire is called a “pit.” When it is full, it is called a “well.” We see in stories in the Torah that special states of ascent from state to state take place next to wells. This happens with Abraham, Isaac, Eliezer, Moses, and Zipporah.

From The Zohar: And He Looked, and Behold a Well in the Field

“When Jacob sat by the well and saw that the waters were rising toward him, he knew that his wife would come there. It is the same with Moses: when he sat by the well and saw the waters rising toward him, he knew that his wife would come there. And so it was: Jacob’s wife had come there, as it is written, ‘While he was speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep. … And it came to pass, when Jacob saw…’

“And so it was with Moses, as it is written, ‘And the shepherds came and drove them away,’ and his wife, Zipporah, came there, since the well caused them that. The well is the upper Nukva. And as they met in the upper Nukva, they met with the Nukva in this world.”

Zohar for All, VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), item 95

The Zohar puts a special emphasis on the parallels between Jacob and Moses because here there is an extension of the middle line that has been built. In the previous wells that our fathers dug, they were still in the right or left lines. Here, however, they are in the middle line.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Jacob’s arrival at Laban’s (in Hebrew, Lavan means white) indicates the upper whiteness, a very powerful light, literally the light of Ein Sof (infinity). Although it is written that Laban was wicked, it is because he appears opposite the whole of the will to receive before it has been corrected. This is why he is titled “wicked.”

Obviously, Laban is very interested in Jacob. He agrees, and he is very pleased because it is actually the governance of the Creator appearing from above, both opposite the good inclination, as well as opposite the evil inclination. That governance acts in everyone.

Laban, the upper light, the governance opposite the whole of the desire that the Creator created, wishes for the entire desire to be corrected in a person, not merely the small part known as Rachel, the small Nukva (female), but also Leah, the big Nukva. This is why Laban immediately goes for the entire desire, opposite his upper whiteness. This is the desire for which he seeks correction.

This is why he deceives; it is the governance of the Creator. This is how He tricks us each and every time, manipulating us, and we understand that this is precisely how we are straightened out: through ostensible deceits. The deceit is because we ourselves are “twisted.”

The result is that a person is compelled to take whatever is available, understanding that even if this is not the beloved Nukva, one must still take it and rise to it, despite the difficulty and the mismatch with one’s own degree.

Is Nukva a deficiency, a big desire?

Yes, Nukva is a deficiency. It is written ^[1] that a man’s wife is as his own body. The body is called a Nukva, the desire (in the soul) with which we work.

In the story about the striped, speckled, and spotted, it seems that Jacob knows how to set up the genetic process. The work here is in three lines—striped, speckled, and spotted—which are the three worlds.

“Striped” refers to the world of Adam Kadmon, the highest world, where Laban is most dominant. Then comes the “Speckled” (world of Nekudim), where the breaking took place. This is where the black dots over the white background come from. It is specifically through them that the revelation comes to a person. The “Spotted” is the world of Atzilut, opposite Adam’s soul. Through it, we correct ourselves and discover the entire Godliness.

Jacob, the middle line, set up his work in such a way that the evil inclination and the good inclination conjoin, meaning the intention to bestow with the egotistical desire to receive. Jacob can work on the stone, on the stony heart; he can connect within him all three worlds—striped, speckled, and spotted. Through this work in the middle line we truly ascend to Beit El, the house of God.

It is clear that in this manner, Rachel cannot bear children duet to lack of Hassadim, the lack of clothing for the light of Hochma. The light of Hochma cannot reach the small Nukva, only the big one, Leah. Yet, a person advances nonetheless, where by delivering more and more Kelim (vessels) on the current degree, one corrects one’s will to receive for the next degrees, called one’s “sons.”

Thus, Jacob has four sons from Leah, then more sons from Rachel’s maidens, and finally Rachel gives him Joseph.

When Jacob asks for the pay he deserves, he wants to receive the upper light in order to bestow into his Kelim, but Laban insists that everything is his. Indeed, the entire will to receive that was created, was created opposite the great upper light, which is Laban. Jacob is still not ready for it because he is still called “little Jacob”; he must fight and ascend many degrees before he becomes great and merits the name “Israel.”

Therefore, it is inevitable that Jacob and Laban will part. Jacob seemingly escapes from Laban, and Rachel steals the idols because they are her powers, her Kelim, which will have to be corrected.

What is the meaning of Rachel’s theft?

In spirituality, stealing means receiving what does not belong to me (in relation to my current state), but for which I will pay later. I cannot receive what I do not deserve. There is no bias in spirituality; everything works according to the rule, “They borrowed from Me and I collect.” ^[2] In other words, I can receive now and pay later because I cannot do it with my current strength. This is how we grow.

Children deserve to receive everything from the family, although they do not bring any income. In the next degree, when the children become parents, they repay.

Jacob flees and Laban catches up with him near Mount Gilead, where they eventually make a covenant. Although along the way Jacob follows the middle line, which is seemingly inconvenient for Laban because he wants disclosure in all the Kelim, it is clear that the disclosure must be limited, in small portions. This is why there was a conflict between Jacob and Laban, and why they made the covenant. Man and the upper force form a special system, in which we gradually advance until we achieve congruence with the upper force.

What are the angels that appear in the portion when they ascend and descend on the ladder, and when they accompany Jacob?

Angels are forces in a person on the way toward the revelation of the Creator in the corrected Kelim, according to the law of equivalence of form. We constantly acquire new forces over the will to receive, according to the ego, until we are corrected into aiming to bestow, from hate to love.

The way to reach the Creator is through “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the great rule; it is our entire correction—love of others. A person who advances on this path and constantly ascends has assisting forces. On the Eve of the Sabbath we say (as written in the Sabbath service text), “Come in peace, angels of peace, angels of the Upper One.” This symbolizes the end of correction.

Is it a force from within or are these forces that the Creator operates?

These are forces that the Creator operates, which is why they are called “angels.” Angels are as the still, vegetative, and animate in this world, which help us sustain ourselves. An angel might be a horse or a donkey, forces that accompany us and help us carry out tasks, but which are managed by the human degree in us.

What is a discovery of an angel? When a person finds an angel, is it a discovery of the force that operates on the person?

A person discovers forces by which to continue rising from degree to degree.

The Creator seems to always appear in dreams. What is a dream?

A dream is a higher degree to which I currently cannot rise. However, I can connect to it by annulling my Kelim: my mind, my brain, and my emotions. It is as though I enter a state of Katnut (smallness/infancy), usually lying down, in order to achieve a higher degree.

When I put the stone under my head, I thus cancel all my perceptions and desires, and walk into a dream. That is, I enter a state of Katnut specifically in order to obtain a higher degree, since everything I have acquired in the previous degree is unfit for the higher degree.

In spirituality there is a gap between degrees. Each higher degree is the complete opposite of its predecessor. This is why there is the concept of going through the night, through a dream, and struggling with the angels, particularly with Esau’s angel. Each time, a person has to overcome one’s ego and sort out with what one should continue to the next degree, and what one should refrain from using in the meantime.

We can see many connections here to the upper degree: a dream is a connection; the stolen idols are a loan for the next degree; Laban is a degree that is still unattainable; is everything a kind of connection here?

The connection happens specifically now, when Jacob wants to enter the land of Israel, when Malchut connects with Bina, when the will to receive connects with the intention to bestow, when such a great correction unfolds in the desire. It is therefore clear why he calls the place Mahanaim (two camps), a place where the Creator is already present, the actual beginning of the ladder, which one has reached through the angels called “angels of the Upper One.”

From The Zohar: And Behold a Ladder Was Set On the Earth

“A ladder implies that he saw that his sons were destined to receive the Torah on Mount Sinai, since Sulam [Ladder] is Sinai because Mount Sinai is, as it is written, ‘Set on the earth with its top,’ its merit, ‘Reaching to heaven.’ All the Merkavot [structures/chariots] and the camps of high angels were descending there along with the Creator when He gave them the Torah, as it is written, ‘And behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.’”

Zohar for All, VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), item 70

We climb up the ladder of degrees only by using the ego, the will to receive, the hatred, Mount Sinai. The ladder is built according to the exact same principle as that of the Tower of Babel. It is the whole of the ego that the Creator created, because “I have created the evil inclination.” When we correct it, we rise above it through the “spice of Torah,” using all the Torah, all the light, Laban, meaning the upper whiteness, which we use in order to correct ourselves until we reach heaven, a state where our entire will to receive is as bestowal, love.

Does this portion relate to what is happening in the world today? Are we, too, facing a degree we do not understand?

Today, all of us, throughout the world, must understand that first and foremost, we are connected; there is no way out of it. Because we are connected, we must use all our powers. Also, we must understand that it is impossible to keep using only the left line, the egotistical line by which we have been growing thus far, and by which the entire world has been progressing. Rather, now we must also find the right line within us, and build the middle line out of the two. This is why the situation we are in right now is just as though we were standing at the foot of the ladder.

The compelling, on the one hand, and the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, will ultimately bring us to a state where we will finally feel that we have two angels, one on the right, and one on the left. This is when we will ask, “Come in peace, angels of peace.” We will ask that they will come and make peace and put some order between us, as well as turn the egotistical qualities in each of us into qualities of bestowal. Thus, we will be able to connect to one another through those angels. All the corrections are from above. When they arrive, our desire becomes the house of God, Beit El.

According to the story in the portion, it seems that things were easier in the past. There were only Jacob and his father. Today it feels as though there are many people and it is very difficult to communicate.

The Torah seems to present nothing but a story, which we must actualize in our world. The Torah narrates it as an allegory, and we need to know how to use it.

Do we have a place where we can act?

Today the whole world is one big Esau. Opposite that, we must “extract” those people who engage in the interior part of the Torah, who are from the right side. It is said about them, “For you are the least of all the nations” (Deuteronomy, 7:7). However, they are the ones with the method.

Those from the left should also be extracted, and from the two of them together, the middle line needs to be built, “For they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah, 31:33). We and the entire world must rise up to Beit El.

We see that there is another falsehood here. How can a Kabbalist know for certain that we are not being fooled again, tricked into the next degree? Or is this how it is should be?

Why not? Jacob places his entire reason as a stone under his head and wants to climb up in a dream. He cannot climb up the ladder except in Jacob’s dream.

Does this mean that otherwise the ego will not let it happen?

I dedicate myself to this ascent. This is how I rise to the upper degree because otherwise I will not be able to leave the previous one. It always happens under the force of bestowal from above, from the force of reception known as “faith above reason.”

When we study, it sometimes feels as though we truly are completely operated, but it is very difficult to feel it in our everyday lives.

This is why we have a means called a “group.” In the group we learn how to annul ourselves before others in the group, before love of friends, love of others. In this manner, we learn to dedicate, to leave our minds and hearts, and to connect with the others “as one man with one heart,” literally in one desire, until we cannot tell one’s own from that of others. We simply become one of everyone.

Can that state exist in a family or among spouses?

It can, provided that the whole world is drawn toward it. We learn how to act this way in a group because toward the group, we can measure it. A person can advance with people with whom one studies and works in mutual spiritual work. When everyone in the group strives for it, each acquires all the powers that exist in the group and can ascend. Any other way is impossible.

Read the Original Portion Here »

^{[1]Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Bechorot, 35b
[2]Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Beitza, 15b.}

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