A question I received: What does it mean that the Creator gets angry? If we’re talking about invariable spiritual laws, why does The Zohar portray the Creator as one who possesses human qualities, such as anger, envy, etc?

My Answer: The Torah uses the language of man to tell us what we feel and attribute to the Creator. I often use a computer as an example of this. Why do we get angry at a computer when it is nothing but pieces of metal and plastic? It has no intelligence, but merely executes its programmed commands perfectly. All its actions are correct.

If you press the wrong key, or if you lack the knowledge of how the program functions, you can smash the keyboard in frustration all you want, but the computer will still respond with the same error every single time. A computer isn’t a person who can change its behavior. A computer is inanimate, and cannot change. Yet, again and again, you relate to it as you would to a person, questioning it in rage: “Why aren’t you doing what I want you to do?”

We attribute to a computer our own qualities, our personalities, wishing for it to change as we do. In truth, we are uncorrected and we change, while a computer is not uncorrected; hence, its behavior is unvarying and always correct.

The same rule applies to the Creator. We’re not talking about the Creator Himself, but about “Bo-Re” (“Come and See”), that is, our perception of the Creator. We discern and conceive the Creator in our desires (vessels of reception, Kelim). And that is why we ascribe to the Creator the same qualities and reactions characteristic of us.

It is therefore written that the Torah speaks the language of man. In order to explain to us our correct behavior and to help us change, we need to imagine that the Creator undergoes changes though in truth He does not. Perfection cannot change, otherwise it would not be perfection.

By ascribing to the Creator our qualities and regarding Him as though He changes His attitude toward us, we can see ourselves in two manifestations: One, the way I am as is, the way I appear from the side and two, in the changes I undergo either in a constant or transient world.

This perceptual duality which allows us to imagine as though something changes outside of us is a great gift from the Creator. Because of it we come to perceive a different dimension, to understand the spiritual world, to enter into its perception freely and independently.

Therefore, our perception that reality exists and changes outside of ourselves is a true salvation from the prison cell of our world (the sensation of spiritual claustrophobia). It is a fundamental point which grants the creature the opportunity to rise above its creation, to become human: Adam, similar to the Creator.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/27/10, The Zohar

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