The Creator enjoys playing with man just like a father enjoys playing with his child. In our world, nature has instilled in parents a desire to bestow to their children. However, this comes from the spiritual root. This corporeal example can help us understand the spiritual world. Just like we enjoy caring for our children, the spiritual parent, which is the Upper System, enjoys caring for its spiritual children. We are those children; we just don’t see it.

When playing with a child, the game itself does not matter. What matters is our attitude toward the child and his attitude toward us in return. When the child stops reacting, the game stops being pleasant to us. We only receive pleasure when the child receives pleasure, when he understands what we do for him, and when he appreciates what he receives from us. This requires a similarity of our desires and qualities. In our world, we don’t understand this because the bigger the children grow, the further they grow apart from their parents. However, in the spiritual world, it’s the other way around: the older the child gets, the closer he becomes to his parent and the stronger he bonds to him.

However, this doesn’t mean that the child becomes dependent on his parent. The child’s dependence ceases just as it does in our world, yet the connection between them strengthens. This same thing happens to parents and children in our world who share common activities and a goal; they unite.

The Creator and creation are connected through a common goal because they want to fulfill one another. They want to return pleasure to each other so that each would understand how much the other values what he has received and to discover love in this reception. Otherwise, we would never feel and understand the Creator.

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The Machsom is the boundary where I receive the force of bestowal. This is exactly what we want to attain – unity among us and the force of mutual bestowal. The moment we succeed at this, it will mean that we have passed the Machsom.

How can we imagine this common Kli, our spiritual vessel? Let’s say each of us comes holding one glass of water and we all pour it into one big bucket. Then it will be impossible to differentiate where is your part, where is mine, and where is someone else’s. This is called unity and mutual inclusion of the desires, which goes on until we all attain a certain volume or measure called “Se’a,” inside of which we begin to feel life.

It’s similar to how there’s a difference between an aquarium and a large water reservoir in that beyond a certain boundary, a water reservoir starts to have its own life, whereas life in an aquarium must be supported artificially. Someone has to feed the fish, supply them oxygen, and clean the aquarium. But if the water reservoir reaches a certain size, it begins supporting its own life. You no longer have to supply it with food and oxygen; it starts to live naturally, on its own.

This boundary is a critical landmark: beneath it things start to die, and above it, things come to life. “Se’a” is the boundary I reach while ascending from below upwards; once I exert a certain amount of effort, I cross the boundary and enter the realm where life begins to support itself. This is exactly how we have to unite our desires.

When we want to revive a dead lake or a lifeless body, we have to put in additional efforts in quantity as well as quality, until we succeed in bringing it to life.

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The Creator is the force of bestowal and love, and one who loves feels great suffering if he is unable to delight his beloved. The suffering that comes from the inability to bestow is much greater than the suffering that comes from not receiving. It is written, “A cow desires to nurse the calf much more than the calf desires to nurse.” The Upper Level greatly suffers when it cannot give of its perfection to the lower level due to the latter’s inability to receive it.

The Creator is the desire to bestow, give, and love. However, we shouldn’t think that there is no lack in this desire – there is. Only it doesn’t come from a lack of fulfillment, but from being unable to share its perfection. This is why the Creator created the will to enjoy – it was in order to fulfill it and express His love toward it.

Our desire already contains all the prerequisites necessary for receiving all of the Creator’s Light and love. However, in order for us to understand what He does and to feel what He gives us, we have to become similar to Him, reaching the same level and qualities. To do this, we are missing just one component – our independence, our own desire to feel His love and to accept Him as the one we love.

Unless this aspiration comes from us, it can’t be considered love. After all, you can’t buy love; you can only buy different services. For example, I pay money at a barber shop, a medical office, or a restaurant, and the people there take care of me from the bottom of their hearts. However, they do it because they love money, not me. What can I do to make them love me? This is a question we cannot answer.

Real love is possibly only if I am completely independent of others. Yet it is written that the Creator is “the first and the last.” Therefore, He faces a problem of how to create us while making us completely independent from Him, and at the same time, making us such that we can develop love for Him until we feel, “I am the first and I am the last” in this regard. This means that the ten Sefirot of Direct Light clothe the ten Sefirot of Reflected Light and complement each other.

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Had my people heeded me in this generation, when heresy is increasing, they would have studied The Book of Zohar and contemplated it with nine-year-old children. … By this they would revoke all the harsh sentences and would extend abundance and Light.
– Rav Yitzhak Yehudah Yehiel of Komarno, Keeping Mercy, Chapter 4, Teaching 20

There are no limitations on studying The Zohar. Hafetz Chaim used to evoke everyone to study The Zohar, even unmarried men.
– Rabbi Yosef Ben Shlomo of Pojin, Yosef’s Building Supplements

The Book of Zohar does not say anything about this world, but speaks only of the Upper Worlds where there is no time as in the material world. Spiritual time is a change in qualities.
– The Book of Zohar, Chapter “VaYetze,” Item 62

The Book of Zohar (The Book of Radiance) was named thus because it radiates the Light of the highest Source. Those who study The Book of Zohar are influenced by this Light and receive revelation of the highest knowledge and the secrets of the Torah.
– Rav Moshe Cordovero (RAMAK), Know the God of Thy Father, Item 2

Prior to the coming of the Messiah, heresy and Epicureanism will increase in the world. The advice for it is to meticulously study The Zohar every day, even if one does not understand what one is saying, since studying The Zohar can cleanse the heart.
– The Light of the Upright, Clear Myrrh

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 122
The most important thing to do during the study of The Zohar is to ask myself what state I have to be in for the revelation to occur.
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“Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 170, Lesson 67
Malchut is simply a point which “expands” and gains volume when the souls elevate within it.
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“Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 41, Lesson 19
Only when we elevate above pleasure can we begin to understand what true independence and freedom are.
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A question I received: When I read The Zohar I can’t help but materialize the images. What can I do about it?

My Answer: Those who start connecting with The Zohar feel its special power. However, a person needs to go through a period of preparation first. This is why we didn’t start studying The Zohar right away. We have gone through a lot and taken several years to prepare. This preparation helps us to have the right attitude toward The Zohar so it will influence us in a different manner. People who are just now joining our Zohar studies without this preparation need to connect to us and annul themselves better. Then, they will receive the same kind of preparation that we have gone through.

When reading The Zohar, people usually feel deeper inner examinations than they would when thinking about the corporal world of food, sex, family, money, power, and knowledge. The Zohar has a much stronger and deeper effect than that. However, some people simply lack a connection with us. Those who are really prepared can also experience the same disturbances. However, because they are already “sinners,” meaning that they revealed “sins” for the purpose of correction, they will be able to quickly deal with these disturbances.

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Mrs. Norma Livne, who is our long time peer, student, friend, and one of the managers of the Spanish Department at Bnei Baruch as well as our representative in Latin America, has received the prize and the certificate of “Lion of Judah” for her contribution as a public activist in Mexico. This is the first time in history that an ambassador’s wife has been awarded the prize.

We wish our friend Norma continued success in her political and public work!

Friends, co-workers, and all of Bnei Baruch

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There are two forces influencing us. One is our ego, which constantly grows, separating us from one another and making us hate each other. But on the other hand, there is an external force that causes us to be interconnected and interdependent.

Even though I never chose to be globally connected with the entire world and I do not want this connection, the Creator still arranges it that way. So on one hand, there is a negative force operating in me, which is directed against everyone else, but on the other hand, all the other people surround me so closely that I have nowhere to hide.

These two forces intentionally pressure me and I don’t have any way out of the situation. Anyone in the world would gladly break all the ties between all the nations and civilizations. But we are yet to discover that we depend on some of the tiniest nations, which seems not to matter. The entire world cannot manage to deal with some pirates in Somalia as well as many other, similar terrorist groups. Why can’t we just destroy them? It’s because the Upper Force will not let us. We all depend on one another and there is nowhere to hide.

There are one hundred and eighty countries in the world, and we are yet to see the kind of problems that will arise once our dependence on one another is revealed. Imagine what happens when your leg is injured; it seems like no big deal, but your head stops working, your attention is gone, and the light pain does not let you function properly.

The reason we are unable to manage a single terrorist country is because we are not unified. If the entire world were to act together, to close their bank accounts and stop buying oil from those groups, that would spell their end. What would these terrorist countries be able to do? They would have nothing. The world could close all the frontiers around them, leaving them no entrances and no exits. We should do like our organism does when a foreign body penetrates it, such as a splinter; the organism immediately isolates it inside a capsule and starts expelling it until the infected place bursts and the foreign body comes out together with all the pus.

However, we do not do the same to the terrorists because there is no world consent. We have to learn from nature what we need to do with them. There is no need to destroy them. We just need to come to a common agreement that we are not to communicate in any way with this part of the common organism. This will make them change very quickly because social influence is the strongest influence there is.

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A question I received: Do we attract evil forces upon ourselves if we read about them in The Zohar?

My Answer: When a person reads about all the wicked people or forces described in the Torah, such as Haman and Amalek, he should understand that all of them are within him. When he corrects these qualities within himself, he also corrects their manifestations that seem to exist in the outside world.

Then, he won’t experience any problems, but on the contrary, he will attract the Light instead of having to be awakened by suffering. If a person aspires to correct himself by making efforts in uniting and studying, then he awakens the evil within him and corrects it, similar to how one catches a snake that has crawled out of hiding.

Our work is to remain in the right line and be ready for the awakening of the left line as much as possible in order to ascend by using it. If we don’t reveal the left line – the snake that has many names and shapes, then we won’t be able to advance.

You should cling to the right line with all your strength because then, regardless of how much the left line is revealed, it will be for your benefit. And the most important thing is not to be afraid of anything. You are treading a very narrow bridge — the revelation of the Light of Hassadim in the Light of Hochma. The bridge from Malchut to Bina is a very narrow line.

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