Question: How do we understand Rambam’s words that “you may not reveal the meaning of ‘slavery’ to women and children?”

Answer: A person is in various forms of dependence on his desire to receive. If his desire to receive is not satisfied, one will not be able to advance and will be obliged to provide his desire with what it needs first. Therefore he is called a “slave” of desire.

The level of “slaves” is divided into several categories. There are genuine slaves, who do not understand they are in slavery and are unaware of their bondage.

There are also “children” and “little ones” who already feel weak and small in regard to their desire to receive, and who know that it dominates both their minds and hearts. Sometimes a person has the opportunity to get to know himself from the outside and see how powerless he is; sometimes he falls into a state where he just does something, like a small child, without reason.

By “women” we mean a state in which we feel dependent. There is a desire to receive, and it is like a husband, like a master. And so we feel dependence and lack (unfulfilled desire), which we must fulfill. So we fulfill it.

We are talking about various attitudes. There is nothing we can do. People employ them, and that is how they exist. Otherwise, it is impossible to live. They look for additional pleasures to fulfill their desires: fashion, public opinion, or something else.

People must have some goals in life so that they gradually fulfill themselves. Let it be football or some other game in life. There could be some changes for the whole world, one thing, then another to feel alive.

This is called life, a change in types of pleasure. This is our world. You can see it every time there is a new fashion, every time something is announced as an event or innovation. “Harry Potter,” then The Matrix, then something else. It gives you a sense of life. Otherwise, what is there to live for? That is the way people work: they look for something new to keep alive.

This is called a “woman.” She feels addicted and falls for this addiction because there is no other way. How can she exist? It is said that she “depends on a man,” “wants a man.” The Talmud and the TES say that a woman prefers “one measure and stupidity (i.e., being dependent) to nine measures as unmarried.”

We can talk a lot about these three categories: “slaves,” “children,” and “women,” about how it manifests itself in our world from the point of view of psychology, how it works in social circles, how it descends into matter and functions in it. We are already seeing this. Given that the public understands this, we can already start explaining it in lectures, and from there move to the reasons, the spiritual roots.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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