Audio Version Of The Blog – 7/16/25
Posted on July 16th, 2025
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Question: How can we work correctly in faith above reason when you don’t just accept the supposed shortcomings of the friends, but so that it a work of correction that leads to a natural love for the friends?
Answer: Continue working the way you say, and you will come to it. You cannot jump to the last step right away.
Question: We acquire faith above reason when we have a screen. Right now, we are kind of playing at and trying to enter this state, and this brings us closer to the goal. But how can we play at faith above reason?
Answer: Keep playing as much as you can. Play the way you used to play with dolls, and then you will see how it formats you.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/29/2025, “Winning the War”
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Question: When we come to self-sacrifice and devotion to the group, we need strength. It is a very big task. If I lack strength in the group, I feel the greatness of the teacher, and I draw strength from there. To what extent can I use this strength in the group to annul myself before the friends?
Answer: Take as much as you can. The actual measure does not matter. Later we will begin to measure: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida, i.e., with what force we need help from above to exist above the light that is revealed from below.
Question: How are devotion and making a covenant with the Creator connected? What is the covenant with the Creator that strengthens devotion?
Answer: Devotion is necessary in any relationship of a person with the Creator, even with friends, between people. I think you will understand this quickly yourself.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/29/2025, “Winning the War”
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Comment: We talk about self-sacrifice, but at the same time we feel a kind of gain, inclusion, and merging more. A person does not feel that he is giving something up.
My Response: A person gives up everything he can except for the connection with the Creator. This essentially is what defines self-sacrifice, the devotion of the soul (Mesirut Nefesh).
Question: I do not quite understand how one can give up on the Creator because we want to attain Him, understand Him, and feel His love.
Answer: It does not mean that you give up on love for the Creator, but rather that nothing else matters to you besides that.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/29/2025, “Winning the War”
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Question: How can I to what extent I am in soul devotion, for example, per gram or per kilogram?
Answer: First you check this in relation to the friends and then in relation to the Creator.
Words explain very little about these states because verifying ourselves in relation to the friends and the Creator are, in essence, such high states that we cannot control them in any way.
We can launch them through the Creator, because if I want to do this, then I ask the Creator for it, and He does it. But we ourselves cannot do it in any way.
Question: Does each person have their own measure of effort or is it the same?
Answer: Each person has their own. We cannot compare them.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/29/2025, “Winning the War”
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Question: Was it hard for you to communicate with your teacher RABASH from the standpoint of mentality?
Answer: Absolutely not. In terms of mentality, we were very close. He was a Polish Jew from the beginning of the last century. I was a Belarusian Jew who grew up on the outskirts of Vitebsk in a town where many Jews once lived. The spirit, the way of life, the habits—it all lingered there, and I somehow picked it up.
In principle, when you study Kabbalah, all of this does not matter. But I understood RABASH as a person, with all his habits. I grew up in a town with just a few houses: my grandparents lived in one, some relatives in another, a little farther away lived more relatives, and so on. It was all very natural for me.
From childhood, I had memories that exactly matched the stories of RABASH. So in terms of everyday life, I had no conflicts or problems with him.
Of course, he had his own habits that he picked up in Israel, after emigrating from Poland. He loved coffee very much because he had lived for many years in Jerusalem with his father Baal HaSulam, who was a great coffee lover. They would pour boiling water over a spoonful of ground black coffee and drink it. Baal HaSulam needed twenty of these glasses a day, if not more, and cigarettes.
My teacher also smoked, not ordinary cigarettes, but very strong tobacco, first without a filter, then with one.
They experienced many upheavals in life. After Baal HaSulam was forbidden to publish a newspaper, he suffered a heart attack, and shortly after, he was diagnosed with cancer.
My teacher went through the death of his daughter and her husband, who passed away just six months apart. Her husband had been the right hand of RABASH, his helper in everything. They died a year before I came to him. Yes, he had serious problems. All Kabbalists do.
That is why I think we are the first and the happiest, probably because we are weak and unworthy of serious trials. Very little is given to us. On the contrary, we receive good feedback for whatever we do. That is why we are able to spread Kabbalah, develop, hold congresses, attract hundreds, thousands, even more people.
Baal HaSulam and RABASH were not granted any of this. They lived in terrible conditions, worked a thousand times harder than we do, suffered, and in the end received a meager result compared to us if you look at it from the outside. And they died in despair: What is next?
And how did the ARI die? It is documented that when his students asked: “Where are you going from us?” He answered: “If you were worthy, I would have stayed. If you wanted to hear me and listened to what I was saying, they would not have taken me.” This was said by a great Kabbalist, who died at thirty-seven. He knew his students would not continue his work, and before dying, he forbade them to study Kabbalah.
Can you imagine a greater punishment for students than to hear: “I forbid you to study! Go back to your animal state and live.” And you do not dare disobey your teacher.
What happened to most of the students of the ARI we know almost nothing. He allowed only one to continue studying Kabbalah: Chaim Vital, who collected all his writings. The ARI ordered these writings to be buried with him. Some time later, his grave was opened, the writings were taken out, and from them his works were compiled, on which Baal HaSulam based The Study of the Ten Sefirot and other writings. So the Kabbalists of the past went through horrific states!
And Rashbi, who wrote The Book of Zohar? He lived in a cramped cave, near a tiny spring and a carob tree with sweet pods. That is what he and his son ate. In such harsh conditions, they dug into the sand, and they studied Kabbalah. Later eight more students joined them, and together they wrote The Book of Zohar, sitting in that cave, in the cold, in the north of the country! The horror!
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. The Links of the Kabbalist Chain from ARI to Rabash” 9/4/10
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Comment: As a rule, a person comes to the study of Kabbalah closer to the age of thirty. You do not really see eighteen-year-olds wanting to know the meaning of life.
My Response: There are both kinds. But at eighteen, the issue is that we need to develop and somehow realize ourselves on the level of ordinary life. Our hormones are active. We need to explore this world, grasp something in it, and come to understand how empty it is. All of this is given to a person.
Many people come to us after they have gone through all that. They have, so to speak, stabilized in their understanding of this world and the lack of anything truly good in it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Who comes to Kabbalah?” 9/19/10
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Question: How can I feel the friends’ lacks if we do not speak about them directly but only abstractly, not from feelings but from the intellect?
Answer: That does not matter. What matters is what you think, dream about, and decide. You wish to act practically based on your decision.
Question: If I feel certain needs, can I say that the friends lack the same and then pray for the Creator to give it to them as well?
Answer: No, you should not measure the friends by yourself.
Question: How do we check what level of bestowal we have reached in the ten?
Answer: We must reach a level of bestowal that resembles the Creator. But that, of course, is a very high level. And before that it is tens or even hundreds of times less.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/22/2025, “Winning the War”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #26 “One’s Future Depends and Is Tied to Gratitude for the Past, Shamati #27 “What Is “The Lord Is High and the Low Will See? – 1” (10.19.2021)
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 54, 55 (7.2.2006)
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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 31 “One Does Not Regard Oneself as Wicked” (1985)
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4th part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”
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