Audio Version Of The Blog – 2/6/26
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Question: Today’s children do not want to listen to older people. What would you do if your students were the same, if they were disobedient and did not want to listen to you?
Answer: Wasn’t I like that myself with my parents? Did I really obey them in anything? They enrolled me in music school; I left it. Moreover, I left with a big scandal. They tried to push me to a medical school, but I ran away from it as well.
I did everything my own way. I went to one college, and I did not like it. I went to a different one, graduated from it as an external student, moved to Israel, and found an occupation for myself: Kabbalah. Why? For what? I abandoned a profitable business and so forth.
From their point of view, it seemed that I was doing everything possible against them: “After all, there are two doctors in the family, but the son is completely different.” He chose some path, he attached himself to some eighty-year-old man, and dedicated his life to him. From the age of thirty he devoted himself to being next to this old man and to learn from him. What can one learn from an eighty-year-old teacher without an education? To study some Kabbalah, wickedness, mysticism?
Imagine this was the early 80s. They looked at me as a very strange person, someone with an education, a wonderful business with opportunity to develop, and suddenly he left it all. What for? In order to study who knows what. During those years it seemed completely abnormal.
I couldn’t explain anything to them rationally at the level of our world. What was I gaining in money, in health, in wellbeing, in better education for my children, in life? The loss was in absolutely everything.
Therefore, no one supported it. When my parents asked religious people, “Our son is engaged in Kabbalah. What do you think? What is it?” they would answer “We feel sorry for you.” Hence my parents were at a loss. I understood it, and I felt for them.
It means that I was a rebel no less than today’s youth. My rebellion was not in wearing a cool jacket or a hat or shaving my head in a special way. It was a serious rebellion against the entire way of life. This rebellion is when you abandon an opportunity to earn millions, to live in luxury, to travel around the world, and so forth.
Comment: Disagreements between fathers and children is a well-known theme: the eternal struggle of generations.
My Response: No, before it was a battle of the greater egoism of the young generation and the lesser egoism of the previous generation when the latter did not agree with small changes made by the next generation at the same animalistic level.
However, now something completely different is taking place. Now the young generation totally rejects the way of life that the previous generation had. Now there is an absolute re-evaluation of values. It is not the kind of values where I need a car instead of a cart or a city instead of a village. The dispute is that I do not want to live if I have to live like you.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Children of Israel, Part 1” 10/1/10
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Question: How can one feel the desire to receive as evil?
Answer: Suppose I stole something and was caught. At that moment, I scold myself: “Why am I stealing? I must put an end to this, because I feel suffering from having such qualities.”
This also applies to our work. It is said that Adam HaRishon was a thief. Any reception without the intention to bestow is called theft.
If I were to see this as evil, I would rid myself of it. It is said: “The advantage of the light is revealed from within the darkness.” If I knew that through acts of bestowal I would reach good, then I would see that the act of reception brings me to evil.
How can I see this? Either through suffering when I perform actions within the desire to receive and receive blows. Then I simply do not want to have this desire; I want to restrict it.
“Less wisdom, less suffering. Do not demand much, and it will be better for you. Why chase after something? Sit quietly, and everything will be fine.” This is how the whole world understands it.
This path is called the path of suffering. But nevertheless, we are not able to live and advance by this path, because our desire to receive is constantly developing and burning. And although we do not control it, it nevertheless demands its due, and then, whether we want it or not, we make use of it. However, we suffer even from the fact that we want to use it, but we do not receive what we desire. This is called the path of suffering in its various forms.
And there is the path of Torah, when through study and various actions, I begin to reveal that in spirituality, in the intention for the sake of bestowal, there is a great attraction, very significant things: eternity, perfection, and attainment, which does not exist at all within the desire to receive.
Then I see that the desire to receive is evil, not because I receive suffering within it, not because I get caught when I steal, not because I desire but do not receive fulfillment, but because it does not allow me to reach the good things that exist in spirituality. Thus, I begin to compare the desire to receive with spirituality, and therefore, I simply want to remove this desire from our world, remove it from myself.
This is called the path of Torah; it is when I begin to see the desire to receive as evil and wish to move to bestowal by means of the upper light which illuminates me just a little. In this, the desire to receive does not interfere with me. The greater it is, the better. I do not destroy it, I do not go against its development, since this will not help me anyway. On the contrary, I take it in its entirety and begin to demand from the light that it return it to good.
Therefore, the path of development when the light that returns to the source operates is natural. It goes together with the development of the desire to receive and with the development of humanity. This is the only path that can give a person an answer to all questions.
A person asks: “Why do I suffer?” Then do not suffer, use the desire to receive that is developing within you, but use it correctly. Therefore, the use of the desire to receive with the intention to bestow is the perfect answer to all questions. You do not need to restrict yourself or artificially flee from pleasures. On the contrary, you begin to use the desire to receive with full force.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/26, Rabash, Article 12, “What Are Torah and Work in the Way of the Creator?”
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Only light and Kli that exist in the universe. Just as light has different kinds of manifestation before Kli, so does the Kli have different ways of feeling itself. It feels itself in this world as either inanimate, vegetative, or animate where it is not aware of itself at all, does not know what it is, and acts solely in accordance with its desire to receive.
These are the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels where creation does not see itself from the outside, and cannot study itself. Then follows the degree of “speaking,” “human,” when the creation can relate to its desire to receive and to all its qualities from the outside. However, this is also very subjective.
Even if it perceives itself incorrectly, cannot understand what is inside the desire to receive, and does not see that all this is predetermined in advance, nevertheless it tries to know itself as some kind of independent point, as a neutral objective researcher who studies himself from the outside.
When can the creation, the Kli, truly judge itself completely freely? When it receives the opportunity to look at itself from the Creator’s perspective. To the extent that the Kli acquires the desire to bestow, it can relate to the desire to receive in the same way the Creator relates to it. And there are no more than these two points: either to relate as creation or as the Creator.
If a person acquires the Kelim of bestowal, then he can see that there are two worlds, that is, two kinds of awareness, sensations, that exist on two planes. And before he receives the Kelim of bestowal, he does not understand at all that there is some other angle of vision, completely different from his own.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 1/25/26, Rabash, Article 28, “What Is, His Guidance Is Concealed and Revealed?”
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Question: Is there always a fear in a person that the Creator will not give him something?
Answer: Such fear is always present in a person. If I believe even a little that I receive from the Creator, then I am afraid that He will not give to me. Then I run to the synagogue, give a donation, or do anything at all, just to receive from Him.
This has nothing to do with Kabbalah. Kabbalah speaks about how I should relate to the Creator so that He will be pleased, without any connection to myself.
First of all, we make a restriction (Tzimtzum) and acquire the qualities of Bina, which are not connected to any calculations regarding ourselves, but exist solely for the sake of bestowal (“Al menat lehashpia”). We cover our desire to receive so that it has no contact whatsoever with receiving, and only then do we begin to receive for the sake of bestowal.
The method of Kabbalah is the only method that works in the opposite direction. All other methods are based on the principle “I give to You, You give to me.” This is trading, calculation: You want commandments? I will fulfill the commandments, and You fill me, my life, give me health, some money, honor, respect, a family so that everything will be fine.
Hasidism and other methods are built on this approach.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/26, Rabash, “Lishma and Lo Lishma”
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Preparation to the Lesson
1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 21, “Concerning Above Reason,” (1986) (2.2.2003)
2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 2, Part 5, Item 24
3rd part of the Lesson — Preparing to Attack at the Congress