The writing says, “Return, O Israel, unto the Lord your God, for you have failed in your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the Lord. Say unto Him: ‘Remove all iniquity and take good, and we will pay with the fruit of our lips’” (Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”).
What does “Return, O Israel, unto the Lord your God” mean in spiritual work? It refers to an instruction that is, in essence, the original goal that must be realized throughout the entire path, so that a person reaches his root and becomes completely realized in it: “unto the Lord your God.”
What does “unto the Lord your God” mean? It means that all of a person’s qualities come to equivalence of form with the qualities of the Creator. This is called return, repentance: “Return, O Israel.”
In Hebrew, the word “Israel” can be understood as Yashar-El, straight to God. Therefore, one who is called “Israel” must reach a state in which he returns each of the desires that constitute his soul to the Creator, that is, he acquires a screen and works with that desire with the intention to bestow.
A person already possesses all these desires. Gradually, by acquiring a screen, the intention to bestow, he returns them to the form that belongs to the Creator.
This is what it means that he returns until he reaches “the Lord your God,” thereby acquiring the same form, the same image, the same abilities, and the same attainment that the Creator reveals to him. They become, as it were, partners existing on the same level, like Zeir Anpin and Nukva of the world of Atzilut, which are on the same level in continuous face-to-face adhesion. This is the purpose of correction.
Then, after correcting this entire soul, these receiving vessels that he possesses, a person rises into the first three Sefirot (GAR). What does this mean?
A person rises above his body, which has already been corrected, and begins to attain the Creator’s thoughts, His desires and intentions that preceded the Creator’s attitude toward him, that is, preceded his creation by the Creator. These are called the “three upper Sefirot,” and the lights revealed in the vessels of the three upper Sefirot are called the “secrets of the Torah.” On the other hand, all the lights revealed in a person’s corrected vessels are called the “flavors of the Torah.”
In spiritually, “man” (Adam) is the Partzuf MA, meaning the lower seven Sefirot (ZAT), in other words, Zeir Anpin and Nukva together. And the ones above ZAT, the three upper Sefirot: Keter, Hochma, and Binah, and the lights revealed within them are the secrets of the Torah.
The lights revealed in the seven lower Sefirot are called the flavors of the Torah.
Therefore, until a person has attained return to the Creator with his entire soul and all his might, that is, until he has corrected all his vessels and filled them with all the lights so that all the flavors are revealed, he is forbidden to touch the secrets of the Torah. They are above him; this is a higher degree.
It is written that they should be concealed rather than revealed. Only one who has “filled his belly with Talmud and laws,” meaning with the flavors of the Torah, and has risen to a higher degree, comes to study the three upper Sefirot, the secrets of the Torah, which are called the foundations of receiving, the roots of the receiver.
Therefore, while a person is undergoing corrections on the way to the end of correction, the reward for revealing the flavors of the Torah is very great. But the reward for concealing the secrets of the Torah is also very great, because a person does not fail along the way: He conceals the part whose time has not yet come and reveals the part that he is capable of correcting.
Those who have already completed the entire part of the flavors of the Torah move on to the part of the secrets of the Torah, which is referred to as “at the age of over forty.”
This occurs according to special, known laws, when a person has already acquired the entire Masach, all the qualities of Binah above his desire to receive, above Malchut, and has thereby truly corrected the entire Malchut with the intention to bestow.
Then he reaches what is called “middle age” [literally, “stable age”], meaning that he stands at his full height, having filled all his vessels with receiving in order to bestow. From “forty years” onward, he begins to rise toward the secrets of the Torah, truly meriting the Lights of the three upper Sefirot and attaining the Creator’s intentions.
Before that, the purpose of our efforts is unknown to us. We cannot understand, attain, or clarify what the Creator’s intentions toward creation are for ourselves.
In order to formulate this somehow, we say that His desire is to do good to His creations; that He created them in order to delight them; that He had a desire to reveal Himself, to dwell within the lower ones, and that He created them in order to fill them, as if to enter into them and reveal Himself within them.
Even our Kelim (vessels) understand that these answers do not satisfy us. These answers will become genuine answers only in the Lights of the three upper Sefirot. However, the very fact that we are able to ask these questions already tell us that one day we will receive the answer.
After all, all questions arise from empty Kelim, which were created by the light, the fulfillment that preceded the Kli. And, of course, this fulfillment will eventually fill the Kli. Therefore, at some stage, our questions will be filled with answers, with lights.
Thus, the instruction “Return, O Israel, unto the Lord your God” must be fulfilled in every person.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”
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