The ten must be in the synagogue at once, and not come one at a time, since all ten are as organs of one body, in which the Shechina resides (Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”).

All of reality includes the Creator and the creation. The creation must independently reveal the perfection and eternity of the Creator; otherwise, it will not have a Kli through which to enjoy this state.

Revealing the Kli is what we need, because the state already exists and we are in it. As Baal HaSulam writes, we are like a person sitting in a dark basement where all the treasures and all the pleasures he needs and even more than he could expect are present, but there is not enough light, not enough of a Kli, for him to see the state he is in.

This Kli can be revealed only on the condition that there is a Hisaron for it, a need for precisely this state. If the desire is for other things, a person will not be able to reveal the state that, in the Creator’s view, is “good and does good,” and fill himself with it. Therefore, in Kabbalah, a person who has attained equivalence of form with the Creator is called “one who does not follow the counsel of the wicked.” What does this mean?

“Wicked ones” and “evildoers” constantly come to a person; that is, his uncorrected desires awaken within him, and each time he examines, analyzes, and sorts them, and “does not follow their counsel.” His ego burns within him all the time, and it is precisely thanks to this “help against him” that he continually renews his state in relation to the Creator and thus grows.

This continues until he gathers all his desires into one great desire directed toward a single thing. Once he reaches the innermost part of all his desires and directs them toward acquiring Kelim of bestowal, he arrives at the prayer “from the depths of the heart.”

At that point, he already has a complete, perfect desire, which is called Beit Knesset (synagogue; literally, “house of assembly”). A “house” is a place of reception, while an “assembly” is a state in which he gathers all his desires into one, directed toward a single goal.

It is clear that the desires are diverse, ranging from animalistic and human to the spiritual, but they are all focused on one goal. This is the state described as a person being in a Beit Knesset. The Creator sees that there is someone in the Beit Knesset who is ready for prayer and demands correction from Him. Then the person receives correction for all his desires, and to the extent that they become similar to the Creator, he attains the Creator’s degree.

Where does he obtain the strength to descend into all his inner “wicked ones” and arrive at the decision that, with their help and on their basis, he wishes to attain adhesion and become similar to the Creator? How can he gather all his desires under a single intention for the sake of bestowal?

We learn that a person receives these desires from the upper one, through the surrounding light. But where will he obtain awareness of the importance of correcting them? From the environment. In proportion to the number of “wicked ones” that are revealed to him, which he feels within his body, he must strengthen himself with the help of the group and receive from it an awareness of the importance of the goal. Then he is assured of the ability, with the help of the surrounding light, to purify these “wicked ones” through the intention for the sake of bestowal.

This, in general, is the main idea of the article “There Is No Assembly of Fewer Than Ten.” We understand why it is written that there is no assembly of fewer than ten. This is a state in which the person examines the properties he has acquired from the Creator down to their very depths and directs and aligns them according to his desire to receive correction for them for the sake of bestowal, as in the ten original Sefirot.
[362947]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/26, Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”

Related Material: 
There Are No Fewer than Ten in Spirituality
Arvut In the Ten
The Ten Is a Complete System of Creation

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

If I have established that the Creator is bestowal, then I must investigate this concept, understand it, draw closer to it, and attain it, so that it alone governs me instead of my own nature. And I must do all this through my own efforts. So how can I achieve this?

I am told that the quality of bestowal can be revealed to me in a group among a few people who are striving toward the same goal. Through working together, you can explore it from both the positive and negative sides, in different kinds of relationships.

Why should you choose friends who are also genuinely striving for the quality of bestowal, that is, students who study Kabbalah and want to reach the Creator? Because then you can help one another: “Each one shall help his friend.” Everyone can set a positive or negative example for others, as well as provide them with strength and support.

In this world, there is no other way for us to advance than to see our neighbor as the goal. Moreover, your neighbor can help you and become a source of strength and support for you.

Otherwise, you will follow the old path described by Baal HaSulam. In the past, a person seeking to attain the quality of bestowal would be content with bread and salt and water, living in poverty, and suffering so as not to give their desire to receive anything beyond what was essential for survival. Everything else they had, they would give to others in order to break their desire to receive in this way. If you want to follow this path, go ahead.

However, today the desire to receive can no longer be corrected through such actions. Our actions must be carried out with the help of the light that reforms, not by breaking ourselves in this way. If you were at the level of Aviut Shoresh or Aleph, you could work with your desire to receive and correct it in this manner. But given the degree of Aviut we have in our generation, we are no longer capable of doing so.

The sages of the Gemara and those who came before them prepared the surrounding light for us as a force that enables us to recognize evil and correct it.

Therefore, instead of giving everything away for the benefit of humanity, working for others 24 hours a day, living in poverty and suffering, and “toiling in the Torah day and night,” that is, doing what we are incapable of doing, we have been given the light that reforms. It is not that one method replaces the other; the previous method simply does not suit our current state. We cannot act that way.

When the desire to receive is small, people can live in poverty, striving for a kind of “nirvana.” But this does not work when the desire to receive is great. Besides, why did they live that way? Because they had no other option. If they had had more than a cup of rice a day, they would have occupied themselves with something else. All these methods arose from poverty, not from an urgent need to attain the upper one.
[361769]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/26, Rabash, “The Rosh Hashanah Prayer”

Related Material:
Relying On The Merits Of Our Predecessors
Passing On The Light In A Chain
The Forefathers As The Architects Of Correction

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: What does it mean to have faith in the sages?

Answer: What is faith in the sages? What, for example, compels you to go to a doctor? You know that you are ill, and there is someone who understands your condition better than you, knows its causes and how to resolve it, that is, how to achieve a positive outcome from this state.

I, as an animal, can only sense my present state, but there is a sage who “sees what is coming into being.” He knows the origin of my current state and how to reach a better state that will be emerge from the one I am in now.

I must turn to such a sage. What does it mean to turn to him? It means having faith in what he tells me, even when it contradicts my own reason and understanding. When an ordinary doctor tells me to take a certain medicine, I take it. Of course, public opinion and so on influence me here. On our path, we need faith in the sages.

Faith is a force that helps me rise above my desire to receive, that is, to to stand against my own nature and my own intellect. Suppose a doctor tells me that in order to recover, I need to put my hand into fire. I must acquire the force of faith in this doctor that will allow me to go against the impulses of my animal body, because otherwise it simply will not allow me to do so.

I must now acquire an additional force, a special force of the upper nature, which will help me act in accordance with the doctor’s opinion and put my hand into the fire. Just as in nature there is a force that does not allow me to put my hand into the fire, so now I must receive a force in order, on the contrary, to do it. That is, this additional force is higher and stronger than my nature. I must receive it from above, for I do not possess it myself.

This is called a new creation that comes to a person. Faith in the sages means above my reason; I acquire the sage’s reason, wisdom, and proceed in accordance with his reason.
[362935]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/15/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘We Have No Other King But You,’ in the Work?”

Related Material:
Faith In The Sages
How Can We Obtain Faith in the Sages?
Entrust Yourself To The Upper One

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 278

What Should One Do When Darkness Takes Over from Within?

A person who is in a descent goes about in the society like a dead man walking, barely functioning and barely dragging himself along. In such a state, he cannot do anything by himself, not even feel that he is behaving like a dead man or feel that the process is acting upon him, but it indeed acts on him. Therefore, he is compared to a dead man, because he does not feel that it acts. Meanwhile, the society resuscitates him and gradually gets him back on his feet. The society must believe in this and continue reviving him for another half a day, another day, another two days, and it passes.

The question is to what extent can we surrender ourselves to those who take care of us, to the society. That is, to what extent we disconnect our thoughts, our head, and let our body do whatever the friends ask, as though we have no head of our own. This is also how we learn in Kabbalah. What does it mean to be “small”? It is when the great one constantly makes all the calculations and the small one carries them out. This is how it is in spirituality. It is not like in our world, where the small one, the child, is the head, and the great one, the mother or father, merely carries out his requests. We surrender ourselves to the upper one and receive the head of the upper one through devotion. Afterward, we develop our own head, but our gaze is always directed upward, at the head of the upper one, to learn from Him, to be like Him.
From a Talk on the Article “What Is “He Who Has a Flaw Shall Not Offer [Sacrifice]” in the Work?” 6/19/2002.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 277
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 276
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 275

Filed under: Talks about the Steps of the Ladder | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 27 “Repentance” (1985) (7.2.2002)

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, “Inner Observation”

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Selected Highlights

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3AudioAudio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

It is written in the Midrash that after the Creator created the nations and they spread across the earth, He approached each of them and offered them the Torah, hoping that someone would want to accept it. But no one except the people of Israel wanted to accept it.

What is so undesirable about the Torah that no one wanted to accept it? Does it contain not only good but something bad as well. Otherwise, why would the Creator have approached everyone?

A person has only one desire called “Israel,” which corresponds to something called the “Torah.” Does this imply that Israel needs the Torah because it is inherently flawed? As it is written: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” But does only Israel have an evil inclination while the nations of the world do not?

Rabash writes that it is specifically Israel that is egoistic and opposite to the Creator and not the nations of the world. It is Israel that needs the Torah. Understanding this, Israel needs the Torah because the Torah is the force of correction. Anyone who feels that they lack the force of correction is called Israel.

This Hisaron (deficiency) comes from above. A person does not have to do the Creator’s work or create desires within themselves. But they must feel which desires are speaking within them at any given moment and work precisely with those desires. They must not remain indifferent and passive, but must use the means called the light of the Torah as much as possible.

To bring Israel, that is, those who want to correct themselves, to the goal (and here this also refers to the nations of the world who acquire the qualities of Israel and also desire correction), the right desires must gradually be developed within them. This happens only with the help of the light.
[361174]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/30/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘He Who Is Without Sons,’ in the Work?”

Related Material:
The Desires Called “Israel” and “the Nations of the World”
The Essence of the Desires “Israel”
Why Is the Torah Given to The People of Israel?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Israel, Nations of the World, Spiritual Work, Torah | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: In the article “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”, Rabash writes about awe before the Creator. Should we fear Him?

Answer: Who does not feel fear? Only those with no reason have no fear or those who have never really encountered life, who have not received blows, experienced suffering, or felt any limitations placed on their desires. But anyone who has already felt a boundary and knows there is a limitation feel a certain sense of fear.

We have a Kli, the desire to receive, and accordingly, there is pleasure. A Kli is created by pleasure, light, and corresponds exactly to the light in quantity and quality.

The Kli is the desire to enjoy. If the desire to receive feels it cannot enjoy because something restricts its ability to fill itself, fear and awe arise from this, from the faintest sense of some boundary to the greatest fear.

Fear results from the emptiness of the Kli. The feeling of an empty Kli can go in two directions: fear of an empty Kli either in receiving for my own sake or in my intention to give.

Therefore, there are two types of awe. A trembling directed at myself, at all the pleasures of this world, whether I have them or not (such as family, health, money, honor, and so on). And fear for the world to come, whether I will attain it. Sometimes fear for this world outweighs fear for the world to come, and then fear for the world to come is discarded.

Sometimes a person develops such fear for the next world that they are ready to give up this whole world to ensure the next. So, he goes to a monastery and subjects himself to various forms of suffering.

Ultimately, a person always seeks to overcome a certain fear, whether it is fear of this world or the next world. But both are sensations of this world experienced in the present. It only seems to the person that they are thinking about the next world. In reality, they are not. What they must overcome is their current negative sensation, a sensation they perceive to be linked to the future.

There is also awe about whether I bestow, how do I bestow, and how I fill my Kli of bestowal. In other words, am I filling the Creator’s Kli? Although it is completely unclear to me what His Kli is, because I can only gauge it through the sensation of my own Kli. To the extent I understand what bestowal is, to the extent I realize and feel what I am doing in relation to the Creator, to this extent I have a Kli of bestowal, and I fill it.

That is, this is also my Kli, my inner feeling. As for what is going on outside, I know nothing. All these feelings are inside us, and they all exist in the present, not in the past or the future.
[361024]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/26, Rabash, “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?”

Related Material:
Fear And Trembling
What Is the Difference Between Awe and Fear?
From Fear to Trembling

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Sometimes a desire is called Makom (place) and sometimes Ish (person). What is the difference between the two?

Answer: We can speak about this in terms of the internal and external. Sometimes we speak about an entire world (which, in essence, is a single person); at other times, we refer to things that are more internal or more external. For example, when one passage speaks about a Beit Knesset (synagogue), and another speaks about a person in a Beit Knesset, it is clear that these refer to states of the point in the heart in relation to all the other desires.

The point in the heart works in such a way that all the other desires gather around it, whether animalistic or human, and eventually even the desires of the Klipot. All of them become like one bundle directed toward a single goal, like the point of Moses that gathers all the other desires toward one goal and leads them forward.
[362951]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/26, Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”

Related Material:
Strive for a Unity of Desires
Influenced by the Desires of the Environment
Connect Your Desires to the Creator

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: What does “a clear decision” mean? Aren’t a decision and a desire the same thing?

Answer: A decision is in the heart. It is not simply words written on paper and stuck to a wall. It is said: “Write them upon the tablets of your heart.”

Question: But each person has a different character. How, then, can a unified desire be created?

Answer: What does this have to do with character? Suppose that we, 80 people, want to build a house. Does it matter what character each person has and what problems each one has? We are all focused together on one goal.

Comment: But one imagines a palace and another imagines something else.

My Response: It does not matter what each person imagines and what each envisions. We, of course, cannot compare the states, intentions, and internal analysis made by each of us. And in general, it is not the group that should do this; it is each person’s personal matter. But we want each of us to participate in this to the extent that they can.

Certainly, no more is demanded of a person than what was initially given to them from above from birth. One person can, for now, think only for one moment a day; another, after a month of study is entirely immersed in it; a third might engage in yet another way.

One perceives more with the mind, another with the heart. For some it may feel like an act of self-coercion, while others feel a sense of inspiration. We are not discussing the specific, personal states of each one; we are talking about a collective effort without delving into particulars; it does not matter in what state each of us is.

Perhaps for one person, the greatest investment they can make, the greatest sacrifice they are capable of, is that today they will sit for ten minutes and listen to me attentively, while for the rest of the time they will be as if dead. For them, this will be a great effort. Whereas for another, studying all day might require only a standard, routine level of effort.

The effort is what counts; therefore, in this case, the first contributes more than the second. We cannot check these things, and it is not we who should do so at all. Moreover, we are forbidden to speak with one another about personal states.

We must strive for the unity of desires, not by speaking about how each of us relates to the Creator, but simply speaking about the Creator Himself rather than our individual relationship to Him. In other words, we should speak about the importance of the goal rather than where I am now in relation to it.

Therefore, one must make the friend’s words important to you. Invest as much effort in it as you invest in your child, and you will see how important it will be to you. “Buy yourself a friend.”

Set the goal to be at the lesson as a single group, with a single intention, and a single unified effort.
[362959]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/26, Rabash, “A Congregation Is No Less than Ten”

Related Material:
The Power of Unity and the Powerlessness of Separation
Let Me Have Your Desires
The Upper World Is Revealed in the Group

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →