Lesson Preparation
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Preparation for the World Convention in New Jersey 2018
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 3, Chapter 3, Item 5
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Shamati #190 “Every Act Leaves an Imprint”
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Lesson Preparation
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Writings of Rabash, Article 13
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 3, Chapter 3, Item 1
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Writings of Rabash, “Confidence”
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Lesson Preparation
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Writings of Rabash, Vol.2, Article 15
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 3, Chapter 2, Item 1
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Writings of Rabash, Vol. 3, Article 924
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Lesson Preparation
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Lesson on the Topic: “Pesach“
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Lesson Preparation
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Writings of Rabash, Vol.2, Article 41
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 3, Chapter 1, Item 3
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Writings of Rabash, Vol. 3, Article 380
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“Don’t swallow maror without chewing it” means that we need to work on our unity with greater perseverance despite our inability to reach it. If we in the group agree with the need to unite, then we have entered Egypt.
Previously, we did not agree or even speak about it. First, the brothers neglect Joseph and throw him out. But then there is a famine and they agree to unite, and then they enter Egypt.
At first, they live well in Egypt, but then they begin to realize that they are unable to connect. “And the children of Israel sighed from the labor” since they could not accomplish anything. It is then that “their cry ascended to God from the labor.”
This is the meaning of “Don’t swallow the Maror without chewing it.” We are obliged to “chew” this work and feel all its bitterness and heaviness, like the bitter and hard horseradish from which Maror is made. From hard work and our failure, we soften and, out of desperation, turn to the Creator.
Only after hard work do we begin to feel our captivity and the need to come out of it, and we begin to feel that there is a force that can help us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/20/18, Writings of Rabash
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In order to come to redemption, it is necessary to feel the exile, as it was said to Abraham: Torah, Genesis 15:13: You shall surely know that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and oppress them, for four hundred years.
That is, you must feel very bad in your desire to enjoy. Although it can bring a person a lot of pleasures and fillings, wealth, honor, power, and all the abundance, a person decides that this is exile for him.
After all, he begins to appreciate spirituality, the quality of bestowal, above all corporeal possessions. Therefore, he cannot tolerate this exile. On the contrary, the more pleasant, satisfied, and rich the Creator makes his life during the “seven years of famine,” the more acute is his desire to break out of it.
He has all the benefits in abundance, but he does not agree to live like this, feeling that he is being bought by being given animalistic pleasures, yet spiritual pleasures—bestowal and the upper world—are hidden from him.
When a person begins to feel his state in this way, then it means that he is already worthy of redemption.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/18, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Inheritance of the Land”
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The difficult thing about studying Kabbalah is that it requires you to acquire new values. That is why those who are not ready or willing to do so due to lack of patience, leave. They do not believe that this study will bring them actual results and do not really understand what this science is about.
Here you need patience to let the upper Light work on you—the force that transforms us into a new being. Gradually, we begin to feel, understand, and judge through new definitions.
Although it seems like someone is the same person on the outside, in reality he is completely different. He is impossible to define by the regular, corporeal definitions, values, and rules. Now he thinks in terms of similarity of form with the upper force, quite differently.
Such qualitative change is received through the influence of the upper Light, through undergoing an intricate inner revolution. This takes many years because such changes occur in a person gradually, in small steps.
And even this is hard to take. It is much easier to advance with the group that you can hold onto. If a person holds onto the group with his eyes closed, he overcomes all the difficulties.
He closes the door on his old values and receives new ones from the group, from the unification of the friends, meaning the new Kli, where ten become as one: he receives a new mind and feelings, a new attitude, new measurement units.
It is a very delicate, difficult period about which it is written: “A thousand enter the classroom and only one exits into the Light.” You have to have plenty of patience for the upper Light to work on you and give you new qualities. When it is said: “Do anything but leave,” this is what it is talking about.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/18, Talmud Eser Sefirot
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Lesson Preparation
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Writings of Rabash, “Why Are Four Questions Asked Specifically on Passover Night?”
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “This Is for Judah”
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If we begin to explain to a little three or four-year-old child our adult problems, obviously according to his mental, psychological, and spiritual development, he will be incapable of understanding them. He is not interested in them and they are not included in his definitions at all.
This is how we read books written by Kabbalists; we must try to realize that we do not understand what they say at all.
Let’s say we read the article “Concerning Love of Friends,” but we do not know what friends are or what love is. “Friends” in spirituality are parts of my soul; however, I do not feel them in this way. I immediately confuse the word “friends” with usual friendship in this world: with acquaintances, someone it is nice to spend an evening with or travel with, or with childhood friends.
However, here it has a completely different meaning. I want to reveal my soul, the eternal part of reality, but so far I only have a temporary, illusory existence in our imaginary world that really does not exist. Therefore, I must understand that the books speak of my eternal soul, which appears to me in the form of some special people I was brought together with by an upper governance, by the broken network of connections between us.
It is necessary to form a representation of such a system within ourselves, albeit still imaginary, but as close to the spiritual one as possible. Apart from this, we need to accurately define who is “a person” in general and “friends” in particular, and what is “love of friends”? Friends are not those with whom it is nice to hang out with, have a drink, a meal, or to dance or study with.
Friends are a special spiritual connection, which is not for the purpose of bringing pleasure to each other. Pleasure can only be the means. But in fact, the love of friends is when everyone acts instead of the other. This is one of the difficulties of studying Kabbalah.
The second difficulty is that we perceive the Torah as a story about our world: as if there is time, movement, and space, which do not exist in the spiritual world. Therefore, this “story” that we hear from the Torah does not exist as well! There is neither Egypt nor the Egyptian exile.
I should not imagine this has ever happened in our world. The Torah describes not historical events, but the sequence of preparatory states that Kabbalists went through in order to achieve the true and the only existing perception of reality.
So, I too should constantly imagine myself not studying history that occurred in the ancient times with a group of people fleeing from one place to another. It is not about this, but about a person’s sensory impressions, finding oneself in a state that he defines as spiritual exile, exile from the spiritual world. Then it is possible to imagine what the spiritual redemption and development is. It is only about what is happening within a person.
Every day I want to separate myself more and more from the stories, from history and geography, and explain them to myself at the inner, sensory level: mine or someone else’s who wants to develop spiritually. All this applies only to the period of a person’s spiritual development. Therefore, “love of friends” and, in general, the entire Torah should be considered only in the internal form, in relation to our development.
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From the 1st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/6/18, Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Pesach”
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