Question: What is the meaning of the holiday of the Giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) and what does it mean that we have received the Torah? We do not seem to keep its commandments. It is rather the opposite. It says “do not steal”—we steal; “do not covet other’s property”—we covet.

How does the Torah relate to our lives today? Could the Creator have been mistaken when He gave the Torah specifically to the people of Israel?

Answer: There is giving of the Torah, and there is receiving it. The problem is that although the Torah was given to us, we never received it. Today’s Israeli society is very far from what it should be in living according to the laws of the Torah. Therefore we are still considered to be in exile.

Question: But we got the Torah, we have it!

Answer: We have the book that says “Torah,” but that is not enough. The Torah is the upper light that returns to the source. The light corrects our egoistic nature, and leads us to love and mutual participation, until we love others as ourselves.

This is called the realization of the Torah. The Torah is the light, as it is said: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah to correct it.” The Jewish people have the most developed egoism, and it is not for nothing that our people are called “stiff-necked.” Therefore we received the Torah for its correction—the light that reforms.

In the past, during the time of the First and Second Temples, the people of Israel used this light for correction. Later they fell from this level, which is called the destruction of the Temple, and they went into exile. It is an exile from a life based on the law of love of others.

Today no one even thinks about loving others anymore. Only the external traditions remain of the Torah.

Question: Have we not received the Torah yet because not everyone fulfills religious commandments?

Answer: We are not talking about religious commandments. The law of the Torah is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Rabbi Akiva calls this the great rule of the Torah, which includes all other commandments. Therefore by fulfilling the commandments mechanically, a person should check: does this bring him closer to love of others, or does it maybe even alienate him? Does it create a split among the people and incite hatred?

Is this the Torah that we got? We have received the highest remedy, because the Torah is light, an upper force that affects us, if we fulfill special conditions. This force can correct our nature and allow us to open the upper world, to open our eyes and see where we really are.

The Torah is eternal, and with its help we can also achieve eternal life. But this is only on condition that we really find out what the true Torah and the commandment of loving one’s neighbor as oneself mean, which combines all the commandments.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 560 – The Holiday Of The Giving Of The Torah,” 5/5/15

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In our days, the correction of the world begins with the nation of Israel—specifically with those who engage in the Torah and replace the study of its external part with its internal part.

Before the destruction of the First and Second Temples, people dealt only with the inner part of the Torah, meaning that each person, due to the “subtlety” of their soul, had knowledge of the spiritual world. And the prophets, who were in an even deeper and higher connection with the Creator than the others, served as the spiritual leaders of the nation.

However, when the downfall occurred and prophets disappeared from among the people, the era of the sages began. People began to engage in external actions instead of internal ones, and this continues up to our days.

At the end of the Introduction to The Book of Zohar, Baal HaSulam writes that now it is necessary to return from the external part of the Torah to its internal part, and to engage in those actions that can bring us to mutual guarantee (Arvut), which we once lost. This is what is referred to as the destruction of the first and second temples.

If we return to the inner part of the Torah, whose light o brings us to mutual guarantee, then we correct ourselves and merit receiving the Torah, the upper light.

Then, because this will happen with us, all the nations will join us, since after the exiles there was such a mingling of souls that if today a small “subtle” part replaces the external with the internal and merits to reach mutual guarantee and receive the Torah, then afterward the entire world will be able to join in, and through this “subtle” part receive the light of correction according to the condition of mutual guarantee. And then the upper light, the Creator, will dwell within all souls.

From this we see that the principle remains unchanged: the upper force acts upon the “subtle” part according to equivalence of form, and the “subtle” part mixes with the “coarse” part, and then brings about mutual correction.

These things are simple. In general, in the whole Torah, in all of Kabbalah, in all of reality, there is one very simple law. And it is precisely because of its simplicity that it is difficult for us to perceive it.

In its simplicity, it is very far from us, for it is simple in bestowing, and not in receiving.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)“

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We must constantly work on one fundamental principle, the principle of Arvut (mutual guarantee). Our forefathers also worked on it, but for their level of Aviut (coarseness), a special method, the Torah, was not required.

Their method was simple. They understood that it was so, and by the purity of their soul, they felt the upper just as a Bedouin living in nature feels it entirely, and senses things thousands of kilometers away. It was simply a natural connection with creation. But when egoism grows, a method and tools become necessary.

What is this method? What is the Torah really about? It teaches how to reach the same connection our forefathers had but on a different level of desire to receive. As that desire grows, more actions are needed, as well as individual effort and collective work of the entire group.

The forefathers did not need to work on Arvut among themselves. For them, it came naturally, like a mother’s love for her child. This necessity was evident through the revelation of the Creator; there was no other way to exist.

But once the desire to receive is revealed, everything changes. Aviut increases, and everyone grows distant from one another. To overcome this separation, various methods, tools, efforts, and learning are required.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)“

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Question: Why was The Book of Zohar, a commentary on the Torah, written? Was the Torah that Moses wrote not enough?

Answer: No, The Book of Zohar was written after the fall of the Second Temple from the level that the authors of The Book of Zohar were at, so they could attain the ultimate highest state. It says so in The Book of Zohar.

It was the last generation after which darkness set in.

The Book of Zohar is intended for us in our current state, to begin to rise to the ultimate correction with its help.

Question: Literally at the same time, the Mishnah was written, which is studied to this day, and it was not hidden. After a few hundred years, the writing of the Talmud was completed, and everyone studies it too. But The Book of Zohar was hidden. How are they different?

Answer: The fact is, The Book of Zohar is written in a special language. It describes the system of the upper world, how we can approach it, and what to do.

Like the science of Kabbalah, it was not supposed to be revealed for 2,000 years from the fall of the Second Temple to our time.

This state of “2000 years” is called “exile from spirituality,” when there was a rejection  in the breaking of the Temple and a descent to the level of our world, i.e., into the darkest state, from which we must begin to attain the highest state.

For this, we need guidance, which is The Book of Zohar. All Kabbalists grew with it.

Question: If anyone starts reading The Book of Zohar, the Talmud, or the Mishnah today, they would not understand a word of it. Why was The Book of Zohar hidden, but the rest were not?

Answer: The Book of Zohar is written in the language of Kabbalah. This is why it was hidden.

In addition, it was written in a state of spiritual elevation. Its authors were ten disciples of Rabbi Shimon, the great Kabbalist, who brought them together, united them, and explained how to attain the upper world. Whatever was revealed in their connections, they wrote down. This became The Book of Zohar.

The Mishnah and the Talmud tell about the upper degrees, but in a more obscure, allegorical way. Therefore those who study them think they are talking about our world. This is first of all.

Secondly, the people who wrote the Mishnah and the Talmud were not at the same level of attainment as the authors of The Book of Zohar. There is a big difference.

As Baal HaSulam notes, those who wrote The Book of Zohar were at the level of the Third Temple, that is, at the highest level of attainment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/23/2017, “The Chain of Knowledge 57 Centuries Long. History of the Kabbalah Methodology”

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Among these there was no man who had been [included] in the census of Moses and Aaron when they counted the children of Israel in the Sinai desert.

For the Lord had said to them, “They shall surely die in the desert,” and no one was left of them but Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun (Moses, Torah, Bamidbar, Numbers, Pinchas).

You cannot move to the next degree unless the previous generation, the generation of the desert, dies out. Perhaps a different transformation was originally intended, and then a different decision was made because it was impossible to make this transformation smoothly in order to add the next state of the “generation of the desert” to the previous state of “exodus from Egypt,” and later the state of “generation that entered the land of Israel.”

These three degrees are very different from each other. In general, all the assumptions in the Torah, “what if it were so or not so,” imply that this cannot be by definition. And it is revealed to us why this cannot be because the desire that came out of Egypt cannot go through all the corrections and enter the land of Israel.

In other words, the stage of “forty years of correction in the desert”, i.e., ascent to Bina, is an absolute renunciation of one’s past state. So naturally it must die.

Anyway, the generation of the desert does not fully correct itself; such faulty states remain there that will later lead to the fall in the land of Israel. Therefore it should die out in forty years.

That is, as Malchut rises into Bina, includes as much as it can in it. But once included, it is no longer the same Malchut, the same property or desires; they are already adapted for bestowal.

Question: What should die in forty years in the desert?

Answer: The desire to think of oneself must completely die out in a person and a passion for the quality of bestowal must arise, directed from oneself toward others. In love, from oneself, in filling others, from oneself. One should have such an aspiration, which is based on great respect for the quality of love and bestowal, and leave everything that is in a person in the background since all else pulls him forward toward the others.

The property of bestowal arises in people under the influence of surrounding light (Ohr Makif), which gradually purifies and corrects them. This light is called the light of the Torah.

All of one’s past thoughts “about himself, for himself, with himself” gradually die out. Moreover, not only the “I” associated with receiving for myself is dying out, but also the “I” involved in giving. That is, the fact that I give to someone, love someone, or strive to do something for people, this “I,” even in striving out of myself, should not be there either.

It is very difficult to explain because such a possibility, such a state, in us is formed by the upper light.

Question: Does no one know that I give?

Answer: Even I do not know it myself. That is most important.

This should happen in the desert. But this does not mean a material desert, in which, by the way, people live perfectly all their lives, because there is water and everything else there.

The desert is a state where, when I strive for the quality of bestowal and love, I discover that I have nothing with which to fill these properties, aspirations, and urges. I want to come to someone, give something, pour everything out from myself, but in fact I have nothing to give, nothing to pour out, no one to come to. I have no strength, no reason for the quality of giving, no opportunity for this.

This is shown to me precisely so that I can reach the pure quality of bestowal, which has absolutely nothing to do with me. And when it is connected to me in any way, it is for my own sake.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/16/15

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And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God took you out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord, your God, commanded you to observe the Sabbath day (Torah,  Deuteronomy 5:15).

Every chapter of the Torah describes the gradual ascent of a person through the degrees of the spiritual worlds toward the level called “the land of Israel.” Although the laws of the Torah may seem to repeat themselves, each time they speak of new spiritual levels and are therefore perceived entirely differently.

All spiritual work is considered in relation to the exile that the people of Israel experienced for the first time when they rose from an unconscious state into awareness of where they truly are in relation to the Creator, that is, in relation to the desire directed toward connection with Him, toward His revelation.

This state is called Eretz Israel—the “land of Israel.” “Eretz” means desire (Ratzon), and “Israel” means Yashar-Kel—straight to the Creator. It is the desire aimed at revealing the Creator, at a living connection with Him, in which one can feel Him directly, just as we now feel each other.

In fact, this feeling is far more vivid and intense. It arises precisely from the feeling opposite to it: from total detachment, incomprehension, ignorance, and lack of desire for spirituality. This state, known as the “darkness of Egypt” or “Egyptian exile,” is not typical for an ordinary person in our world because the average person does not feel they are far from something or that there is something they need to reveal.

Egypt is a state where the Creator does shine, but He shines with inverse light. Instead of evoking understanding, enlightenment, attainment, love, and warmth, He impacts us from His reverse side by bringing about darkness, confusion, rejection, and a sense of worthlessness.

Thus, darkness is also a form of influence of the Creator from above, and in order to feel and understand that you are opposite to the Creator, a great deal of inner work is required.

For example, my mother was a gynecologist and for many years conducted scientific research in the field of medicine. In the evenings she would share her states with my father, and she burned with that darkness, with the lack of understanding, with the desire to find the meaning, the method, the mechanism, behind certain transformations in the human body. I was 12 or 13 at the time, but even then, I could see how someone can be consumed by such a search.

That is why, to truly feel the darkness, one must work deeply and persistently. People like that are characterized by an inner emptiness that is formed by the light that shines upon them from afar but does not yet fill them. It just prepares the vessel in which it will later be revealed. And so, they search.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/16/16

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Six days may you work, and perform all your labor, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall perform no labor, neither you, your son, your daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, your ox, your donkey, any of your livestock, nor the stranger who is within your cities, in order that your manservant and your maidservant may rest like you (Torah, Devarim, Chapter 5, 13-14).

Question: Does the Sabbath day apply to non-Jews?

Answer: No, it refers only to Jews, i.e., to those who are approaching correction.

All spiritual laws began with Abraham and his group began to penetrate into the property of upper nature and to tune themselves to exit from the egoistic crisis that engulfed Ancient Babylon.

Therefore, Kabbalah and Judaism—not earthly, but real, spiritual—are built on the fact that we rise above egoism, where our animalistic part is immersed.

To do this, it is necessary to build ourselves above our ego in order to exist at the level of “Love will cover all crimes (egoism).”

As soon as Abraham and his group began to unite and rise above the ego, they began to feel in their unity the properties of the spiritual nature: bestowal, love, interdependence, adhesion, connection, etc. And completely different laws operate in them. The description of these properties is the topic of all Kabbalistic books.

Abraham’s group sought to use this very system of interconnection among themselves, these laws, according to which they began to live.

The relationships that existed on a spiritual level between a man, a woman, children, between friends, the behavior of a person in relation to animals, in relation to plant life on earth, and the earth itself, they began to relate to everything around them. Therefore, all the laws of behavior come from the laws of the higher commutation of people among themselves.

When we begin to live by these laws, we gradually enter into them. There are personal laws according to which an individual fluctuates every second in his various changing properties. And there are laws in which we flow together in our society.

At the same time, we notice that one state is replaced by another, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth and a seventh. And then the first state repeats again, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh. And then again. But they are completely unrelated to natural cycles and do not relate to the sun, moon, or earth.

These are purely spiritual states that take place only between people. Therefore, at first the people of Israel performed them only between themselves, and then gradually they began to transfer them to phenomena and objects of material life.

In the spiritual world, there are forces that govern the sun, moon, and earth, and form certain relationships between them: the moon revolves around the earth for a month, the earth revolves around the sun for a year, and so on. Gradually, all this began to enter into one unified system for people.

They began to execute the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day on the earthly level. Hence, there were six days of the spiritual week, which correspond to the properties of Hesed, Gevura, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. And the seventh day, Saturday, Shabbat, the Sabbath, is a day of rest when they do nothing, because this quality is similar to final correction.

Since they were on the spiritual level, they began to automatically fulfill these laws on the material level. For them, both worlds were one common whole. And when, at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the people fell from the spiritual level, only the earthly remained. We are still fulfilling them today, although it has nothing to do with anything spiritual.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/9/16

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Question: After the generation that came out of Egypt died out and was replaced by the next one, Moses tells the new generation: “Remember Egypt.” But how can they remember it if they were never there?

Answer: There is no such thing as “they were never there.” After all, this is not about physical bodies but about spiritual states.

The Torah speaks of people who have gone through all the stages from Abraham, and in some sense even from Adam, to Egypt, and exited it with a great desire, with immense emptiness, with the “darkness of Egypt,” and now they feel that darkness as a desert.

The fact that they no longer care already indicates a correction: nothing grows here, fine; nothing gives fruit, fine. They are ready for anything, so long as they can rise above the Egyptian darkness, which evoked a negative attitude in them toward themselves and toward the Creator. Now they want to bring themselves to a state that even slightly resembles Him.

Therefore the state of the desert becomes desirable for them. Even if I have nothing, and I find myself in a state of complete emptiness, I am still glad of it compared to the state I was in before, where I enjoyed all sorts of egoistic acquisitions and felt at ease under Pharaoh’s rule.

Now it is the Creator who governs me. Although I do not see any fulfillment of my egoism in His governance, I perceive it as goodness. Even though I walk on hot sand without water, surrounded by snakes and scorpions, I rejoice in this desert because in it, the Creator rules over me. He goes before me and shows me the way, whether through a pillar of fire or a cloud.

Through the rejection of egoistic fulfillments, I feel that by rising above my ego, I am already following Him even into the desert.

This is the generation that must be born in the desert and enter the Land of Israel. That is, I have gone through all the inner stages from the Babylonian egoism that developed in the generations of the forefathers, then through the generation of Egypt, and later Mount Sinai and the desert. Now I approach the state called the “Land of Israel.” In doing so, I have built all these states within my egoistic desire.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/16/16

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Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God Am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments (The Torah, Exodus 20:3 – 20:5).

Commandments are considered the basis of the entire human code of human existence. They are acknowledged by all religions, by all societies, and serve as a basis for all social life. However, in Kabbalah, they have a totally different meaning.

In other words, “I am the Only! I am incorporeal! I cannot be depicted, imagined, or understood! I don’t give you any hints of Who I am! I cannot be put in your pocket, placed in the corner, or hung on a wall. It is impossible to make an amulet of Me, nor can I be shaped as some kind of a sign! Nothing like that is possible!”

Humans are quite different. A child grabs a toy and doesn’t toss it away for a month or two. It calms him down.

A person goes to a temple, prays, confesses, and cools down. Everything will be all right! For everyone, it is a medicine, a remedy, to settle their worries, a prevention of various social, family, and other problems.

We don’t have anything tangible here. If it is impossible to imagine Him, meaning that there is no one to appeal to, this is a big problem. Does it translate into the fact that there is no God for a regular person who lives in this world? We are unable to visualize Him or sense Him. He is some abstract property of bestowal, something shapeless that fills everything and, at the same time, nothing. What sensors will allow us to reveal Him? We must begin feeling Him one way or another. However, there is nothing around us.

We simply cannot imagine the Lord, the upper force, as described in the Torah, nor can we establish contact with this force. In order to stay in touch with Him we must grab onto something, appeal to somebody, and portray Him somehow.

Question: Why are these “threads” cut off of us? It is as if we are floating in the air. Why is that so?

Answer: It is because we must find Him at a completely different level. We should rise to His degree. Then we will sense something that we have not sensed before and will define things that we previously were unable to comprehend. It will become possible because we will acquire a new set of sensors that are called the five Sefirot.

Before we achieve this, there is no such thing as “God” for us. There isn’t anything at all! Of course, there is nature that twists us, pulls us ahead, and plays with us, and forces us to continue living and to give birth; it controls our behavior in our surroundings and society, and then buries us in the ground. That is it.

I am exaggerating everything by showing that people have no connection with the Creator or with the Torah whatsoever. That is why it is said that the Torah is spotless since no one has ever touched it, not even once.

The Torah is a teaching; it is a spiritual mechanism that is totally disconnected from humans. The fact that we picked it as the source of our beautiful rules and legal laws is very reassuring. Without it, we would just be barbarians.

Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that these rules and laws do not have anything in common with the authentic Torah. We must understand that the Torah’s power, its veracity, and the very core of it are not about the rules or laws. It does not matter what we are doing in this world. Rather, what matters is if we happen to rise to the next level where the Creator reveals to us. For that, we do not need Him to be observable or appear as an image or a phenomenon. Our awareness rises to such a level that we don’t need any images any more since we manage to get out of ourselves.

This explains why the commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” comes first, why it is considered a major commandment, and why it precedes all the others. Each subsequent commandment (their order is not random; they are organized in a certain way) delineates the execution of this particular main commandment.

If one cannot observe this commandment, all other commandments are worth nothing. They do not lead us to the goal. We should constantly keep in mind this primary commandment. For it we should fulfill all other commandments.
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From KabTV’s, “Mysteries of the Eternal Book” 2/25/13

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Question: What property does Nachshon ben Amminadab, who was the first to jump into the Red Sea, symbolize in a man?

Answer: The Gematria (numerical) value of the name Nachshon ben Amminadab indicates the height of his spiritual condition is a property of pure Bina.

It is this quality that enables him to withstand the wall of water. On one hand water is a soft quality that is the basis of life, and on the other hand it is a hard property since it is manifested as Gvurot, the force of judgment.

The hard and soft forces hidden in water can only be moved by rising above egoism. Nachshon is able to do this because everything moves aside for a person who breaks away from egoism since he completely adheres to the Creator.

There is no empty space in the world: it is either reception (egoism) or bestowal  (the property of the Creator). After rising above the ego, you do not enter a vacuum, you enter but the property of the Creator, as Noah did when he entered the ark. So it is here, you enter the property of bestowal, as if in a cocoon, and exist in it. This is the effect of Nachshon. The sea harms someone, as in the story of the flood, and someone else gets to be saved.

Thus the actions of Noah and Nachshon are the same actions that occur at different levels of egoism and return to their original place in the four stages of development. This takes place at each stage. This is what spiritual advancement consists of.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/30/14

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