Kabbalah is a Grand Unified Theory letting us both understand the full scope of reality and experience its oneness.

Now we perceive the world only through our five senses or by instruments that expand their range of perception a bit, whereas Kabbalists perceive nature in its absolute form, because they develop abilities of exiting themselves, by ascending their egoism. Kabbalah meets all the requirements and the definitions of a science, more than all the other sciences because it explores nature in its real form—not in the narrow framework we receive in some confusion of a range of influences, reflections, refractions of our understandings and feelings, and out of our impact on the environment.

Genesis, 6:9-11:32
This Week’s Torah Portion | October 30 – November 5, 2016 – 21 Tishrei – 4 Cheshvan, 5777

In A Nutshell

The portion, Noah, speaks of sinful people and the Creator, who brings a flood on the world. “Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations” (Genesis, 6:9). This is why he was the one chosen to survive the flood.

But he did not survive alone. Rather, he was commanded to build an ark and move into it along with his kin, and pairs of all the animals, and to remain in the ark for forty days and forty nights until the flood stopped.

The Creator made a covenant with Noah and his family that the flood would never return. As a token of the covenant, He placed the rainbow in the sky.

The end of the portion speaks of the tower of Babel, about the people who decided to build a tower whose head reaches the heaven. The Creator decided to confuse their language so they would not understand one another, and then He dispersed them throughout the country.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The portion, Noah, is long, intense, and contains many details and many events compared to other portions. As this portion takes place in the beginning of the Torah, it also marks the beginning of the spiritual path, the most important time in a person’s development.

These initial stages unfold quite quickly, unlike subsequent events, when one begins the actual corrections and corrects one’s qualities meticulously. Later on, the events are far more detailed, as we will see in the future events unfolding in the Torah.

Our development takes place entirely over our egotistical will to receive, which we must turn into bestowal. Today we are still in the midst of a process where the whole of humanity is to begin to work with its ego in the right connection between people. The work against the ego is always a big problem, and appears as waves of a great sea, called Malchut of Ein Sof (Malchut of infinity).

Each time, the ego surfaces more and more, and at first, a person does not know what to do, so the only option is to hide in a box, an ark. It is not merely an escape; it is a correction. A person builds a kind of bubble, the quality of bestowal, and hides in it from all of one’s terrible egotistical qualities, and this is how one advances.

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Humanity is interconnected like parts of one integrated system, but human senses do not let people recognize this connection.

We strive to change ourselves and start sensing a new life, a new dimension within our corrected desires. To reach this revelation, we need to correct our desires and obtain spiritual “sight.” After it occurs, his own experience allows him to sense a new reality rather than trust someone else’s words. While we are still alive, we have to elevate to a level of existence that is above death, called “the world to come.”

Humanity is one integrated body.

We all unite into one spiritual body. Such a spiritual body, where all parts are in harmony with each other is called Adam, the first man. If every person corrects his desires and is ready to unite with the same corrected desires of other people, seeking to unite like brothers into one body, one desire, then we all are connected. And then inside this connection we feel the first man, Adam HaRishon, the joint desire assembled from many private desires.

Genesis, 1:1 – 6:85 This Week’s Torah Portion | October 23 – October 29, 2016 – 21 Tishrei – 27 Tishrei, 5777

In A Nutshell

Beresheet (In the Beginning) is the first portion in the Torah (Pentateuch). It tells the story of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest on the seventh day. It talks about the creation of the man, his arrival at the Garden of Eden, and the creation of the woman. The portion also narrates the story of the sin of the tree of knowledge, Cain and Abel, the generations from Cain to Lamech, the ten generations from Adam to Noah, the corruption that engulfed their generations, and the renewed hope that emerged with the birth of Noah.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

Beresheet contains more stories than any other portion in the Torah. In many ways it is also the deepest of the portions, as it discusses the basis of our being—the creation of the soul.

The common soul was created out of the will to receive delight and pleasure, or simply, “the will to receive.” That will is the soul’s core, and it’s affected by six qualities: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod. These qualities penetrated the substance—the will to receive—and designed it in synchrony with the upper force, the Creator. The reason why man is called Adam is that the word Adam comes from the word Adamah, from the verse, Adameh la Elyon (“I will be like the most high,” Isaiah, 14:14), since he is similar to the Creator, the sublime bestowal, sublime love, to that upper force that gave birth to it.

Adam is the structure of the soul that is equal in form to the Creator and is in Dvekut [adhesion] with Him in the Garden of Eden. A garden means “desire.” The garden is the part of the creature, Adam’s substance—the will to receive. Eden marks the degree of bestowal, degree of Bina. Adam, who is on the degree of Bina, is in the Garden of Eden.

This does not pertain to our world or to the universe we know, but rather to the common soul that the Creator created. From the very beginning, the common soul undergoes a special preparation, the sin, because at its inception it was adhered to the upper force, which means that it had no authority of its own, nothing to its name, or any sense of independent existence. In a sense it is like an embryo in its mother’s womb—on the one hand it exists, on the other hand it is part of its mother, and each of its actions is ruled by its superior.

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