The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) August 31, 2024.
Part 1: Baal HaSulam. Letter 61, 23.
Reader: Hello, we're reading Letter number 61 by Baal HaSulam. The letter does not appear in the Writings of Baal HaSulam, but you can find the study materials in our websites. You can also send us questions through the websites. Anyone asking a question in the study hall is asked to stand up, hold the microphone close to his mouth and speak loud and clear. Again, reading Baal HaSulam's letter 61, you can find the study materials in Sviva Tova and in the Arvut system. Letter number 61.
Reading Letter 61: (00:41) A letter that Baal HaSulam wrote to his brother-in-law in 1928 about the secret teacher
Tuesday, 10 Tevet, Tav-Reish-Peh-Het (January 3, 1928)
Here, in the city of Givat Shaul, a suburb of Jerusalem, may it be built soon in our days, Amen.
To the famous, honorable Hassid, Basket Full of Books [an honorary epithet], Our Teacher Abraham Handil, blessings and peace, Braunstein, may his light shine.
I indeed received your letter from December 16, where you asked me many questions. Particularly, you wanted to know on what I have built foundations in the wisdom of Kabbalah, requiring dwelling over a drop of ink seven clean [days]. Thus far are your words.
As for me, I do not find myself obligated to sympathize with this grief of yours. Nevertheless, for reasons I keep to myself, I will reply to the best of my ability. I will tell you about the main things that happened to me from the beginning of the learning to the end, and for which I have been rewarded with the wisdom, thanks to the Creator’s mercy.
On Friday morning, the 12th of the month of Heshvan, a certain man came to me. It was known to me that he was a great and wondrous sage in the wisdom of Kabbalah, as well as in other teachings. Indeed, as soon as he began to speak, I sensed and tasted in him that God’s wisdom was in him, and all his words were in great exaggeration and self-aggrandizement.
Nevertheless, I truly believed, with all my being and senses, and he promised to reveal to me the wisdom of truth to the fullest. I studied with him some three months each night after midnight at his house. The majority of the study was in the ways of holiness and purity. However, each time, I implored him to reveal to me some secret from the wisdom of Kabbalah. He would begin to say the headlines, but never completed it for me. Naturally, this made my longing very strong. Finally, once, after great pleading, he completed one secret to me, and my joy was immeasurable.
From then on, I began to acquire some being by myself. But the more my being grew, the further my holy teacher grew from me. Yet, I did not feel it. This continued for some three months until in the last days, I did not find him at his home at all. I searched for him but did not find him. Then I felt that he had truly grown far from me, and I regretted it very much and began to improve my ways.
Then, on the morning of the 9th of the month of Nissan, I found him and I appeased him extensively for the matter, and then he was just as appeased as before, and revealed to me a great and all-inclusive secret in about a Mikveh (a place for ritual bathing) that was measured and found deficient. I, of course, was overjoyed.
However, I saw him appearing to be weakening, and I would not leave his house. The following day, on the 10th of Nissan, Tav-Reish-Ayin-Tet (April 10, 1919), he passed away.
My grief cannot be expressed in writing, for my heart was filled with hope to be rewarded with wisdom and knowledge as one of the first ones, and behold, I had been left bare and destitute. Even what I did receive from him, I had forgotten at the time because of the great grief.
From then on, I have been gazing upward with endless longing and yearning, not resting for even one moment in the day, until I was found favorable in the eyes of the Creator and my teacher’s merit and his teaching came to my aid, and my heart was opened with the sublime wisdom flowing on and on like a wellspring.
By the mercy of the Creator, I also remembered all the secrets I had received from my teacher, thank God for sustaining me and keeping me. How can one as poor as I thank Him? He knew my indigence from the beginning, that I had neither the knowledge nor the understanding even to thank and praise for His great favors.
However, who will tell Him, “What You will do and how You will work?” My above-mentioned holy teacher made a living from big business; he was famous all over the city as a good merchant, but to this day, no one knows about him and the wisdom of Kabbalah, and he did not permit me to reveal his name.
Now I will answer the rest of your questions: I make a living being a Rabbi here. Although the salary is very low, the Creator provides for my needs in various ways. As a whole, I currently enjoy dwelling in the land of Israel, and I always hang my hope on the Creator, for His mercies do not end.
I engage in Kabbalah openly, in public. However, in private, to a select few, I sometimes show ways and outlines according to the hour and the time.
I engage in the revealed a few hours a day besides teaching a lesson in rules of permitted and forbidden to the students at the seminary that I watch over, called “a seminary for rabbis.”
Your niece, Leah Tehiya, is to be married in the coming days. The groom is a great wise disciple and teacher, with more fear of the Creator [in the Orthodox sense] than most, of a great lineage, the grandson of the holy Rabbi of Stratin, and the holy Sayer of Maazritch, and his lineage encompasses almost all the disciples of The Baal Shem Tov.
Concerning my health and the health of my household, all is well, thank God. May God let us hear good news and to be rewarded with the comfort of Zion.
Your sister’s groom [brother-in-law],
Yehuda Leib
Reader: (11:49) So, now we will read letter 23. Again, this one is in the Writings of Baal HaSulam in Hebrew, on page 712. Letter 23
Reading Letter 23: (12:31) 16 Heshvan, Tav-Reish-Peh-Zayin, October 24, 1926, London
To my soul mate ... may his candle burn forever:
... Concerning the comparison of your matter to the cascading of the worlds, of which your friends do not approve, it is because they learned from me that first you need to understand the upper worlds, for so is the order—from above downward first, then from below upward. It is so because a corporeal eye can give birth only to corporeality, and wherever it looks, it only materializes. Conversely, a spiritual eye emits only spiritual images, and any place it looks is blessed.
Even the corporeal images, when they sense their source, return to being truly spiritual, not compared to, or like, but truly become complete spirituality, as it is written, “It is changed as the material of the seal, and will be fashioned as a garment.”
What you are asking of me, to teach you the matter of unifications because you were not rewarded with receiving them from authors, I wonder, how will you receive them from books?
I saw your allegories and poetic phrases that begin, “I shall carry my adages and say, ‘Words that are gauged by the Omer [count].’” Indeed, you gauge your words with the Omer, but exert further to bless the blessing of the Omer, for “an Omer is the tenth part of an Ephah [measuring unit, as well as “where”].” Ephah means great bewilderment, as you write, “Ephah [written like “where” in Hebrew] is the right [just] side, and Asirit [one tenth] comes from the word Asurot [forbidden],” for there is a mother to the tradition, and there is a mother to the Pentateuch, as in, “The king is held captive by your tresses.”
That measure indicates that through faith and confidence, the heart’s bewilderment is forbidden, too, meaning that not even a trace of bewilderment remains. This is the measure of the Omer. And yet, we should bless, and this I did not find in your letter.
It is said, “The greedy man curses and spurns the Lord.” That is, a prayer does half, and anyone who prays for himself is incomplete, but halved, for the whole one has nothing to pray for. This is why our sages warned us not to work in order to receive reward, but for wholeness. This is a sublime secret, and only those who have no awakening for themselves will understand it.
This is why our sages said, “The host slices and the guest blesses,” meaning that one must not lie to himself that the landlord is giving him wholeness. Rather, he must feel the truth as it is, in utter precision. This is why it was said, “The host slices,” yet the guest must bless.
“Guest” comes from the words, “and smelled in the fear of the Lord.” And because he receives what the host gives him at the cutting, as though it was complete, he is blessing anyway. And the measure of his blessing is as the measure of his joy with the gift, which is possible for him only through “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”
This is what our sages said, “If he stole a measure of wheat, ground it, kneaded it, baked it, and separated it, how will he bless? He does not bless, but curses.” This is very deep, for one who steals does not thank the robbed one because the robbed one did not give him anything. Rather, he took from him by force, against his will.
The cutting and the reward that a person deserves all stem from the first iniquity, since “a transgression leads to a transgression.” “In the beginning it is as a cobweb, and in the end it is as cart-ropes.” Everything follows the beginning.
And yet, although he believes that all the deficiencies and cuts were done by the Creator, he still cannot think so about the first iniquity, as it is certain that harm will not come from the upper one. It follows that he truly is a thief, as though he snatched from the Creator against His will.
“The tree of knowledge was wheat,” as it is written, “One who robs a measure of wheat.” Se’ah [measure] is as “In Se’ahse’ah [full measure], when You send her away, You will contend with her.” Wheat is the first iniquity. Therefore, although “she ground it and baked it”—meaning they became cart-ropes, and then he separated the Challah [braided bread for Shabbat] from it, from the word Hulin [secular], “It is entirely for the Creator,” implying the exaltedness and separation above reason—he is not blessing but curing, as it is a Mitzva [commandment] that comes through transgression. For were it not for the first iniquity, this great Mitzva would not have happened.
All this is because he is a thief, and does not see that a righteous pardons and gives; hence, he does not bless wholeheartedly and does not make repentance from love, for then sins would become to him as merits. He would recognize that the measure of wheat is the Creator’s gift, and not his own power and the might of his hand.
This is why our sages said, “The host slices,” and not “the guest,” meaning the measure of wheat is also the Creator’s gift, to “keep His covenant and to remember His commandments to do them.” When the guest grows strong and believes that everything that all the host has troubled Himself with was only for him, he blesses Him wholeheartedly. It turns out that that cutting is itself truly a whole thing, after the blessing of the Creator from above downward.
But first, he must gain strength in his fountain of blessings from below upward. That is, he is called “a guest,” for he can gain strength and exert by the scent, as it is written, “and smelled in the fear of the Lord,” and as it is written, “One who steals from his father and mother and says, ‘it is not a crime,’ is a friend to a destroyer.” In other words, the first iniquity is rooted in his body because of his father and mother; hence, the person became a thief by saying that he is as above-mentioned, and it is not the gift of the Creator. This is why he is regarded as stealing from his father and mother, and then adding sin to crime because he says, “There is no crime.” That is, he grows fond of the Mitzva of destroying, God forbid.
This is the meaning of the blessing of the Omer, that one must feel the Creator’s gift even in the measure of wheat, meaning by the scent. At that time, his joy is whole in all his work, and by this the reward becomes whole again, and “The Lord knows the way of the righteous.”
Yehuda Leib, son of my teacher and Rabbi Simcha, may his candle burn
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:36) He says here, because the whole one has nothing to pray for, hence our sages warned us not to work in order to receive reward, but for wholeness. And this is a sublime secret that can be understood only by one who has no awakening for himself; meaning, what we feel that he's talking a lot here about the bread of shame. Meaning, we always say, it was by the power of my own hand, as though there's no Creator in the world. So the thing is that there is a feeling—he's speaking about I and I and I, and does not mention the Creator, that He actually does all the work. And there is a sentence here that I truly did not understand. Where he says, ‘the first iniquity was rooted in his body by the power of his father and mother; therefore, the person becomes a thief by saying that it was by himself and not the gift of the Creator, hence he's considered a stealing from his father and mother, furthermore he adds crime to iniquity by saying there is no crime, meaning, that he grows fond of the commandment to destroy God forbid, etc., meaning, there's no appreciation that the Creator actually does everything.’ How do you explain what he means here?
M. Laitman: This is the case he's writing about.
Student: So, a person should not be crude? Or what does it mean, that he's stealing from his mother and father?
M. Laitman: He allows his evil inclination to go wild.
Student: How does he overcome it?
M. Laitman: First he has to recognize that this is evil. That this is a great iniquity. And then, after a prayer, he will merit correction.
Student: To whom does Baal HaSulam write this, Baal HaSulam, Yehuda Leib? To whom does he, when he's speaking here, when he's writing? To whom is he writing? From, to whom is he directing his words?
M. Laitman: Read the beginning of the letter.
Student: It says, to my soulmate, Rav, whatever, may his candle shine forever.
M. Laitman: The honorable, famous Hassid.
Student: Who is this Hassid?
M. Laitman: I don't know.
Student: So, there are no words?
M. Laitman: Abraham Handil.
Student: He was a student?
M. Laitman: I don't know. I didn't receive any…
Student: Any knowledge of this?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:44) If I understood correctly, he says that if one begins his work by stealing, it doesn't matter what he does later on, the result will already be incorrect. He says one must not lie about himself, that the landlord is giving him wholeness. Rather, he should feel the truth as it is in utter precision. This is why, it was said, the host slices. So, what is this warning here in the beginning of the path, not to steal? What is the stealing, what we should be careful with?
M. Laitman: That then he will have no connection with AVI, as we call it. That is the root of all good.
Student: So what does it mean to steal in this case?
M. Laitman: It's like, let's say, like stealing. What can I say?
Student: Which means what? An incorrect attitude in the beginning of the work? What is he stealing? From whom is he stealing?
M. Laitman: First of all, from himself. Because it doesn't allow him to bless. And that's how it keeps going.
Student: So, let's go not for what not, but what yes. He should see that the host is slicing? That the host doesn't give him wholeness on purpose, but he should bless for that?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And if he doesn't bless in the beginning?
M. Laitman: I don't know what happens, but he doesn't become corrected. He has an opportunity to correct and he doesn't.
Student: Meaning, in the beginning of the path, either you bless or you steal, one of two.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (31:23) When a person blesses the Creator, truly, he begins to feel that the Creator also blesses him?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And it has to first start with the person?
M. Laitman: Well, in some cases.
Student: And when a person feels that the Creator starts with his work first, is there a difference between these two kinds of blessings on the side of the person?
M. Laitman: Can't say. I can't say. We have to feel it. To achieve feeling.
Reader: (32:33) We have, The Preface to the Sulam Commentary.
M. Laitman: Okay, so let's start it now.
Reader: (32:45) So we'll move to the next part of the lesson. Before that, let's sing together.
Song: (32:53)