Now that we've outlined some concepts about how the Kabbalists believe Creation happened, we can turn to the Book of Genesis and see how Kabbalists derived many of their concepts from the text. Before we go into the specifics, however, we should first examine some of the ways in which Kabbalists worked on interpreting the language of the Bible to arrive at their conclusions.
Many Kabbalists of the thirteenth century arrived at their ideas in part through prophecy, which was achieved by slipping into an ecstatic state of consciousness to obtain a mystical union with the divine realm. Kabbalists would chant the names of God like mantras, while using specific breathing techniques and body movements to manipulate the flow of energy through their body and bring on a state of awareness that would allow them to receive messages from the spiritual world. There were even very detailed Kabbalist meditation manuals written about how to achieve this state. Some Kabbalists would also meditate on the words of the Bible or on specific letters, focusing their attention on the shape or sound of the letters to divine the meaning within. By blocking out the distractions of the world, silencing the chatter in their heads, and focusing their attention on one thing, Kabbalist mystics were able to tap into a level of consciousness in which they could comprehend the divine truths or concepts that otherwise eluded them.
In addition to meditation, Kabbalists used a number of more analytical methods to examine the biblical texts themselves. For example, they examined Genesis as if using a high-powered microscope. Like good detectives, they picked through every detail — descriptions of body language, variations in the manner of speech or tone of voice (God is described as whispering, speaking softly, speaking loudly, speaking angrily), changes in verb tenses — to uncover what the Torah was saying beneath the surface, while at the same time keeping in mind what they already knew about the Torah from the fifteen-hundred-year-old written and oral traditions.
The manner in which they did this was identical to the manner that traditional rabbis studied the Bible. There are a number of principles or laws that rabbis use to study and interpret the Torah, whether reading it on a literal or a mystical level. One principle regards the repeated use of specific words or actions. If the Torah mentions something more than once, or uses the same word in different situations, the rabbis believe it is intentional, usually to teach us another lesson or added dimension about something. For example, if the act of giving charity is mentioned in two different places, each occurrence is meant to impart different aspects of the subject. The first mention might describe how much someone gave to the poor (and from this the rabbis would determine the rule for what Jewish law would consider appropriate alms-giving) and the second mention might impart how often someone gave to the poor.
In addition, there are many words that would seem to be used oddly or even incorrectly in the Torah. A grammarian might go through and red-line God's use of terms that are not used in the way we normally would use them. But a closer inspection would reveal the meaning behind the word. Take, for example, the tradition of the wedding ring. The Bible doesn't say specifically that a groom has to give his bride something of value. However, the same word that is used to describe the act of marrying a woman — taking a wife — is also used earlier in the Torah, when Abraham purchases a cave in Hebron in which to bury his wife, Sarah. The Torah says Abraham takes the cave. It's an odd use of the word, especially since Abraham actually pays money for the cave — 400 shekels. Therefore the rabbis concluded that if money was exchanged when the word take was employed in one place, it should also be exchanged when the word is employed in the same manner elsewhere. The ring, then, became symbolic of this exchange.
There are also instances in which different words are used to describe what seems to be the same thing. Take, for example, the different words the Bible uses to describe the act of Creation in Genesis. In some places it says that God created, while in other places it uses the words formed or made. It might seem like splitting hairs to focus on the subtle differences between the terms, but by doing this the Kabbalists reached their conclusion that each of the different terms connoted different kinds of Creation being described: Creation as it occurred on the cosmic, conceptual level and Creation as it occurred on the physical, material level. Kabbalists also examined all the different ways in which the ten names of God were used and whether or not there was an underlying pattern. They came to the conclusion that none of these names is actually the real name of God; that the Bible in fact, as mentioned earlier, never states the true name of God; and that, indeed, there is an underlying pattern to the use of these names.
A third way Kabbalists interpreted the Bible was through Gematria, which involves the substitution of numbers for letters. Each letter in Hebrew is assigned a numerical value (see chart on page 195), and Kabbalists would add the numbers in a word to get the value of the word, then compare words of equal value to discover a deeper meaning. If the Kabbalists were unsure how to interpret one word, they would look for its numerical equivalent and try to discern the meaning of the first word based on the meaning of the second.
Some people find this aspect of Kabbalah a bit flighty and think the Kabbalists were just playing pointless word games. But the Kabbalists used these methods to expand their interpretations of the language. Through such “playing” they arrived at associations and conclusions they might not otherwise have discovered.
All of this focus on specific language leads to an essential point about Kabbalah: For Kabbalists, the Bible cannot be interpreted in any language other than Hebrew. The Hebrew alphabet is sacred because, according to Jewish tradition, it is the language that came from God and it is the tool by which God created the universe. His use of it in the Bible, Kabbalists believe, is very precise. Every letter, every word has significance, and any substitution of the words means, quite literally, that something gets lost in the translation.
We now examine some of the specific words of Genesis to see how Kabbalists discovered various meanings in those words. While every concept in Kabbalah was derived from oral and written traditions in a painstaking process that took generations of great and dedicated minds, the most we can do here is look at one example, the opening line of Genesis, to get an idea of the complexity involved in coming to these interpretations. (My thanks to Rabbi Eliahu Klein, who aided in my understanding of the many possible nuances.)
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The opening words here seem straightforward enough. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth — period. It's a simple statement of fact that seems to tell us everything we need to know about the universe. Well, it seems straightforward, but when we look at the words more closely, we see that with slight variations in the translation of the original Hebrew, we can alter our entire understanding of the events of Creation without essentially changing the concept that the words express, which is that God created the heavens and the earth.
The Hebrew phrase is Bereshit bara Elohim ve et ha shamaim ve et ha aretz. The first thing we should note is that the very first letter of the Bible is the Hebrew letter bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. We might wonder why the Bible would start its narrative with the second letter of the alphabet rather than the first. If in the beginning phrase we're talking about the beginning of Creation, why not make the form match the content and simply begin the Bible with the beginning of the alphabet?
Kabbalists say that the use of the letter bet shows us that something else existed before the beginning of which the Bible is speaking. Prior to “In the beginning” was God, who preceded everything, including the chaos out of which Creation grew. We understand, then, that the missing letter aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet that should rightly begin the book of Genesis, is not here because it represents what preceded Creation, what preceded the Book of Genesis. Aleph is the hidden God (Ein Sof) from which this entire story flows, and bet is the revealed God (the sefirot), the story of Creation itself.
Note also that the letter aleph is assigned the numerical value of 1 in Hebrew numerology, and the letter bet is assigned the value of 2. One represents unity and oneness and undifferentiation, which is a correct description of Ein Sof. The number two represents duality and differentiation, which is an accurate description of Creation, the point at which something emerged from the oneness to create something separate from that oneness.
Something else should be noted before we begin to analyze the sentence. The traditional manner of translating this first line omits one word, which turns out to be an important word for Kabbalists. The word ve (“and”) appears twice in the sentence, which doesn't seem to make sense, so translators have traditionally left it out. Translated correctly, the sentence would read: “In the beginning, God created and the heavens and the earth.” We'll discuss the significance of this later.
Let's begin, then, with the first word in the sentence, Be, which is attached as a prefix to the word reshit. Be can mean, among other things, “in,” “with,” or “by means of” in Hebrew, depending on the context; and the word reshit, which usually means “beginning,” comes from the root of the word head and can also mean “wisdom.” Therefore, if we substitute the alternative meanings, we could translate the first word as:
With the beginning…
By means of the beginning…
In the head…
With the head…
By means of the head…
In wisdom…
With wisdom…
By means of wisdom…
Progressing to the second word in the sentence, bara (“created”), we find a strange conjunction with the word following it, Elohim (one of the Bible's names for God), which seems to suggest that the subject of the sentence is falling after the verb. Normally, however, we would put the actor before the verb: Elohim bara — God created. As it is, Elohim becomes the object of creation, and the subject of the sentence is understood as the third-person singular of the verb bara (“It”), which implies God. Therefore, the first part of the line reads, “In the beginning, God created God ….” But how can this be if God is the source of all things and has no creator?
We have to refer back to our discussion of the ten names of God to see that Elohim is only one manifestation of God. Elohim is the name that refers to the sefira Binah, the last stage of oneness that contains the seven lower sefirot within, but it also refers to all of the sefirot collectively. When we read it this way, we understand that Ein Sof created or emanated the qualities of Himself — the sefirot — to act as agents of Creation. Thus, we have:
In the beginning, Ein Sof created the sefirot…
Going back to the sentence, Bereshit bara Elohim ve et ha shamaim ve et ha aretz, we now arrive at the phantom and that we noted earlier and which now makes much more sense. God created not only the sefirot, but something else as well.
We look to the next word, et, to give us a clue. Et is generally used as a formal function word before a direct object, which is how most translators have traditionally interpreted it here. But the word et is also composed of the Hebrew letters aleph and tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It would seem, then, that et is shorthand for the entire Hebrew alphabet, and if this is the case, then the translation reads:
In the beginning, Ein Sof created the sefirot and the alphabet of the heaven (ha shamaim) and the alphabet of the earth (ha aretz).
This is a correct description of what Kabbalists say occurred. Ein Sof created the sefirot, and through them He created everything in the heavens and on the earth, everything in the universe from A to Z. But what does “the alphabet of the heaven and earth” really mean? What do letters have to do with Creation?
One of the first legends in Judaism is that God created the world through the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Actually it says that 974 generations before God created the heaven and the earth, He created the Torah, and through the Torah He then created the universe. Through the letters of the Torah, he created all that exists in the Torah; thus He created Creation. This is an area of Kabbalah called “letter mysticism.”
But how can this be, since we know that the Torah was first dictated to Moses on Mt. Sinai? Kabbalists say this doesn't mean that the specific Torah existed 974 generations before the world, but that the divine plan was “written” in the heavens. The legend tells us it was written as black fire on white fire; it existed in the “mind” of God. How Creation progressed from mind to manifestation was, at least in part, accomplished through language.
As already mentioned, when Ein Sof emanated His energy into the black space, He sent it out on the power of the letter yud, and it was the four letters of God's sacred name that “propelled” the energy through the four levels of Creation. The sefirot and the alphabet together gave birth to Creation. We can see this principle represented on the Tree of Life in the form of the twenty-two paths that connect the ten sefirot to each other. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and each one corresponds to a path on the Tree. Each letter of the alphabet delineates a different path the energy takes from one sefira to another. Everything in the physical world comes into being through the interconnection of these twenty-two letters and the ten sefirot. But if you look at the Tree, the paths of the letters don't just join the spheres together, they seem to be the framework for the entire structure that binds it. The Tree could easily be a molecular model depicting the binding forces of matter.
Language and speech are in fact fundamental to Creation in Genesis (“God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light”). Every time God speaks in this first chapter of Genesis, something happens; either the waters divide, or the sun appears, or the skies fill with birds of every kind. The world is said to have been created through ten sayings. Indeed, there are ten instances in Genesis in which the words “And God said” are used, and each expression is followed by the creation of something else in the universe. These ten statements created the world.
We might dismiss the idea of letters and language being instruments of Creation as the mere mythology of an unsophisticated people, but when we look at it more closely, we see that the idea is actually very sophisticated. Remember, the Torah is a history of the universe up to and beyond the life of Moses. It preexists events and even foretells them. It appears that, in some way, by saying it is so, it becomes so; by writing it down, the words create the thing itself. (So let it be written, so let it be done.)
The idea of letters and speech having the power to conjure certain things is familiar. Speech is a tool of creation. We all know the power of words; once they are thrown into the world they initiate action; people interpret the words and act on them or react to them. Words set action in motion.
The alphabet can also be seen as a tool of creation because it helps put ideas or thoughts into words, it helps clothe ideas and lead them to expression, making them real. This suggests that the Hebrew alphabet was the tool for carrying the idea of Creation into being. But Kabbalists go beyond this by saying that letters and words actually create.
Linguists and philosophers have long wrestled with the idea that a word cannot be the created thing itself, but only a representation of that thing. According to Kabbalists, this is not the case with Hebrew. The word is the thing; the essence of the thing is tied to its name. This means that the word table, in Hebrew, shulchan, is closely tied to the object table, and that if the object were called something else, then it would also be something else and would no longer be a table. Something in the order of the letters that shape the word shulchan is the formula that creates the thing we know as a table. Alter the letters a little, create a different word, and you create a different object altogether. The Hebrew alphabet is seen by Kabbalists as a kind of code in which words are formulas for the things they express. In other words, the combination of different letters like m-a-y-i-m is a formula for water itself. Each letter represents a different energy or force that, when combined, create the thing the word expresses. This idea is also found in science, in which the elemental tables show how many things in the world can be reduced to a formula. Water, for instance, can be reduced to the elements of hydrogen and oxygen. Kabbalists are suggesting that in a similar way the Hebrew word for water, mayim, contains within it the recipe for making water. The combination of the elements represented by the Hebrew letters m-a-y-i-m can be used to conjure the forces that mix the elements of hydrogen and oxygen to create water. Everything that can be named can be broken down to a similar formula.
We can see the idea even more clearly when we remember that every Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent. Take the word for water. If we say that the letters that comprise the word mayim represent the forces and elements that create water, we're saying also that the numerical equivalent does the same thing. We're living in an age in which genetic marking and genetic coding, which can reduce every one of us to a combination of elements and numbers, has made this much more plausible today than it must have been for the medieval Kabbalists.
We mentioned earlier that the Kabbalists kept many of their teachings secret and were selective in choosing disciples; this is one of the reasons for their secrecy. They believed that knowledge of these codes and the meditative practices that went with them could conceivably give someone the power to alter the forces of Creation. Indeed, some Kabbalists believe that this is partly what was going on when Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea.
Returning to Genesis, from the interpretation of this one line we can see how careful analysis and subtle changes in translation can lead to entirely different descriptions of what happened. This one little phrase contains 1) the basic idea that God created the heavens and the earth; 2) the idea that letters and speech are tools for creation (on a basic and mystical level); and 3) the idea that words and numbers form the basic formulas for all things in the universe. This one line contains a scenario of Creation that speaks to spiritualists, to linguists and philosophers, and to mathematicians and scientists. We've taken different paths but have arrived at the same thing. Just like the paths on the Tree of Life, which all start from the same place — God — and end in the same place — Creation of the heavens and the earth. This gives us one idea of the breadth and scope that Kabbalah encompasses, and helps to explain why Kabbalah can be a lifelong intellectual pursuit. Convoluted as it seems, however, Kabbalah can also be immensely beautiful.
Moving along then, this first line of Genesis, Kabbalists believe, is followed by a description of how the stage was set for Creation — the contraction of God (“The earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the abyss”) and the emanation (“God's spirit moved on the water's surface”). Then the rest of the chapter runs through the days of Creation.
Kabbalists believe, however, that this is not a description of physical Creation, but a description of Creation on the cosmic, macro level. The opening lines of Genesis aren't describing the actual physical creation of the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. They're describing the cosmic prelude — the tzimtzum and the emanation of all the forces of Creation that will then be responsible for creating the birds and the bees. Each day of Creation that follows describes a sefira coming into being. Each day describes another of God's qualities concentrating itself into a vessel. It isn't until chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis that Kabbalists believe physical Creation is actually being addressed. Going back to the first line of Genesis, then, if we substitute the words “In the head” for “In the beginning,” we can see that it suggests that this Creation is taking place on a nonmaterial level. It's all in God's head.
How else do we know that this is not referring to the real Creation? Because in chapter 1 of Genesis we have one account of Creation and in chapter 2, we have a second account using different words to describe the same things. However, the name for God changes in chapter 2 and the word “created” in chapter 1 becomes “formed” in chapter 2. We've moved from the world of Briyah (creation) to the world of Yetzirah (formation). Kabbalists, by the way, do not end chapter 1 with the Creation of humans on the sixth day as do most translated Bibles; instead, they end it on the seventh day after the words: “And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he ceased this work of creation.” Chapter 2 then begins with, “Here is a summary of the events in the creation of the heavens and earth ….”
Why do we need a summary of everything that's just been summarized — particularly when that summary is nearly as long as the original? One phrase that depicts an essential Kabbalistic thought is, “As above, so below.” It expresses the idea that everything that happens in the physical realm has a model in the spiritual realm; everything that happens in our world has a precedent in the higher world. The process of Creation in the spiritual world — that is, the creation of the sefirot as discussed in chapter 1 — is a model for what happens all over again on the next level. This is why in the second chapter of Genesis, God begins His story all over again.
Again, we learn about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. God the Gardener is planting humans’ little island of paradise, giving it all sorts of beautiful vegetation and digging a system of four tributaries through which the river waters of Eden can flow and nourish it. At the center of the garden He plants two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.
But this time the Bible gives us details about how human beings were created. It tells us that God formed Adam's body from the soil of the earth (the name Adam comes from the Hebrew word for earth or soil, adamah, and the word for blood, dam; thus Adam was made flesh and blood). And when the body is finished, God breathes into the body “the breath of life.” The Hebrew word for breath is neshima, which shares the same root as the Hebrew word for soul, neshama.
If this refers to our soul, then we're still not in the physical world, the world of manifestation, the word of Assiyah. If the tzimtzum and the emanation are the first world (Atzilut), and the creation of the sefirot from Binah are the second world (Briyah), we are now in the world of formation (Yetzirah). If we look closely, we can see a description of the tzimtzum and emanation all over again. The chapter begins with a description of the earth that God created. It tells us that the earth is barren, with neither plant nor grain sprouting from it, due to the fact that God hasn't sent any rain. (It is desolate, similar to the space of nothingness created by the tzimtzum.) God then breathes into Man (compare with the emanation) and begins to plant the garden (inseminates Binah). In the middle of the Garden, He places the Tree of Life (Tiferet, the symbol of harmony and balance) as well as the Tree of Knowledge (an eleventh sefira is sometimes placed on the Kabbalah Tree, and is called Da'at — Hebrew for knowledge). Then He digs the four rivers (the four sefirot that stand on either side of Tiferet), and finally he places Adam in the garden (Yesod, the foundation sefira). But what about Malkhut, the last sefira on the Tree? That's where the story of the Fall comes in.
It's significant that the primary symbol of Kabbalah is called the Tree of Life. Indeed, Kabbalists believe that the Tree of Life mentioned in Genesis is actually a reference to the sefirot, which were fully in place once the “creation” stage of Creation was complete; that is, once Creation had passed from the world of Briyah (creation) in chapter 1 to the world of Yetzirah (formation) in chapter 2.
Unlike with the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve were originally permitted to eat from the Tree of Life; they had free access to its fruits. This means they were connected directly to the universal flow of energy through the sefirot and could commune easily with God whenever they wanted. But once Adam and Eve tasted fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they were also prohibited from eating from the Tree of Life, and indeed were ultimately banished from the Garden altogether. How do we interpret this?
It's only after Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that they become aware that they are naked and experience shame. It's a symbol of the final step in Creation, of the final physical manifestation of the forces of God. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve exist in the world of Yetzirah, the world of the spirit. After the Fall, however, the souls that are Adam and Eve become clothed in physical form and they become aware of their nakedness. A line in chapter 3 says that after the sin, God made “garments of skin” to clothe Adam and Eve. Until the Fall, they are souls in the world of Yetzirah; after the Fall, they descend to the world of Assiyah (physical manifestation).
So what is this story all about? What is the meaning of Creation, and what is the meaning of Adam and Eve's sin?
In the literal interpretation of Adam and Eve, we have two historical figures, two distinct individuals who are depicted as the first ancestors of all humankind. But Kabbalists, rather than viewing Adam and Eve as historical figures, view them as archetypal symbols of the splitting of oneness that initiated Creation in the first place. We've all heard the idea that man and woman complete each other; it's a familiar concept that has wound its way into popular romance — the idea of finding a soulmate. Kabbalists believe that the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory for how the concept of duality became actualized in our world, and how the entire aim of Creation is to rejoin the parts into the one. Here's how it works:
Jewish tradition holds that originally Adam and Eve were not created as two separate beings but started out as a single entity with two faces. We see the basis for this in Genesis 1:27 when it says that on the sixth day of Creation, “Like God did God make man; Man and maid did he make them.” Here we have God making both man and woman, and yet we don't have the creation of Eve from Adam's rib until much later in Genesis 2:22. Therefore, we understand that what God created at this stage was a united being, within which existed the dualities of male and female. Actually, to be precise about it, the being contained all the dualities and qualities of all the sefirot. How do we know this? From the line preceding the one just quoted. “Then God said, ‘Let us make Man in our image.’” Note the plurals us and our. The name for God used here in the Bible is Elohim, which, as we noted earlier, represents all of the sefirot together. Thus we understand that it is not God making the statement, but the sefirot. It is the forces of God speaking, and they are talking about creating human beings in their image, in the image of the sefirot. They are modeling human beings on the ten qualities of God that are the forces of Creation. This is what we mean when we say that the Tree of Life and the sefirot are a model of humans.
At this stage in chapter 1, the stage of Briyah (creation), the being called Adam contains the dualities of masculine and feminine united as one. But they cannot look at each other. The legend tells us that the two faces are turned away from each other and cannot see each other. So God, in chapter 2, performs an operation, separating the single entity into two. The Hebrew says not that God took Eve from Adam's rib, but that He took her from his side, meaning that they were joined together like Siamese twins. He creates two halves so that each can turn to look at the other. In doing so, he creates the duality of humans. But remember, this is still on the spiritual level. We're still in the world of Yetzirah in chapter 2, before the Fall initiates the world of manifestation.
The idea that Adam and Eve are separated so that they can turn to look at each other is an example of the philosophical concept of the Other. In order to know that I exist, I need the Other outside me to define me. I exist as me because I am not you. Otherwise, without you, without something outside me, I am the whole world. Freud theorized that the infant recognizes herself and begins to establish her identity only when she recognizes that her mother is something apart from herself. She begins to understand who she is by understanding who she is not. Prior to this, she thinks the entire world, including her mother, is an extension of herself. Only when she “turns to face” her mother, does the child see that her mother is outside of herself, and she begins to develop her own sense of identity. Thus the act of Adam and Eve looking at each other, the act of the two halves turning to face each other, is the recognition of identity and difference.
But the Fall also represents one of the ways in which we arrive at knowledge. Often we can't know what something is without comparing it to something else. Once Adam and Eve eat the fruit of Knowledge, they not only see that there is a difference between good and evil, but also understand what that difference is. Knowledge and understanding represent the beginning of differentiation. It's the difference between simply seeing two things — good and evil — and knowing the difference between them. Good and evil existed before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree, but there was nothing to distinguish them from each other. It is interesting to note that Adam gives Eve her name only after the Fall, recognizing that she is truly different from him. Actually, he comes to know her better than we can imagine, because the next chapter begins with the statement, “And so Adam knew Eve his wife.”
Of course we're talking here about knowledge “in the Biblical sense.”
We've examined the texts of Genesis to see how Creation is depicted, and we've listed several principles to see how Kabbalists believe it was accomplished. But why did it occur in the first place?
It's one of the trickier areas of Kabbalah, because any theory about why God did this or that suggests that we can know what was on God's mind or even that God has a mind.
The burning question is, Why did God create the universe? Why did He break away from Himself and go from the one to the many? According to Kabbalists, God created in order to “know” Himself. As we said about the infant, in order for her to fully recognize her identity there has to be someone outside herself. It's a little like that Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping. There is no relationship, and no realization of the self, without another. So God sent a part of Himself outside Himself in order to undergo a process of evolution and return to Himself a higher being, a being that knows Himself.
All of this is a complex way of saying that God creates in order to know His own goodness; and He creates the duality of good and evil in order to recognize the difference between them. Before Creation, God is a king without a kingdom. He's a giver without anyone to receive. The only problem is that in the process of creating life He also creates a problem.
Creation was initially an act of love that went wrong due to human free will. Kabbalists say that Adam and Eve were originally supposed to stay in the Garden of Eden, to exist as spiritual beings, but they departed from the plan, and as a result the balance was broken; the free flow of energy from above to below and back again was thwarted. Adam and Eve introduced new elements into the equation. Or did they? After all, God is omniscient and He must have known what they would do.
While the consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve is a regretful one (there are no rewards or punishment in Kabbalah, only consequences), it is perhaps a necessary one. Unlike the traditional reading of the Bible, which places blame on Adam and Eve and straps us all with original sin before we're born, Kabbalists believe the soul needed to descend in order for it to evolve. The “punishment” was actually an act of love designed to elevate souls from a point of simple knowledge to conscious understanding (it's not just that I know; it's that I know I know). The aim is for all the many parts of God to return to the oneness, but to an even more powerful oneness than existed before. “Know thyself” seems to be the axiom of Creation, and to know thyself means to know all the parts of thyself. But sometimes we need to step outside of ourselves in order to have the best perception, and this seems to be what God did through the act of Creation: He stepped outside Himself.
Jewish legend tells how, when God was preparing to make the world and told the Torah of His plans for human beings, the Torah complained that humans would be sinful and wouldn't follow the laws that God had written for them. God replied, “Repentance was created by Me long ago, and people who are sinful will be able to mend their ways and be forgiven by Me.”
The whole idea of repentance is important to Creation, because those who plummet to the depths of darkness are said to stand more brightly in the light than those who never leave it. The repenter is stronger than the person who is always righteous, because the repenter has had farther to climb back. He's had to battle impulses and overcome them, while the righteous has not even exercised a muscle. The Bible hints at many ideas of second chances. There are many instances of the second-born child being chosen over the first-born. Moses was the second-born son, as was Jacob. In addition, the Ten Commandments were destroyed by God when he discovered the Israelites' golden calf, but Moses convinced Him to create a second set.
Sin and redemption are necessary to the goal of knowing ourselves. To be good without knowledge of bad, Kabbalists believe, is not real goodness. This does not mean, however, that Kabbalists are advocating that we act badly so that we can then repent. It means simply that we have to recognize the dark sides of ourselves first, acknowledge their existence in us, before we can truly know both sides and then turn from the dark to the light. To have faced the depths of darkness within us gives us more appreciation for the light. On an individual psychological level this seems to be good medicine for the psyche as well, since it's known that the more we deny or repress aspects of ourselves the more they insist on asserting themselves.
The Kabbalists are suggesting that the path to wholeness and balance is to accept that we contain many aspects, none of which is bad or harmful unless it is out of balance. The existence of evil is also important, because choice is essential if goodness is to mean anything. If we do what we are told, it doesn't have the same meaning as if we do something because we choose to do it. But in order to turn away from something, we have to first acknowledge its existence; we have to identify the darkness in ourselves in order to turn away from it.
This lesson is repeated in the upper world where, in the course of Creation, God created darkness into which He then poured His light. This leads Kabbalists to the understanding that there can be no darkness without light. We define darkness as the absence of light. Some modern Kabbalists have likened it to the Chinese yin and yang symbol. You can't draw the symbol for yin without also drawing the symbol for yang. In order to appreciate the light, to know the light, we need to see the darkness. We need to find the light in the darkness in order to bring the light out of it — what is a black hole but a place where light is trapped?
“As above, so below,” thus, suggests that the entire scenario of the Fall was a setup, and that a model for repentance was already engraved in the divine plan. We already saw one example of repentance with the destruction of the previous worlds. God made a mistake and had to right it. But Kabbalists say a second event occurred during the creation of the sefirot that also set a precedent for reparation. When the sefirot were initially formed, God poured too much energy into them and the vessels shattered, sending sparks of energy flying; the vessels couldn't contain Him. Kabbalists call this “the breaking of the vessels,” vessels referring to the sefirot once they were in place to receive Ein Sof's energy. The sefirot were not destroyed completely, but were full of cracks, and God had to repair them. The light was then reduced and the project resumed. This set a precedent for repentance. But reparation is not complete; when God fixed the vessels, it is said, Malkhut, the last sefira, remained cracked, and it is our job to repair it. In the world of Yetzirah, Adam's Fall repeated the breaking of the vessels.
Isaac Luria divides Creation into three realms: the tzimtzum; the breaking of the vessels; and the tikkun (repair). One of the most important concepts in Kabbalah involves the final reparation and healing of the world (tikkun ha olam), which has to be completed by humans.
According to Kabbalists, Creation was a process of exile, of God exiling Himself. When God contracted Himself in the tzimtzum, He removed Himself from Himself, then sent a part of Himself into the darkness to create our world. Malkhut, the end result of that process of Creation, is the symbol of exile. God sent the sefirot out of Him into that removed space to create the world, and as a result, Kabbalists say God sent part of Himself into exile. Exile is not a happy experience. The Israelites lived in exile in Babylonia for forty-seven years, and were, after the destruction of the Second Temple, exiled for another 1,878 years. The exile of God means that God is not whole in some way. Something is divided from God that was formerly united with Him. There is a division in Him, and thus a rift in harmony.
The theme of exile is repeated on each level of Creation. On the second day of Creation, it is described how God divided the vapors “to form the sky above and the oceans below.” He divided them horizontally. The Kabbalists see this as the beginning of the division of the spiritual and physical worlds that, until then, were one. Then the parting continues with the division of the single human being into two, Adam and Eve. And finally comes the last separation with the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
According to Gershom Scholem, the original “sin” was the separation of the spiritual and physical, where before there was unity. Every sin thereafter, he says, is a mimic of this separation, a mimic of the act of getting farther from God, of the exile from God. Part of the repair work that we have to do, then, is to rejoin the physical and spiritual, to elevate the physical world to its former place of union with the spiritual. The aim of Kabbalah is to teach us how to reconnect the two: how to elevate the physical to the spiritual. Understand, though, that this does not mean that the physical world is inferior. Just because it sits on the bottom rung of the Creation ladder does not make it less important than the top. The physical world is, in fact, essential to evolution because it is only in this world that final reparation and evolution can be accomplished, because it is only in this world that division has been made real. It is through our experiences in the physical world that we bring about repair in the spiritual. Evolution could not occur in the spiritual realm alone. It requires lessons that can only be learned in the physical world.
Repentance is essential to the repair of the world and the return to wholeness. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuva, also means “return.” A return from where we came, which is central to the Kabbalist idea of healing the universe and returning to unity.
Humans alone, of all the creatures God created, have free will. In this we are Godlike. We are not mindless followers of God; we are also creators like God and our actions have the ability to affect and alter Creation. The story of Adam and Eve teaches us that we have a crucial role in Creation. In the idyllic Eden, God gave Adam the role of naming the things in the Garden. This means that God gave us a role in Creation, and not an insignificant role at that, since naming the thing is like dotting the i and crossing the t of Creation. After God created the light in chapter 1 of Genesis, He named the light “day” and the dark “night.” The naming of the thing completes the process of its creation. The fact that God lets Adam name the beings in the Garden reveals, for Kabbalists, that God gives us the role of completing the Creation process. It wasn't until the last moments before sundown on the last day of Creation that God finally got around to making a human being. This could either mean that humans were so insignificant that we were the last thing God made; or more likely, that we were the crowning glory of Creation. The entire stage was set for our entrance.
It is said that the letters of the Tetragrammaton, the letters that represent the four worlds of Creation, are not united for as long as we are in exile from God; this is why the name YHWH is not spoken. Only when redemption occurs, when all the worlds are one again, will the name of God be pronounced. Will this ever happen? Evolution of the worlds, by definition, moves forward, not backward. Each world, Kabbalists say, is evolving toward tikkun. Although we may take steps backward in order to do so — like God removing Himself — the eventual propulsion is always forward.