Insights into Rabbi Ashlag's Kabbalah podcast

As we move through Seder night, we drink the four cups of wine and we relate to the elements on the Seder plate, we are not usually cognizant of the fact that both these central components of Seder night, actually represent the four-letter Name of God, YHVH Pharaoh said, “Who is YHVH that I should listen to His voice? “ Actually, Pharaoh was cognizant of God acting through nature in the name of EL...

Have you ever wondered what standing at Mount Sinai felt like? Tradition teaches that all the souls of the Jewish people, past, present and future stood together and heard the voice of God. So what did we actually experience? The Torah states: “And all the people saw the voices and the torches, the sound of the shofar, and the smoking mountain, and the people saw and trembled; so they stood from a...

Tu Bshvat is the New Year for trees. But why should trees have a new year? There seems to be a comparison made between the tree and the human being by our sages: “For a man is as the tree of a field.” It transpires that this comparison goes much deeper. Like the tree we also have fruit to give, the fruit of our lives and of our labor. What type of fruit will we be giving out? Who will...

On this week of the Parasha Toledot, we read the story of  Ya’acov and Esau. This story is such a perplexing one when we read the simple bald recital of the events as they took place  as described in Bereishit, the book of Genesis.  So many questions arise! Ya’acov refuses to give Esau soup until he sells his birthright to him.  On the surface, this looks like a callous act, to put it...

This Saturday night starts the fast of Tisha B’ Av. This is a day in which we mourn the destruction of the Temple. But are we really mourning an historical event? When we use our Judaism as a living spiritual path we don’t mourn a heap of stones, but we ask ourselves what are we missing? What aspect is missing from our lives that we feel the need to sit on the floor and conduct all the forms of mo...

Zohar: Rabbi Shimon said: Woe to the man who says that the Torah comes to tell literal stories and stories of people like Esau and Laban and such like. For if this were so, even in these times we could make a Torah out of the words of ordinary people — even nicer stories than these. If the purpose of the Torah were to show the matters of the world, even the rulers of the world have more excellent...

One evening in 1892 in a suburb of Warsaw, a seven-year-old boy was lying in bed when, suddenly, a book fell off the bookshelf, hitting him on the head. The boy picked it up and started to examine it. His father, hearing the sound, came in, and seeing the book in his son’s hand, took it from him and replaced it on the shelf. “This is a book for angels, not for you,” said the father. But the boy ar...

When we read books of kabbalah, as for example English  translations of the Zohar , or look at diagrams of the Sephirot, we often end up more puzzled than enlightened. This is because Kabbalah actually uses a specific language. As we know, every discipline has its own language. We wouldn’t expect to understand a book on  engineering unless we had already mastered the terms use...

Why is it important to understand the language of Kabbalah? Many people learn about Kabbalah using terms such as light, Sephirot, the Tree of life, without  really knowing what they mean. But this is a shame, because when we learn the meaning of these words terms accurately we  obtain a precious key to the wisdom of our Sages, and to our own lives. The light of God, the Creator, is one,...

“Happy is the man who does not forget You and the son of man makes an effort in You.” In this happy and optimistic letter for the New Year that Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag wrote  to his friends and students in the Beit Hamidrash for Rosh Hashanah, he teaches that the themes of Rosh Hashanah are actually advice the Sages are giving us in how to come closer to our Creator. May we all...

Rabbi Ashlag in the Perush haSulam, his great commentary on the Zohar, teaches: During the 12 months of the year we work on the tikkun of the Malchut. That is, we work on letting go of receiving for ourselves alone, and practice giving unconditionally, doing acts that are in affinity of form with the Creator. In this way we rectify the Malchut —the Shechinah, our collective soul—from the beginning...

When we look back on our lives, we find many things we wish we had done differently.  Yet ultimately everything that transpired did so according to the will of God.  So what do we need to say sorry for? This question was asked by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag. He considers a saying of the Sages of the Talmud, ” The evil inclination would prevail over a person every...

The holy Zohar says, Rabbi Yehudah opened his discourse, “the Scripture says (Psalm 100:2), “Serve the Lord with happiness, come before him with song” and indeed we have learnt that we need to be happy in our service to God so as to serve Him with true desire. In this way our work will be whole. The questions is: How can this requirement of being happy apply when we are talking a...

The Torah was given to the Children of Israel in the month of Sivan, in the third month of coming out of Egypt. The holy Zohar takes this to hint to us that the Torah itself comes forth in the middle line of consciousness, combining within itself both the consciousness of Chesed, lovingkindness, and of Gevurah, strength, and bringing forth a consciousness of harmony and balance. What does this mea...

Each year as we sit down at the seder table we read in the Hagaddah, “In every generation every person is obliged to see himself as if he came out of Egypt.” Each year we need to celebrate the Pesach story, to see the hand of God Himself delivering us from our bondage, not just in the past but as an on-going process in our present. As Pesach approaches, we get busy cleaning our houses of chametz,...

Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag, in his teachings on the Parshat Shavua, Vayikra, wrote as follows: The Scripture says, “And God called Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting saying, “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘ Adam , when he offers from you a sacrifice to God; you shall offer your sacrifice from the domestic animals, from the cattle, or from the sheep...

When the children of Israel arrived at Mount Sinai, the Torah says ” ויחן העם מול ההר.  And the people encamped opposite the mountain.” But what you can’t hear in the English translation is the use of the word ” encamped” in a singular form. The great commentator of the Torah,  Rashi, picked up on this word, and taught its inner meaning as being “as on...

“In every generation, a person is obliged to see himself or herself, as if he or she is coming out of Egypt.” Passover Haggadah Rabbi Ashlag considers a person as a whole world in himself .Therefore, everything that is in the world is also represented within each and every one of us. It is in this spirit that he teaches the inner meanings of the stories of the Torah. Over these last fe...

“Then Yehudah drew near to him, (Yoseph) and said: ‘Oh my lord, let your servant, I pray you, speak a word in my lord’s ears,'” (Genesis 44:18) It is with these words that one of the most moving and dramatic episodes of the Torah opens. “And Yehudah drew near to him”; the Zohar teaches,”in prayer”. There are many sad and broken people in the world, b...

“The three components of the chanukah candle are the vessel itself, the wick and the oil. All three elements need to be present to receive the flame of Chanukah.” Thus Rabbi Baruch Ashlag starts an amazing letter on the elements that make up the equivalent of the Hanukkah candle within each and everyone of us. The light of Hanukkah is the revelation of God’s goodness in a direct...

On the surface of it all, it seems a dreadful story:  A younger son cheating an older brother of what is rightfully his. So seems the story of Jacob and Esau, according to its literal meaning. However, when we learn the Torah only at the level of the Pshat , we get the outer shell, but we cannot attain the truth and wisdom of its consciousness in that way. The great Gaon of Vilna, in his Sidd...

Rabbi Ashlag teaches, that when we come to build a house, we first have to start off with the vision of our final dwelling. We need to imagine for ourselves our bungalow, or our block of offices or our wooden hut in the woods. Only then we can start to make real plans and take the steps we need to fulfill our vision in actuality. Likewise, the first sentence of the creation story which opens the T...

Rosh HaShanah, the new year is a day of choice; a day when we are given the possibility of choosing again. This is an amazing thought. For so many of us, the days go by and we seem to have drifted into habits of thought, feeling and even actions, which on closer examination we may not in fact espouse. So what does this new choice consist of, and how do we choose? As the Sages teach us, we are made...

The streams of Teshuvah , both the individual and the general, rush along. They are like waves of flames on the surface of the sun, which, in an unceasing struggle, burst forth, go up, and give life to the multitude of worlds and to uncountable creatures. … Through Teshuvah everything returns to godliness. The reality of the power of Teshuvah that rules over all the worlds returns and reconne...

Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag tells a parable in which different elements of ourselves are reflected.  Through this parable we can see that we it is perfectly possible for us be quite blind to our own negative traits. Not only that, but they are damaging us in ways that, if we were aware, we would immediately take steps to rid ourselves of them. No-one wants something that will damage him or her...