Tomer Devorah: Resume of the First Three Chapters - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman

we're getting back to our series on tomer devorah Talmud hora literally means the palm tree of devorah it's named after the you-know-whats mentioned in antenna that there was a prophetess a prophetess named evora and she SAT under a palm tree where she dispensed a judgment and Torah teachings and guidance to the Jewish people example of a example of a Jewish woman being in a position of leadership Torah leadership over the Jewish people and this book helmet voir was written by somebody named rabbi moshe shake rivero referred to by the acronym of remark the remark lived in the golden era of its fat in the 15 1600s but you know the period of the of Joseph Carl and the rizal and the great Renaissance of Jewish learning that took place there in sparked at a time which was not only in the reveal two aspects of the Torah but in the esoteric teachings of the tour as well and the remark wrote many many different writings having to do with the Kabbalah one work which is more accessible to most people is this book the toe metamora and on the one hand it's certainly about Kabbalah but one of the main purposes of Kabbalah in general and of this book in particular is to use the Kabbalistic teachings in order to improve a person's kind of daily living and regular service of a Shem so the book Tomer Devorah is divided actually into two parts the first part in the second part the first part is using Kabbalistic explanations of the 13 attributes of Mercy that you'd give me dose of rock amine in order to enable us to emulate God's attributes understand them from more deeper level and therefore emulate them in a more profound way and integrate them into our daily lives in order to make us better people that's the first part of the book which we've completed second fire the book which we started now we're going to want to continue is doing a similar thing but using but through the context of the ten sphero's okay the ten sphero's is a cabalistic kind of principle or doctrine description of creation and in this part of the book the remark is using an explanation or the teachings of the sphere us in order to enable us to connect to their energy and therefore elevate ourselves and also improves on prove ourselves spiritually so if the first part of the book is using Kabbalistic teachings to work on let's say meadows in this way it's kind of a moose or suffer the second part of the book is dealing also with that but more but but more about spiritual refinement as opposed to personality refinement yeah yeah yeah this particular version of the book was divided in two parts in order to learn on a monthly basis yeah we're certainly not gonna be learning at that pace oh that would just be reading it but we're gonna try and read it and explain it more thoroughly and discuss it so tomer devorah was was quite popular for in many centuries after it was written as a musher book but it fell out of use because of its being quite obtuse and people who didn't really have access to the Kabbalistic print underlying Callista crin suppose lost a major part of the point of the book and and therefore it kind of fell out of it kind of fell out of use because he only refers in very general terms and doesn't elaborate on those types of things very much at all and you know what I'm here for what I hope will be helpful is to try and elaborate on those points and bring them into the context of the book in order to illustrate the author's point so this is tomer devorah now we started the the first part of the second part of the book which is going through the Spiros and we therefore cover the section on hakama and we're up to bina and that's that's it here on page memo has on her curvy the fourth chapter but before actually starting the discussion here from bina where we left off we should probably save some introductory words about the actual sphero's themselves and a little bit about of hope one particular in order to prepare ourselves to continue so the idea here in general is as follows is that um part of kabbalah deals what's called masa pray she's massive ray she's means the coming into being of creation and the Kabbalistic starting point is basically this that when we say that God is one that means that there is absolutely nothing other than God and the intensity of that unity of that oneness is so great that really there should be and there cannot be anything other than God the intensity of that oneness precludes the possibility of there being anything else if God is one then God is the entirety of everything in which case there can be nothing other than God so so part of Kabbalah is is it trying to explain how existence can actually exist how is it work could God create something other than itself itself meaning referring to God and in this area of Kabbalah is basically kind of elaborating on on how that happened in terms of God's limiting the intensity of hymns health or of itself to give with the resultant appearance that there are things which exist other than or outside of God although in truth that can't be so so that from a greater macroscopic point of view in the Kabbalistic version there really is nothing other than God and everything that exists is only God and if it seems to be something separate from God that's only a facade that resulted from might these types of reductions or restrictions okay and part of the system or the dynamic of reducing and and restricting restricting involves the idea of sphero's okay Spiros then are kind of like spiritual refractors where divine energy or light is refracted diminished and then use to create something which seems other than God but since it's really just something that comes into being through a crime kind of a filtered presence of God ultimately it's got itself right so what we're seeing really is a refraction of God but that refraction is actually manifestation of God himself so that the one hand looks as if it's something other than God when in fact it's really just an extension and therefore a part of and therefore God itself and this whole concept of creation through restriction through the imitation is referred to in the Kabbalistic terminology as it symptom okay Sim Sim Sim so means retraction or limitation or restriction any of these things and others okay don't have their hand up yes our Skyros it's like the upside down triangle thing like each corner of the upside down triangle I think so I think I know what you're referring to yet yeah yeah they mean it could be right side triangles that could be upside down triangles but yeah do you know the serosa often kind of portrayed tab diagrammatically as you know be 112 triads 1 123 123 123 than 10 yeah I think that's your friend yeah all right yeah and I'll operate that in just a minute I'll let elaborate and not just a minute but this is basically idea that let me before I elaborate and just give me an analogy which i like to use which is if you think about a nuclear power station it emits huge amounts of energy which provides the energy needs of millions of people and every individual user is able as a result of that tremendous source of power at the middle of the matrix to put their little light bulb in their outlet and use that energy for some productive use but that's only because um the source of that energy the intensity of the source of that energy has been reduced incremental e until it actually it becomes available for household use but if people would plug their light bulbs yeah into the actual source the light bulbs would just be seared out of existence and so therefore in order for the one the one hand to be able to tap into that energy productively without being burnt out of existence as it were by connecting to it it needs to be reduced and that's what we're talking about here God is the central absolute source of all power light and energy that intensity of that power light and energy would simply sear any potential creation out of existence it would implode back into the oneness of God therefore God creates limitations stage by stage step-by-step introducing a limited degree of that light and energy and force into the incremental degrading of that system where that energy kind of supports the existence of the system right without destroying it and then it's enabled to be decreed decreased one step further until creation as we know it physical creation comes into being and and and that's what the hebrew word allah means olam means hidden the rear the revealed universe in in hebrew is called hidden hiddenness because it's not referring to the revealed aspect of the world it's referring to very good the hidden aspect division yeah so that the world the physical finite expression of God's existence only comes into being through the hiding of God's energy within it okay and that takes place gradually the general framework is through four worlds at sea loose bria yet syrah ana sia these are for spiritual worlds and the sphero's our part one of those worlds ok so we've discussed in the past more about those worlds and maybe we'll have a chance to do some time in the future I don't want to go into it right now too much but let's focus for the time being now on these fearo's through that pattern of restriction or reduction you have these sphero's these zeros are not physical they're not tangible in any way they're like spiritual filters and each one has a name they're referred to as sphero's not because they are spherical although matically sometimes they're presented is being spherical but the sources what's that it could be from me spa or miss a pair or sepia or so far I'll explain some of those meanings by the way doing this now is a bit apropos with the time period that we're in it being spheres to omair where we're counting the the days of the omair between shrew us excuse me three pacer and Schwartz how many weeks are there seven yeah seven and the you know Kabbalistic teachings correlate those seven weeks to the seven lower sphero's so that preparing ourselves from pace at the shores is about actually using the teachings of the spiros to improve and to elevate ourselves in preparation for the receiving throat so hopefully the discussion that will have here will help us connect into that debt dimension of this time tree that we ran into your soul mate that's right should we hundred yards of lag b'omer so the social sphere assa omair the counting of the all-america also be understood as being this fearo's of o'meara they're actually using of the teachings of the sphere else in order to reveal some of the the hidden energy and dynamic and the time but these fearo's why they called sphero's from the word one explanation is from the word sapir disappear is like the you know is probably where the english word sapphire comes from the precious gem so the Sapir the cefiro so I can subpoena it's like because they like I said their filters for divine light so they emanate divine light like it like a beautiful gem another explanation as to why they might refer to Miz vs fearo's is from the word thats a pair right necessary to count but to recount to tell and in a way these sphero's reveal tell something about God because they are reflecting and refracting divine energy into creation we can actually use the sphero's or the energy that we perceive to be radiating from the sphero's to what's the world looking for extrapolate back behind the sphero's something about God so in that way the Sufi rows are actually mr. pare they're actually telling us and revealing to us something about God another reason another another explanation as to why this you know the referred to as so if yours is from the words far so far which is also probably the root of the word we use in English for Safari as far in in ancient Hebrew is a boundary and and these fearless do that they are about kind of quantifying divine energy in sizable portions in order to be able to use that for creation and so these are some of the these are at least three reasons why they're called the Spiros each sphere has a specific name and there's a hierarchy within the sphere owes there's a special relationship between each sphere and the other and between groups of sphero's and other groups of sphero's so the bay the way it basically goes is that there is a highest all-encompassing sphere which is referred to as Kessler Kessler means crown okay Kessler is all-inclusive insofar as it has within it all of the other sphero's which emanate from it the first three sphero's underneath cancer are referred to as Hawkman bina and das the three is the highest the first triad of Siros houma bina and das usually represented usually represented as Hawkman to the right being it to the left and das lower between the two in the center exactly so Habad comes from the cop from from this Kabbalistic term Hawkman being in bass so Habad is actually an acronym that we used in kabbalah before the inception of the haas salute which came to nanas chabad Habad although we know it more with with the group of chabad is really Kabbalistic concept and it's an acronym referring to the relationship between this first tree at triad of sphero's achma wisdom be no understanding in das generally speaking is far this fear so concerned series which are projected to the right are viewed as masculine to the left is being feminine and in the middle are viewed as being a synthesis of the two or alternatively to the right more having to do with the quality of Chi said to the left having more to do with the quality of grua and in the center balance ok equilibrium and that pattern follows basically throughout we're going to be seeing some of that as we go along but dedicates hoc ma it would correspond to a faculty something like raw intelligence undifferentiated undefined raw intelligence the type of intent of intelligence that we would associate with the divine and the highest level where we can't really perceive the depth and the definition of God's intelligence that would be Hawkman and the verse says Shem Colombo Marga booma say Hashem how great are your deeds of Shem cool on the home Ozzy saw all of them with Hosmer with the meat of Hawkman you made so that all of creation came into being through the first sphere of Hokama home on being the divine intelligence that Hawk m'a transmits its energy to the left it's female counterpart in Vina Vina is understanding comprehension and it's related to the Hebrew word Bonet which means to build you know to create to confession to build and what bina does is it it builds upon the creative influence that was let's say ejaculated to use the metaphor into it from the nail counterpart of Hokama okay so that Hulk ma is really considered to is also is actually called ABBA and bina is called Emma that's a cabalistic by word poke masaba and veena is Emma Abunimah the interrelationship the interaction between hawkman bina or Abunimah EEMA actually receiving the productive energy which is inserted into it or passed onto it from from hakama jest states that energy builds upon it just like the female takes the productive energy from the mail and Jeff States it and builds upon it until it gives birth to a synthesis of the two very good okay so that's in that stas very good what you just did was das what you just did was das acta too yeah okay right that's exactly it yeah so Holcomb is the raw intelligence bina is the processing of that intelligence yes and das is the extrapolation what you just did the projection of the of the of the information if there's a concept of one and you can explain towards the concept of it adding of addition so then a person come therefore to the conclusion of two I understand the concept of one and if there can be one there can be another one and if I understand the concept of you know the direct dynamic of addition so I can come to new knowledge given those principles that would be dots okay so that's how point be done das we've done so far haha we're gonna be starting off with vino but before I going to be no just to give a quick overview of the other spheres and then we'll come back into being in more detail underneath health mabini das you've got what's called the meadows as opposed to those three which are more like faculties achma wisdom intelligence me not understanding das knowledge those are faculties those are like intellectual cerebral faculties below these three faculties you have the seven lower of the ten sphero's the seven Louis feels those are associated with me toes and they go head said give or two ferrous and nets code your soda and Marvel's right press it to the right that's loving kindness for it to the left that's strength or control grew is very much a part of symptom by the way Guevara yeah it was the restriction yeah it requires a great degree of cavora what did you say it's like yes yeah exactly very good so so so Guevara has a lot to do before and in has a lot to do with with with symptom with contraction you've got hazard and grow and then you've got to face which is the media in between without going into much detail has it corresponds to Avron rural corresponds to you talk that's self control and t Ferris corresponds to Yaakov okay the seven lower sphero's which are meadows are also associated with persona in this case Avram its arcane Yaakov okay there are impure sphero's as well and Avram had a certain degree of impurity which was passed off to Ishmael corresponding to the counterpart of a I said in tumor and the same thing regarding Yitzhak it's hawk had a degree of self-control but that degree of control had a negative component which was passed off to a soft and a self represents therefore the sphere of grew in tumor if you're following me and Yaakov represents the pure balance the purified balance of Hesed on the one hand and on the other so Yaakov to 10 ms Lyoko that would be the third that's true and you know the you know there's a whole concept of there being a 10 out of 10 10 sphero's and I'm sure if we're going to cover it in being or not but 10 sphero's which are actually spiritual counterparts in impurity to the Holy side as well and these are called you know this is part of the whole system which we refer to as its own IAM external energy to the central system here that we're talking about and that's the the source for evil in the world impurity and the like below hesed vora and two ferrous you have Nets opcode and you sold the net sock means eternal code means beauty and your soda means something like foundation or base and excuse me they would correspond to wash a net sock our own hood and yosef your soul okay and then below so you saw you've got the singular sphere of Malthus Malthus means kingship and corresponds to dovid amela of course who was a king and it's a lone sphera because it after you have the refraction from Kessler which is a lone sphere on top refracting through all of these other sphero's of the spiritual spectrum yeah it's their reunified and refused back into mau hose ok and this is part of the symptom so that the divine energy coming from in self and its source comes down through the different alamos at cedars priya etsy ornacia in the realm of the Sphero so it comes through kessler it's reduced and refracted down through these different spheres and then reunited refused into this lower form of Malthus where Malthus then becomes the kisser for the next level down ok so that Malthus actually fits in to a case here and then the system starts over again Kessler down refracted until it's emptied into its own mouth hose where that Malthus is the lowest level of that plane but it's the highest of the one below it okay so that Malthus which is feminine visa V receiving from above becomes masculine visa V passing on an energy to the Sphero below okay and in this way kes air and maltose are often I don't think interchangeable is the right word but you know if you actually were counting the number of zeros that we're talking about there aren't ten there are really 11 but we refer to the tent at this Rios is 10 and that's because of this interconnectedness eat well dwelt not because of the all-comers of kesa but the interconnectedness of Malthus em casa they're both extreme and singular whereas the others are part of the Triads exactly what one a 919 right one an i right that's right that's right that's one way of understanding how Kessler and molecules are kind of again I don't quite find the right word interchangeable but but but but but that's how it works when you when you're when you're thinking about Kesser you're not thinking about miles when you're thinking about mom cause you're not thinking about casa um so that ultimately there's really always 10 yeah I don't know I don't know if I don't know if I've ever seen the pictures of the Star of David in the pattern of the sphero's but you know it could be yeah yeah yeah we use Sony how they wreak right yeah you know I'm not uh it's an interesting idea that really seven Spiros but you know you know I'm not sure one interesting idea just parenthetically I heard once about this is that does it is spelled eyelid valve Dollard and a dolly there certain ancient hebrew font appears something like a greek delta which is a triangle so that dahveed is really like Delta and Delta two Delta two triangles to like two dollars which were in some fun to kind of a triangular form but in any case this would then make so so what have we done so far we have discussed generally what this book is who the author was what his intention writing is what the parts of the book about what part of the book that we're in now primarily this view us what the sphero's are in general how they fit into the Kabbalistic kind of description of creation in general and then in more detail about what the individual ciro's armed with their purposes now we're going to go on to even in more depth as we go through the sphero's one by one where the intention is going to be to use the teachings of the sphere us to gain some type of spiritual elevation in each case okay we've done kesteren in some detail before we started aster I don't want to go into carrot too much now we want to focus on on bina but just make some make some of the major points that he made regarding hot ma is that since everything starts from houma then um hoc ma in a way looks up to God to receive its energy but doesn't maintain any of that energy for itself but rather gives all of that energy down to the sphero's below it so that you know that's certainly true regarding regarding regarding the sphere of kisser neither we say I always am contributing either way how's it go Oh much part of the immediate you're talking about we asked a shame for Hulk Mabini das according to some news out of the tiller depends on the Noosa and ours but the Hasidic and this party it is i don't know i don't think it is in the analytics a high scale yeah yeah that's true that you know and that's what we're talking about here as well that mara boo mama say Hashem cooler the whole kumasi saw everything was made with hakama so that hakama actually was used by God to make and create and contribute to everything and therefore a person who is connecting to the sefira of Hawkman will not take that power for himself in order to gain for self-aggrandizement but will actually use his productive creative talents and abilities to benefit others and to take care of the needs of others and not to Lord his power over others but to share it equally and magnanimously with others so these would be the types of teachings that we would learn from the quality of houma in order to elevate ourselves and place ourselves in a better place and then you know in the in the space of creation you know this and some of the other ideas are things that were discussed in the previous chapter regarding hoffman you