Hello everyone, welcome to the second level
of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero's "Tomer Devorah" which
I've translated as "The Kabbalah of Forgiveness"
with a commentary.
The first level (just to do a very quick recap) in the first level
God as it were provides energy to human beings for whatever they do -
all the energy that we require for our
daily existence is constantly flowing into us like electricity
into a computer or a toaster or something like that.
If the toaster where to start doing something strange like let's say
playing music -or more common- let's say burning the toast
and the timers isn't working right, then on a human level we just pull
the plug and that's it for the toaster.
We get rid of it buy a new one that kinda thing. But God doesn't do that.
God as it were forgives the toaster, keeps giving it energy
until the toaster can figure out how to start toasting bread properly. Now that's a
really bizarre
and maybe inappropriate analogy because humans are not toasters
humans hopefully have the capacity of change have the capacity to reform their ways.
So, we hope that God continues to give us energy
so we can work through those issues on our own, and so to as we said in the first level,
Rabbi Cordovero says that we should forgive
others and allow them their transgressions; giving them the time
to to resolve their issues on their own. Now the second level which we're going to
discuss today in many ways just develops that idea
a little further. At this point it gets a little more kabbalistic, and a
little more spooky in fact.
So here's a basic element of Cordoverian Kabbalah:
It actually goes very very far back into the Jewish mystical tradition and in
fact certain elements of it are present even in what's called
"Torahs Nigleh" or "the revealed Torah". When a person commits
an act, either a positive act or a negative act,
and energy is released into the universe:
when the act is
a positive act, a mitzvah, something that is
good for the universe, a fulfillment of God's will, then
that releases a kind of a messenger known as a "Malach" (Angel).
In fact, young children in observant Jewish homes are often taught that
when they say a blessing over the food that their eating, or things like that, they are
actually creating "Malachim" (plural form of "Malach") they're creating angels!
Positive energy sources that go out, benefit the world, and so on. That's also
known as a "Sneiger"
in Aramaic, a "Defender", something that -after 120 years when a person has to
account for their deeds- then all these Sneigers, all these defenders, come forward and say:
he gave tzedakah, he gave charity in this moment or
or he, you know, helped out a person in this way, or he smiled appropriately at a
person who was down, cheer them up- that kind of thing:
these are all Sneigers. Now unfortunately the converse is also true:
if a person commits a hurtful act,
a wrong deed, transgresses God's will,
than this creates a kind of negative energy source
which can be called a "Kteigor" or or a "prosecutor"
in the language up the mishnah, (or in the language
of Cordoverian Kaballah, it's called a "Mashchis", a "destroyer".
This kind of energy being as rather different in that
whereas the Malach, the positive being,
wants to benefit the universe and fill the universal with God's light, as it were,
the Mashchis wants to detract from it, dark in the world,
and it kind of feeds on suffering.
That Mashchis is actually connected to the person just like the Sneiger,
the defender as it were has an address, saying that so and so
created that person, the same is true of a Kteigor, of a prosecutor.
And that Kteigor, then after 120 years, says 'hey, this person now you know spoke
words of Lashon Harah, words of character assassination, behind this
person's back.'
and in fact that's true, there it is, the Kteigor is standing there the negative
energy source
is there and so on. This is the second level God's forgiveness,
that just like God continues to provide energy
to human beings in their actions, if we also accept the premise which is basic
in Jewish thought, that no being can exist
outside of the constant energy flow of God,
it stands to reason then that even these negative energy beings, these "Mashchisim" (plural form of "Mashchis"),
these Kteigorim, these "prosecutors",
they also require a constant influx in energy to keep them alive.
And if that energy doesn't come from God
then that energy must come from the one who made them.
God is within his rights so to speak to say to the Kteigor "you
ugly being, I did not create you. Go back to the one
who did create you and take your energy from that person."
In fact, that being can then go back to the human being who made him
and say "all right you created this amount of evil in the world,
this amount of negative energy, (this is a kind of an energy
debt that you imposed on the world) and now I'm going to take it out of you."
and that can come out, as the Tomer Devorah says, in one of three ways:
(1) either through suffering,
work, you know painful physical suffering or emotional suffering what have you.
(2) or through death, because death atones for a lot,
(3) or through Gehinom, which is sort of like purgatory -it's not exactly like hell,
but it's kind of like something bad happens after death. The latter two
are definitely much worse than the first.
The first option, that is, suffering
is something that we can choose for ourselves, and we're not
talking here about necessarily taking out whips and self-flagellation,
and rolling in the snow, and things like that- it's the kind of suffering that comes
through introspection, evaluation of one's deeds,
regret, understanding how we've done wrong and working through the process.
There's a lot of literature in the Jewish tradition on exactly how to do this,
in fact, one great book the "Sha'arei Teshuva" lists
twenty different levels of regrets that a person can go through,
(oy vay iz mir) but nevertheless the idea of like
you know taking a hard look at yourself and saying "you know, I really didn't treat
that person right."
That is the kind of energy that can
cancel out the energy debt that one created through
this hurtful act this. This is kind of the overall physics
of transgression that is set up
in the Cordoverian Kabbalistic system. So let's just understand that properly:
in the first level God is constantly giving energy to human beings and even when
human beings use that energy incorrectly, God still continues that energy flow to go.
Second level: what happens is that
when we behave inappropriately we create these negative
energy beings
(these negative energy beings are also looking for sustenance they're also
looking for some kind of
energy source) and God, within his rights could say "hey
you know, I didn't make you. Go to the one made you, take your energy from him."
But nevertheless God says "No, I'll take care this,
I'll keep paying down the debt, and let the person who created that Mashchis
eventually come around
to address that him or herself
and then reduce the energy debt by seriously repenting, going through
their ways. Well, now bringing this down to a human level:
I mean this is all kind of weird and spooky, this idea of these energy beings that
are surrounding us,
and have our names on them so everybody knows who created them,
that's very weird stuff. How we actually implement it into
a human level? So the Tomer Devorah is, as I've said in the early lectures,
really a pragmatic human document, it is for our actual use in daily life,
and in fact we can apply this principle to our daily life as well.
Specifically, what's really going on here
is that God is as it were, granting forbearance
on a loan. As the Talmud says for example, a person owes money to two people
when one is his friend and one is his enemy,
the friend says "you owe me a lot of money, you can pay me back a little at a time"
the enemy says "No, I want it all right now." So as it were, God is like the friend
who says "you owe me money [as it were]
you committed this negative disease, the element in the universe, you
you harmed the spiritual environment, so now you've got to fix it.
But, I'll let you fix it a little at a time. You don't have to do it
all at once." And that's, you know, that's a benefit to us.
So too, in our interpersonal relationships
when someone harms us, the Tomer Devorah says, the main thing is to try and give them time
to fix it themselves. Now, you don't have to be a dish rack, you don't have to be a doormat,
but when you are wronged, give that other person a chance
to rectify the situation. You know,
myself, I'm just one of those people,
you know when someone wrongs me I like an apology, but I have to say, one of my own weaknesses
is that I like apologies to be just so. You know, the apology has to be said right.
If you don't apologize right, you know, it's really hard on me.
So what I have to work on myself is that I have to understand that there are a lot of
different ways that people apologize.
Sometimes people apologize in exactly the right wording,
you know, "please forgive me [identifying exactly what I did wrong]" things like that,
other people apologize by just going out and getting me a cup of coffee,
and they don't really have it in themselves to say
"I'm really sorry for doing that particular thing", that's kind of hard but
you know, they want to show that they are sorry, and so they buy me the coffee as it were.
You know, I should learn that it's up on me, the onus is on me, to accept the coffee
as the full apology. In other words, give them time to address it themselves.
So on a pragmatic level, to implement
the second level of the Tomer Devorah is
to give people a chance to address their wrongs. They do something wrong to you:
you can let them know, but don't demand that they change on the spot.
Give them a chance to work through those issues on their own.
Okay, that's about it. I hope you found this useful,
come back for the third level which gets even weirder.
Thank you.