science – intomeaning

listen

In the Amidah, also known as the prayer of the eighteen, there is a verse that says, Vekabel barachim ovratzon et tefilatenu, which translates as “receive with mercy the ratzon of our prayers”. It’s quite perplexing that verse, because we’re not asking God to listen to our prayer. What we’re asking of God is to kabel, to receive the ratzon or the desire of our prayer. How does that make any sense? One would think that God would receive our words, that which we express through speech, but we ask God not to focus on our words, but to focus on something called ratzon, which we can translate as will or desire. Therefore, we’re asking God to access or kabel (receive) the desire and/or the will of our prayers. Why is that significant to Kabbalah?

There is a story of my Rebbe when he was an adolescent. He is introduced to a Rabbi that he has to learn from. The Rabbi agreed to teach him under one condition: he couldn’t ask why the Rabbi is doing what he is doing. In other words, whatever it was that my Rebbe saw the Rabbi do could not be questioned. So adamant was the Rabbi about this condition, that if my Rebbe asked, the Rabbi would answer, but my Rebbe could no longer learn from him. My Rebbe agreed, and he sat and observed the Rabbi interacting with various people about issues they were having with their life. As more and more people approach the Rabbi with questions, my Rebbe started to get more and more confused. Question after question came to the Rabbi, and yet he answered none of them. Rather, he gave each and every single person that came up to him advice and help in one form or another that had nothing to do with the question they asked, but people were leaving satisfied.

Eventually, my Rebbe couldn’t take it anymore, and so he finally asked the Rabbi, thereby forfeiting his opportunity to learn from him anymore. He asked why the Rabbi was responding to questions in a way that never even addressed the actual question. The Rabbi responded “A lot of people have questions that have nothing to do with what they really want to ask because they’re uncomfortable asking about the certain situation they’re in”. It was the Rabbi’s responsibility not to be sensitive to their words, but to the desire that lied within their hearts, which they were trying to express in a hidden way through their speech. In other words, the Rabbi’s role was to be able to kabel ratzon et tefilatenu, to receive the desire (ratzon) of a person’s words, to be sensitive to receiving and processing what they wanted and not just answering a seemingly black and white question in a black and white way.

This is precisely what we ask of God during the prayer of eighteen. We ask Him to be sensitive to that which we desire, even if it means that we can’t express it in words. And in the same way God has to kabel, to receive our desire in a way that He hears it past our words, we also have to become sensitive to His ratzon, His will, His desire, irrespective of what we see in our life as true, because no matter how we see the world, for the good or bad, it really is an expression of God’s desire to give us an infinite and boundless light and pleasure. Kabbalah is the science through which we can access the ratzon of God, a ratzon of love, a ratzon of unlimited giving, which allows us to look past the superficial world in front of us in order that we access the infinite. Where do we see this? In the shma prayer. It says vehaya im shamo’a tishme’u el mitzvotay asher anochi metzaveh etchem, “If you will listen to my commandments, which I have commanded you”. Why are we instructed just to listen to God’s commandments in the shma? Why doesn’t God tell us to perform or to fulfill? Why listen? It is because every mitzvah is trying to speak to us, it is trying to communicate to us a message for which we have to be sensitive. It is not enough that we perform or fulfill by rote action. Rather, we are challenged with the task of looking past the superficial so we can listen to the voice of Hashem behind every mitzvah, to the point where we can access His ratzon. I challenge any man to listen to his tefillin, to his tzitzis, to his siddur, they have so much so say to you, God has so much to say to you, because there’s so much He wants for you, and with Kabbalah, you and I can begin to access His ration the way He accesses yours. All we have to do is listen.

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proof-god-exists1

I can recall conversing with my little brother about the nature of God. I remember asking him, “Daniel, where is God?” He replied rather astutely, “God is in the sky!” I then, to the best of my ability, hid my laughter, and forced a confused demeanor on my face and responded, “But Daniel, I’ve looked outside an airplane and I never saw God…” He cleverly deduced that “God exists at a lower altitude than the altitude at which planes fly.” Then, I challenged him more saying, “I can assure you that if I take a telescope and observe the heavens, God will not be in sight no matter the altitude.” He thought some more and with the utmost clarity he said, “That’s because God is invisible!” I burst out in laughter. One of the greatest joys I have experienced is observing the mind of a young thinker plowing through the depths of his innocent thoughts to uncover a sense of truth. I then asked, “Well if you COULD see God, would He be young or old?” “Old,” he replied. “Fat or skinny?” “Fat,” he replied. “Does he have a beard?” “Yes, he has a white beard,” he said. “Does He know when you’re sleeping?” He screamed, “Of course, Mikey!” “Does he know when you’re awake?” He nodded. To his amusement I finally concluded, “So you think God is Santa?” He burst out in laughter; his eyes showed me he was thinking about the conversation, there was an energy, an electricity that passed through him that showed me an inspired soul.

It’s quite interesting actually, the word “Santa,” as it could be rearranged to spell the word “Satan”. And quite frankly to my knowledge Santa and Satan have similar abilities; they both “Know if you’ve been bad or good”. Perhaps in the same way the word “Santa” is the word “Satan” when rearranged, Satan’s negative role is rearranged as a positive position in the form of Santa. That is to say that Satan’s role is perceived as punishing the bad but not rewarding the good and Santa’s role is rewarding the good and not punishing the bad. Either way they both fall short of what Judaism describes God to be. So how can God be described? There is a famous prayer entitled “Adon Olam” (Master of the Universe) that writes “He was, He is, and He will always be…He is without beginning and without an end…unfathomable”. According to the source, God could not have been created since he has no beginning, and no end would imply that He cannot cease to exist, and He cannot be understood by the human mind since He is unfathomable. Moreover in the Zohar it writes, “No thought is able to grasp you at all” (Tikkuney Zohar). So how can we define something that cannot be described by the human mind? What can we relate this definition of God to that would allow us to come closer to realizing practically what God is? We need to find something we’re familiar with that has the same definition of God, which meets the same conditions God does according to the writings. So what can’t be created, and at the same time cannot cease to exist, but also can’t be fathomed that we know of today?

Well…what does the first law of thermodynamics state? “Energy cannot be created nor destroyed…” How do we define energy? We don’t because we can’t. We can only understand energy in the forms it takes (light, heat, kinetic, potential, electrical etc.), but even that is limited. For instance, we don’t know what electricity looks like, but we know how to use it and manipulate it, but what energy is in and of itself cannot be defined. Where is energy? Everything is energy, because matter in essence is a manifestation of energy in physical form. Energy is the chair I sit on, the shower I take, the feelings I feel, the thoughts I have, and the intimacy I experience. Every second of every day, whether we are conscious of it or not, this web of energy permeates and passes through us, is converted and spreads throughout our bodies, in synapses, mitochondrial and cell membranes, blood vessels, bones, and the list goes on infinitely. Throughout space and time, it is recycled, used, and reused. This vitality that gives us our existence as well as the existence of everything in the universe is the God Judaism speaks of…and not Santa.