The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 28

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems to me we already read this, or at least part of it we already read. Let’s go over it again quickly. “Light”—its primary meaning is physical light, and it was borrowed for divine guidance, and that is why the Torah is called light. And it was borrowed for physical and spiritual pleasure, for desire, for the soul, for the understanding of wisdom, and it is also borrowed for God, blessed be He. Because just as light—you cannot deny its existence; we talked about this, that light is something evidently real, and it is a property of something real and yet it is not matter—so too God, blessed be He. And all these things found in light strongly resemble something separate from matter. True, it is something real, but it is something real that is not matter. That is exactly the precise definition of the sefirot: entities that are not matter. So too God, blessed be He. And because of all these things found in light, Scripture refers to the world of separate intellects as light—that is spiritual light. But one should not make the mistake of saying that intellectual light is something that extends from matter the way physical light does. Habakkuk 3 says, “And brightness shall be like the light,” with the comparative letter kaf—like the light—because the light and brightness seen by the prophet are in the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God, only a likeness, not the appearance of glory itself, because that has no appearance. Therefore, at the vision of the bush, he hid his face, for he was afraid to look, because the senses have no role at all in that kind of attainment. So about that we talked a bit—that the prophets see only the likeness of glory and not glory itself.

[Speaker D] And the likeness of glory itself also isn’t light. Right. If—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it really were light, you could see it. It isn’t light. And what is seen is the likeness of the appearance of glory, not the appearance of glory itself, because it has no appearance in itself. So this is where we began, it seems to me, to talk about “a sage is preferable to a prophet,” right, and “it is not in heaven.” I think that’s where we stopped, if I remember correctly. We said that a sage is preferable to a prophet in the sense that the sage hears glory itself, listens to glory itself, while the prophet sees the likeness of glory, the likeness of the appearance of glory. So in a certain sense the sage reaches higher. And the prophet’s advantage is that he has some sort of visual grasp of an exalted thing, whereas the sage’s visual grasp stops lower down. But in terms of wisdom, wisdom reaches higher. And we said that in fact “it is not in heaven” means that your conclusions have to be reached in a hearing mode and not in a visual mode. Therefore, when something is given to you from heaven by way of prophecy—something you do not actively attain through your own understanding, but heaven, כביכול, directs it to you—then Jewish law is not like that, even if that may perhaps be the truth, because Jewish law is what you yourself listen to or understand. And therefore a prophet cannot introduce anything new from now on, only a sage can. And likewise Elijah, in the vision in which the matter of the three worlds was hinted. And before that, “Show me, please, Your glory”—for example, what Moses our teacher requested there at the rock: “Show me, please, Your glory.” What does that mean? Moses our teacher wanted to see glory itself, not the likeness of the appearance of glory—he wanted to see glory itself. “Show me, please, Your glory.” But glory itself cannot be seen; only the likeness of the appearance of glory can be seen, and that all the prophets see, so that certainly was not Moses’s request.

[Speaker B] That’s why it says, “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That divides it because—

[Speaker B] If you see, then you only see something partial, something that has a backside.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly, and we already mentioned that. Good. “And likewise Elijah, in the vision in which the matter of the three worlds was hinted: generation and corruption, the spheres, the angels or the separate intellects. He said: not in the wind—the force governing the world of generation and corruption; and not in the earthquake—the world of the spheres; and not in the fire—the world of the angels. The Lord, whose essence is hidden, cannot be understood from any positive perfection-attributes, only through negations, which are in the still small voice. For the highest hidden being is neither seen nor looked upon; rather, its matter is heard by the prophetic auditory logic.” So he explains what it says regarding Elijah: “The Lord was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire”—meaning not in the world of Asiyah, not in the world of Yetzirah, and not in the world of Beriah. Divinity begins from Atzilut and upward. That’s why he says “not in the wind” is the force governing the world of generation and corruption, what is called the world of Asiyah. “Not in the wind, the Lord”—that is the world of Asiyah. “Not in the earthquake” is the world of the spheres, and “not in the fire” is the world of the angels. The angels—that is the world of Beriah. Usually most angels are in the world of Yetzirah, not in the world of Beriah. We’ll see this later. But there are also angels in the world of Beriah—the seraphim. The seraphim are the angels found in the world of Beriah, if I remember correctly, and that’s what he means here by the world of angels. Usually when people speak about the world of angels, that means Yetzirah, not Beriah. And “the Lord”—usually that is understood as attached to the previous things: not in the wind, not in the earthquake, and not in the fire, the Lord. Or are the angels in the world of Atzilut? What? No, no, nobody is in the world of Atzilut. Angels are separate beings; angels are in the world of Yetzirah.

[Speaker E] And above the world of Yetzirah—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is the world of Beriah, where there is Metatron, and there are the seraphim, I think—the angels of the world of Beriah. But ordinarily, when people speak about the world of angels, they mean the world of Yetzirah. What he says here by “the world of angels,” he means the world of Beriah. And “the Lord” is Atzilut. We talked about the divine names—the sefirot are really the divine name. Y-H-V-H is the world of Atzilut. So there is wind, earthquake, fire, and the Lord: wind is the world of Asiyah, earthquake is the world of Yetzirah, fire is the world of Beriah, and the Lord is Atzilut and beyond. Why is that called “the Lord”? Because we talked about the fact that in the world of Atzilut, the Infinite is in the form of “He and His vessels are one,” meaning it is considered actual divinity.

[Speaker B] It is considered—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actual divinity, the world of Atzilut. Even though, again, it is ten within divinity, but divinity is attached to it as one thing. And that is what he means by not in the earthquake, not in the wind, not in the fire. What is all this “not, not, not”? It is exactly the negative description of the Holy One, blessed be He. We say: He is not—not earthquake, not wind, not fire. That’s all the philosophers. Basically, when they look at the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, they say: this is not the Lord, not earthquake, not wind, not fire. But they don’t say what He is. Why don’t they say what He is? Because everything that belongs to “what He is” belongs to the world of Atzilut, and philosophers do not deal with that—they don’t even have the terminology for it. Their whole terminology is drawn from the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, so all they can say is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not this, and not this, and not this—not in fire, not in wind, and not in earthquake. But “the Lord,” Atzilut—that is the domain of Kabbalah. That is the domain where one can begin to speak in positive terms, not only in negative attributes. Only in Kabbalah. And that is what he means when he says, “whose essence is hidden, and cannot be understood from positive attributes of perfection, only through negations.” “Not in the earthquake, not in the wind, not in the fire”—that is through negations. It is simply a hint to negative attributes, that the three lower worlds are exactly their opposite, of course—they are the negative attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. Everything we know around us—the Holy One, blessed be He, is of course not matter, but He is also not a separate form of the world of Yetzirah. He is also not fire, which is perhaps an even subtler thing of the world of Beriah. He is none of those. But what is He? I don’t know. I know how to say what He is not, because I function within the conceptual world of the three lower worlds. When you function in that kind of conceptual world, all you can say is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not those concepts. And the world of Atzilut is a conceptual world in which one can relate positively to the Holy One, blessed be He. And that is “the Lord.” And that is what he means by, “not through positive attributes of perfection, only through negations, which are in the still small voice.” What is called “a still small voice”? So he notes down here in Neveh—he says: “And he added and said ‘a still small voice’ to hint at the subtlety involved in understanding the negations said of Him, blessed be He.” Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed talks about the fact that negative attributes are not just empty things. Meaning, they do add understanding, even though they are negative attributes. A subtle kind of understanding—that is what he means by “still small voice.” So “still small voice”—you might think, okay, that’s nothing, you didn’t say anything. No. To say of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He is not various things—this does add some positive insight about Him. A subtle one, such that I can’t express it in any positive words, but even the philosophers still have some kind of understanding, some kind of apprehension of divinity, through negative attributes in the language of our conceptual world. We have to say that He is not this, and not this, and not this, and after we negate everything that He is not, some subtle understanding nonetheless develops within us of what He is. Whereas the study of Kabbalah is already engagement with that subtle thing in a more direct way, in a thicker way, positively. But in the mode of negation, it is “a still small voice.” And there’s a beautiful Rashi there, in that section about Elijah the prophet. Rashi says there: “I heard that there is a voice emerging from the silence.” There’s even a song like that.

[Speaker E] It’s more “crying out from the silence.” What? It’s more “crying out from the silence.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not what I meant, but it’s like “there is nothing more whole than a broken heart.” There’s some older song: “There is silence within the storms. There is a hidden light in the vanished darkness.”

[Speaker E] Who wrote that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I don’t know the song, so I really don’t know.

[Speaker E] Did he understand this stuff? Or was he just babbling?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think so. It’s some intuition of a poet, or maybe even a songwriter—I don’t know exactly. But the poet also probably doesn’t understand it, I assume. But you know, a person feels things. Meaning, you feel that these aren’t just words. You know, I was thinking about this: when you read a line in a poem, sometimes it speaks to you before you understand what it means, and maybe you’ll never understand what it means. And maybe it really doesn’t mean anything at all, and maybe the poet also doesn’t understand what it means. But it’s some words that have an effect on the soul, they do something to the soul. This combination of words, this sentence, has some kind of effect on the soul. That means there is some real idea in it, even if the poet didn’t understand it—it doesn’t matter. He had some feeling that this was a powerful sentence, let’s call it that, a sentence that expresses something. That doesn’t mean that the poet has some collection of things he now wants to express and then formulates them in poetic form. I don’t think poets work that way, at least as far as I can understand. Poets bring out whatever comes out. Now, a successful poet produces powerful lines. It’s not that behind them there is some clearly defined message. He doesn’t really know what that line means, and he intended to package that message neatly into that line.

[Speaker E] And how does it enter other people? What? How does it enter other people?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the point. Because there is some real message here, a message that other people also grasp. That’s why it speaks to them. Even other people—even listeners to the song—don’t always understand what the line is saying. It’s not that they’re impressed by that line because they finally do understand what it means. It has some direct effect on the soul. Meaning, the soul feels it, but it doesn’t pass through your conscious awareness.

[Speaker E] Is it not something they can understand?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe they can understand it and just haven’t. I don’t know if they can’t. It just doesn’t pass through understanding.

[Speaker E] It doesn’t pass through understanding. Is it impossible to gain awareness through understanding?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right now I’m getting stuck simply on section 30. Look for a second at section 30: “The soul’s vision and understanding.”

[Speaker E] I argued with Rabbi Luria—I brought him that statement. About what? About his songs. He told me, you can’t understand it. He told me, you stand here and feel, I don’t know what. But it’s just like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can, you can feel—if you don’t ignore it and you’re not too rational—then you’ll see that when you read certain poems, it’s not because you’re delving into their ideas. You feel that they act on your soul.

[Speaker E] You don’t know—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, exactly. You don’t know exactly. You can try afterward to think about what it might be, but their action on the soul is not dependent on conscious understanding. The soul may be undergoing some sort of process of understanding that doesn’t pass directly through your conscious awareness. You’re not explicitly thinking about it. It’s somehow implicit. Maybe. I’m not even sure of that. It could be that it goes straight to the soul and activates it, you understand? This talks here about “the soul’s vision and understanding.” We’ll get to that in a moment. But then he says—it’s good for reading the passage—but this is somewhat what he means here, it seems to me, by “the soul’s vision”: that there are things that do not pass through the intellect. You are not moved by it—the whole essence of a poem, by the way—as opposed to, say, a philosophical text or any informational text, where there is no point in reading it just like that. Either you understand what it says, you put it into memory, into the intellect, you absorb it, you understand it, and then you can be impressed by whether it is clever or not and start reacting to it. A poem does not impress you through analysis. You don’t even approach analyzing a poem unless it has already impressed you. You approach analyzing the poem only after you were impressed by it.

[Speaker E] There are many kinds of poems. Poems where the message is pretty clear—I don’t know. Huh?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are poems whose message is clear—that’s not a poetic quality. If the message in a poem is very clear, that is usually considered kitsch.

[Speaker E] I don’t know. Bialik, for example—his message is very clear. He says—he talks about—right, I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can tell you what he’s talking about. All those things, the study hall, there—

[Speaker E] His—whatever it is. So the message is clear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The quality of the poem—

[Speaker E] —does not come from its message.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bialik—that was… all right. But the quality of the poem does not come from its message. Even if you know its message, the aesthetic quality of a poem—after all, I can tell you the message of Bialik in The Talmid, yes? I can tell you: yes, I really miss the study hall where there was someone devoting all his days to Torah. Right? I said exactly what Bialik said. Does that sound the same to you? Is it just as beautiful? Just words, right? Why? Because the quality of the poem is not what messages you managed to spin into it. The whole aesthetic quality, all of it, is everything beyond the content. The content itself is not the poetic quality. It may be beautiful, it may not be beautiful, but content also exists in prose. The whole poetic quality, the whole aesthetic quality, is always the form, the way the contents are presented. Same thing in kitsch. When you see a kitsch picture—we talked about this once, I talked to someone about this once, right? It’s the same thing. Why really isn’t it beautiful? There are genuinely pretty pictures there, and nice technique and everything, because there is nothing in it beyond the picture itself. Meaning, if you saw that child with tears at the central bus station—if you saw the child himself, you would cry just as much as when you see the picture. So what is the added value of the picture? Do you understand? So the painter didn’t really do anything. He only copied reality correctly, but what moves you is reality, not the picture. The quality of a picture is measured by what the painter does to you, not by the depicted situation. Do you understand? Same thing in poetry. The quality of the poem is that it is not derived from its content—on the contrary. Meaning, it is everything beyond the content; that is the quality of the poem. “I heard that there is a voice from the silence.” A singer says: I just saw that sentence—I almost fainted. Not that I thought and understood and I have all kinds of insights about it. It’s just somehow a powerful sentence. I don’t know why. Rashi writes that there in Samuel, in Menachot—no, in this passage, in this very passage. There he explains these verses. Okay, so here indeed you see things that I often anticipate for you, things that will come later, just so you’ll have the perspective. But in fact only here does the connection to negative attributes appear. We already talked about them earlier, because anyone who knows how to smell out the Nazir understands that this is hidden there earlier too. But here, for the first time, he actually brings negative attributes into the issue, and he’ll begin to elaborate more on them in the next essay. The next essay begins with negative attributes—the whole discussion of negative attributes. So this is the conclusion of this essay and the transition to the beginning of the next one. So here you really see that the conception of negative attributes is because they are seen through vision. If you want to grasp them positively, you need hearing and not seeing. Good, so let’s move on. The last philosopher-kabbalist in Italy, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, who arranged the method of Kabbalistic wisdom according to the distinctions of logic, in 138 Openings of Wisdom—a book of the Ramchal, you know it? 138, the 138—sorry—pierces and descends to the depths of understanding the relation of light, form, and higher thought. “The sefirot are illuminations”—this is already a quotation from him—“the sefirot are illuminations given to be seen, unlike the simple light, the Infinite One, blessed be He, which was not given. Light is the subtlest of physical things. Even so, this is not actual illumination like the illumination of physical light, but rather what is called illumination. Each sefirah, each attribute, will appear in the secret of one illumination, such that by seeing it one understands what the attribute is; the rule was set that the appearance conveys the understanding of the attribute, namely through the imagining imagination.” So this is basically what we already talked about—that positive attributes—here we’re speaking about the sefirot, this is in Atzilut. Let’s talk about Atzilut. So in Atzilut the sefirot are illuminations, they are light. Light is something you see, supposedly. And that seems to contradict what he said until now, that vision does not apply to Atzilut. But he already said that the prophets see the appearance of the likeness, the likeness of the appearance of glory. Meaning, somehow it can be translated into an appearance. Usually relation to Atzilut is by hearing. That is the mode of the sage, who hears the appearance of glory itself. But the prophet in some sense sees it. So he says that this is not really illumination, and therefore you cannot actually see it. Rather, when you see, there is some object standing there, and when you see it, you understand what the attribute is. You do not see the attribute itself. Rather, fictive objects were created, things like that, which can be seen; prophets can see them, and when they see them, they then understand what they represent—the attribute, the sefirah.

[Speaker E] So it’s like a parable, basically?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And that’s what he says: “through the imagining imagination.”

[Speaker E] But he said it’s not a parable, but rather—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. What the prophets see is a parable—not that Kabbalah is a parable. What the prophets see, the vision, is a parable for the idea itself. And one can deal with Kabbalah not through prophecy. We study Kabbalah through the path of wisdom, not through the path of prophecy. Understand? But it’s important to understand what imagination means in our language. We already talked about this once at the beginning of the essay—“the imagining imagination.” What is imagination? Imagination is seeing an image that has no source. What is imagination? Distinguish it from ordinary seeing. What is ordinary seeing? When I see the table, an image is formed in my mind whose source is the object, the table, standing here. I see the table. The table—and how do you see a table? You look at it, and thus an image of a table is formed in consciousness. What is imagination? I also have an image in consciousness, but there is no source. This image does not arise from some object whose projection onto me creates an image within me. There is no object at all. It is only an image. Right? In that sense, the prophet’s vision is imagination. It is imagination not in the sense that he imagines things that never existed at all, but in the sense that what he sees is a vision that is not the result of contemplating an object. Because that object cannot be seen—that is what we said earlier. That object you cannot contemplate; you can only listen to it. So how does a visual image emerge from that? Well, really, no visual image emerges from it. In that sense, that image is imagination. It is not generated by the object it represents. All right? We said the same relation exists also between the sefirot themselves and the Infinite, let’s call it, or divinity. The sefirot themselves, we said, are positive attributes. But in what sense are they attributes? Usually, attributes of objects—or of anything else—are: I look at the object and within me I experience its attributes. There, the attributes are objects standing on their own. They are not attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the same sense that greenness is an attribute of this table, for example, when it is green.

[Speaker E] Right, here there is something real. What? Here there is something real, not some fictive product of imagination. What? The sefirot. Obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying this works on two levels. First of all, we already talked about this earlier: that the sefirot themselves are positive attributes. But they are positive attributes in the sense that the relation between them and the essence of which they are attributes is not like the relation between attributes of an object and the object itself in our world. Because in our world, when I look at the object, I experience its attributes within me. But when I grasp the sefirot, it is not by looking at the essence of the Holy One, blessed be He—there is no such thing. And not by any other kind of understanding of the Holy One, blessed be He, either. Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, created things that, from our perspective, are His attributes, but in fact they are objects. They are not attributes. All right? Now here we’re reaching another level that works in exactly the same way. These objects that the Holy One, blessed be He, created are also grasped by hearing, not by seeing. Right? Now what the prophet sees is yet another such level. Meaning, those very objects themselves—the sefirah of Netzach in the world of Atzilut—it itself produces a separate object, this is what is called here the imagination, the imagined appearance, yes? A separate object whose role is to represent it. But it’s not that the prophet looks at the sefirah of Netzach and the image received by him is the image he sees in the prophetic vision. He cannot look at the sefirah of Netzach. It cannot be seen. It is not an object that exists and can be seen in the sense of ordinary objects. Do you understand how there are two stages here that work the same way? The relation between the sefirot themselves and the Holy One, blessed be He, and the relation between the image, between the likeness of the sefirot—

[Speaker E] —and the sefirot themselves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which is a parallel relation? It’s the same, a similar relation, yes. The sefirot themselves are also some kind of object that serves as an attribute of another essence, but they themselves are an object. It’s not that I look at the essence and thus attributes are formed within me. And the prophet, who does the same thing with respect to the sefirot, does not listen to them—he sort of sees them. But he does not really see them. Rather, he sees a kind of thing that is an image of the sefirot, not the sefirot themselves. All right? He sees an appearance, but that appearance is imagination, because it is not the result of interaction with the sefirah itself. There is no such thing. The senses of none of us can encounter a sefirah.

[Speaker E] And does hearing do that, maybe?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hearing does that, but indeed no image is formed from it. So in a certain sense maybe it is a higher and deeper grasp, it reaches higher, but it is less unequivocal. We talked about the fact that hearing has advantages and disadvantages. So the prophet has the advantage of clarity, because something you see is completely clear to you. But really, you do not succeed in reaching the thing itself, only some figurative likenesses of it, its imaginative representations. The sefirot, in their entirety, are in effect creatures that were created in order to describe divinity. Right? That is their whole essence, because they are objects that are attributes. In our world there is no such thing; either you are an object or you are an attribute, as we said, right? The sefirot are objects that are attributes. The attributes become objects there. Therefore it also seems to me very correct to say that in order to grasp the sefirot themselves, you need hearing and not seeing. Because we talked about the fact that hearing is usually something directed at you. Like what he said—the hearing of things from the teacher. Just as the Oral Torah is transmitted from speaker to hearer. “Had he made me hear it”—yes? Everything revolves around hearing and the Oral Torah. Because the teacher addresses you, and you hear something addressed to you, something created so that you would hear it—that is why it was created. Something seen does not address you. It is here; look and see it, don’t look and you won’t see it. A visual appearance is something that does not address you. The positive ones. All right, so it is something directed toward me. Therefore the way to grasp it is by hearing and not by seeing.

[Speaker E] And why can’t it be through seeing? What? If hearing addresses me, as opposed to seeing, which doesn’t address me, then what? Then I don’t want to grasp them? No, so therefore the form of grasping—can you see sounds?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t see sounds. Something that addresses you—the way to grasp it is by hearing, not by seeing. Through seeing, maybe you can see the thing making the sound, but you cannot grasp the sound itself. The thing heard itself cannot be grasped by the eyes. To intend toward someone who addresses you—that is called hearing. Also from the side of the hearer, we said that hearing is a more active operation than seeing. Seeing—whatever falls on my eyes, I see. Hearing, usually, especially listening rather than mere hearing, is something you have to intend to grasp and process, to process inwardly.

[Speaker E] In seeing too there is the matter of watching, gazing, which is also—yes, looking in sight is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, there are levels like that in seeing too. But it seems to me that people talk about this in various contexts—that seeing is something in which you are much more passive. It falls on you. It doesn’t—when you hear, and especially when you hear, say, from a teacher—that is the hearing mainly being talked about in the context of the Oral Torah from the teacher—then you sit there and your whole being is directed there, because otherwise you won’t understand. The sounds will reach you if you don’t listen, but that isn’t called hearing, that’s just—yes. In seeing there really may be two phases, but there is also the simple phase: you simply see. You don’t have to intend to see. What you see, you see. True, if you observe more carefully, you will see better, but that is not the essence of seeing. That belongs to understanding, passive reception. The object does not address you, and you also do not address it. It is some kind of thing that happens on its own. Hearing is both that the speaker addresses you and that you must address him in order to grasp it. That is hearing. That is the voice emerging from the silence. We talked about this in the previous section. What is a voice emerging from the silence? There is silence. The philosophers, the people of visuality, cannot—they see nothing there. There is nothing. But from within that silence there emerges a voice. To grasp it, you need ears, not eyes. Therefore there is a voice emerging from the silence. All right? True, silence isn’t silence—it is more like darkness perhaps. But metaphorically, that’s the idea. All right? Someone who doesn’t recognize hearing—for him there is silence there. But there is a voice emerging from that silence. You have to know how to listen, and then you understand that there is a voice emerging from that silence. “The sefirot may be seen in much or little illumination, and in various kinds of images and imaginings, though in them there is in truth no image or form at all.” Yes, that is what we saw—that it does not apply to see the sefirot themselves. And the Ramchal also spoke about this in the previous section: that what the prophets see is only a likeness, not the appearance of glory itself, only a likeness of the appearance of glory. The sefirot themselves are the appearance of glory. And that cannot be seen. “The sefirot are the powers of the higher thought. All of them act in the world to produce all the actions required for one purpose, which is the ultimate perfection sufficient for the governance of the whole world at every time until the end of the whole cycle.” The cycle is probably the world of repair.

[Speaker E] That—

[Speaker F] —means until the end of history.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because history is a kind of cycle. There was emanation, a descent from above downward, then there is a world, this world repairs, and then it will return upward. Yes? We already talked about this once—that history is built in the form of going and returning. “The Lord reigned, the Lord reigns, and the Lord will reign.” These are three aspects connected to three periods in history. “The Lord reigned”—that is really “the Lord was king,” in the past; “the Lord reigns” in the present; and “the Lord will reign” in the future. Yes? So when you are at the stage where He emanated the worlds, or they were created—what is called the world of chaos, when all the worlds were produced—that is called “the Lord reigned.” Why? Because you are moving from the Lord outward, right? The world comes out from the Lord and begins to be formed. The Lord, as it were, reigned in the past. Right? I am moving away from the Lord, not toward the Lord. After that there is a world in which the Lord is king—a static world. That is essentially our world now. That is called the world of repair.

[Speaker E] So when I, say, in Nishmat Kol Chai, need to read there “the Lord reigned,” as in was, is, and will be—then should I relate that to the past, to the period of emanation, or say—what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What should you do in order to fulfill the obligation? Someone who doesn’t know Kabbalah also fulfills the obligation. But—maybe, I don’t know.

[Speaker E] But that is the meaning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that is the meaning of “the Lord reigned, the Lord reigns, the Lord will reign.” That’s how I saw it in Leshem. I don’t know to what extent this is already written in the Ari, maybe, I don’t know.

[Speaker E] But is this whole world considered now to be the present?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. This whole world, these 6,000 years, are the aspect of the present. And here the Lord reigns. Why? Because we are in a static condition in terms of nearness and distance from the Emanator.