The Torah is a historic tale about the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt. But in fact, it unfolds man’s exit from a state of corporeal lowness, called Egypt, to his ascent to the state called The Land of Israel.
Moses, the author of the Torah, used a language named – The Language of the Branches. He used names of objects, feelings and actions of our world, but intended to point to objects in the spiritual world: supreme powers, secret forces, exits and entries of power, information and effects, including harmful ones. All that is portrayed as a historic tale about human development. In fact, human evolution corresponds to the Torah. The Torah describes a certain era in human development, but it actually refers to spiritual roots.
If we avoid looking at the Torah as historic events, we will notice the spiritual forces and everything that comes from the upper world to ours. Instead of flesh and blood figures such as Moses and Pharaoh, or animals and nations, we will see spiritual forces.
If we remove the outer shell from the Torah, we will see an entirely different picture, detached from this world. It will be a picture on a spiritual level. We will see the souls in it. Then, gradually we will come in contact with these forces, and use them for spiritual elevation
With the help of his seventy disciples, Moses composed a guide to spiritual ascent. He made several copies of it and taught it in groups that were called a “people.” Jews have no nationality, because a Jew is a definition of a human soul, whose goal in life is to attain spirituality, a reciprocal contact with the upper world.
The Jews are that group of people that back at the time of Abraham, adopted the concept of monotheism. After Abraham’s demise, a group of people that believed in a single force of leadership was established, a force one could turn to. It could and must help man, because it created man, and waits for man to ask it for help.
The successors of Abraham called themselves Jews, because they were unique in the sense that they wanted unity with the Creator, adhesion with him. They were also called Hebrews; from the Hebrew word Ivri, i.e. one who crossed over from this world to the spiritual.
In the book of Torah, Moses develops a science for the attainment of contact with the upper world, but if we start reading in it, we will find it difficult, if not impossible to see anything deeper than ‘family sagas’ and history. We will not even be able to feel what is concealed in it, as Kabbalists tell us.
People search for all kinds of codes in the Torah, and find all the possible interconnections among its parts. Indeed the parts of the Torah are connected in an infinite number of connections, because each part is connected to all other parts. The number of the letters, the words, the verses and the phrases were calculated, and lately there was a fantastic work of calculation, studying the inner structure of all types of letters and parts of letters. However, that still gives man nothing. It doesn’t teach us what stands behind each symbol, each dot, the shape of the letters and their combinations.
The Torah was written as one word without any spaces. Only afterwards, that word was divided into words and the words to letters and the letters to parts of letters. In the end they arrived at the point and the line that extends from it. A black point on white background symbolizes the source of the light, meaning the light that emanates from the point. If it descends from the upper force, from the Creator to the creature, it is a vertical line; if the force is ascribed to the entire creation, it is a horizontal line.
As a rule, this is all the information that we get from the Creator. All the possible combinations between dots and lines depend on those two signs, sent to us from the Creator:
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The vertical line – a personal sign sent to man by the Creator.
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The horizontal line – a general sign sent to mankind by the Creator.
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All the situations in between.
All the signs combined created the code for the relationship between God and mankind – and any moment things can appear different because at any moment the soul is in a different state.
A person who looks at the letters of the Torah, provided he has learned to read it correctly, can see his own past, present and future through the combinations and situations of the dots and lines. But in order to see these things, one needs a key. With it, he can read the Torah like a tour guide to the spiritual world, not like a historic episode. This key is found in the Zohar. This book interprets the Pentateuch and explains exactly what Moses meant by writing the Torah.
When one studies the five books of the Pentateuch through the eyes of the Zohar, he sees an entirely different thing than our world. He sees the upper world, the spiritual leadership of our world and the entire creation. That is why Kabbalists read those two books together.
Prior to the printing of the book of Zohar, Moses’ students and followers, wrote basic interpretations to certain incidents in the Torah, over several hundred years, so that we understand what in fact Moses had written about. The first interpretation of the Torah is the Mishnah (from the word Sheni, Shanah, something that repeats itself). The Mishnah portrays all the spiritual laws as laws of this world. It explains what one must do and what one must not. We know these explanations as Mitzvot (commandments, precepts), of Do (in English they’re called Positive Precepts) or Mitzvot of Do Not Do (Negative Precepts).
Only Kabbalah can explain these actions. It explains that the most important thing is not the worldly act, but the aim in the spiritual world. What matters is what a person does with his internal intentions. That is precisely what the sages and the disciples of Moses tell us about.
The generation that followed in their footsteps is the generation of the Talmud. The sages of the Talmud explained what is the right way to keep the Mitzvot in each and every situation. But they understood that it was not about the mechanical observation of Mitzvot in our world, but that through these Mitzvot, in their correct spiritual meaning, man studies the nature of our world and the spiritual world in the best way for him.
Though the Mishnah and the Talmud explain each spiritual law in detail, they are written in everyday language. Hence, he who has not the code for correct reading – the code for The Book of Zohar – sees the Mishnah and the Talmud as recommendations for the right way to lead a religious orthodox way of life.
All great Kabbalists, meaning all those sages of the Mishnah (the Tanna’im) and the Talmud (the Amora’im) explained in their texts the system of creation, i.e. how we can best utilize its laws. They explained the reason that these forces come down to us, and how we can use them to always get a positive response, and ultimately become the vital and active part of creation.
When these forces come to us from above, and we react to them correctly, our responses climb up again and bring down to our world good results for everyone. This is the task of Kabbalah, also called the Wisdom of Kabbalah. The word Kabbalah comes from the word Lekabel (to receive), meaning to learn how to receive the abundance that comes to us from the upper forces correctly.
A person who begins to study Kabbalah can clearly see that the reason for all the pains and catastrophes we experience both on the personal level and the global one is that we do not interpret what happens around us correctly. Because of our benighted behaviour and wrong reaction, our situation and the consequences that return to us increasingly worsen.
Kabbalah is the most practical science. It renders man with the key to the leadership of the world. But in order for him to lead it, he must first study it. For that we need to know the general structure of the universe and its system of management, so that we know how to take an active part in it.