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Mesora
©Copyright 2010 Kabbalah Made Easy, Inc. Max Weiman
No parts of this work, except what is allowable by law, may be reproduced in any way without expressed written consent of the author.
Copies may be ordered by contacting Rabbi Weiman at mweiman@kabbalahmadeeasy.com or 314—814-6629
The Mesorah
Sure we’re all familiar with the holy Bible, the Torah, Five Books of Moses, that sacred scroll that is removed from its velvety cover and read in the synagogue amongst devotional fanfare. It’s important to know that while Judaism values the written Torah as the holiest object on earth, and our religion is based on the authenticity of this document, and the truth of the words and ideas therein, nonetheless, the oral Torah, is just as important, if not more important as the backbone of our religion. People refer to the nation of Israel as the “People of the Book”, when in fact, a more appropriate term may be the “People of the Mouth”.
When God gave Moses the written Torah, He also gave him an oral Torah, an explanation of everything in the written Torah, as well as ideas and principles that couldn’t be communicated in writing.
Amazingly we not only continue to have the majority of this oral tradition still intact, vibrant, and usable, after 3300 years or so, but we also have retained a historical record of the major figures that have handed over the transmission of the entirety or the bulk of this word-of-mouth-conveyance of the Almighty’s message and mission to mankind. This historical record is the purpose of this pamphlet.
Here is a timeline, and recording of the names of the sages and holy people who shared in the responsibility to transfer the mesorah, the tradition. While this may not be as fun to read as Harry Potter and the Magic Prostate, it should be an honored keepsake of yours to peruse once in a while and recharge your confidence in the “tradition”.
But wait. Before we do that, we should also note the original mesorah which we don’t usually refer to as the “mesorah” yet our tradition is that there was a type of mesorah in existence before we got the Torah. This original mesorah contained a ton of ethical and mystical information. There are two mystical books that predate the Torah, which most likely were part of this mesorah. They are Sefer Raziel, attributed to Adam, and Sefer Yetzira, attributed to Abraham.
Part I
Pre-Torah Mesorah
1. Adam (3760-2830 BCE) Lived in the Middle East somewhere in or around modern day Iraq. Author of Sefer Raziel, a book of mysticism that the angel Raziel taught him.
2. Chanoch (3138-2773 BCE) Middle East. Great great great great grandson of Adam. He was so pure and holy that he did not need to die, he entered the next world body and soul intact. While he is a relatively unknown Biblical figure, nonetheless this shoemaker was a link in the chain. When he made shoes, it was a mystical experience.
3. Noach (2704-1754 BCE) Middle East. Great grandson of Chanoch. As the lone survivor of the flood, became like the new “Adam” for mankind.
4. Shem (2202-1602 BCE) Middle East. Son of Noah. Established a study-house of the ethical/mystical mesorah with his great grandson, Ever.
5. Avraham (1812-1637 BCE) Lived in Ur, moved throughout Middle East including Egypt. Great great great great grandson of Ever. After coming to an understanding of the Creator on his own, he studied with Shem and Ever. He emulated and epitomized God’s attribute of loving-kindness. Author of Sefer Yetzira, he was an expert astrologer and focused on bringing Godliness into the world.
6. Yitzchak (1712-1532 BCE) Canaan. (later called Land of Israel) Son of Avraham. Exemplified inner strength and discipline.
7. Yaakov (1652-1515 BCE) Journeyed from Canaan around Middle East including region of modern day northern Iraq/southern Turkey. Son of Yitzchak. Harmonized loving-kindness with inner strength.
8. Yosef (1561-1451 BCE) Viceroy in Egypt. Son of Yaakov. Perfected the ability to battle the yetzer hara, the desire to turn from God.
(Two other sons of Yaakov, besides Yosef, who were associated as tribes that were the torchbearers of the study of the mesorah before and after the giving of the Torah were Issachar and Levi.)
9. Amram (1510-1373 BCE) Egypt. Grandson of Levi. Was leader of the nation of Israel in Egypt.
10. Moshe (1392-1272 BCE) Egypt with sojourns in the Middle East. Son of Amram. Due to his humility was a pure conduit for the new mesorah of the Torah, which was intended before creation to be revealed at some time.
Part II
With the revelation on Mt. Sinai in 1232 BCE, a new mesorah is established nullifying the previous ethics, but not necessarily nullifying the mystical wisdom that had been part of the previous mesorah. Those ideas still define the spiritual design of the universe.
Torah Mesorah with Prophecy
1. Moshe (1392-1272 BCE) Along with Moshe sat a group of sages called the Sanhedrin. Each of the following leaders sat at the head of such a delegation that would rule on issues that concerned the entire nation.
2. Yehoshua (1354-1244 BCE) Land of Israel. The quintessential student, never leaving Moshe’s side.
3. Pinchus Land of Israel. Son of Elazar. Grandson of Moshe’s brother Aaron. Originally, Moshe sat and a taught a set of principles in front of Yehoshua and Aaron, then Aaron’s sons, then the elders, then others. Then Moshe would leave and Aaron would repeat the teachings. Then Aaron would leave and his sons would repeat. This way the leaders heard the teachings numerous times. Then they would repeat to themselves over and over until the ideas were ingrained in them and memorized.
4. Eli (988 - 889 BCE) Land of Israel. Simultaneously held all three leadership positions: High Priest, King, and Head of Sanhedrin
5. Shmuel (931 - 879 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. Son of Elkanah. While some of the previous rulers had a technical status as king, Shmuel was the prophet who actually ushered in the official start of kings for Israel by anointing Shaul, the first official king.
6. David (906-836 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. King par excellence. All future monarchs must come from him. And the Messiah is destined to come from him. He taught us how to repent with his example. Mystically, one of the most important figures in all of history.
7. Achia HaShiloni (1381-797 BCE) Land of Israel. Believe it or not, lived 584 years. Kabbalistic lore says that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was a reincarnation of Achia, and also that Achia came from the spiritual realm to teach the Baal Shem Tov on a regular basis.
8. Eliahu (870-726 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. Most famous of all the 48 known prophets. He did not die nor move to the next world, but exists in a quasi spiritual realm that allows him to visit people who are still in this world. In the future he will usher in the time of the Moshiach.
9. Elisha (d. 717 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. Disciple of Eliahu. He repeated some of Eliahu’s feats like reviving a dead child, and other miracles.
10. Yehoyada (725-695 BCE) Land of Israel. High Priest. Saved the Davidic dynastic line by hiding future King Yoash as an infant in the Temple, the only one in line to throne not murdered.
11. Zecharia ben Yehoyada (d.680 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. Son of Yehoyada. Prophet. Fortold the end of Yoash’s kingdom for not following Yehoyada’s moral instruction. Yoash had Zechariah killed and his bubbling blood miraculously could not be cleaned from the courtyard of the Temple.
12. Hoshea (d.575 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. In a strange demonstration of rebuke, God requires this holy and righteous prophet to marry a prostitute.
13. Amos (d. 560 BCE) Land of Israel. Prophet. Rose from obscurity as a man of the people and rebuked both kingdoms, often against the wealthy for not taking care of the poor.
14. Yeshayahu (d.548) Land of Israel. Prophet. Described in many ways the Messianic Era. His book is often quoted as the Haftarah.
15. Micha (d.560) Land of Israel. Prophet. These last four prophets/sages lived in the same time period. During this period the books of Solomon : Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, were codified.
16. *Yoel (d.510) Land of Israel. Prophet. While the time period that covers the next four leaders was politically tumultuous, the sages were always devoted to keeping the mesora in tact and teaching Torah non-stop. And these three* were all in the same time period, but still managed to hand over the mesorah one to the other.
17. *Nachum (d.510) Land of Israel. Prophet.
18. *Chavakuk (d.510) Land of Israel. Prophet.
19. Tzefania (d.460) Land of Israel. Prophet. Since he was the leading sage, he pronounced his prophecies in the study houses and synagogues while Yimeyahu pronounced his prophecies in the streets.
20. Yirmeyahu (d.462)Land of Israel. Prophet. Had quite a wild life, battling false prophets, trying to get the exiled tribes to come back to Israel, witnessing the final downfall of Jerusalem and exile.
21. Baruch ben Neriah (d.347) Land of Israel. Prophet, but not the leading prophet (who was Daniel). He was the first leading sage to be in exile.
22. Ezra (d.348) Babylonia. Some say he was also a prophet. Brought a large population back to Israel to reestablish a semi-autonomous Jewish state (with a Temple and Sanhedrin) after his mentor, Baruch ben Neriah, passed away.
This ends the period of prophecy that started with Moshe. A prophet has a special mission to exhort the people for their moral failings and areas of spiritual needs. However, as a sage in a debate, their status as a prophet held no sway in effecting a decision. The following sages made up a special time period that founded the oral tradition as a unified body of statements called the Mishnah.
Monday, July 13, 2009
When can you do a miracle?
In many ways the beginning of the Torah reads more like fantasy than reality. It seems mythical, because it deals with a different type of reality, at a time when the presence of God was more immanent, and felt more strongly. A time when people had direct conversations with the Creator, and the laws of nature seem much more malleable.
And I believe that while the history in the Torah is accurate, the description of that history is partly allegorical.
That being said, the presence of miracles in Genesis seems natural and fitting. If the presence of the Omnipotent were more real to us, miracles would not be such a big deal. But hyperspace to our time and place, and the same miracles would blow us away. We’d permanently change our life philosophy if confronted with any significant change in the laws of nature.
What happened between then and now? Five overlapping stages emerge …
Stage One: The Infinite Can Do Anything
Our definition of the Creator demands that He be able to do anything. He’s infinite. He can do whatever He wants. Not only can He avoid, manipulate, or even permanently change the very laws of nature that He designed, but it is effortless for Him. Yet if He designed the world with physical laws and principles, it must be that they are part of a wise design, and He wouldn’t change them unless it is highly necessary.
We see miracles in Genesis that are clearly wrought by the Infinite. Noah makes a boat and God has it miraculously filled with a pair of every type of creature. The waters miraculously flood the earth. (See Chapter 8)
A nation rises up to build a special tower in Babel and they are miraculously scattered. (See Chapter 10)
God has Sarah miraculously give birth as a centenarian (without IVF implantation). (See Chapter 21)
There are more examples but the idea of miracles in the book of Genesis seems to be - events that are clearly being done by the Almighty. Not without exception, as we see angels make Lot’s persecutors go blind, Jacob does something that might be considered magical to cause his animals to be spotted etc., Joseph does dream interpretation that borders on psychic ability, but the general approach is God does miracles.
[By the way, many people, including myself when I was younger, in states of questioning, say to themselves or God, “If you want me to believe in You, then do a miracle for me.” “I would believe in God if He did a miracle for me right now.” As myopic and narcissistic as this may be, it is a legitimate request. However, none of the miracles in Genesis appear to be for that purpose. If you are clear that an Infinite Being created this world, you don’t need miracles. If you are unclear on that fact, He does not warrant doing miracles for that purpose. But be careful what you ask for, He may not do a miracle for you , He may just give you a “sign” that obligates you to seek Him out.]
Stage Two: We Get Involved
In Exodus we not only see more miracles from God, like a burning bush, but we also see something new, we see Aaron stretching forth a staff and striking the River to turn it into blood. (See Chapter 7) God said, “I’m going to turn the water into blood.” But he had Aaron do that action that preceded the miracle. A physical action is done by man, even though the miracle is done by God.
A shift in Divine miracle philosophy perhaps?
The plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the Sea of Reeds and other miracles were done through the actions of Moses or Aaron, even though it was clear that the Almighty was the one responsible for the act that defies nature.
And still a miraculous lifestyle permeated the reality of people living in this time. Manna fell from above, some people got afflicted in miraculous ways; fire came down to consume an offering etc.
Stage Three: Hand in Hand
Instead of the famous splitting of the Sea of Reeds, where it may have looked to a bystander that Moses was causing the miracle, even though we all see that it’s really God, we also see miracles that are directed by God but acted out through man. Sotah is a process of bringing a woman to the Temple where the Cohen performs an action of erasing ink on parchment into water to test her fidelity to her husband. She drinks the water and if she is guilty she miraculously falls apart, if she is innocent she miraculously gets pregnant. The Cohen is acting hand in hand with God. (See Numbers Chapter 5)
I’m not sure, but when Moses strikes a rock to bring forth water miraculously in Chapter 20, it seems different than the splitting of the sea. Moses seems to be a partner with God when he hits the rock, not just a puppet of God like when he stands at the sea.
Kabbalah describes a spiritual descent from the earlier time periods. We live with miracles like Manna, hear God speak commandments, see spirituality constantly be expressed through the physical world, but then we leave the desert and enter into the land of Israel, we are expected to live a more normal lifestyle. We are designated to be an expression of Godliness in the natural world. God hands over the reigns, so to speak …enter Stage Four
Stage Four: He Hands Over the Reigns
As a precursor to putting miracles more in the hands of mankind, the Almighty gives us a few guidelines. Magic is forbidden. Slight of hand, Bullwinkle pulling Rocky out of hat is ok. It’s a game; it’s entertainment. But trying to manipulate the laws of nature for your own benefit is forbidden. Holding a séance to contact the dead is prohibited. Using astrology or incantations is also forbidden. (See Deuteronomy Chapter 18) Why?
If you or someone else can perform magic or a miracle, the danger of idolatry hovers close by. You might believe yourself to be a god, or someone else might believe you to be a god. So it is very important that some lines are drawn. On the one hand, if you are holy, wise, and close to the Almighty, it stands to reason that He may do a miracle for you, or allow you to perform a miracle. On the other hand that’s a dangerous situation.
For that reason, we are instructed in Deuteronomy Chapter 13,
“If there should stand up in your midst a prophet or a dreamer of a dream and he will produce to you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about, of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us follow gods of others that you did not know and we shall worship them”, do not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of a dream, for HaShem , your God, is testing you to know whether you Love HaShem, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.”
To me this is one of the most amazing statements in the Torah.
This stage leads us into the holy land. Aside from the continued miracles like Joshua splitting the sea, where the intention seems to be to show that God still loves us even though we’ve moved into the land of Israel and started to be more involved in the physical world, we also have actual people doing miraculous things on their own like when David kills Goliath, or when Samson wages war; individuals who are wise and holy are trusted to know when a miracle can and should be done. Which leads us to the fifth and final stage.
Stage Five: You Can Do It Too
Prophet Elijah causes oil and flour to continue miraculously. He revives the dead. Oddly, his disciple Elisha does the exact same miracles. (See Kings I Chapter 17) Elijah also cures bad water in Kings II Chapter 2. This is the last and final phase which continues to this day. Wise and holy people can do their own miracles. Of course, someone versed in black magic might also be able to manipulate nature in minor ways, but this is forbidden and divinely punished. God gives them just enough rope…
We also have eye witness accounts throughout the Talmud (Circa 500 c.e.) of sages defying the laws of nature. These are generally not on the scale of the flood of Noah or the tower of Babel, but “smaller miracles”. A rabbi wanted to prove something to his town, to educate them, and give them a proper perspective on life. So he gathered everyone around a known snake pit, took off his shoe and put his foot at the hole. A snake came out, bit him on the foot, and the snake died. The rabbi said, “It is not the snake that kills but the sin”. He did a minor miracle to inspire and educate.
In another Talmudic instance a poor man’s daughter told him they had no oil to light for the Sabbath lights. He said, if God can make oil light, He can make vinegar light, and so it was. It was a purely private miracle, and because the man had such an elevated consciousness that he was wholly unimpressed with such a miracle, he could rely on it.
Kabbalah can also involve the manipulation of nature, and some sages would create an animal through the study of Kabbalah, and then eat it. This seems to have been a way of study and education of the holiness of the Almighty’s Torah, not for their personal gain.
We also see instances where prayer brings rain in a drought. Prayer is a way of tapping into God. It’s not really the person who makes it rain, it is God. But the person’s prayer is the impetus for the miracle.
Although these instances were between 1500 to 2000 years ago or so, all throughout our history, there are instances of wise and holy people changing nature, even reviving the dead. (To revive the dead, it is said that the sage is not really doing anything at all. Only the Creator can revive the dead. However, like with prayer, it is the sage who believes he has an unusual circumstance that warrants such a miracle and does the process to revive the dead, and relies on God’s intervention to actually do the miracle.)
Most American Jews are unfamiliar with these stories. We come from an attitude that shuns spirituality along with superstition. We reject and mistrust anything other worldly. But the Middle Eastern Jews and the Chassidic dynasties both are large branches of Judaism. They continue to look at life as one with the spiritual world. They will tell you many instances of their teachers, mentors, rebbes, and miracle workers doing acts that defy the laws of nature. The intention usually is to inspire or teach, never to show off or for personal gain.
My teachers didn’t do such things. But even though the sages we encounter may shy away from such things, - a friend of mine asked a special rabbi we know, “How come our sages can’t do miracles like that?” His answer was, “Who says we can’t?”
Everything in its time and place.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Are you feeling it?
Imagine you bought a new car and after six months it starts to get very sluggish. You take it to the mechanic and he recommends a good wash and wax. “What? Are you crazy? There’s an internal problem,” you say. “Okay,” he says, “how about putting on some of those fancy rims?”
Believe it or not, this is what we do with something even more precious than a new car. When people are feeling negative, sad, or unresourceful, they often opt for an easy superficial solution that is more of a distraction than a cure. Go to a movie, have a drink, eat some ice cream. Sleep. These bandaids don’t address the core issue. The reason why we opt for them is because we really aren’t used to delving into our insides. If you are able to get in touch with what’s on the inside, it’s a very useful thing to do.
One of the elusive things in life is surprisingly very close to your beating heart. It’s called intuition and for most people it has a life of its own. Do you want to have more of a handle on it?
Actually, your mind and heart are in cahoots to form an inner sense called intuition. This elusive part of us can be a powerful tool, if we understand it. Since you’re more familiar with your mind, let’s start with that.
Mental Intuition
In Hebrew the word Binah sometimes refers to intuition, and is one of the main spiritual connections to the Almighty, as explained in Kabbalah. Binah can mean knowledge that comes to a person without an intellectual process. A flash of insight or an uncomfortable feeling about a person or situation can come to us for a variety of reasons. But usually we think of this as intuition.
Technically, binah is a word that grammatically implies making connections between two different things. (Similarly the word “bein” means – between.) Sometimes it refers to the type of analysis that takes an idea and compares and contrasts it to everything else we know to be true. We can do this naturally, or we can do this intentionally. If I say “I’m not really 47 but I’m actually 35,” you will automatically, not necessarily intentionally, start matching that statement with internal knowledge in a split second. Does he look 47 or 35? Why would he have said he was 47 if he isn’t? Does he have an expression on his face that shows he’s joking?
On the other hand, a process of comparing a statement with everything else you know to be true can also be done intentionally. The Torah states God said to love your fellow man. Here are some analytical questions: Can I choose to love? What if my fellow man is a moron and a jerk that leaves his garbage cans in front of my driveway every week? Why isn’t it enough for me to merely like my fellow man? Can I just love my fellow man in my heart or is God asking me to try to stop famine and war in the world also?
You can develop, with practice, an analytical intellect that naturally breaks information down, clarifies, defines, and then compares and contrasts. The ancient Talmud trains people to do this, and learning this process is a large portion or any “traditional” scholar’s training.
Premonition
Have you ever had a premonition? Have you ever felt like something was going to happen before it did? The heart knows when something is about to happen. We all have intuitive feelings all the time, but we ignore them because they are distractions. We have no idea, usually, what information these feelings carry. Is it heartburn? A headache? Or an inkling that something is about to happen. Job, the quintessential sufferer of the Bible, had three friends that sensed something was wrong and all showed up at his door on the
There is a spiritual world all around us that is complex. There are thousands of spiritual beings on your left and on your right. And there’s a good reason why we are unaware of the spiritual world. It’s too much for us to handle. But many generations held onto sensitivity to spirituality and didn’t leave it completely. For the past one hundred years people have gone away from the unseen and the mystical. They wanted facts and science, not religion and superstition. But they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
The truth is that you are not required to get in touch with your intuition. But if you do, it can be an extremely powerful tool.
Intuition
Graphology is the study of handwriting and is used by psychologists, criminologists, and job application analysts. A good graphologist can tell you many things about your personality. They can describe your relationship with your parents; they can assess your general level of honesty, tell if you’re happy or depressed. But it takes time to learn this skill, and you have to have an intuitive ability also. They studied children’s ability to assess handwriting based purely on intuition. It turns out the children were extremely accurate until they reached puberty. After that, as pre-teens they began to rely more on intellect or visual factors and less on their intuition. Children are naturally intuitive. If you want to relearn your intuition, you need to get in touch with your “inner child.” You have to choose a time and a place to feel childlike. Not immature, but more like going with the flow, having unstructured fun. Sometimes spending time with a child and letting the child dictate the flow of activities and conversation can help. Sometimes being around other people who are intuitive like artists and musicians can help too. When was the last time you sat on the floor with a child and played?
Feelings
People tend to think of “feelings” as emotions like anger or jealousy, but there are various feelings that aren’t emotions. You can feel tired, hungry or thirsty. You can feel “funny”. You can feel out of sorts, awkward, uncomfortable, upbeat, or “on your game”. You can feel like something isn’t quite right. Feelings can be synonymous with intuition. Feelings come and go all day long. An exercise you can do to get control of the power inside you is to write down on a piece of paper numbers one to ten. Carry the paper with you and every once in a while write down exactly how you are feeling. It may not be easy, but with effort you can articulate what you are feeling. This act puts your internal barometer more in the palm of your hand.
Inside
Kabbalists describe the internal workings of the human being. We all recognize that we are not our body. The physical masks the spiritual. Our body is our “mortal coil” that we are enclothed with while in this physical world. Some of us are also aware that we are not our thoughts and feelings. If you can say, “I can’t control my thoughts.” then you are not your thoughts. If you can say, “I can’t stop feeling this way.” then you are not your feelings.
But the act of getting in touch with your thoughts, feelings, and intuition gets you one giant step closer to understanding your true self. Some people say “ignorance is bliss”, but I believe true happiness comes from understanding yourself, God, and spirituality. The tool described here, of getting in touch with your inner self, is a powerful means to greater happiness.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Revenge, Sweet Revenge
Even though the Bible is the biggest “bestseller” of all time, and continues to affect believers and non-believers more than any other book ever written, many people are wholly unfamiliar with the original language. This causes some confusion and misunderstanding especially if you get your religious philosophy from Time magazine.[1] Some misunderstandings regarding the spiritual messages from the Torah can easily be cleared up without spending years studying the language. There are some key mistakes that are the cause of major glitches that should be corrected.
Here is one of the Top Ten Mistranslations:
עין תחת עין – “Ayin tachas ayin” – An eye for an eye.
(Ex.-21:24, Lev.-24:20, Deut.-19:21)
Ask your average layman if they are familiar with this phrase and what it means and you’ll hear that - of course that is the famous Biblical verse advocating taking revenge on your enemies. Although other peoples all over the world have sanctioned revenge in various forms, even officially in the Code of Hammurabi and Babylonian Law, the Torah is quite clear that revenge is forbidden; it is a transgression stated in Leviticus 19:18 “Thou shalt not take revenge.” People think the Torah advocates revenge when in reality it forbids it.
This misunderstanding is so pervasive, being misquoted in books and magazines, even by spiritual and knowledgeable people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. that it is almost useless trying to convince people otherwise. But if you want to know the real Torah; the one that has guided spiritual people for 3300 years, you should know the truth.
It is truly unfortunate that not only do people misunderstand the true message of the Torah, but they use this mistranslation to malign the Jewish people, who historically are shown to be extremely non-vengeful compared with other nations.
Two types of revenge
To be clear, there are two types of “revenge” that need to be separated. One is a private type of revenge where a person takes it upon himself to exact retribution when someone did him wrong. This, the Torah says, is clearly immoral. When we do that we are playing God. It’s the Almighty’s job to right wrongs, carry out punitive justice and correct the imbalances in the world. When we are slighted we naturally want to retaliate. We want to make things “even”. But that feeling is disconnected from God and spirituality. We need to channel those feelings inward and ask why the event happened in the first place. Is there a lesson I need to learn? Am I leaving myself unprotected? Is there a message from the Almighty concerning my spiritual growth?
We need to remind ourselves that God still runs the world. If someone stole $100. from me, the Almighty has many ways of returning me the money, and many ways of taking the profit away from the thief. God doesn’t need my help in carrying out His justice. [2] Kabbalistic “karma” has many ways to right a wrong. Which leads us to the second type of “revenge”.
The second type is a formal revenge that a court of law carries out. The courts, being human, are incapable of carrying out true divine justice. But they do have a duty to provide society with a system of justice that is fair, promotes harmony in society, and presents criminals with punishments or consequences that help prevent crimes against other citizens so we can live in harmony. Every society tries to develop a justice system that is objective and wise. Non-Torah systems sometimes included the possibility for the criminal who maims to be himself maimed. This, even when carried out by an objective court, the Torah also says is not right, and provides an alternative through monetary compensation. We are instructed NOT to carry out either of these two types of revenge.
Courts of Law
So what does this phrase an eye for an eye mean in the Torah? It is a poetic phrase in the context of court cases and instructions for judges. If a person injures another to the point of causing that person to lose an eye, there is a monetary fine paid. An eye is priceless and can’t be replaced, but the court is mandated to issue a fine nonetheless. Some say it also means that the aggressor should feel as if they deserves to have his/her eye taken out, but of course the courts are not going to do that.
(On a side note, an interesting commentary by Rabbi Eliahu of Vilna[3] explains that since the word “tachas” literally means “under”, you can look at the Hebrew letters that spell “ayin” which are ayin, yud, nun, and pick out the letters underneath[4] which are pey, chaf,
One eye is taken for an eye
If your neighbor leaves a severed pig’s head on your porch, you will naturally feel like retaliating. As is often the case, human beings seem to be projecting their feelings onto the Torah and finding a phrase that supports their feelings. We would like to carry out revenge or have the court carry out revenge, so we justify it by attaching our feelings to this phrase. In fact, this phrase is so catchy and poetic that books, movies, and popular songs like “Bad Moon Rising”[5] have used it many times.
But our feelings are holy and come from a good place, even our negative feelings. We want revenge because we crave justice and expect the world to work in a fair and honest way. Justice is part of Godliness and something our soul clings to strongly.[6] But when this feeling gets confused with personal hurt, we channel it into the wrong direction. Whenever we feel personal hurt, the spiritual challenge is to try to channel it back to God. Seek His advice how to channel those feelings in the right direction through prayer, introspection, and understanding. Of course if we are legally allowed to seek payment for damages we should do so through an objective third party legal system. But ultimately the Almighty runs the world.
In short, the Torah advocates an official system of justice with courts and judgments that preclude personal vengeance, while clearly stating that personal revenge is a transgression. There is no room for doubt in this matter. Please spread the word.
[1] E.g. issues from Jan. ’83, Feb. ‘06
[2] The Sefer HaChinuch goes farther and suggests that hard feelings towards the person who wrongs you are misplaced because if God didn’t want it to happen the person would be powerless to harm you.
[3] Outstanding Lithuanian rabbi known as the Genius of Vilna -Vilna Gaon (1720-1797)
[4] If you place the Hebrew alphabet in a vertical row with alef at the top, each succeeding letter is underneath the previous letter.
[5] By Credence Clearwater Revival, written by John Fogerty 1969
[6] Din is the fifth of the ten kabbalistic Sefirot, and encompasses divine justice. We understand intellectually that true justice is not always immediate, and sometimes requires a next world, reincarnation, etc. however, we still desire to see justice now.