this comments thread has turned into a debate about the authenticity of the zohar (sorry anonymous contributor, your post was excellent and deserves much more praise:) however the threads have gone wild, and because of substack's structure it's really hard to sift through the conversation. a lot of the conversation turned into the details of the zohar's concepts, and i just wanted to repost a comment i made down below found only deep within, after clicking on the right seventeen "continue thread" buttons:
i'm not sure if there is any point in quibbling over the details right now. these questions are actually non-starters as you learn the language (or rather the experiences behind the language). (the only question here that isn't a non-starter is gilgulim. the rest is basically ontological.) the sefiros, higher realms, other worlds and anything related to that are concepts that are not meant for public consumption precisely because the layman will hear these concepts and hear what he only can with his limited knowledge of spirituality, while not realizing that these words only make sense once one understands/experiences what these other "worlds" actually are. they are NOT other places where other things exist like we do. we don't believe in these sorts of myths. what they do mean is similar to things like thoughts, concepts and minds which are not tangible and have absolutely no physical attributes at all. someone who has no idea what their inner self (the mind, the soul, the neshama) really is, which most people don't as the rambam laments, has no way of accessing the meaning of these things and will fill in the blanks with physicality (or worse, actual nothingness). said physical ideas are actually wrong and have no place in torah. so talking about them now has no meaning. i would say shimon is correct and we are correct. the version of these concepts in the way most of us can imagine them is factually wrong. the gr'a also denied "upper worlds" in the sense that we might picture it. what we know, however, is that people like the gr'a had access to the "world" of the mind by detaching himself from his physicality (a really hard thing to do, especially in this very materialistic world we are accustomed to) and attaching himself to the world buried deep within, the world of the mind. in that world, things that sound like words which mean one thing, mean another once one is trained to understand like that. once that is accomplished, most of these concepts are understood as they are to be, as explanations of Hashem and how he interacts with the world we live in. someone who does not get this actually has no place in the world of nistar, the world which is inherently Sod.
"A Sefer Torah that is off by a single letter, even if that letter doesn't change the simple meaning of the text, is invalid." We don't have the exact number of letters anymore. For example, Yemeni sifrei torah don't have the same amount of letters
Very well written! I loved every word of it.
this comments thread has turned into a debate about the authenticity of the zohar (sorry anonymous contributor, your post was excellent and deserves much more praise:) however the threads have gone wild, and because of substack's structure it's really hard to sift through the conversation. a lot of the conversation turned into the details of the zohar's concepts, and i just wanted to repost a comment i made down below found only deep within, after clicking on the right seventeen "continue thread" buttons:
i'm not sure if there is any point in quibbling over the details right now. these questions are actually non-starters as you learn the language (or rather the experiences behind the language). (the only question here that isn't a non-starter is gilgulim. the rest is basically ontological.) the sefiros, higher realms, other worlds and anything related to that are concepts that are not meant for public consumption precisely because the layman will hear these concepts and hear what he only can with his limited knowledge of spirituality, while not realizing that these words only make sense once one understands/experiences what these other "worlds" actually are. they are NOT other places where other things exist like we do. we don't believe in these sorts of myths. what they do mean is similar to things like thoughts, concepts and minds which are not tangible and have absolutely no physical attributes at all. someone who has no idea what their inner self (the mind, the soul, the neshama) really is, which most people don't as the rambam laments, has no way of accessing the meaning of these things and will fill in the blanks with physicality (or worse, actual nothingness). said physical ideas are actually wrong and have no place in torah. so talking about them now has no meaning. i would say shimon is correct and we are correct. the version of these concepts in the way most of us can imagine them is factually wrong. the gr'a also denied "upper worlds" in the sense that we might picture it. what we know, however, is that people like the gr'a had access to the "world" of the mind by detaching himself from his physicality (a really hard thing to do, especially in this very materialistic world we are accustomed to) and attaching himself to the world buried deep within, the world of the mind. in that world, things that sound like words which mean one thing, mean another once one is trained to understand like that. once that is accomplished, most of these concepts are understood as they are to be, as explanations of Hashem and how he interacts with the world we live in. someone who does not get this actually has no place in the world of nistar, the world which is inherently Sod.
Very nice post.
"A Sefer Torah that is off by a single letter, even if that letter doesn't change the simple meaning of the text, is invalid." We don't have the exact number of letters anymore. For example, Yemeni sifrei torah don't have the same amount of letters
The פרד״ס idea (פשט, רמז,דרש, סוד) originated with R’ Moshe de Leon, who also forged the Zohar.