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The Mystery of the Eighth Day

And on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Leviticus 12:3 In the Torah portion of Tazria, we are commanded to circumcise a male child on the eighth day. In the previous Torah portion, Shemini, we read that the dedication of the Tabernacle (Mishkan) also took eight days, and only on the eighth day the Shechinah (“divine presence”) rested on it. What is the significance of the eighth day? Chasidic philosophy interprets the eighth day as the day after seven days. In numerous writings (ma’amarim) and talks (siḥot), the Rebbes of Chabad stated that seven days represent nature, whereas the eighth day is a day above nature.[1] The eighth day represents the supernatural. Why, you may ask, do the seven days represent nature? We are told that the number [...]

By |2024-04-14T21:40:11-04:00April 14th, 2024|Kabbalah, Leviticus, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Space, Spirituality, Tazria, Time, Uncategorized, Vayikra|0 Comments
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What is a Soul? III. The Many Souls of Man

  …[H]e who tries to cure the soul, wishing to improve the moral qualities, must have a knowledge of the soul in its totality and its parts…Maimonides[1] Maimonides opens his introduction to The Ethics of the Fathers with this statement: Know that the human soul is one, but that it has many diversified activities. Some of these activities have, indeed, been called souls, which has given rise to the opinion that man has many souls, as was the belief of the physicians, with the result that the most distinguished of them states in the introduction of his book that there are three souls, the physical, the vital, and the psychical.[2] While Maimonides lists three souls—the physical (tiv’it), the vital (chiyunit), and the psychical (nefoshit)—he believes them to be aspects of one soul—“Know that [...]

By |2022-01-25T15:40:55-05:00December 15th, 2021|Kabbalah, Neuroscience, Reincarnation, Soul, Spirituality, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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What Is a Soul? II. Anatomy of the Soul

In the biblical story of the creation of Adam, the Torah states: Then the Eternal G‑d formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Genesis 2:7 The word translated into English as “soul” in the original Hebrew is nefesh. This is the first and the lowest level of the soul given to Adam. The taxonomy and anatomy of a soul in Judaism are quite complex. Original biblical sources speak of three levels of the soul: nefesh (“soul”), ru’ach (“spirit”),[1] and neshamah (“breath”).[2] The Kabbalah speaks of the five levels of the soul: nefesh, ru’ach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. This is based on classical rabbinic sources. As stated in the midrash, “By five names is the soul called: nefesh, ru’ach, [...]

By |2021-12-31T15:00:28-05:00November 5th, 2021|Ezekiel, Kabbalah, Names of G‑d, Sefirot, Soul, Spirituality, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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My Name Is G‑d, and I Am Pleased to Make Your Acquaintance

In the beginning, G‑d created the heaven and the earth...[1] (Genesis 1:1)   Classical biblical commentators have given the first words of the Torah many different translations and have interpreted them to have many different meanings. That said, one simple aspect has received little attention—that G‑d is introducing Himself to us. If we take poetic license and change the order of the words, the first phrase in the Torah could be loosely translated as: “[My name is] G‑d—[Who], in the beginning, created the heaven and the earth.” G‑d is introducing Himself to us as the Creator of everything—heaven (i.e., the spiritual) and earth (i.e., the material). This interpretation of the first verse in the Torah may be helpful for the following reason. In truth, G‑d is entirely unknowable. The Creator of everything, including [...]

By |2020-05-25T18:18:41-04:00May 25th, 2020|Bereishit, Bereshit, Creation, Entanglement, G‑d, Mathematics, Names of G‑d, Parshah, Physics, Quantum Theory, Science, Spirituality, Superposition, Uncategorized, Wavefunction|1 Comment
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The Soul is in the Blood

For the life of the flesh is in the blood." (Leviticus 17:11) The word translated here as “life” in the Hebrew original is nefesh, i.e., “soul.” Torah appears to be telling us that soul of every live creature is in its blood. Indeed, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi says so explicitly in the Tanya: The abode of the animal soul derived from kelipat nogah in every Jew is in the heart; in the left ventricle, as it is filled with blood, and it is written, 'For the blood is the soul' (nefesh)…. just as the blood has its source in the heart, and from the heart it circulates into every organ…" (Likkutei Amarim, 9)[1] The animal soul is primarily vested in the blood (from where it spreads to the whole body and beyond). What does [...]

By |2021-12-31T14:54:36-05:00May 4th, 2020|Acharei Mot, Biology, Ezekiel, Kabbalah, Leviticus, Names of G‑d, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Science, Sefirot, Soul, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Zohar|6 Comments
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Ki Tisa Hints at the Coronavirus

On the Eve of Shabbat, we received a government mailing containing documents that we were required to fill out and send back to the Census Bureau. The connection between the Census and the plague was not lost on me. The Torah portion we read last Shabbat, Ki Tisa. It begins with the story of the census: When you count the children of Israel according to their numbers, let each one give to the Lord an atonement for his soul when they are counted; then there will be no plague among them when they are counted.” (Exodus 30:12) This verse, linking the census with a plague, was uncanny in view of the COVID-19—Coronavirus pandemic—the modern-day plague, in the midst of which we find ourselves today. Interestingly, the word “count” in the verse above is [...]

By |2020-03-18T18:06:46-04:00March 16th, 2020|Biology, Exodus (Shemot), Ezekiel, Isaiah, Kabbalah, Ki Tisa, Mashiach (Messiah), Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Sefirot, Shemot, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Primordial Serpent—the Incurable Atomist

Now the Serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Eternal G‑d had made. (Genesis 3:1)   When G‑d placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, He issued a decree: And the Eternal G‑d commanded the man, saying: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.” (Genesis 2:16) Having commanded man to eat from every tree of the garden, including the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, G‑d qualified His command: “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) There appears to be some dissonance between verses 16 and 17. Verse 16 uses two words, akhol tokhel, each of which shares the [...]

By |2020-02-14T16:54:15-05:00February 14th, 2020|Atomic Theory, Bereishit, Bereshit, Genesis, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Time, Uncategorized, Wavefunction|3 Comments
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Cosmic Symphony

Strings vibrate, Souls tremble, Angels are running and returning, G‑d is touching and not touching – The rhythms of the universe… Nothing stays still… all is in flux. The inexorable flow of time is synonymous with the existence itself. Indeed, everything exists in time. However, from where does the time come? This is, perhaps, the greatest mystery of science. In modern physics, we do not know what time is, let alone from where it comes. We only know how to measure it – by counting the number of periodic intervals, which we accept as a unit of time. For example, in antiquity, people used a night-day cycle as the basic unit of time. This cycle was born out of observations of the apparent rotation of the sun around the earth (although, in reality, [...]

By |2021-12-15T20:45:38-05:00October 30th, 2019|Bereishit, Creation, Deuteronomy, Devarim, Ezekiel, Genesis, G‑d, Soul, Spirituality, String Theory, Time, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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Space – Between Future and Past

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – I We do science by studying nature. We study physics in a lab, peering into space, or working out mathematical models with pencil and paper to see if they fit experimental data. However, great mystics of the past were able to see how this world operates by gazing into spiritual worlds above. On Shavuot, the holiday when we celebrate the revelation on Mount Sinai, we read the prophecy of Ezekiel (the First Vision of Ezekiel) called Maaseh Merkavah (or Ma'aseh Merkabah) – Work of the Chariot. Masters of Kabbalah have taught us that understanding the Work of the Chariot gives the initiated an understanding of the works of nature. This Shavuot, studying and thinking about Maaseh Merkavah, I came to understand some profound insights about the physics [...]

By |2020-06-01T21:10:52-04:00June 13th, 2019|Ezekiel, Fractals, G‑d, Holidays (Yomim Tovim), Kabbalah, Names of G‑d, Physics, Relativity, Science, Sefirot, Sefirot, Shavuot, Space, Spirituality, Tanakh, Time, Topology, Uncategorized|6 Comments
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Wellsprings from Above and Wellsprings from Below

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month… all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. (Gen. 7:11) In calculating the time of the dawn of Messianic revelation, the Zohar writes, And after six hundred years of the sixth thousand there will be opened the gates of wisdom above and the fountains of wisdom below, and the world will make preparations to enter on the seventh thousand as man makes preparation on the sixth day of the week, when the sun is about to set. (Zohar I, 117a) The Zohar calculates this based on the letters of the Tetragrammaton, but brings the verse from this parashah as the mnemonic: “In the six hundredth [...]

By |2022-05-30T22:03:48-04:00October 14th, 2018|Bereshit, Genesis, Kabbalah, Mashiach (Messiah), Names of G‑d, Noach, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Quantum Field Theory, Science, Uncategorized, Zohar|2 Comments
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