Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy

“‘And it came to pass because you hear these sentences … and you shall eat and be satisfied, and you shall bless the Lord your God, etc.,’ This Mitzva [commandment] to bless the Creator for everything one eats and drinks and enjoys in this world, and if he does not bless, he is called ‘a thief from the Creator,’ as it is written, ‘who robs his father and his mother’ … because the blessings that a person blesses the Creator come to extend life from the source of life to the name of the Creator” (The Zohar).

We should ask, 1) Why is a person called a thief when he does not bless the Creator? 2) To understand the reason that The Zohar gives, “because the blessings that a person blesses the Creator come to extend life from the source of life to the name of the Creator,” what is the connection between extending abundance and man’s blessing?

The thing is that the purpose of creation is to do good to His creations. For this purpose, the lower ones were created with a desire to receive the benefit, and through this disparity of form they became separated from the root. When there is separation, the lower one cannot receive. Hence, we must correct the separation, meaning to be able to receive the upper benefit.

Therefore, when a person blesses the Creator, he bestows upon the Creator. Therefore, even the pleasures he receives, his intention is not to receive, unless in order to be able to bless on it. This is called “equivalence of form.” This is why the abundance comes for His name, etc.

A “name” indicates Malchut, regarded as “the whole of Israel” or the Assembly of Israel, which is everything. For this reason, what a person does in private, surfaces and sentences the entire collective, as our sages said, “One should always see oneself as half guilty and half innocent. If he performs one Mitzva, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the entire world to the side of merit” (Kidushin 40). The reason is that every individual influences the whole collective through his actions.

Therefore, if an individual works for the sake of the Creator, namely that in everything that he enjoys he needs a blessing so he can bless the Creator, it means that his aim is to bestow. At that time, the abundance extends from the Creator to the Assembly of Israel, meaning to the Shechina [Divinity], which is the unification of the Creator and the Shechina.