Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy

Our sages said, “I the Lord,” Rabbah said about it, why is it written, “All the kings of the earth will thank You, Lord, for we heard the sayings of Your mouth” (Psalms 138)? It did not say, “the saying of Your mouth,” but “the sayings of Your mouth.” When the Creator said, “I, and you shall not have,” etc., idol-worshippers said, “He is demanding for His own glory.” When He said, “Honor your father and your mother,” they rethought and admitted the first commandments (Kidushin 31a).

We should ask what they saw in His saying “Honor,” to the point that it was worthwhile to rethink. By intimation, “your father” and “your mother” are Hochma and Bina, as it is written in The Zohar. First, they thought that since the whole basis of Judaism is faith above reason, they said that He was demanding for His own glory, meaning that only the lower ones would serve Him above reason, and He would give them nothing in return.

Faith above reason is called “complete bestowal.” When He said “Honor,” it means that man should honor Hochma and Bina, which is the Torah, called Hochma-Bina-Daat.

Daat [knowledge] is the quality that connects the two, as in “And Adam knew his wife, Eve.”

We see that there are two manners of Segol [a Hebrew punctuation mark]:

1) Segol of Nekudot, where the connecting line is below [ $D:\Chaim\Books\Eng_Books\Zohar_New\Links\Segolta.JPG$ ]

2) Segol of the quality of Taamim, where the connected quality is above [ $D:\Chaim\Books\Eng_Books\Zohar_New\Links\Segol.JPG$ ]

The meaning is that Daat means Dvekut [adhesion] and connection, which is called “the giving force,” since man must achieve a degree of bestowal called “equivalence of form,” as in, “As He is merciful, so you are merciful.” The beginning of the work should be in faith, which is called “I, and you shall not have,” which is above the intellect.

This is called “learning Torah Lishma [for Her sake].” Afterward, one is rewarded with the secrets of Torah being revealed to him, which are called Hochma, Bina, and then he must renew the faith once more. That is, he should not say, “Now I have a basis of Hochma and I can serve the Creator because I already have support.”

Therefore, we must renew the faith once more, so we work even now without any basis. This is “reason below,” called Hochma-Bina-Daat, and this is called “Daat of Kedusha.”