Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy

432) “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat.’” A command is nothing but idol worship. “The Lord” is the blessing of the Creator; “God” is the judges. “The man” is bloodshed; “Saying” is incest. A command is nothing but idol worship means that anywhere where it is written “Command,” it implies prohibition of idol worship. Here, too, the word indicates “Commanded” means He forbade him to idol worship.

Here Adam ‎HaRishon ‎was commanded seven Mitzvot [commandments]. “Commanded” is idol worship; “The Lord” is the prohibition of the blessing of the Creator; “God” is the judges, who sentence justly; “The man” is the prohibition on bloodshed; “Saying” is the prohibition on incest. “From any tree of the garden,” and not what is stolen, “You may eat,” and not an organ from an animal.

“From any tree of the garden you may eat” indicates that He permitted him to eat everything, even the tree of knowledge, but he should eat them in a unification, and the tree of knowledge was not in unification with the rest of the trees of the garden.

433) We see that Abraham ate from the tree of knowledge, and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets ate from the tree of knowledge, yet they lived. But the reason is that that tree, the tree of knowledge, is the tree of death. Anyone who takes it in itself alone dies because he has taken the potion of death.

Interpretation: The tree of knowledge is the Nukva of ZA. We should always unify her with the rest of the trees of the garden, the Sefirot of ZA, and then we can eat and receive the abundance from her, who is the tree of knowledge.

This is the manner in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets ate from her. But one who does not unify the Nukva with ZA her husband, but extends from her, herself alone, then she is the potion of death, as it is written, “For in the day that you eat from it you will surely die,” meaning from her alone because he separates and cuts the plantations, separating the Creator from His Shechina. This is why his sentence is death.

434) Adam ‎HaRishon ‎was pulling on his foreskin, separating the holy covenant, Yesod of ZA, from his place and portion, from the Shechina. Hence, he was certainly pulling on the foreskin, leaving the holy covenant, the unification of the Creator and His Shechina. He clung to the foreskin, the shell, which separates the Creator from His Shechina, and was tempted by the words of the serpent.

435) “And from the fruit of the tree ... ‘You shall not eat from it’ ... lest you die.” “From the fruit of the tree” is the woman, Nukva of ZA. “You shall not eat from it” because it is written, “And her legs go down to death,” meaning that the legs of the Nukva descend to the shells, where there is death, meaning if he extends abundance only from her when she is not in coupling with her husband.

It cannot be said that the tree of knowledge is the Sitra ‎Achra ‎and is not the Nukva of Kedusha ‎because there are fruits in the Nukva of ZA, and it can be said about her, “And from the fruit of the tree.” But in the Sitra ‎Achra, ‎there are no fruits because another god is sterile and does not bear fruit. So how does the text say about it, “And from the tree of the garden”? Indeed, it is written, “On the day when you eat from it you will surely die.” This is why the tree is called “the tree of death,” although it is the Nukva of Kedusha, as it is written, “Her legs go down to death,” even though she herself is life and Kedusha.

436) That tree, the tree of knowledge, was watered from above. It grew and was glad, as it is written, “And a river comes out of Eden to water the garden.” “The garden” means Nukva of ZA. That river, Bina, enters the Nukva and waters her, giving her Mochin of Gadlut, and everything becomes one. Through these Mochin, ‎ZA and Nukva became one because from there down, below Nukva of ZA, there is already separation and they cannot receive those Mochin, as it is written, “And from there it parted.” It is so because below the garden it is already separated and is not entirely Godliness, since NR of BYA below the Nukva are not Godliness.