Zohar - The Secret of Revelation - Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy

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Zohar - The Secret of Revelation

December 29

04:07 PM

The Book of Zohar is both the most mysterious and the most significant book of Kabbalah. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that although it was written nineteen centuries ago, its true purpose is for our time. Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) revealed its wisdom to us, reigniting what had long been forgotten in our hearts. This film is produced by the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy.

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It was hidden for hundreds of years, far from human eyes. The Book of Zora. They were thinking about us while they wrote. Us. Second century CE. Little Judea groans under the rule of Rome. The Second Temple, the foundation of the Jewish nation, is in ruins. And yet, the Judean spirit is strong. Bar Kokhba's warriors battle bravely and fiercely. The mighty Roman army that conquered half of the world suddenly finds it is helpless against them. But eventually, it is much too strong. The uprising is brutally suppressed. And to break people's spirit completely, they order it to put the great master Rabbi Akiva to death. He spends his last days in the company of his five disciples. Five out of thousands. He had an enormous school. Twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva's students are killed due to unfounded hatred. They fell from the degree of holding love for one another into a dark world of envy, pride, and selfishness, and they disappear. Rabbi Akiva knows he is about to die, and he gives his last lesson to his remaining disciples. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai Rashbi is one of them. Rashbi was a great sage with a special connection to the Creator, but in truth, he wanted only one thing: to live this world with all of its problems and suffering to a state of perfection, harmony, and love to the Creator. And that is why the Romans feared him. He radiated the spirit of freedom. First, they executed his teacher, Rabbi Akiva, and soon after, they came after him, Rashbi, to kill him and his son, Eleazar. But they were too late. Both father and son vanished into the mountains and forests of Upper Galilee. This is where the story about the Book of Zora begins. In the north of the land of Israel, among the forests and mountain paths, near the village of Pikin, therein hides a small cave. It could barely fit two people. This cave became Rabbi Shimon's and his son Eleazar's refuge for thirteen years. To survive, they ate from the carob tree and drank water from a nearby creek. However, their main sustenance was spiritual. Precisely in this dark and damp cave, they discovered the harmony of the universe, the unifying love that reigns over the world, the Creator. They came to realize that the purpose of every person's life on this planet is to reveal the Creator. In addition, they realized that they had a special personal mission: to write a book that describes every step of the way to the Creator, how a person can attain the upper force of nature. Now, how could it be that two fugitives who escaped execution were supposed to write a book? Then, unexpectedly, Caesar, the Roman Emperor, died. Soon afterward, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Eleazar were informed that their execution was called off. They could finally leave the cave. They came out of it with one thought: the book had to be written right away. And there was a good reason for this. Their people were about to enter into a two-thousand-year-long exile, and the Book of Zora needed to be ready before that. The Book of Zora would be written right here, in this cave, by Rabbi Shimon and his nine disciples. But first, they had to enter the cave. It doesn't sound like a big deal. Why couldn't they just start writing, if that's what they had to do? But there was a strict condition. The book needed to be written from one heart. It meant that ten Kabbalists needed to become as one author. How could they do it? Were they supposed to sign some kind of covenant? How could they crush their individual egos and pride in order to merge as one? And yet, it was indeed a strict condition. Imagine, it was the same condition that the people of Israel received when the Torah was given to them on Mount Sinai. And then Rashbi and his disciples needed to abide by it, knowing that they had the mission to write the holy book and what was expected of them in the process. They signed a brotherly covenant. After signing the covenant, they entered the cave. It was as if they entered outer space. And each of them had a specific role in this mission. These are the names of the authors of the Book of Zohar: Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Eleazar, Rabbi Yossi bar Yaakov, Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yitzhak, Rabbi Hezekiah, Rabbi Chiya, Rabbi Yossi, and Rabbi Issa. It is hardly surprising that in order to write the book, they had to thoroughly prepare themselves, even writing the first letter. Putting a pen to parchment took hours, days, and months of preparation. And they wrote in the Book of Zohar how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. Indeed, at first, they all felt like brothers. These are the friends as they sit together and are not separated from each other. And all of a sudden, at first, they look like people at war wishing to kill each other. One minute, they were brothers who loved and understood each other, and then suddenly they hated each other so much that they became ready to burn each other to the ground. How could that be? This is precisely why they signed a brotherly covenant, in order to remember it in the dark time of hatred. Rashbi knew. They all knew. In order to write the Book of Zohar, they had to face the abyss that divided them, which tore them apart and which made them each other's enemy. It is because they had to go through everything that the world will go through in the future. They had to experience hatred, to feel it to the bone, in order to rise above it and return to brotherly love. Then they returned to being in brotherly love. But it did not happen right away. They already knew who incited the hatred and why he did it. So they turned to him, to the Creator, and asked him for help. The Creator listens to their words, and he has contentment and delights with them. The Creator covers all crimes with love. This is how the Creator became revealed to them as the force that united them. It gave them the strength to write. The authors of the Book of Zohar wrote it only when they rose out of their descents, above the abyss that separated them. Only then did the pen touch the parchment, and the letters and the words emerged, the magic lines of the divine book, the wisdom that one should know, to know and to observe the secret of the soul. What is the soul within him? Where does it come from? And why does it come into this body, which is a foul drop that is here today and in the grave tomorrow? To know the world one is in and for what the world will be corrected, to gaze upon the sublime secrets of the upper world, and to know one's master. And one observes all that from within the secrets of the Torah. They wrote from the height of love, from the height of the Creator's complete attainment. It was impossible to write otherwise. The energy, the unifying force that they put into the Book of Zohar can unify that which cannot be unified. They were thinking about us while they wrote. Us, people today, who fight and hate each other. They knew that our time would be a time of endless wars, where relatives would become enemies, and hatred would rule the world. They knew that we would try to stop the decline, but we would fail, fall in despair, and finally ask for help. Then the time would come for the Book of Zohar. It was intended as an instruction manual for how to rise above evil. But until we reach a dead end, the book cannot be revealed. Until we realize that we are enslaved by our egos and want to escape from that slavery, the book needs to stay hidden. Therefore, they chose Rabbi Abba to write the book. Only Rabbi Abba knew how to conceal spiritual knowledge so that it would not be used ahead of time. Rabbi Abba did his job to conceal the spiritual power. The scrolls in which the book was written were well hidden by its authors. It was hidden for hundreds of years, far from human eyes, waiting for the moment of its revelation. Then, suddenly, it started appearing in different places throughout the world. Some of its scrolls would show up in the Eastern market in Jerusalem in the ninth century, and in Spain in the twelfth century, and after that in Sfat, Istanbul, Egypt, and Prague. Two thousand years later, the Book of Zohar reached the hands of the great Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, who went on to write a complete commentary on it. He called it the Sulam Commentary. Sulam, meaning letter in Hebrew, as in a letter that leads to the light that fills the book. He explained how to use its power. Kabbalists established four conditions. The first condition: do not try to understand the Zohar through your intellect. You read the Zohar with your heart. It is not meant for intellectual knowledge. It is meant to help us change. The second condition: the Book of Zohar is not about this world. The Zohar stories are not stories, and its names are not names of people, places, or things. The Zohar writes about the inner states that we travel through when we experience the book from within. The third condition: the Zohar contains the light that changes us. If we want to change, if we don't want to be burned by our own hatred, and if we don't want to be controlled by our egos, then, according to the extent of this yearning, when we read the book, we attract the light contained in it, and it purifies our soul. The fourth condition: as one man with one heart. This is how ten Kabbalists wrote the Book of Zohar. We should read it the same way. So what are we waiting for? What are we hoping for? Here it is, the Book of Zohar. It's right in front of us. Let us open it, and let us connect to the secret power that dwells within. We will feel what they felt: happiness, unity, and adhesion with the upper force. That is what the Book of Zohar is about. That is its secret. Today, we are ready to discover it.