Terumah: The Sanctuary as the Connection with God's Love

The Torah, Israel, the Promised Land, and the Temple of Jerusalem are the essential elements to reveal God's presence in the material world. They are parts of the same entity we call consciousness, and they are also the means to achieve its purpose.

The Torah is God's master plan, the Promised Land the material and spiritual space to implement the plan, and the Temple of Jerusalem our highest knowledge and awareness of God's love as the level to connect with Him. In this Unity we fulfill our mission to reveal and proclaim His kingdom over all His creation.

With Torah study we learn to know the Creator through His ways and attributes, which we as Israel are entitled to emulate. As our divine legacy and inheritance, the Torah defines our identity as Jews. We are Jews because the Torah tells us what we are. We have spent hundreds of generations immersed in Torah study just to define for us and future generations, who we are.

The result of this long journey is the volumes compiled by the oral Torah [the Talmud]. Ironically, after so many centuries and lifetimes devoted to such monumental task, we still debate what defines the Jewish identity. This indicates that one of the major challenges and endeavors we have to engage into in the dawn of the Messianic era is to discover and embrace who we truly are, based on the definition that the Creator gave us in His Torah.

As long as we don't realize our Jewish identity we will never know our purpose in the material world. Knowing or ignoring this identity has determined our fate as individuals and as a nation. If we are willing to learn from our history, the expected obvious and “logical” conclusion would be to embrace our real identity, though it seems that our common predicament is to rebel against who we are.

We rather assimilate to other “cultures” or lifestyles. The main criticism to non observant Jews is their lack of interest in knowing their Jewish identity. If they, out of individual desire, would inquire about it probably would leave behind what doesn't define who they are.

It's interesting to note that in these times thousands of people from all over the world are embracing Judaism as their material and spiritual identity. This fulfills the prophecies about “the gathering of the exiles” as the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, for whom we pray three times a day when we stand before our Father and King.

The land of Israel is the geographic space in the material world chosen by the Creator for His people, to fulfill their destiny according to His will. The Torah describes this land both as a physical and spiritual place to exercise our identity, because this identity encompasses material and spiritual qualities.

Judaism conceives life and the physical world as part of a unity from which nothing is separated, because our destiny is to make both the spiritual and material as the combined means to reveal God as the Creator of all. This comprises all levels and dimensions of consciousness that must be conducted and guided by God's will.

This is what we call here God's love as the cause and effect of what we conceive and experience as love in our human comprehension. The more we discover, experience, learn and share love, the more we know God's love.

In this sense, the land of Israel encompasses all manifest and potential facets of human consciousness under the awareness of God's love. We have mountains, valleys, deserts, beaches, sea, lakes, hills and plains that represent thoughts and ideals, imagination, insight, expression, sensitivity, austerity, and character traits that expand or limit the way we conceive life, the world, and how we interact with our fellow man.

Hence we are gifted with a land that enlarges the human potential in every dimension of intellect, thought, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts. This land, as a special quality in consciousness, endows us to fulfill God's will. In other words, as long as we do not dwell in it (meaning not living consciousness in its full potential), we are not able to fully manifest God's ways and attributes in the material world.

The Sanctuary, as the Tabernacle and the Temple of Jerusalem, is also the anchoring physical and spiritual place in which our consciousness reaches the full awareness of the Jewish identity. By realizing God's love as the essence of who we are, through the awareness of His ways and attributes, we ascend to Jerusalem (the highest awareness of God's love).

Thus we will be able to enter the most sacred place in consciousness which is our connection with God. We pray daily for the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and this process we do only with the help of God's love. This is how we understand terumah as the elevation process through which we offer our life to God's will.

The offerings we elevate in the Temple are all facets, aspects, traits, qualities and dimensions of consciousness under the guidance of love as the material manifestation of God's love. See our commentary on Parshat Terumah: “Elevating Life to God's Love” in this blog on January 30, 2011 for more details.

Only love meets love, and nothing else. Thus we understand that our offerings must be unblemished and whole, meaning that in them there is nothing but love.

“(…) and have them take for Me an offering [lit. uplifting] from every person whose heart inspires him to generosity (…)” (Exodus 25:2)

When love inspires us and fills us, generosity follows and our love meets God's love.

“And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among [in] them” (25:8)

The Torah is the means to establish this Sanctuary.

“And you shall place into the ark the testimony, which I will give you.” (25:16)

Our sages debate on the allegorical meanings of every part and utensil of the Tabernacle and compare it to the human body, and all that God created in the seven days of His creation. These comparisons teach us that the Sanctuary encompasses all the elements of the material and spiritual Creation.

As an allegory of the human body, it means that all the body contains must be consecrated to its Creator. Hence we proclaim what king David's stated.

“Happy are those who dwell in Your house, they are ever praising you.” (Psalms 84:4)

After all, we are God's creatures, and our destiny is to know Him and unite with Him. That's the legacy of the Torah, Israel, the Promised Land, and the Temple of Jerusalem.

“Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. For He has strengthened the bars of your gates; He has blessed your children within you. He makes peace in your borders, and fills you with the finest of the wheat.” (147:12-14)

Yitro: Understanding God's Love

We frequently say that our Sages equate hearing to understanding and seeing to knowing, in order to teach us two levels of perception. Hence, we assimilate the material world through our senses and knowledge through our understanding. In this context, “Yitro heard...”, “and Yitro came…” (Exodus 18:1, 5) are two complementary stages that give sense to the fact that thought precedes action.

Yitro is a precondition for the revelation of the Divine Presence in the material world (as it happened in Sinai), and they mention several reasons that we will consider later. He personifies the process that the children of Israel have to engage in our relationship with the Creator, because by hearing about Him and understanding His ways and attributes we come to Him. This means we don't need or have to see Him and know Him before we embrace Him.

Understanding is the first stage to assimilate knowledge, and in this sense our mystic Sages define the process starting with intellect as the ability to acquire wisdom, followed by discernment as understanding which leads us to knowledge as a bonding experience.

This is a universal process pertaining human consciousness, which we also apply in our endeavors to know the Creator. Israel was chosen to experience Him through every sense and level of consciousness during the plagues in Egypt and the split of the Red Sea. All these in order to tell their descendants about the events that changed forever our relation with the Creator. Hence, we first have to hear about their experience with Him, so we may come to Him as Yitro did.

This is why our Sages consider Yitro as the epitome of the convert who comes to Judaism as the true way to return to God. By true we refer to the discerning process that precedes the knowledge of Him. In this process we Jews are all converts to the Torah as we were in Sinai, because we have to individually pursue this knowledge by first understanding its revealed and hidden messages by God.

Our oral tradition tells us that Yitro renounced idolatry by the time Moses came to Median fleeing from Egypt. As a former high priest of idol worship he knew the ways and means of the forces of nature, considered lesser gods by Pagan peoples. This knowledge made him an unequivocal example for other idolaters who want to abandon their cults and serve the will of the Creator.

We must understand idolatry as something rather concrete than abstract. Both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah refer to idol worship not as a delusional cult but as something real, because it is based on the belief that the forces of nature have power over life, as it indeed is.

The distinction that the Torah makes very clear is that those forces are commanded by the Creator. They serve His will as it was magnificently proven with the Exodus from Egypt, and the miracles that followed. This Exodus had the two-fold purpose of freeing Israel from bondage and oppression, and to make the entire world aware of God's ownership and control of His Creation.

Many of us think that sorcery, necromancy, divination, voodoo and other magic practices belong to the realm of fantasy and exist only in the minds of superstitious people, and that is a mistake. The Torah commands us Jews to reject such beliefs and practices not because they are not “real” but because we owe ourselves to the Creator who chose us to be above and beyond the laws of nature, the lesser gods that serve His will.

This is what has made us different, and still makes us distinct from other nations: our belief in One and only God, and our relationship also exclusive with Him. Our Sages tell us that Yitro practiced and experienced all kinds of worship to the forces of nature, and coming to Sinai to recognize the sovereignty of the Creator was one of the conditions for Israel to receive the Torah.

In our times, primitive idolatry joins modern idolatry as ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions named addiction to fashion trends, “pop” and “light” culture, drugs, vanity, and enslaving lifestyles bound to consumer's society. Such idols seem to be harder to abandon than slavery in Egypt.

Ego, as the modern Pharaoh, appears as the absolute and unbeatable ruler of all levels of consciousness. Becoming the contemporary Yitro seems to be near to impossible as long as we don't understand God's Love, and come to His ways and attributes as the redeeming forces that are the true rulers of our consciousness.

Our total freedom begins when we hear and understand the voice of God's Love as our true Essence and identity. When we do it, our own Love puts in motion the connection with its source, which is God's Love.

“And the Lord came down on Mount Sinai... and the Lord called to Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.” (19:20)

God comes down to call our understanding of His Love, for us to come up to the highest level of our consciousness to meet Him. This level becomes our knowledge of His ways and attributes.

Yitro represents our awareness that no matter how “real” ego's fantasies and illusions may be in what we believe, think or feel with what we possess or are addicted to, they are temporary vanity and futility that sooner or later will either change or end, if they don't destroy us beforehand.

We have to be experienced practitioners of materialistic fantasies and illusions up to the point to become as experts as high priests of idolatry. Only in full awareness of their futility we can understand that only Love works wonders and miracles capable to bring us back to the knowledge of God's Love as our One and only Creator and true Source of Life.

Let's awaken to our discernment as understanding of God's Love to embrace Him as our Creator, Redeemer, and true freedom.

Beshalach: Love as the Meaning of Life

One of the fundamental principles the Torah teaches, and the book of Exodus in particular, is the fact that all emanates from the Creator and is sustained by Him.

Understanding this in a deeper level means that we are His creation, and not all the way around. This also implies that in order to truly know who we are, first we have to know God.

“In all your ways, know Him. And He makes your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:6)

The Hebrew Bible and our sages define the way to do it by what is called Judaism. This is the most important contribution to humankind since its beginnings.

Human life without a positive direction for the sake of positive effects does not make much sense. Without a true meaning there is not point, though most of us in this world live regardless true meaning or not. Life seems to be a random phenomena, and being born in a particular place and culture determine most of one's destiny, making look “luck” as the deciding factor. Such existentialist approach ends when we find and experience a true meaning in life, and this meaning is love.

We begin to understand and to know life and its meaning when we recognize love, not ego, as the true driving force in life. This is the starting point to know the Creator, because everything -- including love -- comes from Him. Through the awareness of love we begin to know God's love.

Exile under the darkness in Egypt was a negative experience from which our forefathers cried out for a true meaning in life. A valuable purpose to exist in the material world. In this context, the real point of exile and darkness is to lead us to our love as an emanation of God's love.

“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to cause it to lead them on the way and at night in a pillar of fire to give them light, [they thus could] travel day and night.” (Exodus 13:21)

This verse teaches us that we exist for the sake of God's love. Teaching and directing ego in love's ways and attributes is not an easy task. We have learned in the Torah that the interaction between Moses (our highest knowledge of the Creator) and Pharaoh (ego) was not precisely a “piece of cake”.

Ego demands a minimum amount of control over most aspects of consciousness, and the lack of it generates conflict. We have confrontation between what is the positive right thing to think, desire, feel and experience, and ego's fantasies and illusions that not necessarily aim for positive and enhancing purposes.

Ego voices its fears when is not in control, and only in its silence our love and God's love can lead.

“The Lord will fight for you, but you shall remain silent.” (14:14)

Our awareness of God's love must lead every aspect of consciousness (the children of Israel).

“The Lord said to Moses, 'Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel and let them travel'.” (14:15)

God's love also leads us when our own awareness of love also leads us. Once we fully experience the knowledge of God through His love, we realize that it has been ever since His creation.

“The Lord will reign to all eternity.” (15:18)

God is, has been, and He always will be. We assimilate this principle when we follow His ways and emulate His attributes.

“And He said, 'If you hearken to the voice of the Lord, your God, and you do what is proper in His eyes, and you listen closely to His Commandments and observe all His statutes, all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you'.” (15:26)

Hence when the awareness of love leads our consciousness, there's no room for darkness or negativity.

Again let's be mindful that ego must be a complementary driving force along with love, and not opponents to each other. Two of the most negative effects of ego's feeling or belief of lack are doubt and uncertainty. In particular if we don't believe or feel that love is the true essence and identity that sustains us since birth until death.

“He named the place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarreling] because of the quarrel of the children of Israel and because of their testing the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord in our midst or not'?” (17:7)

Likewise, when love is not in our midst, what --if not love-- takes over? From these verses our sages relate Amalek to doubt and uncertainty, which we must vanish from our connection and relationship with God. We must do it also in our individual and collective experience with love in the material worlf.

“The Lord said to Moses, 'Inscribe this [as] a memorial in the book, and recite it into Joshua's ears, that I will surely obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the Heavens'.” (17:14)

As we mentioned above, we are God's creatures and we depend solely on His love. In this context we indeed live as a miracle from God.

“Then Moses built an altar, and he named it 'the Lord is my miracle'. And he said, 'For there is a hand on the throne of the Eternal, [that there shall be] a war for the Lord against Amalek from generation to generation.” (17:15-16)

We are always in the hands of the Creator. In the same way that His love sustains us, love also fights our wars against ego's fantasies and illusions. We must pursue and achieve our highest knowledge of God in order to vanish doubts and uncertainties ego makes us feel with its feeling or belief of lack.

Let's be aware that when we are fully aware of love in all levels and dimensions of consciousness, we never lack anything.

The more we live in love's ways and attributes, the more we are close to God's love. Our inner enemies are the negative traits and qualities that deny love as our true essence, identity and purpose in life. They disappear when we are completely aware of God's love as the cause and effect of His creation.

Bo: From Darkness to Light

The last three plagues prior to the Exodus from Egypt came with a deeper awareness of the Creator as the One and only cause and effect of His Creation.

Each plague corresponds to a particular level of consciousness that we must awaken in order to have a complete awareness of Him in our life and in the material world. We are His creatures, and anything we may think or believe we are or have comes from Him and belongs to Him: “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, may the Name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21) and this is the first step to start the process of getting to know Him.

The plague of the locusts represents the Creator's ownership of our nourishment both material and spiritual, and the verse of its arrival is juxtaposed to His Commandment for Israel to serve Him:

“Let My people go, and they will serve Me. For if you refuse to let [them] go, behold, tomorrow I am going to bring locusts into your borders.” (Exodus 10:3-4)

The awareness of His absolute ownership and control is a premise to relate to Him according to His will, which is to serve Him. The main obstacle to assimilate and adopt this premise is ego and its desires, represented by Pharaoh and Egypt. The following plague, darkness, is the material and spiritual experience of the complete absence of God's Presence in our consciousness, which is also a direct consequence of ego's blindness to give in to God's Love from where His Creation comes:

“They [the Egyptians] did not see each other, and no one rose [moved] from his place for three days; but for all the children of Israel there was light in their dwellings.” (10:23)

This awareness (the Light in the dwellings of the Israelites) of God's Presence in His Creation makes the difference between darkness and Light. In this context ego is one dimension of consciousness that we also must direct to our full awareness of the Creator's will:

“And Moses said [to Pharaoh], 'You too shall give sacrifices and burnt offerings into our hands, and we will make them for the Lord our God'.” (10:25)

In our positive actions and deeds (“our hands”) we serve and honor God's Love, and ego is successfully directed not by good intentions but by good deeds. When we act in Love's ways and attributes, our positive actions don't leave any room for materialistic fantasies and illusions. These seduce ego to take control of our life and lead us back to darkness, where we can't see beyond ourselves.

Darkness is the result of ego's agenda to make the world spin around its desires. In this sense, darkness is the worst of all the plagues because it prevents us to see beyond of who we think we are. In darkness we are really lost, and in this predicament we have no choice but to seek the Light in order to be truly redeemed. This was the Creator's preordained experience for us to move our consciousness towards the Truth. Our Sages teach that the darkness of exile is the beginning to search for the Light of Redemption.

The tenth and final plague is the death of the firstborn of those who denied the Creator's ownership of His Creation. The firstborn represents our primary intention in life along with its values, principles and goals, like the first fruits of the land that we must bring as offerings in the Temple. The Egyptians' firstborns were inexorably dedicated to submit their lives to materialism without creating anything beyond the futility of ego's illusions.

The firstborn is the first expansion of our human essence, as a reaffirmation of God's Love as the cause and effect of everything, including life. In this sense, we have to consecrate such expansion to Love's ways and attributes as the material manifestations of God's Love:

“Sanctify to Me every firstborn, every one that opens the womb among the children of Israel, among man and among animals; it is Mine.” (13:2)

After all, everything belongs to Him. When we consecrate our extensions to ego's rule we are indeed “dead” before God's Love. The experience of our closeness to God's Love is the beginning of our freedom, and it is our first Commandment as Jews to commemorate the first of the months as a memorial of our liberation from darkness. The New Moon as the beginning of the months (see our commentary on Hanukah in December 2011 in this blog) because we realize our true Essence and identity when we reveal Light out of darkness:

“And this day shall be for you as a memorial, and you shall celebrate it as a festival for the Lord; throughout your generations, you shall celebrate it as an everlasting statute.” (12:14)

This is the experience and legacy of our exile and bondage in darkness: to live the blessing of revealing Light as our true identity when we cry out loud to God's Love to lead every aspect and dimension of consciousness in His ways and attributes. Mystic Sages explain that the seven-day period to celebrate Pesach and Succot represents a continuing process through which we correct and elevate the seven primordial emotions known as loving kindness as compassion, power as self-control, truthfulness as enlightenment, perseverance as triumph, honor as glory, righteousness as the foundation of justice, and prevalence as sovereignty. When we are committed to practice these qualities on a daily basis as a moment to moment expression or our true identity, we are serving the Creator in order to fully reveal His Presence in the material world.

This knowledge we must have every moment, not only as a Commandment: “And it shall be for a sign upon your hand (in what we do) and for ornaments between your eyes (in what we think, see and learn), for with a mighty hand did the Lord take us out of Egypt.” (13:16)

The permanent awareness of God's Love as our Creator and sole owner of all that exists. This includes the Light He gives us to return to Him when we realize that we don't belong to darkness in the realm of illusion, but to His Love as the realm of Truth. As individuals we must have the courage to “come to Pharaoh (ego)” and confront it with the full awareness that Love is the real ruler of life from its beginning to its end, as God's Love is the ruler of His Creation.

The Final Redemption in Judaism I

Our Prophets and Sages refer to the Final Redemption both in concrete and allegorical definitions, and there is nothing obscure or unclear about their meanings. Maimonides says that the Messianic era, as the time for the Final Redemption, starts when we individually and collectively truly love each other, just because. He points out that while the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless and uncalled for hatred, the Third and permanent Temple of Jerusalem will be build because of selfless and unrestricted Love for each other. Again, we reaffirm the axiom that Love is the key to Redemption simply because Love does not coexist with anything different from its ways and attributes. It does not seem easy to love each other, otherwise we would have gained our Redemption long time ago; and we have to reflect thoroughly on why we don't love each other in the same way that the Creator loves His Creation.

The Prophet Isaiah speaks about the Final Redemption through impressive allegories such as the lion eating grass along with the lamb, in what our Sages call the total vanishing of the "evil inclination". In other words, our human free will is going to be able to naturally choose goodness all the time. The challenge we seem to face is how we get to that level of higher consciousness. How can we be capable to disregard or ignore evil in order to choose goodness all the time? How can we turn the wild untamed lion that represents ego out of control into a docile and obedient driving force always willing to pursue goodness for the sake of goodness? The answer to both questions is that we achieve it in a gradual process of refining all aspects and dimensions of consciousness. We have lions and wolves as well as sheep and lambs, as allegories to negative and positive traits that we must harmonize towards Love's ways and attributes. We do that precisely through Love's ways and attributes.

We mentioned before that our Sages say that those who want to be redeemed must prepare for their Redemption, in the same way that we do what we must in order to get what we need or want. There is no other way to do it. We prepare for what we desire with all our soul, heart and might, and the Torah commands us to do that referring to the Creator. This is not about a blind love or desire to be close to Him and His Love, but a genuine desire to know His ways and attributes as the means to love Him. Our Love for Him does not come from thoughts, emotions or feelings but from our discernment and knowledge of Him. Isaiah indicates that the only interest in the "end of times" as the Final Redemption will be the knowledge of God, which will cover the Earth as the water fills the bed of the oceans. 

This is not an abstract knowledge of the Creator but a concrete awareness of His ways and attributes for us to emulate, and we achieve it when we act according to Love's ways and attributes. This is how we understand "loving each other" as the foundation of the highest awareness of our connection and relationship with God, represented by the Temple of Jerusalem. This is the context of our daily prayers when we ask the Creator to rebuild Jerusalem, because besides being the undivided capital of Israel it also represents a united consciousness in its highest knowledge of God.

We have said that the destructions of the First and the Second Temples were the result of doing the opposite to Love's attributes, and we will build the Third Temple by honoring Love's attributes as the ways of God's Love. We mentioned that in a gradual process we individually begin to ignore anything negative and focus on the positive, as a natural way to perceive and approach life and the material world. Most of what we call or see as evil or negative is the result of our own evil or negative approach. All the things we don't like in this world are the effect of either what we or others have done with the wrong attitude. Wars, hunger, slavery, exploitation and their synonyms are the result of egocentricity, and their opposites are the effect of mutual understanding and cooperation out of the common knowledge that these are synonyms of selfless Love.

The good news about the Final Redemption is that once we individually redirect all aspects of consciousness in Love's ways, God's Love does the rest as He promised in the Torah in through our Prophets. Once we choose to return to Him, He will release us from the mirages and fantasies of ego's materialistic desires. Some Sages say that the Final Redemption will come with a sudden and absolute change in human consciousness, in which we are not going to be able to tell the difference between before and after that change occurs. It will be as if evil and negativity have never existed, and we must prepare now in order to allow the imminent change to occur sooner than later. We don't need to wait for the Final Redemption as a Divine decree, but as a mutual agreement between our Love and God's Love; and it's up to us to start fulfilling the agreement because it is us who yearn for Redemption.

Let's start not only to "visualize" Love, peace and harmony among each other but to make it real through positive actions. In the same way that some say "let there be peace and let it start with me", we must say the same about Love and its ways and attributes not only as the right and proper things to do, but because Love is our true Essence and identity. Love is our greatest legacy and inheritance because Love is the portion that makes us happy and fulfilled. Our Sages say that "rich is the person who is happy with his/her lot". We have said many times that "lot" may mean who we are, what we have or the circumstances in which we live, but we believe that our true lot is the awareness of how close or far we are from God. In this sense our lot is Love as whom we are, what we have and the circumstances in which we are when Love is the guide and conductor of all aspects of our consciousness. This is the greatest fulfillment and happiness we can ever have. Final Redemption is at hand when Love is totally enthroned in our life.

Noach: Life as Diversity

The ten generations between Noach and Abraham give testimony of the diversity inherent to humanity. We are referring here to a wide spectrum we call traits, qualities, talents, skills, etc. along with also diverse aspects, levels and dimensions of human consciousness. This array with all its potential is a reflection -- within the limitations of material reality -- of the infinite and endless diversity of God's Creation.

We only need to look around to realize that we do not live in a dull world, and that we are here to relate with a multidimensional diversity. We can understand it as "I am diverse, hence I am" because we live simultaneously with thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions, and instincts. 

Noach had three sons that our Sages teach that represent the foundations or roots of intellect (Shem), emotion (Japheth), and sensuality (Ham), with which we approach a large range of possibilities to be experienced as cornerstones of the building we call life. The Torah's approach to life is unequivocally ethical, and the most adequate conductor to this approach is our intellect as the discerning power of consciousness.

Our Sages equate intellect to soul. Thus the more we discern about our circumstances in the material world, the more we live in consonance with our soul. In this sense, as they say, soul is to the body as the Creator is to the world. This means, among other things, that the soul is what connects us to Him.

Living and approaching life from the place of the soul is the only way to transcend the mirages and illusions of the material world. In a practical context, the soul encompasses the Divine attributes that the Torah instructs us to emulate. In sum, the more diverse and complex material reality appears to us, the more we need strong foundations to approach it in the most positive, constructive and uplifting ways and means.

Most of Noach's descendants rejected the diversity God bestowed in the world. This rejection was also manifest by their previous generation who perished in the Flood as a consequence of corrupting life, and making it meaningless before God. It seems hard to believe that after such a short transition, the "new" humankind wanted to commit the same mistake by building the tower of Babel.

As a Divine creation, we humans have the potential to reach out to our Creator by following His ways and manifesting His attributes. Ego's materialistic desires and illusions make us believe and feel that we are self-providing and self-sustaining entities, and they are the bricks of the tower that makes us believe and feel that we are our own god. Our Sages say that arrogance is the worst of kind of idolatry, because it does not allow one to see beyond himself. Egotism becomes the easiest way to deny anything different, and consequently diverse, from our own perception.

The worst transgression of the generations previous to Abraham was not defying God's rule over His Creation and proclaiming man's dominion over his own life and fate, but their denial of the diversity and multidimensional potentials of human life as the most precious Divine gift to us. A special gift to be appreciated, valued, cherished, rejoiced, and to be delighted with. In this sense, the worst sin is to deprive human consciousness of its potential to encompass and approach life and the material world with all their revealed and concealed diversity.

After the Flood, the Creator still endowed us with free will to choose not only from what we know as good and evil as it was so in the Garden of Eden, but from a myriad of possibilities within every aspect, level and dimension of consciousness. Thus, in the awareness of God's Love as our Essence and true identity, we are fully able to discern and choose Love's ways and attributes amid the wide diversity of possibilities the material world offers us.

The generation of the tower of Babel came together united to circumscribe human life to a single ideological, cultural and social pattern; in "one language" able to turn man into a god for himself, and the rest of Creation was meant to be an accessory for man's "greatness" (see our commentary dated on October 2, 2010 in this blog).

The Creator's response was not more destruction, as with the Flood, but to give us the knowledge and awareness that every individual is as diverse as there are ways of conceiving, thinking, feeling, sensing and responding to the also diverse world where we live. Hence, the challenge for humankind is to also respond with an embracing, unifying and harmonizing approach to diversity as a Divine gift for us.

Among the many messages from this Biblical portion, we can learn that indeed humankind has the potential to be united around an ideology, paradigm or belief as we see it with politics, religion, and even fashion trends. Either for good, as we experience it when natural disasters happen and we rush to help our fellow men in need; or for bad with suffering of those who are victims of religious fanaticism or under totalitarian regimes that desecrate the sanctity of human life.

Time and again, the choice is ours. Either we build towers for ego's desires and illusions of grandeur, or we build towers in our consciousness to be closer to the Creator. Towers not built with bricks of clay but with Love to reach up to God's Love. This Love is our Essence and identity, with which we choose the goodness in the multifaceted diversity that He gave us.

We must hear our Creator and reach out to Him with the expansion of our awareness of His Love (represented by Jerusalem and its Temple) in the diversity of its aspects and dimensions:

"Broaden the place of your tents, and stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, stint not; lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs. For southward and northward you shall spread out mightily, your offspring will inherit nations, and they will settle desolate cities." (Isaiah 54:2-3)

Parshat Haazinu: The Sheltering Love of God

The ardent plea of Moses in this portion contains the words of our highest knowledge of the Creator, summoning Heaven and Earth as the two dimensions that comprise human consciousness.

"Listen, O Heaven, and I will speak! And let the Earth hear the words of my mouth!" (Deuteronomy 32:1)

The essential message of this portion summarizes one of the primordial principles of our Torah and hence in Judaism, the oneness of the Creator from whom everything emanates, and the way it happens.

"The deeds of the Rock [the Almighty] are perfect, for all His ways are just; a faithful God, without injustice He is righteous and upright." (32:4)

These are the qualities of God's love, and love as we experience Him in His ways and attributes.

In this sense we understand that anything different from His ways are our own choices, either be ego's illusions or lower passions derived from uncontrolled desires.

"Destruction is not His; it is His children's defect you crooked and twisted generation." (32:5)

Moses, representing our highest awareness of God, questions our choices when we separate from His attributes.

"Is this how you repay the Lord, you disgraceful, unwise people?! Is He not your Father, your Master? He has made you and established you. (…) You forgot the Rock [the Almighty] who bore you; you forgot the God who delivered you." (32:6, 18)

We are reminded again that God's love does not dwell with anything different than His ways and attributes.

"[So] the Lord guided them alone, and there was no alien deity with Him." (32:12)

This is reaffirmed time and again.

"See now that it is I! I am the One, and there is no god like Me! I cause death and grant life. I strike, but I heal, and no one can rescue from My hand!" (32:39)

The vast majority in this world live in and for material illusions derived either from ideologies, beliefs, culture, fashion, or most commonly from consumer society's trends. We literally live and die for them, sometimes regardless if they don't make sense, or if they are right or wrong.

We can call it our contemporary idolatry. The question that Moses asks us is if these idols really nurture our life and save us from their negative predicament.

"Then He will say, 'Where is their deity, the rock in which they trusted, who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations? Let them arise and help you! Let them be your shelter!" (32:37-38)

Hence we must ask ourselves if there is anything of true value in ego's illusions, and what is left after they consume the vitality of our minds and bodies.

The portion continues with the consequences of living in the realm of illusions, the separation from our own essence that emanates from God's love, as the reiterated warning against separating from His ways.

Our sages wisely choose one of the most beautiful reflections of king David, inviting us to heal our ordeals in the mirages of the material world by trusting and embracing God's love, in the accompanying haftarah for this portion.

"God is my rock, under whom I take cover; my shield, and the horn of my redemption, my support, and my refuge; [He is] my savior who saves me from violence." (2 Samuel 22:3)

"When I am in distress, I call upon the Lord, yes I call upon my God: and out of His abode He hears my voice, and my cry enters His ears." (22:7)

"He sent from on high [and] He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my mighty enemy; from them that hated me; for they were too powerful for me. They [my enemies] confronted me on the day of my calamity; but the Lord was a support to me. And He brought me forth into a wide place; He delivered me because He took delight in me." (22:17-20)

The psalmist praises the Creator and His ways always in the right context, because he is aware that the only way to dwell with Him is by thinking, feeling and acting according to His ways.

"The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from [the commandments of] my God." (22:21-22)

Again we are reminded that His love does not dwell with anything different than His ways and attributes.

"With a kind one, You show Yourself kind. With an righteous mighty man, You show Yourself righteous. With a pure one, You show Yourself pure; but with a perverse one, You deal crookedly. And the humble people You do deliver; but Your eyes are upon the haughty [in order] to humble them." (22:26-28)

Humbleness is the yoke that directs ego into love's paths of righteousness, and out of the illusions of grandeur and fantasies of the material world.

Parshat Vayelech: The Choice to Return to God

Our highest knowledge of the Creator (represented by Moses) is our natural guide toward our permanent connection with Him (represented by Aaron, the High Priest). Moses sets up the tabernacle for Aaron to officiate in it, and in this sequence of action we allow God to direct every aspect of our life because He is the means and the end in which we must conduct ourselves; as Moses teaches us.

"The Lord, your God, He will cross before you; He will destroy these nations from before you so that you will possess them. The Lord He is the One who goes before you; He will be with you; He will neither fail you, nor forsake you. Do not fear, and do not be dismayed." (Deuteronomy 31:3, 8)

The psalmist and all our prophets remind us of this truth, which we must enthrone in all levels and dimensions of consciousness. Hence it is our choice either to do so, or follow ego's illusions and fantasies as the idols that we create out of a false sense of lack.

Trusting God's love is trusting love as our true essence and identity, as well as the power and strength that fights for us against the idols of materialism.

"And the Lord will do to them, as He did to the Amorite kings, Sichon and Og, and to their land, [all of] which He destroyed." (31:4)

This awareness we understand that only by living in love's ways and attributes we indeed are delivered from ego's illusions.

"And [when] the Lord delivers them before you, you shall do to them according to all the commandment that I have commanded you." (31:5)

If we can't trust God's love as our Creator and our essence, we are probably trusting illusions that ultimately lead us to our estrangement from who we truly are, along with its negative consequences. Therefore, we must be unshakable.

"Be strong and courageous! Neither fear nor be dismayed of them, for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will neither fail you, nor forsake you." (31:6)

Fantasies and illusions, by their nature, always forsake us because they are as insatiable as ego's desires, like the eyes that are never filled with what they see.

We have to unite all traits, qualities, levels, aspects and dimensions of consciousness around God's ways and attributes, and harmonize them toward His service.

"Assemble the people: the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger in your cities, in order that they hear, and in order that they learn and revere the Lord, your God, and they will observe to do all the words of this Torah." (31:12)

We have to reiterate again that love, as the material manifestation of God's love, does not dwell with anything different from its ways and attributes. This is an immutable principle that we must be aware of every moment in what we think, feel, sense, and do.

"And I will hide My face on that day, because of all the evil they have committed, when they turned to other deities." (31:18)

If this awareness is not present anymore (represented by Moses' death) we are at the mercy of our own materialistic illusions.

"For I know that after my death, you will surely become corrupted, and deviate from the way which I had commanded you. Consequently, the evil will befall you at the end of days, because you did evil in the eyes of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands." (31:29)

Our actions, "the work of our hands", illustrate what we believe and what we follow. If they are not love's ways, they are probably something that does not dwell with love.

We know quite well that we love selectively, and according to our ego's agenda. We condition love to be what we want it to be, and not what it is; in the same way that many condition God to be their own "personal" god. They usually call it "my God" at their service, without ethics or moral values attached to it, a god of fanaticism.

We all know that it doesn't work that way. Love inherently means and implies ethics, as God's attributes also imply ethics. He is the God of the Torah and the Jewish Scriptures, the God whose Creation is an emanation of His love. The God who knows and loves His creation, including our human nature, the way He made us.

In His love, God gives us free will to choose between love and our illusions. He loves us unconditionally because He gives us free will. In His unconditional love, He awaits our return to Him as the essence of who we truly are.

Our prophets reiterate this truth in the haftarah for this portion.

"Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Take words with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, "You shall forgive all iniquity and teach us [the] good [way], and let us render [for] bulls [the offering of] our lips." (Hosea 14:2-3)

"Who is a God like You, who forgives iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not maintain His anger forever, for He desires loving kindness. He shall return and grant us compassion. He shall hide our iniquities, and You shall cast into the depths of the sea all their sins. You shall give the truth of Jacob, the loving kindness of Abraham, which You swore to our forefathers from days of yore." (Micah 7:18-20)

Parshat Ki Tavo: The Heritage of God's Love

The second verse of this portion commands...

"(…) that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you will bring from your land, which the Lord your God is giving you." (Deuteronomy 26:2)

Our mystic sages refer to two levels of awareness represented by the vegetable and animal realms. Contrary to what we may think, they explain that the former depicts sensuality and sexual activity (symbolized by the perennial blossoming and fruitfulness of some plants and trees), and the latter purposefulness and movement (symbolized of the instinctual animal behavior to act according to their purpose in nature).

In this sense we may have a better understanding of the sacrifices (offerings) made by Cain and Abel. In the context of this portion, the "fruit of the ground" (the expression of our individual creative process in every aspect of consciousness, particularly those related to the senses, sensuality, passions, and instincts) must be elevated towards the mission the Creator has commanded to Israel.

The previous verses in Ki Teitzei and the followings in Ki Tavo are related to the ethical values aimed to promote individual and collective harmony among different social levels and economic conditions among the people of Israel. Hence, the verse above is just another reminder that we have to direct all aspects of consciousness toward God's ways and attributes, because we have to be aware that all creation, our individual lives included, belong to the Creator.

By acknowledging this, we are indeed willing to fulfill God's will.

"I declare this day to the Lord, your God, that I have come to the land which the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us." (26:3)

This land is the awareness that God's love made us, and we also must be and do according to love's ways as individuals and as the nation we are.

Our true freedom takes place in this level of consciousness opposite to slavery under ego's materialistic fantasies and illusions. These are the mirages for which we enslave our life to "work hard" to keep them as "real".

"And the Egyptians treated us cruelly and afflicted us, and they imposed hard labor upon us." (26:6)

This is why we have to remember every day our Exodus from Egypt in order to make the choice every moment, either to live in the slavery of ego's illusions or in the freedom of love's attributes.

After all, God's love is our true essence and redemption from the miseries of living by and for the illusions of the material world.

"So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression." (26:7)

We become truly free in the land that He offers us.

"And He brought us to this place, and He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey." (26:9)

That is the place in every levels of consciousness where we all are happy.

"Then, you shall rejoice with all the good that the Lord, your God, has granted you and your household you, the Levite, and the stranger who is among you." (26:11)

The place where every level and dimension of consciousness dwell in the transcendence of God's love as our essence and identity.

For this we ask God constantly to keep us aware of love's attributes as His heritage for us.

"Look down from Your holy dwelling, from the heavens, and bless Your people Israel, and the ground which You have given to us, as You swore to our forefathers a land flowing with milk and honey." (26:15)

"And the Lord has selected you this day to be His treasured people, as He spoke to you, and so that you shall observe all His commandments, and to make you supreme above all the nations that He made, [so that you will have] praise, a [distinguished] name and glory; and so that you will be a holy people to the Lord, your God, as He spoke." (26:18-19)

Hence we have to choose back to Him by exercising and manifesting the identity He has bestowed upon us, the honor and privilege of being and manifesting love's ways and attributes as the inheritance of the greatest love of all, God's love.

The prophet again recalls for us the awareness of our heritage in the haftarah for this portion.

"And nations shall go by your light and kings by the brilliance of your shine. Lift up your eyes all around and see, they all have gathered, they have come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be raised on [their] side. Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall be amazed and become enlarged, for the abundance of the sea shall be turned over to you, the wealth of the nations that will come to you." (Isaiah 60:3-5)

In this awareness we realize our purpose and destiny.

"Violence shall no longer be heard in your land, neither robbery nor destruction within your borders, and you shall call redemption your walls and your gates praise. You shall no longer have the sun for light by day, and for brightness, the moon shall not give you light, but the Lord shall be to you for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory." (60:18-19)