A Spiritual Path to HaShem for the Noachide with Kabbalistic Commentary

The basis of these lessons uses a book titled "The Path of the Righteous Gentile-An Introduction to the Seven Laws of the Children of Noach" by Chaim Clorfene and Yakov Rogalsky.

This is the Introduction that comes from a blog BY NETIV / THE PATH · SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Knowing God - More than Knowing HaShem

PART ONE

Concerning the First Existence, the God of the Universe, God’s Oneness and the negation of attributing physicality to Him.

1. It is the foundation of foundations of all doctrines and philosophical inquiry to know that there is a First Existence without a beginning and that He created all existence from absolute nothingness. Everything that is found in the heavens or on the earth exists only because of the truth of His Existence.Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:1

chanoch's Commentary

The Mishneh Torah is a Book written by the 13th Century Sage Moshe Ben Maimon known as Maimonides. He wrote down the 13 Principles of Faith that define the Jewish path as defined by the orthodox community. The first of the Esser Debrot when translated tells us "I am HaShem. . . " From this statement Maimonides directs us to know HaShem. Can there be existence without a beginning? If the answer for you is YES, then why does the Torah start with the word "Beginning". Should it not start with "i or HaShem has always existed?" If your answer is NO, go back to the beginning since you are not yet on a spiritual path.

2. If all the creatures in creation should cease to exist, He alone would still exist and in no way would He be nullified because of their nullification. Every creation needs Him, but He, Blessed Be He, does not need any of them or all of them, and His truth is not like the truth of any one of them. Misneh Torah 1:3

chanoch's Commentary

Are there different truths? Do you perceive your truth as the only truth and that this truth is exactly the same for every entity and / or person in the universe? Can Truth be relative to the entity that perceives this truth? If your answer to any of these questions is "no," please rethink your answer before you move past this particular handout and lesson. There is no proof that the answers are "yes" except your individual experience of the Creator. We will not spend time proving this point to you. If you want to discuss it further call me individually. Here is a hint: You are reading the story of Creation as a literal event and yet it is also metaphorical.

Their existence is not imperative, but depends on His existence. Therefore, their existence is relative. But the First Existence is uncaused. His existence is absolute.

3. Of Him the prophet says, “The Lord God is truth (Jeremiah 10:10).” He alone is truth and there is no other truth like unto His truth. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:4 Of Him the Torah says, “There is nothing else besides Him (Deuteronomy 4:35).”

chanoch's Commentary

One of the Names of God meaning one of the attributes of HaShem is the Hebrew word אמת Emet which means Truth. The three letters consists of the first letter, the middle letter, and the last letter of the Hebrew Alef Bet. This hints to the statement "Truth is All" or "All - Everything is Truth". Does this mean there is no False? The gematria of Emet is 441. When expressed with the definite article "the" as in "The Truth" the gematria becomes 446 the same as the Hebrew word Mavet - "death". This implies and in my opinion proves that truth is relative since each person has a truth and when they think their truth is the only truth they connect to the energy of death. This is the human sin of all of human history which leads to war and other forms of chaos.

4. This Existence is the God of the universe and Master of the earth. He directs the planet with a power that has neither limit nor end, with a power that is uninterrupted, so that the planet always revolves. And it is impossible for something to revolve without there being a force causing it to revolve. He, Blessed Be He, causes it to revolve without a hand and without a body. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:5

5. And if it should ever occur to you that there is another deity besides Him, it is a rejection of the very Source on which everything depends. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:6

6. This God is one. He is not two or more than two, and there is no single existence that is unique and singular like His existence. He is not in a category that includes others of His species. And He is not divided into portions or sections as is a body. His oneness is the ultimate of simplicity and His uniqueness has no equal in the universe. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:7

chanoch's Commentary

The initial sentence in No. 6 is actually "Our God" in my opinion. As long as you relate to the sentence This God and do not yet realize that it the sentence is also implying "ours" you create separation between you and other aspects of humanity. This will continue to create separation in your life which will always lead to chaos. Yet there is "no coercion in spirituality" so that one must arrive at this understanding on their own without undue influence from other sources be it a society or an individual or even your loving family.

7. If there were many gods, they would necessarily have bodies, because there is no way to differentiate one being from another except by bodily or material differences. And if the Creator had a body or any material form, He would have both a limit and an end, and His power would have a limit and an end, because it is not possible for there to be a body that has no termination point and everything pertaining to a body also has a termination point. But because of our God, Blessed Be His Name, Whose power is endless and uninterrupted, the planet revolves perpetually, for His power is not a bodily power. Because He has no body, there are no accidents or occurrences of the body that happen to Him which might divide or separate Him from another being. Therefore it is impossible for Him to be anything but One. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah

8. If a person should think that there might be two deities, equally uncreated, what would distinguish one from the other except for their occupying different places at the same time or the same place at different times? And if you want to say that they occupy different places at the same time or the same place at different times, they are surely not limitless. Otherwise, the concept of two infinities arises, which is by definition impossible. Infinity is one and all inclusive and supremely indivisible into aspects, extremities, or forms.

9. It is explained in the Torah and the Prophets that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, has no body, for it says, “Because the Lord He is God in Heaven above and on the earth below (Deuteronomy 4:39),” and a body cannot be in two places, and it says, “Because you saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you (Deuteronomy 4:15),” and it says, “And who is compared or equal to Me? (Isaiah 40:25),” and if He had a body, He would have some basis of comparison to other bodies. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:8

10. If so, why does it say in the Torah, “And under His feet…(Exodus 24:10),” and “Written by the finger of God, (Exodus 31:18),” “the hand of the Lord (Exodus 9:3),” “the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 38:7),” “the ears of the Lord (Numbers 11:1),” and many examples like this? All of this is because the intellect of man is unable to fathom anything other than physicality, and the Torah is given in the language of man. So all of these examples are descriptive phrases, such as, “If I whet the glitter of My sword, (Deuteronomy 32:41).” Does He have a sword? It is all only a metaphor. The truth is that He has no semblance or form, but all of it is the vision revealed to the prophet, as it is written, “Can you find God by searching for Him, or can you delve into the depths of the Almighty?” (Job 11:7).” Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:10

11. And what was it that Moses sought when he asked God, “Please, show me Your glory (Exodus 33:18)”? Moses wished to know the truth of the existence of the Holy One, Blessed Be He, to the point where he knew it in his heart, just as one knows a person whose form is engraved in his heart, and whom he recognizes as distinct from other men. Thus did Moses yearn to know the Holy One, Blessed Be He, to the point where He would be distinct in Moses’ heart like other existences, thereby knowing the truth of God’s existence as it really is. And God answered him that man, while his soul is attached to a body, lacks this power of intellect and so he cannot know this truth clearly. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:11

12. Since, as it has been explained, God has no body, He is not subject to the accidents of the body. He has neither attachment nor separation, neither place nor measurement, neither ascent nor descent, neither right nor left, neither front nor back, neither standing nor sitting, and just as He has no ending, neither has He a beginning, and He has neither life nor death as a body has, neither intellect nor wisdom like a wise man, and He neither sleeps nor wakes, and he has neither anger nor laughter, neither joy nor sadness, neither silence nor speech like the speech of man. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:12

chanoch's Commentary

All of these descriptions are being used to say what HaShem is not. This is because there is no way to encompass the totality of HaShem with all of His/Her/Its attributes. HaShem Just IS. This is why there is no verb "to be" in Hebrew. "To Be" is HaShem. An Active sense of being. Know that this description is inadequate and incomplete.

13. And such passages in the Torah as “He sits in the heavens and laughs (Psalms 2:4)” are merely metaphors and similes, for as the sages of Israel teach, the Torah was given in the language of man. And God says, “I am the Lord, I do not change (Malachi 3:6).” If He were at times angry and at times joyous, this would surely constitute change, for all these qualities and attributes are found only in a physical body, a vessel whose foundation is dust. But He, may He be blessed, is exalted far, far above any of this. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah, 1:12

chanoch's Commentary

The Prophet Isaiah (i think it is Isaiah but may be another Prophet) says that HaShem says "I am not you; I do not change." This statement is profound. There is no movement in or by the Creator. There is only existence that is part of the Creator. Contemplate this Truth well and often. It will connect you to the Creator and His Children - both the Children of Israel and the Children of Noach.

PART TWO – Concerning the obligation to love and fear God.

chanoch's Commentary

The knowledge of HaShem is the Mitzvah of the Children of Noach. Included in the term knowledge are emotions especially the emotions of Love and Fear/Awe. The Hebrew words are Ahavah אהבה meaning love and affinity and Yirah ירה meaning both fear and awe. Essentially the path to know HaShem is through the emotions to fear and / or feel awe of HaShem and finally to love HaShem. This is the attainment to Know HaShem as implied by the statement of the first of the Esser Debrot - Ten Utterances - Anoki HaShem אנכי יהוה. Anoki is an acronym for the following statement: "i write my Nefesh to you". Chanoch adds: Listen closely. This is a very deep statement.Torah is the soul of God/HaShem. After you learn more about the tools of Kabbalah and the Hebrew Letters you will be able to decode this acronym for yourself.

1. One should strive to love and fear God, Who is honored and exalted, as it says, “You should love the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 6:5),” and “You should fear the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 6:13).”

chanoch's Commentary

As said above Love and Fear/Awe of HaShem is included in Knowing HaShem. Yet there are three separate Mitzvot as described in statement 1.

2. What is the way to love Him and fear Him? When a man ponders deeply about His wondrous deeds and His manifold great creations, he will realize that God’s wisdom has no equal or end, and he will immediately love and praise and glorify and desire with a great desire to know His Great Name. According to the mystical teachings of the Torah, the Name of God means the Revelation of His Divine Presence. And when he thinks about these things, he will immediately be awestruck with fear, and he will realize that he is but a tiny creature, low and inconsequential, Any being in comparison to the entire universe, and all the more so in comparison to the One who created the universe, can be considered truly inconsequential, standing with extremely limited knowledge before the One Who possesses knowledge that is perfect and complete. Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah, 2:2

PART THREE – Concerning God’s creation of the universe through His speaking and the continued existence of the universe through God’s life force.

1. “Know this day and take it unto your heart that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is no other (Deuteronomy 4:39).”

2. In the beginning, when God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters (Genesis 1:6),” the words of His blessed speech, being eternal as He is eternal, stand eternally in the firmament of the heavens as the activating life force in creation. Were God to retract His words or cause His speech to depart even for an instant, the heavens would immediately return to absolute nothingness just as they were prior to their having been created by God’s saying, “Let there be a firmament.” Tanya, Gate of Unity and Faith, chap. 1, p. 76b

chanoch's Commentary

Human Beings perceive time in a digital fashion, by the second or part of the second. HaShem creates time continuously. That is what is implied in the above teaching. Since time is created continuously the Creation is also created continuously. It is therefore constantly changing and becoming something different than it was before. This is known as the process of creation. We perceive this in 4 steps or phases according to the teachings of Kabbalah. The firmament is what creates our perception of separation.

3. Thus it is with each of the Ten Utterances by which God created the world. Were God’s speech to return to its Source, the entirety of creation would instantly cease to exist and would become the absolute nothingness that it was before the beginning of the six days of creation. Tanya, Gate of Unity and Faith. It must be understood; however, that God’s speech is never separated from Him as it is with created beings, for there is no place outside of Him.

4. One who contemplates the foregoing can begin to understand how God was one and unique and alone before He created the world, and remains equally one and unique and alone even after He created the world, and that the creation of the world in no way added anything to His completeness and perfection. Tanya, Gate of Unity and Faith chap. 3, pp. 82 - 83a

5. This seems to be a paradox. How can it be that the creation of the world added nothing or effected no change in God? The seeming paradox is resolved by realizing that compared with God, Whose speech is the sole life force in creation, the world is absolutely and literally nothing and nonexistent. This is because in His Presence everything is considered nonexistent, literally null and void, and there is no place devoid of His Presence, Tanya, Gate of Unity and Faith chap. 3, 78a as it is written, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord (Jeremiah 23:24).”

6. When a flesh and blood person speaks, the words and the breath of his mouth are felt and seen to leave the speaker and to become things unto themselves, but God’s speech is never separated from Him, because there is no place devoid of Him and nothing outside of Him, for He is eternal and infinite. Tanya, chap. 21, p. 26b

7. Even the idea of speech as applied to God is to be taken not literally but metaphorically. Just as the speech of a person reveals what was hidden in the person’s thoughts, thus it is with the Lord of Hosts, Blessed Be He, Who brought forth all of created existence from a state of concealment to revelation by the Ten Sayings of creation as recorded in the Book of Genesis. It is this which is called speech in reference to God. Tanya, chap. 21, p. 26b

8. These Ten Sayings by which the world was created are called the speech of God because through them His will went from a concealed state to a revealed state. But this so-called speech is unified with Him in absolute unity. The difference is only from the perspective of created beings, who receive their life force from God’s speech, as it descends from His exalted being and creates material existence, descending level after level until it reaches this base physical world. Here, created beings are able to receive the Divine flow of life without losing their identities and being absorbed and nullified in their true Source, God. Genesis Rabba

9. This Divine influx is concealed to avoid a revelation of God that is greater than the world can endure. Therefore, it appears to the creatures that the light and life force of the Omnipresent which is clothed in each creation, and is the true existence of each creation, is a thing apart from His Blessed Self and merely issues from Him, just as the speech of a human being issues from the person. Yet there is absolutely no concealment from the perspective of the Holy One, Blessed Be He. Nothing is obscured from Him whatsoever. To Him darkness and light are exactly the same, as it is written, “Even the darkness conceals nothing from You, but the night shines as the day (Psalms 139:12).”

10. Nor does the descent of level after level prevent His blessed speech from remaining in a state of absolute unity with Him, but it is metaphorically like the snail whose garment is part of him. Genesis Rabba

11. The error that secular philosophers make which leads them to believe that God created the world and then abandoned it to its own devices is that they assume that the creative process of God is the same as that of man. In truth, it is vastly different, as it is written, “For My thoughts are not like your thoughts,” and, “Thus My ways are higher than your ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).” Man is merely capable of creating something from something. The human craftsman takes an ingot of silver and fashions a vessel from it. When the craftsman removes his hand from his creation, the vessel remains. This is because the craftsman merely changes the form of a created substance. However, when God created the heavens and the earth, He made them from absolute nothingness, and were He to remove His creative force, they would be as they were before He brought them forth into the state of revealed creation, that is, they would be non-existent. Tanya, Gate of Unity and Faith, chap. 2, pp. 72a-72b

12. From the foregoing words of truth, it should be apparent how the entirety of creation is, in truth, considered null and void with respect to God’s activating force and the breath of His mouth. This does not mean that the creation is an illusion. What it means is that God’s Divine Force is its true existence and that the creation has no independent existence of its own. However, it must be realized that the example of God’s removing His original Ten Sayings was hypothetical. God has no such intention. The universe is real. It is, however, nullified to its Creator. How do we know the universe is real? Inasmuch as our limited senses and intellect are part of the created universe, any proof they might offer is inconclusive, for we are part of the very thing that may not exist! There is but one proof that the universe really exists. It says so in the Torah, as it is written “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).”

chanoch's Commentary

Understand what is being stated. Since our minds and consciousness are part of the creation we can not truly independently perceive or logically determine the truth of the Creation. In Kabbalah we are taught that the Creation is an illusion since it changes and the Creator does not change. This is what determines that the Creation is not real. Yet the statements above are saying the Creation is real. To reconcile these statements we need to realize that to us the Creation is real since we perceive it as real while in truth the Creation is a process that will lead our perceptions to arrive at the truth and the true world. Yet it is not the physical world but the higher world of Atzilut.

13. The reason that every created being and thing appears to possess an independent self-existence is that we do not grasp or see with our physical eyes the power of God and the breath of His mouth that is within creation. If permission were granted the eye to see the life force and the spirituality that flow from God to every created thing, then we would no longer see the physicality of material existence. For, since the physical world is truly nullified to its Source, if we could see the Divine source, how could we see the physical world? Tanya chap. 3, p.78b 26 Ibid.

14. By analogy, a ray of sunlight may be seen from the earth, but from the perspective of the sun which is the source of the ray, all that is seen is the light that fills the sky. From the sun’s perspective, the ray has no existence whatsoever.

15. However, the analogy of the ray of sunlight is incomplete, because its source, the sun, exists only in one place in the heavens. The sun does not exist both in the heavens and on earth where its light appears to have a separate existence. This is in contrast to created beings, which are always within their Source, although the Source is not revealed to their eyes. Tanya Chapter 3 p. 78b

16. It is not sufficient to say that God created the world during the six days of creation, for His creative activity is continuous, an infinite flow of life force. This is why it is written in the present tense, “He creates darkness and forms light,” Siddur (Hebrew Prayer Book), morning prayer service Originally from Isaiah rather than in the past tense – He created darkness and formed light. And this applies to man as well. The man who feels his own self-importance and does not recognize that the Creator is bringing him forth from absolute nothingness into existence is called one whom God created in the past tense. This is in contrast to a person who acknowledges the truth of his existence, realizing that it constantly comes from God alone. This person is called one whom God creates. One who contemplates these teachings will surely come to realize that God is truly our Father and our King Who brings us into being and desires our existence.

chanoch's Commentary

In the 13th Century Sefer by Rav Yehudah Bachya titled "Duties of the Heart" in English it says the following: Just as we are required to know God, so too are we required to properly know God's Way for us. This takes us into a discussion about what is the nature of Halakha.

Halakha is traditionally thought of a Jewish Law, the application of the Mitzvot of the Torah and the Sages. However, Halakha means “the way”/ "the path" and therefore, has applications to everyone, everywhere, each in accordance to one's individual needs, and lifestyle.

How does one determine "God's Way" For Me? The study of Kabbalah is the beginning of the path for you to determine the answer to this question for yourself.

Introduction Commentary by chanoch

The first statement in the Esser Debrot is "I am HaShem...". Our Sages teach that this includes the following Mitzvot: ( I am also giving you an English translation of the source in the 5 Books of Moshe.)

Mitzvah 1 in Maimonides Count of the 613 Mitzvot

To know there is a G-d--Exodus 20:2

אָנֹכִי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים

"I am the Lord, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."

chanoch adds: see below for explanation of how one goes from "I am HaShem to "Know HaShem".

It is my intention to list all of the Mitzvot that comes under the Mitzvah of "Knowing HaShem". This is not yet complete. Volunteers needed.