The Arizal on the Torah

Parashat Terumah

Introduction

The word terumah, which is usually understood and used to mean “donation,” literally means “elevation.” By donating something to the Holy Temple or to some other holy use, one is elevating it from the domain of the mundane to that of the sacred. This week’s parashah (Exodus 15:1-27:19) begins with a discussion of the various items the Jewish people are asked to donate to the construction of the Tabernacle (mishkan), the portable Temple that accompanied them throughout their trek from Mt. Sinai into the promised holy land of Israel. Although G-d asked the Jews to make this donation and specified exactly what was needed, it was left up to each individual if he would donate and how much and what he would donate: “from each person whose heart moves him” (Exodus 25:2). Thus, this donation was an expression of each individual’s feelings about his relationship with G-d. As such, the concept of donating as described in the opening of this parashah is a deep, spiritual experience, which strikes at the most profound levels of the heart of both the individual Jew and the collective Jewish community.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the concept of donating and the word termuah in particular are subject to detailed analysis in the classic Torah commentators in general, and in the corpus of Jewish mystical writings in particular. What follows is one of the several analyses the Arizal offers of this concept.

Male and Female

In discussing the dynamics of the spiritual dimension of reality, the Arizal makes frequent use of the male-female metaphor. This is because the basic concept of creation is duality, beginning with the fundamental duality of the Creator and His creation. G-d is one, but He has created a world that appears to exist outside of Him, and this automatically sets up a tension between the existential consciousness of creation as being a separate, independent reality and its consciousness (or lack of consciousness) of its origin in and dependence upon Him. G-d and creation yearn to reunite with each other, since this reunion expresses the original, perfect state that existed prior to creation. Yet both G-d and creation are conscious of the fact the world was created for a purpose, and the “business” of this situation must be attended to in order for the ultimate union of G-d and creation to occur on an even deeper level than existed originally. Along the way, however, besides the underlying yearning for ultimate fulfillment that informs the entire process of life, there are the ups and downs of periods of partial reunion followed by renewed enforced estrangement. Thus, the underlying dynamic of life is one of yearning, passion, and romance.

In the dynamic of duality, G-d assumes the role of the male and creation that of the female. The male is “trapped” in His consciousness of the ideal, original state of reality. His challenge in working toward the reunion is “get out of his head,” to realize and yearn for the superior fulfillment that is possible only through uniting with what the female represents. The female, in contrast, is “trapped” in her consciousness of perfecting created reality. Her challenge is to remember the goal towards which she is working, to reveal the subconscious yearnings of her heart to transcend created reality.

Although, as we said, G-d is generally assigned the role of the male and creation that of the female, the male-female dynamic is replayed throughout all levels of created reality. In other words, every level of creation has its male and female aspects—the part of it that represents the orientation towards abstract perfection and the part of it that represents the orientation towards concretizing and manifesting perfection in reality. The final, lowest manifestation of this duality is, of course, man and woman in our physical world.

Two Aspects of Femininity

The idea of donation is feminine concept, since it expresses the desire to take something physical, something that is initially part of the mundane world, and elevate it, make it spiritual. This, as we said, is essentially the underlying pathos of reality in general: taking the created world and reuniting it with its original consciousness as part of the pervasive Divinity of all reality.

Now, the Arizal notes, there are two aspects of femininity. These are represented by the two letters hei of G-d’s four-letter Name (referred to as “the Name Havayah”), which is spelled yud-hei-vav-hei. (The yud and the vav represent the two aspects of masculinity.)

It is taught in Kabbalah that the Hebrew alphabet is the means through which G-d created the world. The form, name, and numerical value of every letter embodies the different energies; by blending these energies together in words, G-d created the world. Specifically, we are taught that G-d created the world using His Name Havayah, which means that the creative process is reflected in the order and “personality” of the four letters that compose it. We thus have here a clear indication that the male-female dynamic is the existential underpinning of all reality: The world was created through the Name Havayah; thus, all reality reflects the structure and dynamics of this Name; and this Name itself reflects two levels of union between male and female, yud-hei and vav-hei.

The four letters of the Name Havayah are associated with the ten sefirot or channels of Divinity through which G-d created the world. These ten sefirot are manifest in all aspects of creation. Specifically, the first sefirah, chochmah (“wisdom”) is associated with the first letter of the Name, yud; the second sefirah, binah (“understanding”) with the second letter, the upper hei; the six sefirot of the emotions with the third letter, vav; and the tenth sefirah, malchut (“kingdom”) with the last letter, the lower hei. The tenth sefirah, da’at [“knowledge”] is not specifically associated with any letter of the Name Havayah, but is generally seen to come after binah, and therefore may be considered to be something of an extension of the first hei.

From this we see that the first aspect of femininity is binah, or “understanding.” It is in binah that the objective insight that is chochmah becomes subjectified and starts to become “real” to the person. The second aspect of femininity, the second hei, is malchut, or “kingdom.” Malchut is how a person becomes king over reality, by expressing his ideas and emotions and through them changing, rectifying, and elevating the world from its initial, purely physical state to a spiritualized state. Binah is thus the actualization of chochmah, and malchut is the actualization of the emotions. In both cases, the male principle is the abstract idea and the femal principle is its concretization. Malchut may be considered a lower form of binah since expression is simply a way of making other people understand the emotions one feels.

The two Biblical archetypes for these two facets of femininity are the two wives of Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Leah is represented by the first hei of the Divine Name, and Rachel by the second hei. Since the four letters represent and sequential, descending process in the act of creation, this means that Leah (the “upper” hei) represents a higher level of spirituality than Rachel (the “lower” hei). Leah personified binah; Rachel personified malchut.

The Fifty Gates of Understanding

The numerical value of the letter hei is five, which means that there is an innate “five-ness” in femininity; each of these aspects of femininity comprises five dimensions. The ten sefirot are reflected in each of the five dimensions of these two aspects of femininity. This gives us fifty (5 x 10) sub-aspects for Leah, the upper hei, and fifty for Rachel, the lower hei.

This clearly recalls two teaching of our sages recorded in the Talmud. The first is that there are fifty “gates” of understanding (Rosh Hashanah 21b), that is, fifty subjective levels through which one may conceptualize or relate to G-d. The second is that an additional measof understanding was given to woman beyond that given to man (Niddah 45b). Thus we see that understanding is an intrinsically feminine quality, which is associated with the feminine letter hei and which comprises fifty “gates,” corresponding to the ten sefirot manifest in each of the five dimensions of (both aspects of) femininity.

Now, since each of the two aspects of femininity, the upper and lower hei’s of G-d’s Name, comprises fifty sub-aspects, they may each be represented by the letter of the Hebrew alphabet whose numerical value is indeed 50. This is the letter nun. And here we encounter an interesting phenomenon: the letter nun is of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet that has two forms, one used when the letter occurs at the end of a word and another in all other cases. In the usual form, the lower part is bent at a right angle to the “spine” of the letter. In the form used at the end of a word, this bent segment is bent down and is in effect a continuation of the “spine” extending below the normal line of the letters.

Precautions against Attack

The idea of extending “below the line” in Kabbalah represents the idea of penetrating into the lower aspects of reality. As we said, the feminine aspect of creation is that which draws the Divine energy into the task of rectifying and elevating the created world. This entails a certain danger, since through prolonged contact with aspects of reality that are not conscious of holiness their perspective on life can “rub off,” and it is possible to lose sight of the goal of the work being done. For this reason, whenever malchut descends into the lower realms, she must take adequate precautions not to let the negative forces latch on to her and drag her down to their level.

Thus, the final form of the nun, which extends below the line, represents binah, the upper hei, Leah. Since binah is on a higher level of spirituality than is malchut, its higher consciousness of spirituality enables it to descend into the realms of impurity without fear of attack. The regular form of the nun, in contrast, is bent upward, signifying the need for malchut to refrain from getting too involved with its task of refining reality. What this means is that on an intellectual level one can freely contemplate and discuss strategies of how to go about rectifying even the lowest realms, the aspects of creation that are inimical to Divine consciousness. But when it comes to actually engaging in the struggle with these elements, it is necessary to refrain from venturing into levels where one could be exposed to attack.

In between these two nun’s (or two hei’s) is the letter vav, which signifies the emotions, as we said. The emotions oscillate between binah and malchut, between renewing themselves in the intellectual ideas that gave rise to them and the means for their expression. The Biblical archetype for the emotions is thus Jacob, who was married to both Leah and Rachel. When the letter nun is spelled out as a word, it is spelled nun-vav-nun; the vav is wedged between the regular and the final nun.

One Hundred Blessings

The process of “spelling out” a letter is called “filling” it (milui) in Kabbalah. Now, when the letters of the Name Havayah are spelled out as words, this produces an “expanded” Name Havayah. There is only one way of spelling yud: yud-vav-dalet. There are three ways used to spell hei in Kabbalah: hei-alef, hei-hei, and hei-yud. Similarly, vav may be spelled vav-alef-vav, vav-yud-vav, or simply vav-vav. Thus, there are many ways that the original yud-hei-vav-hei of the Name Havayah may be expanded. Of all these, however, Kabbalah focuses primarily on only four major spellings. Since every letter possesses a numerical value, these four “fillings” add up to four aggregate numerical values. These four fillings and their values are:

These four fillings themselves are associated with the four original letters of the Name Havayah. Thus, the third spelling, whose numerical value is 45, is associated with the vav of the Name Havayah, or the emotions.

The number 45 is represented in Hebrew by the letters mem-hei, which spell mah, the word for “what.” Based on the phonetic affinity between the word mah and the word formed by inserting an alef between the mem and the hei, mei’ah, which means “a hundred,” our sages made the following homiletical exposition (Menachot 43b): It is written, “What [mah] does G-d require of you?” (Deuteronomy 10:12). If we read the word mah as if it were mei’ah, we have: “G-d requires of you a hundred.” This alludes to the obligation to recite one hundred blessings daily.

For our purposes, we see from this that the vav is associated with the filling of the Name Havayah whose numerical value is 45; 45 is the numerical value of mah, which is substituted in Rabbinic homiletics by 100; thus, the vav is associated with the number 100. This is reflected in the dynamic we have just described, in which the emotions are situated and oscillate between the two hei’s, which, as we explained, are the two nun’s, each of whose numerical value is 50, giving a total of 100.

This is why blessings are associated with the number 100, as we find in Genesis 26:12: “And Isaac planted in that land, and the produce yielded a hundred-fold, for G-d blessed him.”

A blessing is a means through which we draw Divine consciousness into the world. When a person eats, for example, he is performing a mundane, physical act, which at best serves to keep him alive, and in less than optimal situations simply serves as a means for him to indulge in gross sensuality. When he makes a blessing on the food, however, he acknowledges G-d as the source of both the sustaining power of the food and the enjoyment derived in eating it. He thus infuses a potentially animal act with awareness of G-d; this influences the way he eats (as well as what he eats and how much) and transforms the act of eating into a way to increase the world’s consciousness of G-d. The obligation to recite a hundred blessings each day means that every day we are instructed to actualize both the abstract insight of the higher perfection through the fifty gates of binah and the motivation to change reality through the expression of the fifty gates of the lower binah, malchut.

Elevating Creation

Keeping all the above in mind, we may return to our original discussion of the idea of donating. As we said, the propensity of the feminine force of creation is to get so involved and active with the challenge of infusing Divinity into reality that it runs the risk of exposing itself to the attacks of the unrectified elements. In its enthusiasm to bring Divine inspiration into all corners of the universe, it may focus too much on the task and cross the subtle line between influencing and being sucked in or sucked upon. By focusing too much on the exigencies of the job, it may lose track of it ultimate goal. The syndrome is unfortunately all to well known: An inspired young couple dedicates their lives to raising a Jewish family. But to provide a proper home and a proper education, the parents must go to work and expend great effort and concentration on succeeding in business and building the home. Before they know it, their focus has shifted and they have sunk into the pursuit of materialism and the quest for greater and better ways to provide the proper setting and home for the spiritual life they never seem to get around to living. This scenario plays itself out in a thousand ways in different settings all over the world.

Therefore, G-d calls upon us to donate some of the fruits of our labors to the Holy Temple. By donating, by freely giving up some of the precious goods we have labored so exhaustingly to acquire, we are re-orienting them back to the goal of our involvement with them: the ultimate reunification of reality with its Divine source. The word for “donation,” terumah, we said, literally means “elevation.” is the feminine aspect of reality, the hundred blessings of life, that needs to be “donated,” or elevated, for its specifically our captivation with the romantic idea of infusing reality with Divinity that is in perpetual danger of leading us astray into the quicksand of materialism.

—adapted from Likutei Torah, beginning of parashat Terumah

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