Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] We have the five books of Moses, which is the first and the main part of the Torah.
[00:00:11] And then we have subsequently the books of Nevi', Im, the prophets and books of Ketuvim, the Scriptures and the books of Nevi'. Im. The prophets were written by our prophets.
[00:00:26] And these books are very different in their nature and they have different parts to them. The books of prophets have some history of what was happening during the era after the period which is described in the five books of Moses finishes.
[00:00:46] And they also have the teachings of the prophets of those days.
[00:00:52] And they also have very strange, very weird descriptions of dreams, of visions that prophets had.
[00:01:04] And if you will be reading them without any commentary, without any explanation, you might think that the guy who wrote this was on something.
[00:01:14] You might think that this is some hallucination, some weird stuff described here, and you don't even know where to begin, really what these prophets were. Spiritual experiences, spiritual visions, and much of subsequent books of Kabbalah, primarily the book of Zohar, the writings of the Arizal, are based on those descriptions, on those visions.
[00:01:46] And what you asked about, the specific vision that was described in the Haftara, which you read, is one of those descriptions.
[00:01:54] So first of all, it says that every angel has two wings.
[00:02:01] You would think that, well, angels have two wings just because birds have two wings, just because airplanes are built with two wings. It's just this is the way things or birds fly. So obviously that's why angels have two wings. Well, not exactly.
[00:02:20] The angels have two wings, as Kabbalah is telling us, because these two wings are a fear, respect, awe that we have for God, reverence for God and our love for God.
[00:02:38] So it says that every mitzvah, every Torah commandment that I perform creates an angel.
[00:02:46] When I do a mitzvah, I create an angel. Now what kind of angel it creates if I do a mitzvah and I just do it by rote, I do it just because I have to. I'm putting no feelings into it, no motion.
[00:03:02] I am putting on tefillin just because I know I have to. And it's early in the morning, I am half asleep. I barely drag myself out of bed a bit earlier to have time to put on fillin. And I'm half asleep and I'm putting on tefillin. I put on tefillin correctly. I did everything the way I'm supposed to do. So I created an angel, but I did it without any feelings.
[00:03:24] If I put on this Tefillin because I have deep respect and awe for, for the one who gave me this commandment. If I do it because of my understanding of greatness, of God, who told me to put on tefillin, and that's why I'm doing it, then the angel that I will create with this mitzvah is going to have one wing.
[00:03:50] It's going to be the left wing. Because in Kabbalistic charts, the emotion of awe, fear and reverence is on the left.
[00:04:00] If I put on my tefilling because of my love for God, I love God. And since I love God, I want to do everything what he tells me, then if this is the only emotion that drives me to do this mitzvah, then the angel I will create will also have only one wing, is going to be its right wing.
[00:04:21] But the best way to do a mitzvah is, is both out of reverence for God and out of love for God. And then if I do my mitzvah this way with these both emotions, and my angel is going to be created with both wings, going to be two winged angels.
[00:04:40] Obviously, to fly up, an angel needs two wings.
[00:04:46] And there's a story about BAAL Shem Tov once walking into a synagogue, and he prayed there in the synagogue. And before he walked out, he said, wow, this synagogue has so many prayers in it. People were very flattered to hear this from BAAL Shem Tov, but his students knew that something is up when they already left the place. His students asked him, rabbi, what do you mean when you said that the synagogue is full of prayers? He says, very simple. Whenever people do every mitzvah, they create an angel.
[00:05:27] Whenever they do this mitzvah with emotion, they create wings for these angels so these angels can fly up. This synagogue has a lot of people praying, but all of them are praying there just by road. They are praying without any emotions, without any feelings.
[00:05:41] So they create these prayers, they create these angels, but these angels cannot fly up anywhere. So all the prayers are staying in the synagogue, all these prayers are staying in the building. They're not going anywhere.
[00:05:51] That's why I says about Al Shandrav that this place was full of prayers because his prayers didn't go anywhere.
[00:05:57] So in other words, it's like this, your relationship. If we will take an example about our relationship with other people.
[00:06:07] If your wife asks you to do something, you do it. Why? Because your wife asked you.
[00:06:15] And if you will do what she asked, she's already going to be happy because you did what she asked.
[00:06:21] But you could also do it with feeling, with emotion. What are the feelings Sometimes we do things for our friends, for our loved ones, for our spouses.
[00:06:34] Why? Because we love them. If I love my wife, I don't know, she has this strange request of me. She loves oranges, and she asked me to get oranges for her. She's pregnant and she's craving oranges. Okay? You turn the world over. Why? Because your wife is pregnant and she's craving oranges, and you will turn the world over. Why? Out of love for her.
[00:06:56] Sometimes you do things out of respect, out of awe, out of fear, out of. For example, if somebody, let's say you're somebody who you have a lot of respect for. In our world, we usually don't have much respect for anyone. So it's hard to bring an example like this. But let's say somebody who you have a lot of respect for a famous actor or a famous athlete, right? You met up with LeBron James, you met up with somebody famous, with a big football player, or you had a dinner with Ovechkin.
[00:07:25] And Ovechkin asks you, by the way, could you do me a big favor?
[00:07:31] Could you do this and this and this for me?
[00:07:34] You, out of respect for him, out of awe that you have for this person, you will be doing whatever he asked with feelings, with emotion. It won't be love for him. You don't love him, you don't feel any love for him, but you feel a lot of respect for him.
[00:07:49] So what you read over there were descriptions of different angels, and that's why they had wings. That's what the wings of angels that you described over there are.
[00:08:00] I will give you a description of these four faces.
[00:08:03] So Kabbalah explains that there are four ways how God can express himself.
[00:08:16] Just like we. I am one person, but some people call me Rabbi Bilinski, some people call me Tati. That's how my children call me. Some people call me Zaidi. That's how my grandchildren call me. Some people call me Welvo, and some people call me with other names, which I'm not going to repeat here. So it's the same me. I'm the same person, but different people call me different names. Why? Because I have different expressions.
[00:08:43] So, same thing. There are different expressions of God, and that's why God has different names, and that's why God could express a different side of him. When I am at work, I express a different side of me than when I'm at home. When I play with my grandchildren, I'm expressing a different side of me than when I am being a rabbi in a synagogue. So these four faces are four different ways. How God expresses himself in different kabbalistic worlds.
