Authors: Nathan Erez
“I’d like to tell you a story about Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav,” she began.“There is a mountain, and on that mountain there is a stone, and from that stone a spring flows. The mountain and the stone and the spring all lie at one end of the world, and the heart of the world lies at the other end. The heart lies on the other side of the world from the spring, but is longing to come to that spring; at the same time the spring wants to come to the heart.
“Now, you may ask, ‘If the heart is so desirous of coming to the spring, why doesn’t it simply go to it?’ The problem is that when it tries to approach, the incline of the mountain is very steep, and as it climbs the mountain it can no longer see the spring. And if it does not see the spring it will die, because its life force comes from that spring. Thus, as soon as it comes close to the mountain and can no longer see the spring because of the incline, it is forced to retreat. Should the heart cease to beat, heaven forbid, the world would be destroyed, because the heart is the life essence of every living creature. That is why it cannot go to the spring, but must stand opposite it, pining for it.”
“What, then, is the
Even Shetiyah
?” asked Elijah. On the tip of his tongue was something else very important that he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t remember what it was. When you want to say something that you know is important, but that you cannot for the life of you remember what, it is almost impossible to concentrate on anything else.
But the question had already been asked, and Prof. Ashuri replied, "This goes back to the original sin and the Kabbalistic concept of ‘breaking of the vessels’. The world somehow became messed up and turned into what it is now, but that is not its natural and desirable condition.
“Now, as to
Even Shetiyah
. It can be translated as the Foundation Stone, in that all of foundation begins from it, or, alternately, as the Watering Stone, which ‘waters’ the whole world with its largesse. If the
Even Shetiyah
were to cease to exist, the world too would cease to exist. Unfortunately, the
Even Shetiyah
has become dislodged from its normal place, and the whole world must seek to put it back in its proper position. This is what the story of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav is all about.”
Elijah asked himself why he needed all of this; why had he allowed himself to be involved in the text; a thing he always steered well clear of? But, since Prof. Ashuri was providing him with a full dissertation, he felt that at a certain point he might have to respond; so he listened attentively.
“The Kabbalah is based on a theory about the structure of the world. At the apex is the Creator. In His desire to do good, He produced a perfect creation, which is obviously a spiritual world which is better than the one in which we live. From that world derived other worlds, one from the other, until we come to the coarse world in which we live.”
Elijah sighed, “I am quite confused by all this. One world is derived from another. How do you explain this to your students?”
“What do you know about computers?” Prof. Ashuri asked him, appearing to change the subject.
“Very little,” Elijah answered. “I’ve gotten to the stage where I write my articles by myself. I even took two compulsory courses in programming and actually enjoyed them. I also surf the internet, but how is all this relevant?”
“You’ll soon see. Do you have any idea what happens inside your computer when you use it?”
“Let’s not get carried away,” said Elijah.
“I’ll explain to you about your PC and then we’ll come back to the worlds of the Kabbalah. Did you
ever wonder
how it is that a computer, which is nothing but a bunch of wires and electronic parts, produces what we want of it? The answer is that it does not do so directly, but via a number of different layers and intermediaries.
“In the final analysis, all the information which is processed is relayed through a series of transistors which can either be in the ON or the OFF mode. The question is whether they are carrying an electrical charge or not. It is this division, into the ON and OFF modes, which is the basis of our computers, which work on a binary system. At the core, computers are run by computer languages known as assembly languages. They only accept zeroes and ones, and their response is also based solely on zeroes and ones.
“The computer manufacturers have written various machine programming languages which are more amenable to people. These languages are called ‘higher-level’ languages, but they too can be very complex. For average people like myself, these, too, are far too complicated. For us, there are computer languages that are of an even higher level. Let us assume, for example, that I have a program on my computer that stores all my telephone numbers. I enter the data into the computer, and my program translates this into a lower-level, more complex language, and then this is translated into an even more complex language, until eventually the translation is into machine assembly language. After a series of such transformations, we end up with a language that translates everything into electrical signals of pure machine language.
“A simple act of entering telephone data is ultimately translated into thousands of actions, which act on many thousands of transistors. When I try to retrieve data from my telephone database, the computer works in the other direction, with thousands of actions taking place before the data is delivered to me.
“Practically speaking, there never has been, and there never will be, a way for us to carry out the most elementary action on a computer without our affecting all these different ‘worlds’ and ‘layers’ which separate our world from the world of the computer.
“For the average user, all of this is totally irrelevant. The average user has no idea what happens every time he uses the computer. He knows that he performs a certain action and receives a certain result. For the average user, who may at best have a vague idea of how computers work, the different layers involved in operating the computer simply do not exist.”
Elijah remained silent, for he was beginning to understand the basic ideas behind the Kabbalah. Afterwards, to ensure that he had digested the information correctly, he asked, "Does that mean that we can compare the world in our Kabbalistic interpretation to the world of the computer? We have a central Creator, whose influence is felt via many worlds, and through them He reaches our world. These layers of worlds descend from on high, downward through many intermediaries until they reach our world and influence it. Is that what you meant?”
“Would you like to sign up for my course?” Prof. Ashuri asked, laughing.
“You have many students.”
“Many,” sighed Ashuri, “and from various faculties. A considerable number of them are not even registered at the university. They come to register, and I ignore the fact that they are not on the roster. This year, I closed registration after seventy-five students had signed up, but in reality over a hundred attended each lecture. For purely selfish reasons, because of my age, I suppose, I refused to accept any more. I have found lately that Kabbalah has shown signs of a resurgence of interest. As a result, many charlatans earn a fine living from it.”
Elijah remembered that he was really on his way to the library. He parted from Prof. Ashuri in his normal awkward, hesitant and apologetic manner, thanking her profusely no less than three times; he would even have bowed down to her if that was what would have enabled him to expedite his exit. However, Prof. Ashuri had one more important observation to make.
“I hope that your interest in the Kabbalah will not infect you with that dreaded disease...” she smiled.
“What disease do you mean?”
“Kabbalistic literature is generally divided into three major streams. The first and most important one is the cosmological, mission-oriented one. Here we find a direct line between ourselves and the Master of the Universes, by way of His influence on all the intermediate worlds. Note the term, ‘Master of the Universes’ in the plural. In this view, there are mutual influences, going from the upper worlds to us, and from us to the upper worlds. All the commandments and all the proper intentions and all the prayers are ultimately aimed at mending those spheres, which were damaged at the time of the Creation. In the language of the Kabbalah, this means repairing those vessels which were broken.
“The second stream is Kabbalistic-prophetic. It is an attempt to attain what is known as cleaving to God and to achieve spiritual elevation. This can be accomplished by internal meditation, which includes reciting the Holy Names, internal and external purification, combining sacred letters and repeating them over and over, singing and moving the head, and breathing techniques. This can unite one with the higher worlds. One who does this properly can reach the level of prophecy. There are even books with detailed instructions on how to actually accomplish this and how to ascend to a higher spiritual level. I often hear of students who have embarked on such a course, and it is, indeed, a disease.”
“Don’t worry about me. And what about the third stream?”
“The third stream is the one which has elicited the most criticism. It is referred to as Practical Kabbalah. By that, we mean people who use the Kabbalah for their own personal purposes, as a way to exploit the secret knowledge to which they have access in order to control nature and man’s fate. Practical Kabbalah appeals directly to supernatural forces and sometimes even makes them solve the problems of the one calling upon them. These include attempts to foretell the future, to converse with the dead, to heal the sick, to banish evil spirits and the evil eye, and of course to acquire wealth, respect, and/or the love of a man or a woman. That, too, is a dangerous game to play.” Prof. Ashuri laughed, but Elijah could not tell whether or not she was serious.
When he walked on, the spell was broken, and he remembered what else he had wanted to ask her. He remembered something Norman told him before he set off on his travels that he claimed to have heard from his father: “You will bring the fountain!”
In 1967, the nineteenth year of the State of Israel, the Israelis took the Old City of Jerusalem. After a number of battles, the Israel Defense Forces broke into the Old City via the Lions’ Gate. The original plan had been to conquer the walled Old City through the Dung Gate, which appeared to be less fortified. However, the senior paratroopers refused to enter the Old City via the Dung Gate and demanded that the entrance to the sacred city be through the Lions’ Gate. As they explained it, the very name Lions’ Gate was more in keeping with their own view of themselves. This choice received considerable criticism once the battle had been won, with claims that it would have been preferable militarily to attack the city through the Dung Gate. The officers in charge of the operation, who saw such carping as no more than hindsight, rejected this criticism angrily. Another factor, which was not considered at the time by those involved, was that there was a certain poetic justice in the choice of the Lions’ Gate. In Arabic, the gate is known not as the Lions’ Gate, but (more properly) the Leopards’ Gate, so named because of the stone animals engraved above it, but as “The Gate of the Tribe” (
Ashibat
), a word reserved for the “Tribe” of the Jewish people, whereas an Arabic tribe is referred to as a
Kabilah.
The name is an indication that - for reasons which are not clear - the Arabic tradition is that this is the gate through which the Jews will enter the city.
As a result of this war, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem underwent its third major transformation. Originally, when the university was founded in 1925, the dedication ceremony, attended by the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, took place at the site where the original campus on Mount Scopus was later built. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the Mount Scopus area was one territory in which battles were fought over. While the campus was ultimately retained by Israel, it became an enclave, entirely surrounded by Jordanian territory. Under the terms of the cease-fire reached between the two sides, Israel was granted limited access to the campus and was permitted to post a small contingent of people there. Only once a month, and this by means of an armed and armored convoy, were the contingent's provisions brought in for the following month. That, of course, rendered it valueless as an educational institution. To meet the needs of the university, a new campus was built in Givat Ram, in the western part of the city.
When the entire city of Jerusalem was liberated in June 1967, the government immediately decided to return the Hebrew University to its original site. As a result, a major concrete complex was built on Mount Scopus, planned by a top architect who had won numerous prizes for his distinctive work and exceptional talent. What no one had foreseen when viewing the blueprints in the abstract, but soon became apparent in reality, is that the layout was so complex that neither the students nor the lecturers could find their way around, and people who had been using the facilities for years would often find themselves lost.