A Kabbalistic View of Israel’s War with Hizbullah

by Nechama S.G. Nadborny-Burgeman

[All quotes in this essay are from Israel and the Seventy Dimensions of the World.]

“One of the most beautiful Kabbalistic teachings speaks of the unity of all human souls. In Sefer HaGilgulim (The Book of Reincarnations), Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in the name of his master, Rabbi Isaac Luria, that all of our souls (including Hizbullah and Hamas) were bound together in the Collective Soul of Adam and Eve, the first human beings. That is, each of the six billion souls of the world’s present population is rooted in the first, Divinely-created man and woman. Therefore, in the depth of our psyche, we share a common unity.” However, we have fallen asleep, become unconscious of this primal reality.

If we go further into the teachings of the Kabbalah, we learn that, before the creation of this world, many worlds were created and destroyed.

“There was a breakdown from higher levels of existence in order to bring about lower levels of existence.” (For a more detailed explanation please refer to Israel and the Seventy Dimensions of the World.) The Kabbalah describes this process as the shattering of the vessels in the world of Tohu (Chaos). In our world of Tikun (Rectification), we are currently struggling with the residual effects of the brokenness of the world of Tohu. We experience these residual effects in the form of “evil.” This evil is the root of all exile, war, pain and suffering – in short, the illusion of being abandoned by G-d.

The World of Tohu could not endure because it consisted of levels of consciousness that were unable to embrace perspectives other than their own. Scripture refers to this limitation when speaking of the kings of Edom who reigned and died before the kings of Israel. The Kabbalah refers to the death of these kings as the “Shattering of the Vessels.”

This phenomenon of “shattering” in the World of Tohu resulted in the form of a pre-shadow consciousness resembling Adam and Eve which was created from the remnants of the vessels, and from the sparks of the Divine light that fell amongst them. The Kabbalah names this form Adam Beliya’al, which literally means “man without a yoke.” That is to say, a consciousness was formed that did not acknowledge a relationship between the Creator and the creation, and therefore did not accept upon itself the yoke of heaven.

The consciousness that Adam Beliya’al encompasses does not focus on Divine Will and G-d’s intimate involvement in the very life-pulse of Creation. That is to say, from the fragmentation of the World of Tohu, there arose a consciousness that was not attuned to a code of law that permeates and sustains creation.

The consciousness of Adam Beliya’al is likened to raw, childlike unharnassed energy, defying structure. This consciousness has a positive tendency towards perceptions of spiritual transcendence and a negative tendency to be drawn to physicality and the baser drives of seeking pleasure while defying the Divine code of moral boundaries.

To make a long story short: Adam and Eve, who were totally in-tune with Divine awareness of their Creator, ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They exercised their free choice by going against G-d’s commandment to refrain from eating of its fruit. The result: a cosmic event occurred that was so shattering that more than 5,700 years late we are still picking up the pieces.

At that moment of eating, transgressing the Divine commandment, the one unified soul of all of humanity – our common root – splintered into smithereens. Yes, the unifying link among ourselves, and with all of our current, fierce enemies was traumatically shattered. These pieces of our original unified soul fell and interfaced with Adam Beliya’al. As a result, there was an intermixture of consciousnesses.

This is the history of all of our souls. Each one of us is a different degree of a mixture of Adam and Eve consciousness, and Adam Beliya’al consciousness. Each one of us has a certain perception of the Divine as Creator and our responsibility in our relationship to our Creator, as well as a consciousness that may sense spirituality and lofty sensations of transcendence, but lacks an awareness of ourselves as part of the Creation in relationship with the Creator. This lack of awareness seriously undermines our responsibility for each other.

“Adam and Eve gave birth to sons and daughters. The elements of their souls that expressed their original light, including their relationship with their Creator and their obedience to Divine will, were extracted from the elements of their soul that retained the potential to express that light but did not recognize the existence of the Creator.”

“Abraham, who lived twenty generations after Adam and Eve and ten generations after the flood, was the first to actualize this latent soul-potential by deliberately rediscovering the One G-d hidden in reality. Thus, through his descendants, the line of Israel emerged. The seed of Avraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob and Rachel, Leah, Bilha and Zilpa, inherited the consciousness of One Creator.”

Their seed stood before Mt. Sinai and received the Torah, the Divine code of life and instructions for the redemption of all of humanity. All legal and moral systems in the civilized world are based on the Torah’s teachings. World religions and philosophies embrace morality to the extent that they propagate the teachings of the Tree of life, whose fruit was permissible to Adam and Eve; our one unified soul.

The Torah, including its deeper teachings of the Kabbalah, has been guarded by those of Israel who have accepted the yoke of heaven. Its teachings speak of the dual nature of this world. Where there is the most light, there is the most darkness. Where truth is pure, the dark side will come to challenge its inheritors.

We are now in the war of light verses darkness. The people of Israel share different degrees of awareness of her Divine mandate. The prophets have warned us to be the living embodiments of the Torah’s teaching or be challenged by her enemies.

As a people, we are currently being challenged by the forces of darkness. The Torah speaks of the tribe of Amalek. Historically, the tribe of Amalek pathologically hated and wanted to destroy Israel. Today, although the lines defining the cultural identities of the nations have been blurred, we still suffer from the scourge of Amalek. Amalek is now a minority whose death-obsessed ideology is polluting larger and larger segments of the world’s population. In the past, it has seeped through and manifested itself as Haman, Hitler, Sadam Hussein, Hamas. Now it is Hizbullah.

Amalek is that group of souls who are most deeply imbedded in the consciousness of Adam Beliya’al. Therefore, the struggle of an Amalekite to awaken from his/her slumber is the most challenging. However, we learn from the Talmud (Gittin 57a; Sanhedrin 96b) that the descendants of Haman converted and learned Torah in Bnei Brak.

The Talmud tells us that every human being is an entire world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov says the same thing: All nations exist in varying degrees in each individual. Accordingly, we are challenged first of all to destroy the Amalek in ourselves.

Israel is also commanded to defend herself from her enemies. G-d commanded Israel to wipe out Amalek. Israel’s first king, Saul, almost accomplished this. Because of his misplaced compassion he was not successful.

“Originally, we were one, and in essence we are still one. We are each called upon to journey inside and find the place within that was never affected by the initial cosmic shattering. In the depths of our shared psyche, the memory of unity persists. In the wellsprings of our consciousness, we share the belief in the ultimate unity of humanity. Together, we can still mine the diamond of our oneness. Together, we may look into each other’s eyes and truly see a reflection of ourselves. When this ideal is realized, all conflict will cease.”

“In order to rescue the simplicity of truth, we have been given the meditative models of the Kabbalah… They are our antidotes to the confusion and distortion that has plagued mankind since Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge over 5760 years ago. As we sort out the confusion of our psyches, we can begin to live out the Torah’s vision of a family of nations. We must simply re-awaken that which lies dormant in our souls.”

“The Torah of Israel holds the key to holiness, to the purification of the soul, and to the clarification of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, truth vs. falsehood, and essence vs. externality and the loss of self. The Torah provides the law of life, the key to affect the return to the initial purity and unity of the Garden of Eden. All of our spiritual perceptions, when carefully discerned, may truly contribute to, inspire, and support the essential process of return.”

In the meantime we are commanded to defend ourselves and in so doing we must impose an uncomfortable and unpopular value judgment. Yes, for survival, not only our own, but for all of humanity, we must believe in ourselves and the message we carry as the people of Israel.

“We now have to seriously look at how we define “Israel”. According to the holy Ari of Safed, the immortal soul of primordial Adam, as he existed before the sin, is referred to as “Israel”. Every individual from all nations is now challenged to find her relationship to Israel. We must each ask ourselves: “What is my unique contribution to the process of awakening from our present slumber, reclaiming our primordial unity and supporting the light of redemption?” Ultimately and immediately we must ask ourselves the undiplomatic question, “Whose side am I on?”

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[Nechama S.G. Nadborny-Burgeman, www.NechamaSarahGila.com, is the author of The Twelve Dimensions of Israel, and of Israel and the Seventy Dimensions of the World – a Kabbalistic approach to an Enduring World Peace – from which all quotes in this essay are taken]