Pirkei Avot, Part 9: Shemaya and Avtalion

Good evening, everyone. Last time we began commenting on the first saying of these two converts, who stand as the fourth pair in the chain of transmission of the Law. This is very important, for it tells us that there is no exclusion. On the contrary, we count on the contribution of the outside world from the moment it adopts — let us say — the categories of thought of the Torah itself, and provided there is no possibility of deviation. As I pointed out to you, we cannot confer positions of collective responsibility on new converts, because they have not yet proven themselves. But Shemaya and Avtalion established themselves as much by their learning as by their conduct. There was no reason not to mention them as an important key in the transmission of this Law, which without them risked being lost. So what teaching does this bring us?

A teaching that is very important, because until now there has been no mention of loving one’s work. Ve-sena et ha-rabbanut — as it is rendered here, “hate lofty station,” hate positions of responsibility. Do not seek them; if they come to you and there is no one else to take on the burden, then of course you have the duty to shoulder your responsibilities. And do not seek to make yourself known to the powers that be. So how does all this fit together? “Love work.” We have established the difference between melakha and avodah. Avodah is ordinary labor — let us say, servitudes. And there are many servitudes, a great many. Well, one cannot really love them; such are the necessities of life. But melakha means serving the community and society through one’s creative mind.

And as for that creative mind: when the word melakha appeared for the first time, it appeared at the creation of the world. When Hashem completed His creation, it is said “His melakha” — which we have translated here as His creation, His mission. I had pointed out that within the word melakha lies malakh, messenger: each person is charged with a mission to fulfill. And for us, who in our faith join heaven and earth in everything we undertake in life, there is no question of separating spirit from matter, but on the contrary of investing matter with spirit and raising matter to the level of spirit. Consequently, there is no dichotomy at this level.

On the contrary, there is no disgust at what takes place here on earth, at what can be accomplished, and each person has the duty to do it. And ehov, “love,” is ultimately more than simply “doing” one’s work. A love is not measured in time; it has no limits; it is permanent. Hence the need to devote oneself to answering what one loves — because, be careful: if idleness is the source of many ills, work that is not truly appreciated and valued by the one who does it is equally a servitude. It does not allow the person to flourish, it does not develop his possibilities, it does not give the full measure of his abilities, of his potential. That is why the word “love” is fitting here: just as the word ahav is used for the Eternal, Shemaya allows himself to apply this very verb, “to love,” to melakha. And what is forbidden on Shabbat is everything that contributes to setting up the structures of this world and establishing them. For example, one may move furniture inside the house, or chairs — even in the street, provided there is an eruv — if one needs to hold a celebration in honor of Shabbat. All this is permitted: to hurry, to enjoy oneself, to carry something out. But note: this is not considered melakha, and one is permitted to do it on Shabbat.

The melakhot forbidden on Shabbat are, in short, those labors whose cessation marked the end of the whole work of creation of the six days. So Shabbat suspends the melakhot; it does not suspend the avodot. We continue to live normally; there are many things we go on doing on Shabbat because they are part of our life and do not have that character. On the other hand, forming a word out of two letters by drawing them — yes, that is forbidden, because we have given birth to an expression. So do not see in this an absurdity or an exaggeration: it is the founding idea of melakha itself, consecrated by Shabbat, which gives melakha a different resonance. And it is on this account that the sages of old, the rabbis of old, all had a melakha — a trade, a profession. They did not rely on their Torah for a living. Of course they dispensed it generously and without payment; and when they needed it — insofar, of course, as they held rabbinic office within the community and bore public responsibilities — they were remunerated in proportion to the time they devoted to it. But in essence, they themselves were called — they were designated — by their profession. The examples are many; I could cite a few. Rabbi Yossi ben Halafta, for instance, was a tanner, a worker of hides. Rabbi Yitzchak Nappacha was a smith; Yehuda was a tailor; and Rabbi Yehuda was a baker, and so on. So there is not — heaven forbid — any contempt or disgust whatsoever for work. On the contrary, our sages said: peshot nevelta be-shuka ve-la titztrikh la-beriyot — skin a carcass in the marketplace rather than be dependent on other people.

If one truly has to go and skin a dead animal in the public square rather than beg one’s livelihood from other people, then one must do it. That is a key: a person ought to keep all his dignity through his work, and not depend on institutions, even communal ones. Let those who have ears hear. Thank you. Now, to enter into competition while carrying out this melakha — you have no need of that. It is not in a spirit of competition that you should undertake your melakha. You must accomplish it for your own sake. You must know that what is essential in your life are your spiritual concerns — the study to which you devote the greater part of your time, or at least some part of your time, but in a way that is, let us say, regular, fixed, permanent. That is what must be done. Ve-sena et ha-rabbanut: “hate authority” — not rabbinic office as such, though there are those who have dared to interpret it in that sense. Rabbi Akiva Eiger was one of them; he said: “All my life I have hated being at the head of a community, with my rabbinic duties; it has caused me much pain. I would have wanted to be a shamash of the community — a servant, a simple servant of the community.”

What offended him was, indirectly, the sense of loftiness that he had — that he felt, or that all those around him made him feel — and that made him suffer, because in some way it imposed a distance on him. So ve-sena et ha-rabbanut has two immediate meanings: do not seek competition in what you do; do not seek to occupy high positions; do not seek promotions; do not seek kavod, honor; do not seek distinctions; do not seek to put yourself forward. It gets you nowhere. In the end, on the contrary, you will reap nothing but disappointment, because no one will forgive you the slightest deviation, the slightest fault; and it is impossible to hold an office under constant tension without a trace of weariness, which indeed makes us miss our goal.

Now: ve-al titvada la-rashut, “do not make yourself known to the reshut.” We saw that reshut has two or three meanings. There is reshut ha-yachid and reshut ha-rabbim. Reshut ha-yachid is my own private sphere; reshut ha-rabbim is the public domain. So: do not follow the populist current. Try to preserve something of your personality, your own attributes; do not cheapen them. That is the first meaning. The second meaning is the governing authority: do not count on the authorities to show you, later on, any gratitude for all you have done, for all your devotion. On the contrary, it will border on ingratitude.

And yet you will indeed have sacrificed, at times, your family life, your personal advancement and so on, and your study, in order to serve others. Let us not forget that this advice is given at a time of great political upheaval within the Jewish community in the Land of Israel, during the Second Temple period — we have spoken of this — when various factions were forming, and there were depositions, jealousies, struggles for power, each side seeking support, which is sometimes sought among the rabbis, among the elite, among the thinkers. So: try not to take sides, and remain as discreet as possible in this domain.

That is the overall idea of Shemaya, which Avtalion now completes. Avtalion tells us: Chakhamim, hizharu be-divreikhem — “Sages, be careful with your words, shema tachuvu chovat galut — lest you become liable to exile and be banished to a place where the waters are foul.” And here the translator has rendered it well; we will look at his wording in a moment. “So that the disciples who come after you will drink and die” — perish spiritually — “and the Name of Heaven will be found profaned.” Naturally, this follows the logic of what Shemaya said. Shemaya was the nasi, and the head of the court, the av beit din, was Avtalion. And Avtalion, as his name indicates — av talya, that is, “the father of the little ones” — was probably a teacher. You will understand why: because he puts his own role as a teacher squarely in the dock. And through his words, I am in the dock tonight just as much as he is.

We have already said that what distinguishes man from beast is dibbur, speech — that breath of G-d which was invested in him and which alone establishes the link between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the material, and, to tell you everything, between the transcendent and man. That is why everything is called davar. The reality of each thing is what it says to you. It speaks to you in one way or another; you feel concerned by it, and so it becomes an object, it becomes an event — for the word davar means word, means object, means event, means thing. Indeed, it is speech that makes the event; it is speech that gives reality to everything.

All right? He tells us: one must know how to measure one’s words, to be careful with one’s words. It is not easy. It is not easy to put everything into clear language, into naked language. We very often make use of metaphors. And language is not only the language of the mind; there is also the language of the heart, and their resonance does not always create a symphony, a beautiful symphony. On the contrary, there are rifts, and these sometimes express themselves in malicious remarks, in reductive judgments, in a certain elitism we practice in spite of ourselves. And our relationship with others, which passes through speech, means that either we handle a person with kid gloves, trying to wrap him in all sorts of niceties, or we judge that he is not worth the trouble and cut him down to size.

And when a teacher uses this kind of language with his students — the gifted and the less gifted — and even when he delivers his teaching however he can, without paying attention to the one who does not have the same possibilities, the same abilities, and without truly bending down to go over that teaching with him again so that it becomes clear — well, we leave room for distaste, or for misinterpretation, or for a bad relationship; and the rejection that follows is capable of far-reaching excesses. I told you what happened with Trotsky; he is not the only example. But there is an anecdote I have always greatly appreciated, about a rav who spent all his time going from city to city, from country to country, to collect money so that his yeshivah could survive.

He went to complain to the great Rav Aharon Kotler. He said to him: “Listen, I have no life. I run a yeshivah and I am always away. I cannot look after my students; I must at all costs keep this yeshivah alive, and for that I neglect even my family.” He expected words of consolation from Rav Kotler, but Rav Kotler said to him: “You know, I must tell you that all these tribulations you are undergoing come from the fact that the relations you maintained with your students were not always the best. You excluded some because they did not please you; you showed contempt toward a few; you did not much care for certain ones who did not give you the kavod you thought you deserved. All of this is now taking its revenge on you, and so today you find yourself atoning for your faults toward your students through your travels across different countries, collecting money for them.”

That shows what a certain vision of things our rabbis had: they constantly called themselves into question. This is very important in the relationship we undertake with the world. So long as we do not know how to take the measure of ourselves, so long as we do not have this inner questioning — asking whether we have acted rightly… I confess to you that several times I have left the classroom depressed, because it is not always easy to manage a class with different levels within it, particularly in Hebrew studies. In other subjects it is easy: at the end of the year the guillotine falls when things are not going well in mathematics, physics or chemistry. It is unforgiving, and then no one protests. But a student who… And the people who come are from different currents, from different upbringings within the same class, so it is very difficult to manage, and it sometimes happens that you lose your compass, lose your bearings, and you ask yourself: have I acted rightly? Have I acted rightly? Because it is very dangerous, very dangerous, “for you could become liable to exile.” And liable to exile? Ha-rotze’ach bi-shgagah — you know: one who in those days had caused a death by inadvertence. There were six cities of refuge, and he had to take refuge there until the death of the High Priest.

Because the whole community in some way shared that responsibility — and, at the highest level, the High Priest, that is, the chief educator of the people. And there he remained until the death of the High Priest. And you know that the mothers of the High Priests used to bring food and gifts to those exiled in the cities of refuge, to tell them: take care, do not pray for the death of our son in order to get out of your prison. Yet it was not a prison; it was a center of re-education, because when someone was exiled, his master was exiled with him — his teacher with him — for he was not to be cut off from his master. Otherwise this place of refuge, this “prison,” would have had no reason to exist.

So one who committed an inadvertent killing was liable to exile. And an inadvertent killing committed by any teacher, by anyone responsible for a community who does not fulfill that charge as he should and who leaves room for error at any level whatsoever — well, such a person is not necessarily exiled at once. Either he is ashamed of the results and exiles himself; or a void forms around him, and he lives out his exile, he lives in that state of solitude; or else he is indeed condemned to exile by the authorities, and so on. So this exile may be a physical exile, but it may also be a spiritual exile of one’s being — “and be banished to a place where the waters are foul,” liable to exile.

In those days, you know, students followed their teachers along their journeys, following them from place to place in order to learn better at their side — and above all from their conduct, from their way of life. So: a place where the waters are foul — what are these foul waters? You know that the Torah has been likened to water, to a source of reviving water. That is the special nature of water: it purifies, it quenches a person’s thirst, and it is a source of blessing. That is the symbolism of water, which comes up, let us say, many times in the course of our lives. Now waters, so long as they are springs, living, so long as they flow, so long as they come from other sources…

…they renew themselves continually. And a teaching must never be considered settled once and for all. It is valid today, at the moment I am speaking to you; what I convey to you today is valid for today. Tomorrow we will indeed have to look for a chiddush, a new element. Yesterday’s teaching must be given life. And that is why a teaching that leaves no possible room for error and hardens into dogma is very dangerous. Why? Because it is like water that collects and stagnates in a pond, and it becomes polluted — polluted more and more as time goes by. That, for a teaching, is what the foul waters are. This is why our sages said — later you will understand — “you will see the difference between one who serves G-d and one who has not served Him.”

So our sages asked: what is the difference? It is very simple. There is the one who reviewed his learning a hundred times and stopped, telling himself, “I know, I have mastered everything.” And there is the one who, after a hundred times, continues and says to himself, “I will review it a hundred and first time” — that one is the true servant of G-d. The first, who stopped, went over it a hundred times — a hundred times, you may say; truly, he reviewed it a hundred times. So he possesses it, but he possesses it in a raw state. Someone who keeps a garment on for a hundred days — that is hard, it is not possible; it will smell bad. There is a newness that must be introduced all the time; it is another way of evolving, of understanding things. And above all: zekenekha ve-yomru lakh — “ask your elders, and they will tell you.” Zekenekha: your elders.

You know, in certain circles the rav was called “Saba” — the Saba of Kelm, for instance. One did not say “Admor,” but “Saba,” and that stands out. People wondered why they were not called “Rav.” And the answer is quite simple too. A rav — I myself can be one. Anyone can be a rav. It takes a period of study, and one can indeed attain that title. But the title of saba, grandfather — grandfather in […] — that is already reserved for a certain stage of life and a certain height. Not everyone is a saba; everyone can become a saba, but not everyone is a saba, isn’t that so? That is the second idea: “for you could become liable to exile and be banished to a place where the waters are foul” — where heresy is rife, because this can indeed lead to heresy.

People go… Today, we were all nourished — nourished in our youth on fables, from Little Red Riding Hood to the great fables of La Fontaine and others still […]. But if we keep them as they are, they are bland, sorry, devoid of meaning; they no longer speak to us; we have moved on to something else. It is the same in other domains: there are words of Torah — I tell you, words of Torah — that are true, but because we have not recycled them, not restored them, not given them new life, not illustrated them, they have stayed with the old sages; we have left them with our old sages. And that is what is meant by “the disciples who follow you will drink and perish spiritually.” Va-yamutu, “and they will die” — this is not a physical death; it is a death of the spirit, for people who took all this literally. But above all: ve-nimtza shem shamayim mitchalel, “and the Name of Heaven will be found profaned.” Ve-nimtza shem shamayim mitchalel — why? Because others say: look what came of it. This gentleman who gave such a teaching thought he was nourishing many generations, but he reaped nothing.

And the discredit cast upon this master spreads; it contaminates the other masters. And that is the profanation of the Name of Heaven, shem shamayim. We must understand this shem shamayim, the Name of Heaven. Our sages explained that shamayim is sham mayim, “there is water.” That is to say, there are the waters — there are found the waters that revive the earth. But for these waters to come down from heaven, man must be present and must resolve to work the earth; so long as man does not resolve to do so… for “that Hashem your G-d may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.” There is blessing only once you have shown the work of your hands.

When you have committed yourself to accomplishing something, then you can know blessing. So we have spoken of mayim, the foul waters. The foul waters are the lower waters: the waters that remained beneath the earth and that cannot — cannot — nourish the world without this bounty from heaven. Well, that is the Name of Heaven — the heavenly waters, one should say — which are profaned. For one must understand that the only time in Creation when it was not said ki tov, “that it was good,” concerns the separation of the lower waters from the upper waters. And that separation took place on Monday, the second day. Every day it was said, “and G-d saw that it was good”; but when this separation of the waters took place, the text […] did not deem this separation good so long as man does not bring about…

…the junction between the two waters, and it is on him that this depends, since, as has been said, vegetation will not spread over the earth, for ve-adam ayin la’avod et ha-adamah — “there was no man to work the soil” — so long as man is not there to work the earth. And that is what Avtalion tells us; there is an important lesson to draw from it for ourselves. After this we come to Hillel and Shammai — Hillel and Shammai, great schools. We have finished with the fourth pair; theirs is the fifth and last of the pairs charged with the transmission of the Law. After them we will have the Tannaim, the rabbis: we will have Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Yehuda, and so on.

From now on they will bear the title of “Rabbi”; there are many rabbis. As I told you a moment ago, these earlier figures had no need of that title; their name alone attests to their stature. There — I think I will stop here. Or do I still have time? Yes, perhaps I still have a little time, unless you have questions to ask before I move on to Hillel and Shammai. There are questions. — “You have all the time you want, Mr. Benizri; we have a whole lifetime to hear your teaching.” — That’s kind of you, thank you. I’m giving you the chance to pull my leg. — “Mr. Benizri, good evening.” — Good evening, Eric. — “You spoke to us about giving new life to the words of Torah.”

“Does that mean we call into question the life we gave them before? If I understand correctly, the task given to man is precisely to produce within himself enough creativity to connect these two waters, the upper waters and the lower waters — whatever his, I won’t say means, but whatever, let us say, his competence.” — What I mean, Eric, is that you are no longer the young student I once knew — you are no longer that. Today you have a different stature, a different dimension; that’s good. But when you read the texts with me at your age then, you had an approach that was at your level. Today it is not that that approach is worthless; you are more demanding.

Before, you could be satisfied and prefer a street snack to the school food, the school meal; but today, at home, I suppose you have a well-set table; you appreciate things, you savor them differently. What you loved before, you no longer love as much today; you have other demands, and so on. At every age there is a Torah. “U-ve-torato yehgeh yomam va-laylah” — “and in His Torah he meditates day and night.” […] It is said: mi-penei seivah takum. That means: before the elderly, before white hair, before white heads, takum — you shall rise. The Zohar says: no, wait — mi-penei seivah takum: before you arrive, before your hair turns white, rise up, get moving, because afterwards you will regret having let all your time pass by. Do you know what […] once gave his son-in-law? Well, a gold watch — a gift that used to be given to the bridegroom. And he said: “Take care — the gold is not in the watch; the gold is in the hands that turn. If you know how to value the time they measure out for you as you value gold, then your watch is worth more than gold.” That is the Torah. One should indeed try to learn it, measured against time, with the demands you have today. Do not tell yourselves that it is outdated; tell yourselves rather: I have not yet understood it well enough.

Because of two things: if it is outdated, then it is not divine — it is not divine, it is worth nothing. If it is divine, then it never grows old; it is we who have grown old without understanding it, without decoding it. So it is up to us to adapt ourselves to it, not up to it to adapt to us. We only adapt it to ourselves during a period of initiation; but afterwards, one must know how to measure oneself against it. — “I was speaking not only in relation to oneself and to a person’s personal development from youth to old age, but also in relation to the era in which we live. I am not Eric, just so you know whom you answered — but it doesn’t matter, it was very instructive, thank you.”

“What I meant, Mr. Benizri, when I began asking you about giving new life to the words in light of…” — Yes. — “I think you answered me, more or less, with regard to ourselves and our personal development. So now the second part of the question: couldn’t we give the Law, the Torah, a somewhat more modern language? Couldn’t it be brought up to date as our technology advances? Today we know very well that an extraordinary change is taking place before our eyes, and we cannot keep up. And what of the Torah, when we are busy discussing pits, or the identifying signs of a lost object here and there?” — My dear friend, everything you study is garments — garments of the spirit. The words you decode today are garments; tomorrow you will clothe them differently. But know that the garment — yes, you may set it aside because it is too short, too wide, too long, and you will give it other measurements; it will be the garment of the day; but the garment must be changed. It is the same […]. The letter is a garment, I think. You know, there are four dimensions in each letter, and each letter is independent of the others. In Hebrew writing there are no letters joined to one another; they are independent.

So there are four levels in the letter. First, the letter itself, its form. Second, its phonetics. Third, its music: it has a resonance, a vibration. And note: if the letter has suffered a nick, a tear of any kind, the whole sefer Torah is disqualified — it is pasul; one no longer reads from it until it has been corrected and that letter has been fixed. That tells you how important it is. Now, the fourth level is that the letter must remain autonomous: it must not touch the next one. If it touches another letter, the sefer Torah is disqualified. And this is what leads Hasidic thought to say that the most important thing in the letter is the white that surrounds it, not the black with which it is written.

— “That is what the Messiah will come to read, in fact.” — Absolutely; but the Messiah must be prepared by oneself. — “Rav Benizri, good evening. Rav Benizri, I would like to offer you a blessing that I have pronounced only once here in the seventeen years I have been in Israel, to a rav who had also passed through Belgium — but I no longer remember the Hebrew wording. In French it amounts to saying: may Hashem bless your knowledge. On the last thing you said — well, let me go back to the first thing. I took notes; for once I organized myself a little better to respond within the subject of what you said and of your lecture. You spoke first of all about menial tasks. I would simply like — it is not a question but a testimony — to affirm to you that with time and experience one sometimes manages to do even these menial tasks with great joy. And I think I am addressing the men of the household here, in saying that this is perhaps one of the keys to a successful home.”

“That’s one thing. About the relationship between heaven and earth, I recently took note of a lesson in which it was said […], and so that makes the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. Regarding idleness — since you once told me, ‘don’t let go of humor,’ for once I’ll put it front and center; I found a joke in the course of what you said. It’s about idleness — oisiveté — and so, of course, what would I say to young people who stay stuck in their rooms and won’t come out, to the idle? I’d tell them: you have to get up early, like the birds — les oiseaux. And after all, our sages, our chakhamim, got up early and prepared themselves two hours before tefillah, so as to be concentrated in the makom and to be able to pray properly.”

“Well, the last thing is perhaps…” — And here, quite simply, allow me to interrupt you, because you have just jarred me. You have just grated on my ears, because when people start handing out moral recipes like cooking recipes, that doesn’t sit well with me. Forgive me. — “Listen, in any case I am happy to tell you that with my wife, who is from Tunisia, I had no choice — I had to do my share at the sink, so I couldn’t do otherwise.” — Well, Shmuel, that’s good. One thing — one thing, please don’t take my words the wrong way. Try to avoid lecturing others. Lecture yourselves.

That is important, because when you lecture others, it means you have already set yourself up as a model, as a reference — and I forbid myself that; forgive me. And why? Because you put in difficulty other people who have not reached the path you have followed, and one must not put them in a bad position. There are people who are geniuses and who get up late. But when they wake up, you can no longer catch up with them. — “I can’t hear you anymore.” — Wait. — “The sound… I did receive what you said to me. I was certainly not in a frame of mind to lecture anyone or anything of the sort; I know very well that each person lives in a different world and in different circumstances.”

“That said, regarding the symphony: that touched me enormously, because it is a theme I addressed in my writing about the symphony in three movements. And indeed, you will surely agree too that when G-d speaks…” — Why in three movements? — “Precisely because when Hashem speaks in the Tanakh, in the Mikra, it says amar, and so it passes through three successive phases, which are or, mayim and rakia — light, water and firmament.” — So there are only three dimensions, not four. — “No — that is precisely my question, and it is the only question I’ll keep: would you agree that, in relation to the last theme you addressed, the four modalities of the word — I had thought, I don’t know whether you would agree with this too — could these four phases be related to the four worlds? Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.”

So listen: first of all, the idea of three movements is not a false idea. Indeed, in […] the Name Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei was divided, if you like, split into three — Yud-Hei-Vav — and then the hei at the end. You have yud, which equals 20; hei, which equals 6; and vav, which equals 13. That makes, all in all… — “Thirty-nine, you say? Thirty-nine? Twenty? But the Tetragrammaton — I don’t follow — the Tetragrammaton is 26. Where do you add the 13? With the 20?” — Who is asking this question? — “I am!” — So listen, there are two ways of reading the Tetragrammaton. Either in its short form…

Yud equals 10, hei equals 5, vav equals 6, hei equals 5 — so you have 26. Or by spreading the letters out, as you roll out dough. How do you write yud? Yud-vav-dalet. Yud-vav-dalet equals? — “10 plus 6 plus 3… 13… 10 plus 6, 3… 19?” — No. Dalet is 4? — “4.” — Dalet is 4, yes, sorry. — “Yes.” — So yud equals 20, hei-alef equals 6, and so on. — “Ah, okay.” — So Yud-Hei-Vav, and this corresponds to the thirty-nine, the thirty-nine avot melakhot, and these are the thirty-nine labors that refer to the structure of the world in its creation, as I told you a moment ago. […] And it was separated from the final hei. The final hei, which is the fourth dimension — the fourth dimension is that of earthly reality; it is Asiyah, it is Asiyah. And Asiyah, precisely — Asiyah depends on Yetzirah.

Asiyah is equal to itself; it can be renewed only by the movement of Yetzirah — the movement of conception, of creation. [Atzilut] is what lies far off, which we do not reach; Beriah is a first approach that we have; and we are, above all, in the world of Yetzirah, the world of the conception of things. And it is this conception that changes the reality of the world, Asiyah. That is why the final hei, which relates to Asiyah, is separated from the first three matrices you were speaking of, my dear friend Shmuel. — “Thank you, Rav.” — Thank you very much. — “Thank you very much, Rav Benizri. We are going to have to part now, even though we would truly like to stay. It was a quite extraordinary lecture.”

“I wanted to let everyone know that next week the lecture will return with a somewhat different subject. It will be more a lecture bein ha-metzarim, for the period between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av. I thank you on behalf of everyone.” — With pleasure. — “May I ask one last question, even if it is only a subject for reflection? If the Torah, or the word of the Torah, must be a permanent questioning — a questioning of oneself — could we not also think, Mr. Benizri, that this might mean an evolution in how to live the Torah, how to live religion, and so make room for all the various present-day rabbinic movements, including the movement of women rabbis?”

“I would like to have your thoughts on this, because I think there is…” — Well, that is a big subject. — “It is a very big subject, but there are also women who…” — I will answer you briefly now, because we don’t have time. — “Yes.” — I have already said that it is we who should adapt ourselves to the Torah. The fact is that we are far from it. We do not grasp it in its totality; we have only fragments of it, only touches, only nuances. We would need the whole — and the whole is an extraordinary rainbow. We would need to see it in a single glance, to seize it in its beauty, and that demands a great, great deal of investment. I assure you, we have only […] — much as one keeps a sick person going, heaven forbid, bit by bit — such is the state of our mind with regard to the Torah.

But we do not realize it. Just imagine — I repeat it once again — if G-d gave the Torah, if there is a creative force in the world that dictated its law, by which it constituted its world… You know, I want to tell you something. Today many people laugh at it: it is said that when a child comes into the world, an angel gives him a little tap on the mouth and he forgets all his Torah. He knew that Torah in his mother’s womb; he knew it. “There you go — look at me! I’ve forgotten everything!” So how is he supposed to forget this Torah? Who are we kidding?

This child, in his development, started out from that molecule and gradually came into being, until he had a physiognomy, a micro-physiognomy. That is the whole Torah that he learned day by day in his mother’s womb, through his own development. He was conscious of it while he was in his mother’s womb, because he was in permanent gestation. And now, when he comes out into the world, he has suddenly lost it; he must rediscover it. What was inherent in him has become something objective and external; it has become his objective. Now he must rediscover it by himself. So know that you all have a Torah within you. It is present; it has simply been reduced to silence.

And as a result it is condemned to oblivion, to the veil that covers it. You will rediscover it. You will rediscover it differently. We study the Torah, but in the end this Torah becomes our personal Torah — our Torah, his own Torah. A person who devotes himself to the study of Torah gives birth. And as I told you, his own Torah is not only its writing, not only its phonetics; it is its musicality, the way it is sung. This Torah must make you sing. There, my dear friends — come. Thank you. I have spoken enough. Shavua tov to everyone. Shavua tov, shavua tov, Jean-Laurent. — “Eight o’clock.” — I thought it was seven o’clock!