Inside the Torah: Narrative, Interpretation, and Mystical Meanings

By Rabbi Charna S. Klein

God gave the Torah to Moses and our ancestors at Mount Sinai thousands of years ago, and we’ve been studying it ever since. Rabbi Charna S. Klein continues the tradition in this scholarly work, interpreting the Torah’s fifty-four chapters in Inside the Torah.
Klein presents interpretations from ancient Sages to modern commentators and adds original rabbinic interpretations on important topics such as creation, evolution, societal development, gender, sexual diversity, and more. The author also applies scientific lenses, including cultural, archeological, physical and medical anthropology to explicate hidden meanings in the Biblical text.
Meant for Jews and non-Jews, the book is a significant contribution on the interpretation of the Torah from the perspectives of Chassidus and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, its concepts, structures, and meaning.
Rabbi Klein encourages the Jewish people as inheritors of the Mosaic tradition to connect with God and repair ourselves and the world. Awaken, know, delve deep and reach high to make yourself a vessel for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781480892958

Rabbi Charna S. Klein

Rabbi Charna S. Klein is also an anthropological scientist, teacher, and author. This book reflects Rabbi Klein’s broad and varied background. It connects science and spirituality.

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Copyright © 2020 Rabbi Charna S. Klein.

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Scripture taken from the Artscroll Series ® / Stone Edition © Copyright 1996 by Mesorah Publications, Ltd. 4401 Second Avenue / Brooklyn, N.Y. 11232 / [phone] / www.artscroll.com

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9294-1 (sc)

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-9295-8 (e)

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Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/07/2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 – The Book of Genesis—Bereishit

BereishitHow It All Began

NoachConfluence of Science and Torah

Lech LechaGo to You and Your Destiny

VayerahGod Appeared, God Sees All, Humans Can See

Chayei SarahSarah’s Life

ToldotPatterns for Generations to Come

VayetzePlace, Time, and Consciousness

VayishlachSend Me to Survive Exile and Change

VayeshevHidden and Revealed Identity

MiketzRevealing Truth and Light

VayigashCome Close and Choose God’s Way

VayechiLiving On

2 – The Book of Exodus—Shemot

ShemotNames Are Important

VaeiraGod Appears by Name and Manifests in Nature

BoCome to God and Go Free

BeshalachSend and Sing Our Destiny

YitroMoving and Models

MishpatimLaw and Its Evolution

TerumahLift Your Heart to God, God Will Dwell in You

TetzavehStones, Clothes, Connections

Ki TisaSeeing the Light, Keeping the Faith

VayakelSacred Space and Time

PekudeiAccounting and Redemption

3 – The Book of Leviticus—Vayikra

VayikraGod Called You to Be Holy

TzavCommand and Response

SheminiBe Holy in Seven Days, Reach for the Eighth

TazriaShe Conceives, We Raise

MetzoraSpiritual and Holistic Health and Illness

AchareiSocio-Cultural and Spiritual Limits, Inclusiveness and Change

KedoshimBe Holy for I am Holy

EmorSay to Them

BeharUnity of Space, Time, Holiness and God

BechukotaiBlessing or Curse – the Choice is Ours

4 – The Book of Numbers—Bemidbar

BemidbarWilderness and Counting, Emptiness and Structure

NasoHeads Up

BehaalotechaRaise Up, Redeem, Spread Light

ShelachSend, Spy, Die, Return to God

KorachLeadership Issues

ChukatDecree, Death, Illness and Remedy

BalakEvil as God’s Blessing in Disguise

PinchasInherited and Merited Leadership

MatotTribes and Us

MaseiThe Journey and Us

5 – The Book of Deuteronomy—Devarim

DevarimThe Importance of Words and Faith in God

VaetchananThe Teaching

EkevBlessing, Love, Messianic Sign

Re’ehSee, Choose, Do

ShoftimUsing Good Judgment

Ki TetzeWhen You Go Out, Do Good

Ki TavoCome In and Offer Up to Bring Blessing Down

NitzavimStand Together, Big Ideas

VayelechMoses Went

HaazinuGive Ear, God Is Merciful

Vezot HabrachaThis Is the Blessing

INTRODUCTION

This book is for anyone interested in looking inside Torah for content and insights. It draws on and provides detailed source citations (as well as a bibliography) for classic and ancient sources, including the Talmud, Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar, and a range of commentaries from traditional to modern rabbis and works, including Orthodox, Chasidic, and Kabbalistic; Rashi, Nachmanides, Maimonides, Or Ha-Chayim, Baal Haturim, Shem Mishmuel, Isaac Luria, Avraham Sabba, Aryeh Kaplan, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Jonathan Sacks, David Wolfe-Blank, and Shefa Gold.

Throughout this work, I have cited sages and scientists while also offering my own ideas and interpretations. Each Jew is said to have a letter in the Torah, and a unique and valid perspective on Torah. Maimonides commented on the mitzvah of learning and teaching Torah, God commanded us to study Torah and to teach it. In this spirit, I offer this book to you with the intent to continue and add to the process of Torah learning and insight.

This is a companion guide for the fifty-four Torah portions that is thoughtful and metaphysical, expansive and yet concise. Its intended audience is broad, from the newer learner to the sophisticate and scholar; Jew and non-Jew; Chassidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Jewish Renewal; men, women, sexual and gender minorities.

The Torah is one of a kind, divinely authored, with endless levels of coded meaning and mystery. This book moves between the levels known by the acronym PARDES, which includes the peshat/simple story, remez/hinted meaning, drash/interpretation, and sod/secret or mystical meaning. The discussion describes and analyzes selected texts and themes. The analysis includes particular and recurrent words, numbers, and gematria/numeric equivalent of letters in words. For example, the Hebrew words sipur/story, sefer/book or text, and mispar/number, share the root letters spr. The same root is in the word sefirah/sphere, of which ten levels are on the Tree of Life, a Kabbalistic model for everything. Torah is referred to as a Tree of Life.

This book also includes discussion of subjects in the sciences, including anthropology, archeology, biology, and physics, as they relate to the Torah and Kabbalah. Sages have conceptualized the universe in ways that are increasingly affirmed by scientists and mathematicians, though they differ in approach and aim. God is the infinite source infusing the physical universe.

In a beyond-multisensory experience, I had a vision of luminescence and of an ethereal being with human semblance. I experienced God coming to me, speaking at once from without and within. The synesthetic experience was devoid of cultural content. I received a deep knowing of God not subject to doubt. The experience was one beyond description in words. It is an inspiration for this work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my teachers of Torah, from traditional to modern sources, and anyone from whom I learned something to contribute. I thank the members of my congregations and communities. I thank the following individuals who edited parts of the manuscript: Alan Sachs, Rabbi Glenn Karonsky, Janis Siegel, and Paul Hamburger. The author continued editing after these editors, and I take full responsibility for the content and any errors that might have been made.

Mr. Alan Sachs and I have been good friends since the 1980s. After leaving Seattle for New York, he was editor of the English-Yiddish Dictionary of Academic Terminology and of the textbook Yiddish Two, and throughout the ’90s taught advanced Yiddish conversation and composition at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Guided by his adroit knowledge of English style and of classical Hebrew grammar, with a discerning eye for detail, he edited the Books of Bereishit and Vayikra, Notes for the Reader, Bibliography, and Glossary. I greatly appreciate Alan’s indispensable work.

Rabbi Glenn Karonsky edited the Books of Shemot and Bemidbar, pointing to the confusing and superfluous, and offering clarification. Glenn is also a first cousin and a friend. I thank him also for his contributions to our Isaacson family (our mothers were sisters). May their memories be for a blessing.

Ms. Janis Siegel is a professional writer of many published articles. She was a regular columnist at the Seattle Jewish Transcript. Notable were her excellent articles in the area of science. I thank Janis for early editing of parts of the manuscript.

Mr. Paul Hamburger is a more recent addition to the editing team. We met at a Sunday morning learning session where he quickly emerged as knowledgeable and willing to contribute. He is an attorney and author of Unlocking the Code: The Letters of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson and The Anochi Project: Seeking God’s Identity. I was thrilled when Paul agreed to help edit the manuscript. He offered invaluable comments.

I thank the people at Archway, an affiliate of Simon and Schuster, for publishing this book.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book in memory of my grandparents, particularly Reb Joseph Isaacson, and my parents Rose and Aaron Klein, and to my cherished daughter, Josepha Chasha Mira Klein.

NOTES FOR THE READER

• While the proper term for each of the weekly portions of the Torah is sidra, the more commonly used (and variously spelled) term of parashah (plural parashiot) is used here. In the singular immediately preceding the name of the Torah portion, Hebrew usage requires the word to be inflected parashat.

• Hebrew words from the Torah are sometimes used, followed by the English translation in quotes. This is done for quoted text and terms. The English translation is usually given when the Hebrew word or phrase is introduced, and not subsequently. A glossary at the back of the book provides definitions of essential Hebrew words.

• The first mention of a particular person’s name includes a title, such as Rabbi, Rebbe (for Chassidic rabbis), and Dr. Subsequent occurrences show the person’s surname only.

• For ease of reference, persons mentioned in the Torah are usually referred to by the English form of their names. Their Hebrew names may also be given, especially when relevant to the discussion.

• The bibliography can be consulted for full source information. Citations in the body of the text have partial reference information. Sources by authors with the same surname are disambiguated by inclusion of the publication date and the page number. Numbered footnotes are on the relevant pages.

• The present tense is used for past events in the biblical present, as that accords with the Torah perspective that these events are true and operative for all time.

• The English translation of the Torah text in Hebrew is from The Stone Edition of the Tanach, Artscroll Series, A Project of the Mesorah Heritage Foundation. Mesorah Publications, ltd., 1996, 1998

In some exceptions, the author translates the Torah text literally from the Hebrew. For examples, the author translates the word bereishit as in beginning rather than the common in the beginning, and translates echad as one rather than one and only.

The Book of Genesis—Bereishit

Parashat Bereishit:

How It All Began

Nothing is more monumental than what is written in Parashat Bereishit — the majestic narrative that recounts the creation of the universe, existence itself, and life forms, including human beings.

The first word and the name of the first parashah (portion) of the Torah (also known as The Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch, Bible, and Old Testament) is be’reishit (in beginning) ("be" means in, of, with). Volumes of commentary have been written on this word that in English is referred to as genesis. The infinite, Ein Sof (no end, endless) is eternal and precedes the creation of the finite world. The sages discuss the process of creation of the finite from the infinite.

In beginning there was nothing; there was only God. There was no beginning and no end prior to this event, no time and no space. Kabbalah (Jewish mystical tradition) uses the name Ein Sof to refer to the eternal that precedes the creation of the finite world. The sages say that God is without time and space and undefinable except with respect to what God is not.

Kabbalists explain that through the process of emanation, nothing becomes something—yesh (there is) me’ayin (from nothing). Nothing literally means that there was no thing, no material reality. The infinite, as distinguished from the finite, is not composed of things and is unchangeable.

Ein Sof emanates Or Ein Sof (light without end). Two kinds of lights develop—or sovev also known as or makif ¹ (surrounding light) and or mimalei (filling light). The filling light extends into all the different forms the light of God manifests on earth. The metaphor of light is the closest term that the Torah and Kabbalah use for something that emanates from the infinite and is not material.

The Torah describes how God created the universe with ten mamarot (sayings), the first of which is: yehi or (let there be light) va’yehi or (and there was light) (Genesis 1:3). The light moves as described in Ezekiel I ratzo v’shuv (runs and returns) up and down (metaphorical directions) the Eitz Chayim (Tree of Life), and according to the Zohar (Bereishit) in all directions on the Tree of Life. The light infuses spiritual essence into our world. Energy and sound spiral down through the Tree of Life to us.

According to the Sefer Yetzirah, the first attested work of Kabbalah (traditionally reputed to have been written by Abraham; and/or later by Rabbi Akiva, AD 50—135), God created the world with the holy Hebrew letters in the sequence of voice, breath, speech (Kaplan 1990, 70). The Sefer Yetzirah describes the parts of the human speech apparatus with which the letters are sounded.

Bereishit contains the ten sayings with which God created the world. God tasks Adam with naming the living and non-living components of the physical world with words that describe their essence. The letters link the spiritual and physical worlds. In order to create a physical world, God connects the spiritual with the physical. The spiritual does not have space-time and requires attachment to the physical in order to manifest in the physical world.

Words are formed with the letters. The Zohar describes a complicated and detailed process of how letters and words in Bereishit were intricately involved in creation (see Sefer Ha-Zohar, Hakdamah, 1:3b). (Traditionally, the Zohar is attributed to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, student of Rabbi Akiva in first-century Palestine. Academia attributes it to Rabbi Moses de Leon in thirteenth-century Spain, who probably published previous ideas passed down orally.) In a section of the Zohar called The Alef Bet of Rav Hamnuna Saba, each letter argues why the Torah should begin with it, and the letter bet prevails: "The letter bet entered and said to the Creator: ‘Maker of the world, it would be good to create the world by me, as by me You are blessed. For bet is berachah [blessing]’". The Creator replied to bet: Of course, I will create the world by you, and you shall be the basis of the world. The first letter of the word be’reishit is bet, the second letter of the alef bet with a gematria (numeric equivalent) of two. (Hebrew letters are also numbers.)

The Zohar (7b) states that the letter bet represents the two sefirot (spheres) on the Tree of Life of chochmah (wisdom) and malchut (kingdom) as they are involved in creation. Chochmah represents the flow from above to below, while malchut represents the flow from below to above.² The flow through the other sefirot of the Tree of Life and the other letters are all involved in the creation process.

Some sages comment that the holy names of God were the ‘tools’ used in creating the universe (Sabba 30-31). The four-letter name of God, the Tetragrammaton, represents various sefirot and their combination on the Tree of Life. The individual sefirot and netivot (pathways) between them on the Tree of Life are represented by the letters. Various names of God are ascribed to each sefirah.

Creation is also said to have taken place with 231 gates, which number derives from the combination of each two of the twenty-two Hebrew letters. The number 231 is also the gematria of the name Yisrael (Israel). The letters are read as yesh rl’a, which means there are 231 (Kaplan 1990, 117).

Moshe Cordovero (a sixteenth-century sage of Tzfat) explained the stages through which the divine light became letters, which became names of God, which also became names of angels, which became the words in the Torah.

Chassidus describes the process of creation through stages of thought, speech and action. Thought is likened to Torah. Speech is likened to prayer. Action is likened to tzedakah (charity) (Zalman 2017).

Isaac Luria, the Arizal (a sixteenth-century Kabbalist in Tzfat), introduced the concept of tzimtzum (withdrawal, contraction). The endless God withdrew in order to make a vacuum in which the material universe could come into being. A kav (line), a ray or river of light emanated from the endless through four worlds extending into the vacuum. At the end of the kav was a dot that became the material universe. The light became increasingly coarse and congealed into the matter comprising the physical world. Through the process of materialization, God and the light are increasingly veiled and hidden.

The Torah’s first verse states, Be’reishit bara elokim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-aretz [In beginning God created the heavens and the earth] (Genesis 1:1). These seven words are said to correspond to the seven days of the week, seven heavens, seven lands and many other significant sevens in the Torah.

Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi (an eleventh-century French sage), and Targum Yerushalmi (Aramaic translation of the Torah during Second Temple times) translated be’reishit as with wisdom. The letter b (with) is written in the Torah twice the size of the other letters. Dr. Gerald Schroeder (an Israeli physicist and Torah scholar) wrote that everything, including inanimate matter—each atom and cell—has the innate wisdom that was incipient with creation (Schroeder 2001). Wisdom is as fundamental to our universe as are time and space (Schroeder 2009, 155). Bereishit has been confirmed as the information (Wheeler), the thought (Jeans), the idea (Heisenberg), and the mind (Wald) discovered at the quantum level of every item and atom. We are truly the idea of the creation and, biblically speaking, the wisdom of the Creator (Schroeder 2009, 202).

The word be’reishit can also be parsed as bara sheit, similar to the word sheish (six.) He created six, the six directions—up, down east, west, north, south—in the six days of creation from which everything emerged and spread. There are other sixes, such as the six letters in the word be’reishit (bet, reish, alef, shin, yud, tav). The sixth word in the first sentence begins with vav, the sixth letter of the alef bet. Leonora Leet (2004) wrote that the six refers to the six points on a circle, whose connections form a hexagram within the Tree of Life.

The word reishit can represent parts of the creation. The letter reish can stand for rakiah (firmament), alef for aretz or eretz (earth), shin for shamayim (heavens), yud for yam (sea), and tav for thome (depths) (Gold 1999).

Moses Ben Nacḥman, called Nachmanides and Ramban (a thirteenth-century sage) posited that the world was created from a dot the size of a mustard grain, and a very thin substance devoid of corporeality but having a power of potency fit to assume form and to proceed from potentiality into reality. This dot is represented by the letter yud, the first letter of the Tetragrammaton.

Some scientists theorize that the world was created from a single small point, a singularity, followed by the big bang almost fifteen billion years ago. Schroeder (1990) explained how fifteen billion years can equal six days of creation from different perspectives in the universe—God’s perspective and ours differ.

Scientific thinking is converging with what the Jewish mystic sages wrote centuries ago. The big bang theory (though some scientists question this as they do any theory) and the Bereishit account of creation could describe the same thing in different language. However, science is unable to address questions of what or who created the universe and why; that is addressed by the Torah and Jewish sages.

According to Rabbi Isaac of Acco (a thirteenth-century sage), the world was created some fifteen billion years ago. The fact that he came up with that figure, which was scientifically substantiated with astronomical instrumentation he did not possess, could assuage skeptics.

Albert Einstein established that E = MC², that energy and mass are interchangeable, convertible into each other, that there is a space-time continuum and that time is relative. The energy from the Big Bang was electromagnetic radiation … [scientists realized that the forces of electricity and magnetism combine] … something akin to super-powerful light beams (Schroeder 2009, 28). Moments later, the energy from the light-like energy of creation (29) condensed into matter. Here science and sage agree.

Dr. Vernon Neppe finds the formula E = MC² in the first three sentences of the parashah. Energy is indicated by shamayim (heavens), and matter is indicated by aretz (earth) (Genesis 1:1). The word bara (created) (1:2) functions as the equal sign. The C of the formula is the speed of light. And God said let there be light and there was light (1:3). The twice-mentioned word or (light) represents the squared exponent.

Kabbalists have constructed theoretic concepts for describing deep Torah. A sefirah is a sphere or vessel to contain the divine emanation as it flows through the Tree of Life. God’s will from the highest sefirah of keter (crown) enters the sefirah of chochmah (wisdom, inspiration, inception). The process of creation proceeds as the infinite is brought down in stages on its path to becoming finite reality. The path is