Through The PaRDeS - 5 Levels of Torah Study

In my previous post I asked:

Why did Elisha Ben Avuyah become a heretic as a result of his trip through the PaRDeS?

In this post I ask - why did I write through the PaRDeS as distinguished from to the PaRDes? I did that because, contrary to the traditional opinion, not only did Elisha Ben Avuyah not succeed by becoming a heretic, but I posit that Rabbi Akiva didn't succeed either by merely entering and exiting in peace.

Kabbalistically understood, PaRDeS is an acronym for the 4 parts of Torah - p'shat (literal), remez (allusive), drush (homiletic, hermeneutic) and sod (secret, esoteric). Rabbi Akiva entered and exited in peace, but he still was brutally murdered by the Romans. He failed to bring down mercy, because unlike Rabbi Yishmael Ben Elisha (Brachot 7a), he failed to "bless Hashem", thereby arousing Hashem's mercy even in the context where sin is present among am Yisrael, thereby enabling the collective sin to be abrogated and forgiven.

A trip to the PaRDeS is insufficient. The PaRDeS represents 4 levels of Torah study, but there is actually a fifth level of Torah study (Sichos In English):

There is a fifth level of Torah study which unifies all the other four; it is "fear of G-d," as the Mishnah states: If there is no fear of G-d, there is no wisdom. (Avos 3:17)

This fifth level of Torah study is sufficient and able (Shakai) to redeem us from the exile of the Shechinah. Just as there is a fifth comprehensive exile of the Shechinah in addition to the 4 exiles of Bereshit 1:2, there is a fifth comprehensive redemption of the Shechinah in addition to the 4 redemptions [1] of Shemot 6:6-7. This comprehensive redemption is associated with tikkun chatzos, the midnight rectification.

Tikkun chatzos has two sections, tikkun Rachel and tikkun Leah. Through the two tikkunim of Rachel and Leah, comprehensively known as tikkun chatzos, Rav Nosan tells us that "the level of disorder becomes included in the level of order". In other words, the light of tohu is brought down into the world of tikkun, creating, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz has written it, "a third order of existence greater than either tikkun or tohu of itself [2]."

Taking all this together, we can see that the fifth comprehensive redemption is associated with tikkun chatzos, the midnight recitification, and with "the fear of G-d" (the feminine pillar). In other words, it is associated with the evolution of woman accomplished in the merit of Torah Lishmah, which unifies the PaRDeS and "blesses Hashem".

Footnotes:

[1] Maharal, Be'er
[2] In The Beginning, Discourses On Chassidic Thought, R' Adin Steinsaltz

JBlog Me

technorati tags: Torah kabbalah Judaism shechinah sacred feminine Torah Study Talmud Talmud Torah Gemara PaRDeS Rabbi Akiva Rabbi Yishmael Ben Elisha Elisha Ben Avuyah Metatron Enoch angels merkavah mysticism memory mind soul soul development prenatal oath Niddah 30b consciousness kabbalistic psychology psychology cognition science of mind science of memory