by Marc Gafni
If you were to say that the Holy One was not exiled together with Her, for this reason the verse (Proverbs 27) says, “Like a bird wandering away from its nest, so does a man wander from his place,” in order to protect Her during Exile from foreign possession-takers. As it is written (Is. 42): I am God, that is My name, and I will not give my Honor to any other, nor My praise to idols.” “Other” refers to the other god, that is, Samael; “to idols” – these are those appointed over the other nations.
And because of Her, the Holy One is a king bound in her tresses. He is bound to them by the tfillin of the head, which are the glory of the head, for the tfillin of the head (rests) on the spot of the mind-canals, and He is bound to them by the arm tfillin, by the knot of the arm, as it is written (Ez. 24): “Your turban (pe’er) is tied on you”. And since He is bound to them in Exile, it says concerning Him, “A prisoner cannot free himself from prison.” And the Shechina is His prison; because of Her love he is bound to her, and the secret of this matter is “My lover is as a bundle of myrrh for me, he rests between my breasts.”
When I teach TZ, I liken it to a jazz musician improvising. To appreciate the fullness of his inspiration, follow how one words leads to another in the Hebrew/Aramaic, and discover many wonderful word games, e.g. how does “asur” forbidden fit in here?
Happy is the people who know how to cause prayers to rise through speech and deed. Concerning [such a people] it is written, (Is. 51) “And I will place My word in his mouth, etc.”. We have already said this – do not read ami – “My people” – but rather imi, with Me, in partnership. As it says concerning Him (Psalms 33): “The heavens were made by the word of God, etc.”. So to, you are in partnership with Me, for by your word, heaven and earth are made.
Acosmic abra kadabra!
We learned in the Sifra Detzniuta [section of the Zohar]: David mentioned nine tikunim here—six [verses in this section from Psalms] with the holy name, compromising six names, and three [verses] with the name of man [for a total of nine; this corresponds to the nine tikunim of zeir anpin, meaning that the name of God and the name of man are both used divinely, i.e., to express the nine divine tikunim of the zeir anpin aspect of divinity]. And if you say, There are only two [mentions of man], [in truth] there are three, for the word nedivim ‘nobles’ also refers to man. We learned: Six names, as it is written, ‘I called God (Yah) from dire straits’—one. ‘Answer me from the great expanses, O God (Yah)’—two. ‘God is with me, I shall not fear’—three. ‘God is with me, with those who help me’—four. ‘It is good to trust in God’—five. ‘It is good to trust in God’—six. Man, three times, as it is written: ‘God is with me, I shall not fear, what can man do to me?’—one. ‘It is good to trust God rather than man’—two. ‘It is good to trust God rather than nobles’—three.
Come and see: The secret of this is that whenever man is mentioned here, he is only mentioned [together] with the divine name. Thus it is fitting, for man is only called by what he is worthy of. And what is he worthy of? The divine name. As it is written, (Gen. 2): ‘And YHVH Elohim created man’. This contains the complete name, which is YHVH Elohim, as is fitting for him [man]. And this is why in this instance [in Psalms], man is only mentioned [in conjunction with] with the sacred name.
And we learned: It says ‘I called God (Yah) from dire straits, Answer me, God (Yah) from the great expanses’. It says Yah Yah, twice, parallel to the two cheeks, to which the hair [of the divine beard] is attached. And when he [David] saw that the hair is drawn down, and is suspended, he began to say ‘YHVH is with me, I shall not fear’, ‘YHVH is with me with those that help me’, using a name [YHVH] that is not lacking [as contrasted to Yah, which consists only of the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton], a name that is sacred, and it is together with this name that man is mentioned.
And regarding the statement, ‘What can man do to me?’ [since man is one of the ways of expressing divinity,] this must be the case, as we learned: All these holy crowns of the King [the nine tikunim], when they are clothed with their tikunim, are called man, the image that contains all.
I am so clever and in possession of such a perfect memory and so cost effective! This I hijacked from someone’s dissertaion.
5. Yihudim in the Besht
See Besht al hatorah, Bereshit 179, Noah 32, Vaethanan 14 (including practice) and an incredible one you’ll love on doing a yihud with a person’s own name in Bereshit 134. I should have remembered this one to show you earlier. In general, there is a ton of such stuff in the Besht.
This article is available by Marc Gafni
