The Zohar: They came out of the Land of Israel and descended into Babylon, saying, “This is the place we will stay.”

We will rise to the heavens and will fight the Creator so that He doesn’t flood the world as he did in the beginning of time.

Parsa under the World of Atzilut is a special correction that was made deliberately to prevent the Light from descending lower. This is why they said: “Let us rise to the firmament and fight with the Creator so as to remove this border and allow the Light to descend from above downwards.”

A person gradually learns and begins to understand that he has to strive towards bestowal, but he doesn’t want to stay “in the Land of Israel” where everything is done for the sake of bestowal, since he can’t see the benefit in doing so. As new egoistic desires are revealed within him, he leaves the Land of Israel and moves towards Babylon, the land of reception.

He then starts to think that the wisdom of Kabbalah can be used for egoistic purposes, for personal fulfillment. He wants to conquer the Creator and make Him serve his own egoistic purposes rather than the other way around, just like in the Grimm fairy tale about the fisherman and his wife.

He starts to look for a lower, less noticeable place where he can hide from the Upper Force in order to avoid getting rid of his egoism. Thus, he builds a “city and tower” (ZON de Klipa) and lives in it. He thinks that the Creator has to fill his egoistic desires with Light, instead of fulfilling his clean desires, since the latter would require him to ascend and attain the property of bestowal, Bina. He wants his egoism to be fulfilled and argues with the Creator.

Each one of us can find these properties within ourselves. This is described in the Torah when addressing the builders of the Tower of Babel: “Rise to the heavens and fight the Creator!” “Fight” means to demand the Light from the Creator, to ask for revelation while remaining in one’s current egoistic state. One asks, “Why hasn’t the Upper World revealed itself to me? The Creator is unfair! I have waited for so long, so why hasn’t it happened yet?”

This is what is referred to as “building a city (Zeir Anpin of Klipa) and a Tower of Babel (Malchut of Klipa), which happens to us on every level. Each time, we have to make a choice of whether to follow the path of Abraham – the path of bestowal, or the path that the whole world chooses – the path of Nimrod.

There is a rule: “The whole is equal to any of its parts.” The whole Torah is present even in our smallest and lowest states, including the states called Noah, Babylon, Egyptian slavery, wandering in the desert, construction and destruction of the Temple, and the entire path until the end of correction. It repeats itself again and again on each level.

This is why when studying The Zohar I can find everything I read within myself, in every state I go through: an Egyptian slave, the people of Israel, the High Priest of the Temple, the Pharaoh, Bilam and his donkey, and so on. They are all inside me.

Our role is to try to imagine and sense these metaphors like a child that’s studying the world around him. The most important thing is to not stop making an effort. There is no other book in the world and no other way to lift ourselves into spirituality.

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