PMF Exoteric Site - Jewish Section
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B'S"D The 2-day festival of Rosh HaShana starts with the first day of Tishrei. The world was created on Sunday, 25 Elul but man, the culmination and purpose of Creation, was created the following Friday, 1 Tishrei - Rosh HaShana, which is why this day and not the first day of Creation is taken as the first day of the year. While all created essences are receptacles for the divine light that emanates from the Creator, man is the greatest by virtue of having the greatest desire - a potentially infinite desire. In this, man is most unlike the Creator Who, by definition, has no needs or desires. Rosh HaShana is a celebration of this (created Ex Nihilo) capacity to receive and is, in fact, the day upon which it is decided, on high, what each will receive in the coming year. In addition to prayers of supplication, we have festive meals of joy and celebration connected with this desire-to-receive. This desire or ambition has two sides, positive and negative. Desire is the key to human development since without it we would be unwilling to make sacrifices for the attainments to which we aspire. At the same time, we all know that desire also lends itself to negative manifestations such as egotism, selfishness and greed. The 10th of Tishrei is Yom Kippur, a day on which we, to an extent, emulate the Creator if only through acts of non-receiving since the Creator needs and thus receives nothing. Self-denial need not be experienced as deprivation but actually as a joyful cleaving to the Creator through non-receiving acts of emulation. This holiday is only one day since it is impossible to live very long in deprivation. Self-deprivation is merely a corrective for reorientating our ambition so that our desire-to-receive will be exercised for the purpose of extending kindness towards others. The next logical stage is "desiring-to-receive-in order-to-give," which is the Messianic paradigm of the Seventh Millennium in which we become a channel for divine influence. This cosmic orientation finds its expression in the festival of Succoth (Tabernacles), a 7-day harvest festival that begins on 15 Tishrei. It is a festival that, through the display of fruit and through the sacrifice of 70 bulls (in the days of the Temple) symbolizes the role of Israel to share divine abundance with the "seventy" nations of the world. We also share food with guests in the Succah, a temporary dwelling or "booth" that completely encompasses the Jew for the week of Succoth and that each Jewish home is required to create. Succoth culminates in an 8th day festival called "Simchat Torah" that symbolizes the joy of perfection associated with the completion of the Messianic, Sabbatical Millennium that was prefigured in the giving of the Torah that is meant to bring us to perfection. This symbolizes the resolving of the duality of receiving-in-order-to-give into the eternal ecstasy of the ultimate "receiving-IS-giving" paradigm. May we all have a year of health and abundance, a year of dedication, kindness, creativity, breakthrough and redemption.
May you be inscribed for a good and healthy New Year! Blessings to all from the Founding Associates of Project Mind Foundation,
David Devor Back to Top |