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Orchard of Delights 8 Beshalach
£The Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments themselves in Torah and more spiritual matters. This then lead to
their going without water on the metaphorical and physical levels for
££
and Creation
and Creation
and Creation three days, ultimately leading to the bitter state of mind recognized
by the Ba’al Shem Tov. By throwing a tree into these bitter waters,
Moses symbolically reminded them that by immersing themselves in
the wellsprings of Torah, they could reinstate the necessary balance
We have already mentioned in the portions of Bereishit (“The Ten
Divine Utterances of Creation”) and Va’eira (“The Medium is the between the physical and the spiritual in their lives. Learning Torah,
Message – Patterns in the Torah and the Number Ten”) the intrinsic particularly through the lens of PaRDeS, similarly affords us a well-
connection between the ten utterances through which the world rounded, holistic view of the Torah that allows us to balance the
was created and the Ten Commandments revealed in the portion of physical and spiritual in our lives.
Yitro. To understand this connection more fully we need to review Immediately following this episode, the children of Israel traveled
several sources and delve into several concepts that connect the Ten and camped in a desert oasis named Elim, where there were twelve
Commandments and the Torah’s account of creation. springs of water and seventy date palms (Exodus 15:27). Rashi,
drawing on a homiletical derash from the Mechilta, associates the
At the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, the Torah recounts,
“And it was evening and it was morning the sixth (hashishi) day” twelve springs with the twelve tribes and the seventy date palms
(Genesis 1:31). Following the other days, the Torah also declares with the seventy elders. After learning the lesson of the bitter waters
that “it was evening and it was morning” and mentions that it was the people were given the chance to experience the joys of the Torah,
the “second,” “third,” “fourth,” or “fifth” day, respectively. But on a virtual oasis in the desert that life can become when devoid of
none of these other days is the definite article (“the” [heh]) used to Torah.
single out the day. Rashi points out that the letter heh is utilized The seventy date palm trees further symbolize the seventy “faces”
on the sixth day to allude to the fact that the continued existence or aspects of Torah that are revealed to those who eat of its fruit,
of creation was contingent on the Jewish people’s acceptance of the and quite literally allude to the PaRDeS system of learning Torah,
Torah at Mount Sinai on the sixth of Sivan. On this day, creation an “orchard” of spiritual and intellectual delights. Alluding to the
was created anew, as it were, for from its very inception, the only highest level of PaRDeS, seventy is also the numerical value of
purpose and justification for creation was Torah’s introduction into the word sod (secret), the inner Kabbalistic dimension of Torah.
the world. Furthermore, the date palm symbolizes the tzaddik, the righteous
person, of whom it is said, “The righteous like the date palm will
The verse introducing the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1) –
“And God spoke all these things saying” – consists of twenty-eight flourish.” (Psalms 92:13) Deep inside their very beings, every Jew
letters and seven words, the exact number of letters and words in has a spark of the tzaddik, as the prophet states, “Your people are all
the Torah’s first verse: “In the beginning God created the heavens righteous, they shall inherit the land forever” (Isaiah 60:21).
and the earth.” This correspondence beautifully supports this notion It is interesting to note that dates are among the very highest
that the Giving of the Torah represents the fulfillment of creation. fruits on the glycemic scale, which measures natural sugar content.
Dates only grow in hot climates with abundant sunlight. The process
The name of God used exclusively throughout the initial account of
creation is “Elokim,” the very same name used in the verse introducing of photosynthesis, by which a plant takes the light of the sun and
the Ten Commandments. The name “Elokim” connotes the mystical converts it into energy and eventually fruit, teaches us how we can
act of Divine contraction (tzimtzum). When God “thought” of creating

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