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Orchard of Delights Bereishit

for your contemporaries or make one concerted effort to convince £The Ten Divine Utterances The Ten Divine Utterances
££The Ten Divine Utterances
people to change their ways? And now you protest!”
After Noah leaves the ark, God makes a covenant with him, of Creationof Creationof Creation
promising never to flood the world again. Noah was granted a
unique oppportunity. Like Adam and Eve before him, he could
decide what direction the world would take. He could create a brand In Jewish tradition reality is constructed from a combination of
new civilization. Why then does Noah choose to plant a vineyard the ten sefirot, or ten Divine emanations, and the Hebrew letters.
and even worse become intoxicated? (Genesis 9:21-28). The Zohar Kabbalah uses the model of the ten sefirot to structure all reality,
explains that Noah planted a vineyard in order to rectify Adam and from the spiritual to the physical. Just as a biologist would explain
Eve’s sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that the DNA sequence of proteins contains all living creatures’
for according to one rabbinic tradition, the Tree of Knowledge was a foundational information and is reproduced in every cell of the
grape vine. Since Adam and Eve had been banished from Eden as a human body, so too the Kabbalah explains that the sefirot underlie
result of the corrupting influence of wine, Noah hoped to rectify their and infuse every aspect of creation. So it is not surprising that the
sin and begin rebuilding the world anew on the right foot by planting ten Divine utterances of creation are intrinsically linked to the ten
a vineyard. sefirot. (For further on the sefirot, see Appendix 3.)
Based on allusions in the biblical text, the Midrash notes many At the beginning of Sefer Yetzirah, one of the oldest Kabbalistic
sexual innuendoes that cast light on the complicated and perverse texts, God is described as creating the world through thirty-
sexual desires fuelling relations between the snake, Eve, and Adam. two wondrous pathways of wisdom. According to the Kabbalah
Intoxication seems to have played a part. So it is indeed unfortunate these thirty-two pathways are the ten sefirot and the twenty-two
that instead of rectifying his forefather’s sin, Noah became drunk Hebrew letters. In fact, in many Kabbalistic charts the ten sefirot
and according to the Midrash was castrated by Canaan, his grandson. are connected to each other by the twenty-two lines of the Hebrew
He too lost sight of his ultimate goal and descended into sexual letters. Although somewhat different from DNA’s double helix
degradation. Why did this happen? This humiliating downfall may structure, the model of the sefirot none the less has a very similar
have had to do with God pointing out to him that he had failed as a visual effect.
leader. In effect, because of his shortcomings, he was complicit in the The ten utterances of creation and the ten sefirot are further
destruction of the world! connected to a whole array of other sets of ten, particularly the Ten

As a result of this realization, his drinking drove him into a deep Commandments, which can be seen as a quintessential “kernel,”
depression and a state of intoxication that opened the door to even a microcosm representing all the other commandments. This
more disasterous consequences. The revelation of his own culpability relationship is alluded to by a mathematical gem. There are 620
in the destruction of the world, especially after he had assumed he letters in the Ten Commandments and there are 620 commandments
was so righteous, may have sent him into a psychological tailspin, in total! The 620 mitzvot are comprised of 613 actually mandated
leading to despair and drunkenness. Instead of rectifying Adam and by the Torah and seven rabbinic mitzvot that the Sages endow
Eve’s primordial sin and the world, his intoxication symbolized a with the status of Torah mitzvot. (Alternatively, some reach 620 by
profound failure, one whose reverberations are still felt on the most explaining that the additional seven mitzvot are the seven universal
subtle levels of reality. Noah’s enormous potential makes the tragedy commandments known as the Seven Commandments of the Children
of Noah.)

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