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Orchard of Delights
law speak of and actually codify concern for the environment. These
discussions and laws stretching back thousands of years pertain to
air, water, and noise pollution; the dangers inherent in and proper
disposal of toxic matter; animal conservation; the prevention of
pain, not to mention cruelty, to animals; overgrazing the land; tree
preservation; allowing land to rejuvenate by lying fallow; water
preservation; designating open areas around cities, and more. As in so
many areas of modern life, the Torah is a shining light, offering both
practical and philosophical wisdom. Concern with the environment
is an ancient Jewish principle, one that needs to be applied and
practiced now more than ever.
£The Sixth MilleniumThe Sixth MilleniumThe Sixth Millenium
££
Although the Zohar, the Kabbalah’s foundational text, is not a
prophetic book as such, it does contain the following two predictions.
Commenting on the verses, “In the six hundredth year of Noahs’s life,
in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that
day all the foundations of the great deep burst forth and the windows
of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth for forty days
and forty nights,” the Zohar states that in the six-hundredth year
of the sixth millenium both the waters from below and the waters
from above will burst forth and flood the world in preparation for
the Messianic era (Zohar 1:117a). The lower waters symbolize secular
knowledge and the upper waters Torah wisdom.
The sixth-hundredth year of the sixth millenium ended in the
year 1840 in the Gregorian calender and spanned the hundred years
preceding that date. During the years 1740-1840 virtually every
field of human endeavor underwent a radical change. The Industrial
Revolution began and the United States of America and France
were forever transformed by political revolutions. The changes
initiated during that period gathered steam and were followed by
revolutions in science, transportation, communications, medicine,
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Bereishit
In Pirkei Avot (5:1) we find the following statement: “With ten
utterances the world was created.” Pirkei Avot is certainly not
considered a mystical treatise or a collection of allegorical sayings.
It is a collection of the Sage’s ethical and moral teachings; therefore,
this dictum can be accepted at face value. The normative tradition,
as brought down in Pirkei Avot, unambiguously declares that the
instrument through which God created the world was, indeed, Divine
speech.
This tradition is based directly on the Torah’s account of creation.
Nine times during the course of creation, the Torah records a
Divine utterance, followed immediately by the very act of creation
mentioned. For instance, on the first day of creation, the Torah states:
“And God said let there be light – and there was light.” The Sages
consider the opening verse of the Torah – “In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth” – an all-encompassing utterance.
Thus, according to the Oral Torah, which was given along with the
Written Torah, the world was created with ten utterances; Divine
speech is quite literally the instrument of creation.
A stunning teaching illustrates how the first verse in the Torah
graphically conveys this notion. The letter peh (פ), which means
“mouth,” is traditionally written so that the black outline of the
letter peh contains the white outline of the letter beit (ב) within it. No
other Hebrew letter contains another letter formed within itself like
this. Since the Torah begins with the letter beit, the inverse graphical
relationship may be presumed true: the first letter of the Torah is
conceptually surrounded by a white letter peh, meaning “mouth.”
Thus it is as if the opening letter of creation emanates directly from
God’s mouth!
Further bolstering this notion of the creative power inherent
in God’s speech, the Sages teach that the instruments of Divine
speech, the Hebrew letters, are the building blocks of creation. Not
just linguistic symbols, these letters actually contain an animating
Divine force. Thus, for instance, the letters spelling the word for light
actually constitute light. (See chapter five of The Mystical Nature of
Light, for a fuller elucidation of this concept.) Indeed, not only are
the letters an animating force, the Torah is actually considered the
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