Tanakh Lessons, part 2.

Chapter 1 (Bereshit).

With Natalie Dekel.

We’re going to learn Torah, which is a Jewish Book of scriptures. And the most important thing is: it’s the human experience of being spiritual in the human body. Judaism believes that (it’s not a religion; it’s a way of living)… and the reason we’re here on this planet, on this earth and in this body is to bring the light into the darkness and illuminate every aspect of our existence. Sefer Bereshete, the book of Bereshete, the Genesis, the beginning, the first book is describing how God has created the universe. Now, we need to remember that it’s partially symbolic. And it’s not quite one to one. So, when we start with a book saying ‘Beresete’, in Hebrew, every letter has a meaning and numerological sequence. So when we start the book, beginning with BET,

that is the second letter, which shows us that there was first universe before this story.

Yes, there was a previous civilization, and what we’re talking here is subsequent creation. And also, Judaism believes that time doesn’t really exist. Which means that this moment of creation continues every single moment.

– Why do we call it ‘in the beginning?’

…for you to understand the sequence of events logically, as well as experientially. And what it means is that every single moment now you create the universe along with God, because you are made of God, you’re part of God. So when we say ‘in the beginning, God created the earth and the heavens’, and the world was a emptiness, and there was darkness, and then the Spirit of God was hovering within it, and around it. And then he creates light, because this is the first separation into duality of existence, from oneness into separate being.

And this is what characterises our reality at the moment. This also implies how we think. So if your mind is in vague and darkness, and you don’t know where you start in, where you’re going, you need to find something to focus on, which is light.

It says, also (in a the human interpretation), that God saw that it’s good, and then he continued to create, which means when you create light, you can expand on it. Darkness just draws more darkness. Does it make sense? If you want better life, you need to do more things that make you feel better.

Secondly, the several mentioning of God in in the Torah are in different ways. When God is mentioned as Elokim…

 – Female, right?

No, male. It’s also plural, because ‘El’ is one; ‘Elohim’ is plural.

So that implies the, the objective, masculine energy of creation, from nothing. It’s like pure judgement, pure manifestation. There’s no emotional aspect to it. If it says, for example, ‘Shechina’, that will be the feminine aspect of God, which is more compassionate, as an aspect of ‘Rahamim’, which is compassion.

– It’s like Greek gods?… but it’s all in one God.

Also, the creation was divided by days. So there was the first day where he created the heavens above the earth, and below the earth. Basically created the atmosphere. And he said, ‘this is Yom Sheni’, the second day, which is Monday in Hebrew.

So the first day was creation of light versus darkness. ‘Yom Ehad’ first day. It’s interesting that it’s not ‘Yom Rishon’. It’s ‘Yom Ehad’ . ‘One day’, as opposed to ‘first day’. The translation is when He created dark and light, the separation, it says it counted is as number one, but it’s not the ‘first’ because time didn’t exist from that moment. Time is a creation…

– Why is it called ‘number one’?

To show you that it was separated into stages. The second day is called ‘second day’, so it’s quite interesting.

So in Hebrew ‘Yom Ehad’… is different from ‘Yom Rishon’. ‘Yom Ehad’ is like 1,2,3. ‘One day’ but it’s not ‘first day’.

In the English translation it read ‘the first day’, so they mistranslated it.

We have a whole chapter, in The Energy Book, written about the elements and how the universe and your body operate within these elements.

He created, then light on the first time, then he decided to do the atmosphere on the second. And then on the soil, on the earth, there was a decision to make grass. Interestingly, there are two different chapters with story of ‘Bereshete’ and the reason for it, partly because different people wrote it. It was always oral tradition. So, when they collected the books and decided to write it down properly, there were different debates on what to add, because people remember it differently.

– I thought, Moses brought it down.

No, it was physically written in 15 century or so…

No, Moses wrote it down.

He only wrote down 10 commandments, literally, and it was 10 letters, and we don’t say ‘commandments’, actually, what he wrote are suggestions.

So we had oral tradition in Judaism passed by words. This version of the Bible is fairly recent, it is a collection of a several authors that wrote it down.

– So it could be wrong, everything I read.

No, it’s just, you can see the difference between… and it carried meanings; that’s why they collected it.

– It could be wrong because Moses broke the tablets, the first ones.

No. They passed the tradition orally… He wrote the commandments again… And he also was teaching his children and other people.

– The very, very original one?

This tradition includes more than what he was writing. It was including what happened before him as well. I

It’s not about rules on baking… This is about family memories and passing of information from divinity to experiential knowledge. Not because one person wrote it as it was channelled to him, because many others were doing that as well. So, the interesting difference between the first story and the second story of creation is that in the first, God created the world ,and he made a tree, which is fruit. But it didn’t work. He wanted the tree to be edible. The tree itself, to be fruit, a fruit tree.

A tree that is fruit, ‘Etz Pri’. Fruit Tree, which is edible. But it didn’t work, and that’s why in the second story, it says, he changed it and made a tree that bears fruit. In a way, the second chapter is the improvement on the universe.

– So, God isn’t perfect?

It’s about a work in progress. Perfection is a process. It’s not a dead final result. The perfection lies in the process and evolution. Otherwise, we’ll be all dead perfectly fine, and in the beginning, there would be no need to be born. The darkness is also perfect. It’s part of the plan. It doesn’t need to be judged and condemned for being dark. The dark and the light has perfect place in the perfect existence in perfect balance. And there our jobs here is also perfect, even the imperfections are perfect.

You can see my illustration of the tree of life here in the Energy Book. We discuss how the body is made of energy, and how we can understand that energy, how it works, and develop it further.

So, the first attempt at making a tree was a tree that is a fruit in itself, and it didn’t quite work, which is why in the second option (in the same chapter, there’s another option) it says He created a tree that makes fruit, bears fruit.

– I still don’t get it. God is meant to be like amazing. He can make like universe, but He can’t make a fruit tree?

He made it but it didn’t work in terms of our reality. If now God gave you the perfect tool to be able to see past the Horizon; past time, present and future… to see forward past the horizon and your own back, you would go mad, not because it’s not perfect, it’s perfect; but because you are incapable of dealing with that reality.

-So the university wasn’t perfect?

No, it was limited to create human world, and human world cannot deal with it at the moment which is why it’s still perfect it’s just not… even Moses could only see God from the back and from distance which means it’s symbolic so he could not conceive and deal and tolerate the amount of energy includes.

– So if you see God would you…

You would change your state of being to another; you can’t conceive it. It’s like detonating atomic bomb and watching it. You can’t even see the solar eclipse with your eyes. You have to cover them otherwise you’ll go blind. I’m talking about God’s existence of pure godliness.

– If you saw it?

You would not be able to tolerate it. Forget about God, just think of pure love; one ounce of pure unconditional love. You would not be able to tolerate it. Because it’s so pure, that dealing with it. Absolutely, you know, it just means you can’t deal with that amount of energy. How many people do know are capable of looking into the mirror and truly love themselves or hug a stranger with pure love. They will be uncomfortable, they wouldn’t be able to hug each other. And that’s basic conditional love. We cannot conceive or understand pure divinity because of our physical limited bodies. This is evolving and maybe one day we will, but at the moment the way things are we are unable to do that.

Interestingly, after the third day the planets illuminate the skies.

Sun and the moon were created after the earth.

– How there can be day and night if there’s no sun?

Because it’s a decision made…

– But you have day and night because of the sun, and earth orbit the sun?

Perhaps it’s not… Perhaps the day night is the division of your functionality? You would wake up if it’s night time, even if you…

– Because I was trained to.

Perhaps the division is the timings of action.

– So, it does not mean literaly…

Yes. God continues and creates animals that roam the world and birds. And He created giant crocodiles. It’s interesting that he specified crocodiles whereas he gave generic terms to other animals. I’ve read somewhere, that there were other types of beings before humans that were attempted to exist, but this didn’t quite work out either. So even for example, the snake; we interpreted as a snake; originally it was a type of snake-people. And that was mentioned also in Egyptian mythology, and other cultures that say that there were different types of people, or beings, that populated the planet, and they were extremely powerful and intelligent. Things change and they possibly didn’t survive, I don’t know, there were reasons why they moved on.

This crocodile mentioned, interestingly, as well as Leviathan. ‘Livyatan’, we translate it as a whale but it was a massive being, probably alongside the dinosaur style, massive, massive being that was threatening the existence of other animals.

So, all these creatures were roaming the world and God liked it. And He blessed it and he said, carry on live and exist in this world. And that’s where He decided that there would be evening and there would be morning. The evening and morning are more about divisions of labour rather than physical reality. It’s more ‘this is when I say a day of work done’. It’s more kind of restaurant. And God said, ‘the world will continue to create animals, but we need somebody who will be like God, and help looking after the world. And looking after the earth, and the animals and the plants, just like I’ve created it. I need somebody to be my guardian of this planet’.

– Why can you get like one of the snake man to do it?

Because obviously, it was a different type of being that was not like God…

– But they were really intelligent.

Yeah, but maybe that’s not what makes humans. Dolphins are intelligence, and yet they’re not humans.

God has created Adam, from the word ‘Adama’, the earth. He took the earth and created in His image. ‘Alef’ (of Adam) is from Elohim, mix spirit and blood to create a human.

Alef is the first letter of Adam.

And Elohim (God, in Hebrew starts with A, Alef).

And Adama (earth).

Alef in Hebrew is the first element. The shape of the letter has four corners.

– Man was before woman?

No. The first human, the first Adam, that God created, was in the image of God, and it was male and female together. All in one, it was hermaphrodite, which was one being that has both male and female in it, and it was called Adam. He was blessing this person, and he told them, ‘come on, carry on, populate the world, look after it’. What God did realise is that it didn’t quite work out. It was hard to populate that way.

– You can. Strawberries do it.

Possibly, but it just didn’t work for some reason, which is why the next chapter says that He then separated Hava, which is the living being from Adam. He separated the being that is more analytical, and action based, to a living being. So, he separated two qualities and made them into two beings. One was the calculating, and more forceful, and the other was creative and living and passionate. And these two qualities were created into two beings, Hava and Adam.

He told them: ‘you can do anything on the planet, you can eat the fruit, look after the animals, look after the plants’. And that was the Friday. On the seventh day, God saw that his world work was pretty much complete. And He made a Shabbat; He stopped working, He stopped all his further creation, to let this world be, and which is why Saturday’s is called Shabat. It’s why you stop, you pause your actions, and you focus on reflection and connection to spiritual side of things. And he blessed that day. And he sanctified it to be a rest day.

See another one of my paintings about angels, and the link to intuition and the spirit world. The more we learn to be aware of how our body works energetically and spiritually as well as physically, we’ll know how to connect better to the spirit world and feel more aware and present in this reality.

He sanctified that day to be the Shabbat. At that time the world didn’t have rain.

– But God’s put the water into different stuff?

Yes, but there was no rain. Instead, God would create a kind of fog that will come from the earth and water the earth and Adam then look after the earth.

Now, the second chapter is overlapping. That man still didn’t work the earth quite because it says ‘Ain’ which means didn’t yet work the earth… it’s overlapping so we had creation including Saturday in the first chapter. The second chapter says: ‘there was no rain, the man did not yet take care, and the earth itself was looking after itself through this fog’. The man has not yet worked the earth. Because it was combined man and a woman. The creature that was created at first didn’t quite know how to operate in the world, it didn’t work. That’s why God created new person. And this time, he used ‘Afar’ which is the dust of the earth from Adama. Previously He created Adam from Him self.

There are two overlapping stories. One after another. The first chapter describes creation of fruit tree which is fruit itself, and a man and a woman as one being that is supposed to look after the earth, however, it didn’t quite work out, so that first creation didn’t quite work out. And in that creation, we had creatures like huge crocodiles.

– So, it sounds pretty cool.

Yes, but it didn’t work out for some reason. And that’s why second chapter starts that God has decided to create human, this time, He’s not making him off Him self, but of the dust of the earth. It’s a different type of a being. It’s a physical being… He breathes life into it, but it’s not pure spirit like before. The first Adam was pure spirit. This one is physical embodiment. Our spirit is pure; our bodies are physical. We are a manifestation, a gradation of high level frequency, but on the lower end.

He created this human from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his breathing system, the spirit of life through breath. We don’t have just a soul. There’s Nefesh and Neshama. Neshama is the breath of God, it’s the pure divinity. Nefesh is the physical animalistic force that activates your body. For example, after your spirit, your soul leaves the body, Neshama leaves the body, your hearts can still pump, your nails will grow, your hair will grow for a while, triggered by this animalistic force of living. It’s two different energies.

Previously, the human was pure spirit. But the pure Spirit could not act in physical reality, the way it was, the way it was meant to be, which is why we choose to be physical, because physical can work in the physical reality.

I talk in my second chapter in the Energy Book, about the various energy bodies, how it’s made, and how we operate with the universe, on different levels. On the emotional level, physical level, energy level, body level. So this time, God breath, energy, the breath of God into the person and made him alive and turned him into a living being.

– Him, or ‘them’?

I’m saying ‘him’ in English. At the moment, there was no gender.

And He planted that being in the Garden of Eden.

© Natalie and Gil Dekel.
Uploaded 30 Nov 2022.