The Bible is a portable library containing many books and authors. You do not read a library. You do not assume every book is in harmony with every other book. You understand that the fiction wing of the library gives flight to truth as well as the non- fiction wing. In fact, alighting on only one wing, you will naturally fly only in circles.
So we begin, in the beginning, with the Book of Genesis. Did I write book? Wrong. We begin with the Scroll of Genesis or more accurately again with The Scrolls of Genesis. As we unroll we discover a scroll within the scroll, as “Creation” is repeated three times. Why?
Scholars identify the author of the first account of creation as a Priest who is called P. The Second author is called J. All who call this author J add to a farce since she should be identified as Y.
Y? Why? Hebrew has no J. German has J. They create this author in their own image and do not get her name or initial right. She may have been the greatest literary talent of the ages and we call her J! Oy! Jumping Jehovah!
The J Jehovah and even the Y Yawe scholars favor calling God YHVH, which is closer, since it is not pronounceable.
They practice what is called “Higher Criticism” The higher criticism is extremely complex but often not profound.
We turn to the Kabballah for the profound.. The Kabballah teaches a “Higher Creativity”. This terribly uncreative “J” is counterbalanced by the Physics the Kabballahists discovered in the text. Small j has a point on top and this iota is the key to creation. Nahmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nachmun)and his school discovered the Big Bang in The Beginning! In a point smaller than the dot on the head of small j God began creating heaven and earth.
Y, in her goodness “renews”, every moment, of every day, the story and workings of creation.
The story of creation foreshadows the workings of creation. True metaphysics guides us towards true physics. Science still seeks to understand creation, and the beginning, and Kabballah and science have much to teach one another.
Tikkun, Reading is Kabballah
Before we begin our study together I must introduce you to the Tikkun. Just as the concept of Tikkun is essential in our understanding of Kabballah the Tikkun Koream is essential for our study.
The text does not exist. More accurately the letters are bodies without soul as they exist in the Genesis scroll. Consonants. Your Genesis is in its essence an interpretation. One cannot read without a Tikkun.
The Tikkun, and Reading as Kabballah
What one sees in the scroll, are in a way, like charcoal sketches of the story of creation. The master painter has not yet added depth, perspective, or color. The Tikkun is the scribes interpretation of the consonants written in the scroll. The scroll has no vowels or punctuation.
The scribes were transmitters of an oral tradition of chanting that scored the torah scroll and gave breath and life to the text in the scroll. Musical notation, poetically called trope, fixes meaning to the black and un-aspirated soulless letters. This is a Tikkun of the text. The trope give the dark text of the scroll a meaning, and are the genesis point of all creative readings and misreading of scripture. The tropes one finds in the Tikkun give music to the text. The musical variations, to remix our metaphor, also give color and depth and perspective to our painting. Moreover this Kabballah teaches a coloring book for beginners and a sketched canvas for future master painters.
Before we mix our colors we turn to the master painters of the past and the architecture of the page we turn to after we learn the Parsha in the Tikkun,
The Mikraot Gedolot.
Kabballah This
Kabballah this. All study begins with the Tikkun and then continues with The Targums, then Rashi, then Ramban, then ibn Ezra and then other commentators that encircle your page. Then you move to The Zohar, but only with a reliable teacher, and then Chassidic text. This is the order of study for a Kabballah of Torat Emet, of Truth with a capital T. You need to acquire a teacher.
