{"id":300840,"date":"2008-03-02T22:18:14","date_gmt":"2008-03-02T22:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/%d7%9c%d7%9c%d7%90-%d7%a7%d7%98%d7%92%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%94\/the-zohar-on-tikkun-habrit-2\/"},"modified":"2023-06-20T12:38:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T12:38:17","slug":"the-zohar-on-tikkun-habrit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/300840\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zohar on Tikkun HaBrit – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
Since the act of spilling semen in vain defiles both man and the earth, the spiritual blemishes it causes can only be rectified through a great teshuva. (Zohar, Bereshit 61b)<\/span><\/div>\n
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Rabbi Yitzhak was in the presence of Rabbi Shimon. He asked him: Regarding the verse, \u201cAnd the earth was corrupt before G-d,\u201d (Bereshit, 5:11,) if men transgressed, why should the earth be called corrupt?<\/span><\/div>\n

\nRabbi Shimon answered him, Because it is written, \u201cFor all flesh has corrupted its way.\u201d In a similar fashion, it is written, \u201cAnd the land was defiled, therefore do I punish its iniquity upon it,\u201d (Vayikra, 18:25.)\u00a0 If mankind sinned, why is the earth to blame? The reason is that mankind is the essence of the earth. When they pollute their way in the world, the earth becomes defiled. This is proven by the verse, \u201cAnd G-d saw the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
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Come and see, all sins of man, and all of his acts of defilement, can be rectified through teshuva (repentance.) But the sin of spilling one\u2019s seed on the earth, which defiles the man and casts semen onto the earth, defiles both him and the earth. Of such a man it is written, \u201cThe stain of thy iniquity is before me,\u201d (Yirmeyahu, 2:22.) It also says, \u201cFor Thou art not a G-d that hath pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil (ra) dwell with Thee,\u201d (Tehillim, 5:5,) except through a great teshuva. On this it is written, \u201cAnd Er, Yehuda\u2019s firstborn, was evil (ra) in the sight of the L-rd, and the L-rd slew him,\u201d (Bereshit 38:7.)<\/span><\/div>\n

\nRabbi Yitzhak asked, Why did the Holy One, Blessed Be He judge the world with water, and not with fire or something else? Rabbi Shimon answered: This is a secret. Through their sin of corrupting their ways, they prevented the upper waters and the lower waters from uniting as they should. Since in corrupting their ways (spilling semen in vain) they did not allow male and female waters to join, thus they were punished with water, for the transgression of wasting their water.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nFurthermore, the waters were boiling and caused their skin to peel off, just as they had corrupted their ways by spilling their hot semen – measure for measure.<\/span><\/div>\n
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As long as the Jewish People guard their sexual purity, embodied by the Brit, there is no enemy that can harm them. (Zohar, Bereshit 66b)<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cAnd I will establish My Brit with thee,\u201d (Bereshit, 17:21) that you shall be the sign of the Brit in the world. After that, \u201cAnd thou shall come into the ark.\u201d For if he had not been a tzaddik (a guardian of the Brit) he could not have entered the ark, for only the tzaddik can unite with the ark. Therefore it is written, \u201cAnd thou shall come into the ark,\u201d as has been explained.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Rabbi Elazar said, As long as men remain attached to this Brit and do not loosen their hold of it (do not blemish it with sexual sins,) there is no nation nor language in the world that can do them harm. Noach clung to Brit and guarded it, therefore the Holy One Blessed Be He safeguarded him. But all of his contemporaries did not guard the Brit, and because of this, the Holy One Blessed Be He removed them from the world.\u00a0 As has been stated, in exactly the same way that they sinned, they were blotted out from the world.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Once again, the Zohar emphasizes that by safeguarding the holiness of the Brit, a man is protected, not only in this world, but also in the next. (Zohar, Bereshit 94a)<\/span><\/div>\n
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Another began his exposition by referring to the verse, \u201cUnless the L-rd had been my help, my soul would have soon dwelt in (Duma) silence, (Tehillim, 94:17.) We have learned: what is the special merit of Israel that they do not go down to Gehinom, and are not delivered into the hands of Duma (the angel in charge of Gehinom) like the idol worshiping nations?\u00a0 The reason is that they are distinguished by the sign of the Brit.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nFor we have learned that when a man leaves this world, bands of destroying angels, wielders of fiery judgment, gather to claim him. But when they examine him and see that he bears the sign of the holy Brit upon him, they flee from him, and he is not delivered into the hands of Duma, to be cast down into Gehinom, for whomever falls into his hands is condemned to punishment there. Both upper and lower (angels) are afraid of this sign, and no evil decrees have dominance over a man if he has succeeded in safeguarding this sign, because he is attached to the Name of the Holy One, Blessed Be He.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The sefirah of Yesod, associated with the organ of the Brit, is the spiritual channel connecting an individual to G-d. Through the channel of Yesod come Divine Inspiration (ruach hakodesh,) and perception of G-d. Thus a proper Brit Milah, and guarding the laws of sexual purity, are the keys to a Jew\u2019s attachment to G-d. (Bereshit 94a)<\/span><\/div>\n

\nAnother explained the verse: \u201cAnd from my flesh, I shall see G-d,\u201d (Iyov, 19:26.)\u00a0 What is the meaning of \u201cAnd from my flesh?\u201d It would be more proper to say, \u201cfrom my inner essence.\u201d However,\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cmy flesh\u201d is to be understood literally (as being the place of the Brit,) as in the verse, \u201cand the holy flesh is removed from thee,\u201d\u00a0 (Yirmeyahu, 11:15,) and also, \u201cand my Brit shall be in your flesh,\u201d (Bereshit, 17:13.)<\/span><\/div>\n
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For thus we have learned: Whenever a man is stamped with the holy impress of this sign, through it literally he will attain his awareness of G-d, because the holy soul is attached to this place (in the parallel spiritual world of the Yesod.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But if he does not merit this, because he did not guard this sign, then of him it is written, \u201cThey lose the soul of G-d,\u201d (Iyov, 4:9,) for he did not properly guard the impress of G-d. If, however, he guards it, then the Shechinah does not part from him\u2026.<\/p>\n

When is the Shechinah established with him? When he is married, then the sign enters into its intended place… The holy soul is attached to this place, and everything depends on this sign. Thus it is written, \u201cAnd from my flesh, I shall see G-d.\u201d This is the perfection of everything, literally from \u201cmy flesh,\u201d from this very sign. Therefore, how fortunate are the holy Jewish People who are attached to the Holy One, Blessed Be He; fortunate are they in this world and fortunate in the world to come. Regarding them it is written:\u00a0 \u201cBut you who cleave to the L-rd your G-d, are alive every one of you this day,\u201d (Devarim, 4:4.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Having relations with a gentile woman not only defiles a Jew and his offspring, it is like bowing down to a false god. \u00a0(Zohar, Bereshit 131b)<\/span><\/div>\n
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Whoever cleaves to a woman of any of the gentile nations becomes defiled. The child born from such an attachment receives a defiled spirit. It may be asked, if the child is from a Jewish father, why should he receive a defiled spirit? Behold, at the very start, his father polluted himself when he attached himself to that impure woman.\u00a0 Since the father become impure from this impure woman, all the more so, the child born from her will receive an impure spirit. Not only this, but he transgresses the Torah, as is written, \u201cFor thou shall not bow down to another god; for the L-rd, whose Name is Zealous, is a zealous G-d\u2026\u201d (Shemot, 34:14.) He is zealous over the holy Brit.<\/span><\/div>\n
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To be continued<\/span><\/div>\n
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***<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
(Secret of the Brit<\/a> is reprinted with kind permission of JewishSexuality.com<\/a>. Tzvi Fishman <\/a>was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Creativity and Jewish Culture. His books on Judaism and Jewish themes include: “Tuvia in the Promised Land,” “Days of Mashiach,” “The Kuzari For Young Readers,” and four books on the teachings of Rabbi Kook, “Torat Eretz Yisrael,” “War and Peace,” “The Art of T’shuva,” and “Lights on Orot,” co-written with Rabbi David Samson)<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the act of spilling semen in vain defiles both man and the earth, the spiritual blemishes it causes can only be rectified through a great teshuva. (Zohar, Bereshit 61b) Rabbi Yitzhak was in the presence of Rabbi Shimon. He asked him: Regarding the verse, \u201cAnd the earth was corrupt before G-d,\u201d (Bereshit, 5:11,) if … Continue reading “The Zohar on Tikkun HaBrit – Part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62109,"featured_media":1369414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_joinchat":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[83792],"tags":[19831,24676,20658,19837,19846,34505,19823,44682,41606],"author_post":[14301],"new_serie":[86777],"class_list":["post-300840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiness-for-men-and-women","tag-brit","tag-yesod","tag-shmirat-habrit","tag-kedusha","tag-personal-holiness","tag-pgam-habrit","tag-sexuality","tag-spilling-seed","tag-tikkun-habrit","author_post-tzvi-fishman","new_serie-secret-of-the-brit"],"acf":{"intro_text":"

The holy teachings of the Zohar, where we learn what Rebbe Shimon Bar Yochai and his disciples say about Shmirat HaBrit, the major...<\/p>\n","breslev_id":"8191","post_views_count":"1842","updatetime":"01\/01\/0001","serialid":"9","serialnumber":"8","special_content_in_the_post":"none","meta_title":"The Zohar on Tikkun HaBrit - Part 2","meta_description":"The holy teachings of the Zohar, where we learn what Rebbe Shimon Bar Yochai and his disciples say about Shmirat HaBrit, the major...","paragraph_first":"","paragraph_second":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1369414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300840"},{"taxonomy":"author_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/author_post?post=300840"},{"taxonomy":"new_serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breslev.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/new_serie?post=300840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}