Shalom, u’vracha!

I was inspired to write this after recently reading a wonderful piece you can read here from my teacher, Rabbi Ebn Leader. In it, Rabbi Ebn compares and contrasts Van Gogh’s process of creating art with Rebbe Nachman’s thoughts on how prophesy creates a vision for a better world. In both cases, they use a combination of imagination together with observing what is real in the world.

After reading it, I noted that the content of Rabbi Ebn’s article was similar to an excerpt of Reb Zalman (you can read it in its original Hebrew here) from his Sefer, Yishm’ru Daat, pp. 62-63. I have decided to publish it along with Reb Zalman’s translation and commentary, taken from two recordings of Reb Zalman giving this piece over. May we together imagine and then bring about a better world, as we are in a very difficult time now,  כן יהי רצון במהרה בימינו אמן:

נשא את ראש בני וגו’, (במדבר ד’ ב’)

Raise a headcount of the children [of Israel] (Numbers 4:2).

נשיאות ראש, כדי שהשכל יהיה לבוש לנשמה השכל צריך להתפשט

Raising the head: In order that the sechel / the mind, the intellect, should be a garment for the soul, the sechel has to spread itself

ולהרחיב

and it has to make a lot of wide space.

“On the level of פשט / p’shat / the simple meaning, the נשיאות ראש in the beginning of the Book of Numbers is a counting and, the counting is always done with this phrase, naso et rosh / Raise a headcount.

“We can take the drash / interpretation a little further, and say that when a person is treated as just a number, their humanity is reduced; they become an object. And this was one of the first things that the Nazis did; they would take away the name of the person and reduce them to a number.

“But here, I am not talking about the p’shat. The word, naso, also means to lift. So how can we lift the head?”

על ידי (תהילים כ”ד ז’) שאו שערים ראשיכם — (משלי ל”א כ”ג) ונודע בשערים בעלה –

It does it by opening the gates of your head (Psalms 24:7). And in Mishlei (21:23) it says, “her husband is known in the gates.”

שערים ההשערות (ל’ ערות בשפעל)

And I translate the word שערים as השערות. It means the imaginal openings, from the word ערות, awakeness in the שפעל which puts a shin in front of that.

Here is how he explained his translation of this word, שערים / gates.

“We say in L’cha Dodi quoting Isaiah: הִתְעוֹרְרִי הִתְעוֹרְרִי / Awaken, awaken, arise and this is related to שער / Sha’ar a gate. Here too, underneath, you have ער / Er, awake. נער / Na’ar a lad, is somebody who stood watch; someone who was not sleeping, who would remain awake, Er.

“So now comes a text in Psalm 24, שְׂא֚וּ שְׁעָרִ֨ים | רָֽאשֵׁיכֶ֗ם וְ֖הִנָּֽשְׂאוּ פִּתְחֵ֣י עוֹלָ֑ם / You gates, lift your heads and be uplifted, you everlasting portals, which doesn’t make any sense in pshat. What can we do? How can we open the gates of the world so the King of glory shows up? So how can we deal with this?

“So, the point here is that if I’m going to hold the mind to past experience, I cannot reach anything outside of what I know from the past. If a person is held and kept to past experience, the gates remain closed. But when I can open up the gates of the imagination, the imaginal realm, as my teacher Reb Yosef Yitzchak used to talk about and as I read in the writings of Henri Corbin, then I can open to something new. It brings to mind how Albert Einstein used, what he called, Gedankenexperiments, to develop his theory of relativity because, there was was no other way to check them out; the only thing he could do it was to try the theory out in the imagination.

“So let me remove the limits, the boundaries that I have from past experience and see what it looks like if I do something different.”

When we don’t get answers to our questions, we can move beyond into the imagination, where we can feel God’s presence and strengthen our faith. An idea of God no matter how clear and well-defined, isn’t enough. Imagination can open gates of creativity where I ask the question, “What can I imagine an answer to be?”

And it  reaches beyond just being in the head. When I studied the below text of the Ari z’l from Sefer Etz Chaim, it took me into sensations (a shiver up the spine), feelings (excitement and happiness considering a state of light, balance, harmony, perfection and beauty), and intuition (a reality in God’s presence).

כי הנה נודע כי האור העליון למעלה למעלה עד אין קץ הנקרא אין סוף שמו מוכיח עליו שאין בו שום תפיסה לא במחשבה ולא בהרהור כלל ועיקר, והוא מופשט ומובדל מכל מחשבות, והוא קודם אל כל הנאצלים והנבראים ויצורים והנעשים, ולא היה בו זמן התחלה וראשית כי תמיד הוא נמצא וקיים לעד ואין בו ראש וסוף כלל

It is known that the supernal light, infinitely beyond, called Ein Sof / no End, it’s name demonstrates that it cannot be grasped in any way, neither by thought nor by any reflection whatsoever. And it is abstract and separate from all thoughts, and it preceded all created beings, both in heaven and below and it did not have a beginning or a starting point, for it always exists and endures forever, without any beginning or end.

כי מה שהנשמה מרגישה מן האור חולף ועובר,

What the neshama feels of the light goes away very quickly, it passes.

ובלי שהשכל יכול לארוז את השפע מתוך הבנה.

Very often the mind cannot hold onto it; it passes too quickly from the soul without the mind being able to wrap the shefa / the outflow, into understanding.

וצריך השכל להיות יותר עדין ומלומד בתורת הסוד

The sechel has to be more subtle and well-learned in the mystery teachings, of Kabbalah,

כדי להכיל את אור הנשפע.

in order to be able to contain the light that flows down.

כי כל התכונה של תורת הסוד

The whole basis in the way in which the teaching of mystery comes

אינה לתת למי שהוא חשיבות וגאוה רזא לי רזא לי,

is not for giving somebody a special reputation and pride “I have a secret! I have a secret!”

אלא לתת לשפע הקודש מושגים גמישים

Rather, it is to give elastic ideas to that holy flow that comes down,

גמישים is soft, gentle not hard, מושגים are ideas, concepts and Reb Zalman translates it as elastic ideas. The idea is that the concepts we have are just approximations of the realities the concept is trying to reach toward. In the case of all realities, we try and dress them into a concept as our way of holding them, but it doesn’t represent the full reality; it is incomplete. It’s like a snapshot of something, but the object of that snapshot is always alive and moving. So gamish / elastic is the way he describes it as still alive and moving. It means soft in contrast to a concept which has clear boundaries. We don’t want the mind to freeze it; rather, we want to add in the imagination and to bring in the emotions and sensations regarding what could be. They are all needed to help in the process of reaching toward a presence, toward a new reality.

בהם יכולה ההארה להתלבש בלבושי דיבור ומילים

so that this enlightenment that comes down could dress itself into garments of speech and words

שיש להם יחס לשורש נשמת האדם.

that have a connection to the root of the soul of the person.

“Because, if I put it in words that don’t speak to your soul; then it’s of no use. The language and the ideas into which you’re going to wrap the shefa / the divine outflow that comes has something to do with how the root of your soul operates because it’s filtering through you. Otherwise, all you have is a concept that won’t help you.”

ובזה צריכים גם לאמונה שתורת הסוד אמיתית היא,

For this, they have to also have the faith that the teachings of the mysteries [of kabbalah], are true,

אשר ממנה באה אותה ההשערה של הנשמה אל השכל.

with the effect that the Neshama’s imaginal opening of the gate comes into the mind’s [understanding].

As Reb Zalman states, the soul’s imagination is guided by what we have learned in kabbalah and hasidus.

כי לפעמים התורה והשפע באים ממקור בלתי מוסכם בין עמא דבר.

Sometimes the light comes from a place that doesn’t have the agreement of the people of the street

עמא are the people and דבר means outside.

And how can you tell when going against the grain of popular opinion is warranted. Reb Zalman says that it can be trusted if it comes through holding onto your connection to tradition, and to that which comes in of Hasidus and Kabbalah.

He was a pioneer who was listening to what was coming down regarding the Paradigm shift of our generation and the transformation required in all the world’s religions for the good of the planet and this went against popular beliefs. Eco-kashrut was at odds with halakha / Jewish Orthodox practice related to recycling, post-triumphalism was at odds with beliefs of g’ulah / redemption and moshiach / Messiah in Yiddishkeit, Gaia was at odds with a God who was the omni, omni. The list went on with regard to his ability to let his imagination inform his actions. He chose subtlety over conformance. 

לכן מי שמשתתף עם שבטו השייך לשורש נשמתו

If you are connected to your tribe, which has to do with the root of your soul,

שהם ג”כ מאמינים בשותפות באותם המושגים

and you also believe in the shared awareness in those concepts,

יכול גם להבין ע”י נשיאת ראש

you can then understand by lifting up your mind, your consciousness, your head,

באופן שההבנה תביא אותו גם להרגשה ולמעשים.

in such a way, then the understanding will bring you to feeling and to action.

To feel it, to experience it and to take action. Reb Zalman said:

“And that’s why Moshe counts the people according to their tribes. Because in each tribe there is a consensus of the people. When people ask me in what sense do I believe something is Halakhah, I keep saying it’s the consensus of the committed. The committed span different groups who believe in ways similar to those within their group and each group’s consensus matters; even if it differs from group to group.

“So if you are connected to your tribe, which has to do with the root of your soul, and you believe in those concepts which are a shared awareness between you and your tribe, then your neshama has found its tribe and you can reach an understanding that when you lift up your head, that understanding can lead you to knowledge, to feeling, and ultimately, to action.”

וזוּהי הלשון המשתפת של הרביים עם החסידים שלהם

And this is the language that connects the Rebbes with their Hasidim

שהרביים נושאים את ראשיהם לרמה יותר גבוה.

because the Rebbes lift up the consciousness of their Hasidim to a higher level

The Rebbes are participating, by which, Reb Zalman says, they become partners with their Hasidim so that, in that higher level, their Hasidim can receive what is coming down.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Faith, Hasidus, Participatory Epistemology, Reb Zalman says, The Hasid Says, Torah Portions, Yishmru Daat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.