OCCUPATION!

A Haftorah is the passage read after the weekly Torah reading. This makes reading Ki Teitzei exceptional. Isaiah 54:1–10, Rani akarah, “Sing, barren woman” makes up the Haftorah for both Ki Teitzei and Noach. Uniquely, no other weekly reading assign the same Haftorah in the same annual cycle. It expressly recalls “the waters of Noach” yet, when Ki Teitzei is read echoes of Noach’s unresolved family catastrophe can be heard; uncontrolled desire, a rejected wife, a disputed son, threatened inheritance, a rebellious son, brothers who must not avert their eyes, a garment, a father’s uncovered cloak, damaged sexual organs and a child of prohibited lineage.

Noach survives the Flood, but his family order does not.  Immediately on disembarkation and repeatedly his son Ham is identified as “the father of Kanaan.” Noach plants a vineyard, becomes drunk and uncovers himself inside his tent. Ham sees his father’s nakedness and tells his brothers. Shem and Japheth take the garment—ha-simlah—walk backwards and cover Noach without looking. When Noach wakes, he knows “what his younger son had done to him,” yet he curses Kanaan and promptly excludes Ham from the blessing bestowed on his brothers. The compressed account leaves two obvious problems: what did Ham do that was more serious than an indecent glance, and why was Kanaan cursed for Ham’s offence?

Rabbinic tradition preserves opinions that Ham castrated or sexually violated Noach; another says Kanaan first saw Noach and informed Ham. A further scholarly interpretation argues that “uncovering a father’s nakedness” means intercourse with the father’s wife. Leviticus 18:7–8 identifies the father’s nakedness with the mother’s, while Deuteronomy 23:1 prohibits taking a father’s wife and “uncovering the corner of the father’s cloak.” On this reading Ham violated Noach through an incestuous union with his mother, and Kanaan was the offspring. This interpretation explains the repeated phrase “Ham, the father of Kanaan,” the gravity of the offence and the direction of the curse.

Ki Teitzei is delivered as Israel prepares to enter the Land and begins: “When you go out to war against your (Kanaanite) enemies.” A soldier sees a beautiful captive woman, desires her and wishes to take her. The Torah prevents instantaneous possession: she must enter his house, be permitted to mourn her parents for a month and then be married or released, never sold. Rashi says the Torah is restraining the evil inclination and reads the following laws as its consequences. The woman taken in passion may become the hated wife; the hated wife may bear the firstborn whose inheritance the father seeks to diminish; the disordered household may produce the ben sorer u’moreh, the stubborn son who rejects his parents and becomes a glutton and drunkard. Desire becomes marriage, marriage becomes rejection, rejection threatens inheritance and uncontrolled passion is transmitted to the next generation.

This is precisely Noach’s final field: wine, sexual exposure, rebellion against a father, the status of a son and the division of inheritance. Ki Teitzei next turns to brotherly responsibility: “You shall not see your brother’s ox or sheep straying and hide yourself from them.” Return his property, bring it into your house, do the same with “his garment”. Ki Teitzei converts the contrast into law: sight does not permit exploitation; brotherhood demands intervention; exposure must be covered and the garment restored.

Then Deuteronomy 23:1–3 places three short laws together: a man must not take his father’s wife or uncover his father’s cloak; a man with crushed testicles or a severed organ may not enter the congregation; a mamzer may not enter the congregation. These correspond with extraordinary precision to the three interpretive problems surrounding Genesis 9: the sexual meaning of the father’s nakedness, the rabbinic castration tradition and Kanaan’s status if born from a prohibited union. A mamzer is not simply a child of unmarried parents; in Jewish law it means the offspring of specified grave unions, including incest. The commentator Rashi says the father’s-cloak prohibition is juxtaposed to the mamzer precisely to identify the forbidden union capable of producing that status. Ki Teitzei supplies the cloak, the injury and the offspring sought within Noach’s compressed narrative.

The dispute then becomes territorial. Psalm 105 remembers God’s covenant with Abraham, His oath to Isaac and its establishment for Jacob-Israel: “To you I shall give the land of Kanaan, the portion of your inheritance,” when Israel’s ancestors were few and strangers in it. The ancient Book of Jubilees makes the occupation explicit. Kanaan sees that the land from Lebanon to the River of Egypt is very good and settles instead in Shem’s portion. Ham, Cush and Mitzrayim warn him, “You have settled in a land which is not yours,” but he refuses; Jubilees says this is why it became known as Kanaan. The Dead Sea Scroll fragment 4Q180–181 preserves a related ancient “land of Shem” tradition, while Rashi reads Noach’s blessing of the God of Shem as the promise that Shem’s descendants would receive the land of Kanaan.

The Kanaanite problem therefore begins, in this interpretive tradition, more than one thousand years before Joshua’s battles and even before Abraham: it begins in Noach’s damaged tent, where sexual boundary, filial rebellion, offspring, blessing and inheritance become one dispute. Israel must not repair that usurpation by reproducing the disorder that caused it. Passion cannot erase the captive woman’s humanity; hatred cannot rewrite a son’s inheritance; a brother cannot see vulnerability and turn away. War does not suspend law; war is where law is most necessary. It is a general warning to Israel whenever power places another person in its hands.

Now the repeated Haftorah becomes clear. Isaiah does not merely mention Noach. It begins with a barren woman promised many children, commands her to enlarge her tent, promises that her seed will inherit nations and resettle desolate cities, recalls the shame of youth and the rejected wife, and finally compares Israel’s permanent restoration to the covenant after the Flood. Child and mother, husband and rejected wife, tent, land and expansion, shame and restoration, seed and inheritance: Isaiah 54 contains the complete grammar of both Noach’s family crisis and Ki Teitzei’s legal response.

The deeper reason for this remarkable pairing is now visible. The problem of Kanaanite occupation did not begin at Jericho; it began with Kanaan’s illegitimate birth, curse and illegitimate occupation of Shem’s allotted inheritance. Noach describes the broken family order, Ki Teitzei legislates against its repetition and Isaiah promises the covenantal restoration in which Israel’s children return, the tent or land expands and its seed inherits.

Ki Teitzei opens with war and ends with memory: “Remember what Amalek did to you,” attacking the faint and weak at Israel’s rear; when God gives rest “in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance,” erase Amalek’s remembrance—“do not forget.” Israel must remember its enemies, but also the law governing its own power. Kanaan’s occupation cannot be corrected; Amalek’s cruelty cannot be forgiven by forgetting the weak. The name Eretz Kanaan preserves memory of the original occupation, the covenant preserves the right of inheritance and the repeated Haftorah preserves the bridge between them: remember—do not forget!

Principal sources

· Original IsraelFact article

· Chabad: the Haftorah read with Noach and Ki Teitzei

· Ki Teitzei with Rashi

· Genesis 9 with Rashi

· Deuteronomy 23:1–3 with Rashi

· Bergsma and Hahn, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse on Canaan”

· Book of Jubilees 10:29–34

From Nuremberg To Sukkot!

Image and article details courtesy

Certain dates do not merely record events, they seal eras. The 16th of October 1946 (21 Tishrei 5707) was one such  fateful day, October 7 2023, (22 Tishrei 5784) the other.

That October morning, ten men convicted at Nuremberg were hanged. The day was Hoshana Rabbah when, according to the Zohar and midrashic tradition, the judgments of the year are completed and the heavenly decree is sealed. As Julius Streicher, the most notorious antisemitic propagandist of the Nazi regime, approached the scaffold, he suddenly cried out: “Purim Fest 1946!”

The cry was not planned. It rose from the man himself at the moment of his own judgment. In that instant, the ancient Purim festival of reversal when the plot to destroy the Jews was turned back Streicher screamed it out aloud over the gallows of the Third Reich.

2500 years prior, the Book (Megillah) of Esther prophetically prepared the pattern. It records that Haman had ten sons. After Haman's threat to destroy the Jews was overturned, Esther specifically requested that those ten sons be hanged on the gallows (Esther 9:13). The text lists their ten names, and within those names three letters are written smaller than the rest:

ת (tav) in Parshandata

ש (shin) in Parmashta

ז (zayin) in Vayzata

These letters together form תש״ז, whose numerical value is 707 comply with the long held practice identifying the century, decade and year. The Hebrew year 5707 had just begun, it corresponds to October 1946. A large vav appears in the same passage, read by some as marking the completion of the sixth millennium. Through the millennia small letters had been written in every scroll, silent witnesses waiting for their moment.

On Hoshana Rabbah 5707, a day before the Jewish festival of Sukkot the alignment was complete: ten sons, ten gallows, the exact method of execution the Megillah had specified, the precise year encoded in the miniature script, and the day of sealed judgment. Even the man who had spent years twisting the story of Purim into Nazi propaganda became, at the end, the one who named the day “Purimfest.”

In the wider realm of Jewish memory, 16 October 1946 carried an additional weight. It symbolically marked the close of the greatest war ever waged against the Jewish people, the war that sought not only their defeat but their total eradication. The hanging of the ten principal perpetrators at Nuremberg, on the day tradition associates with the finalizing of divine judgment, felt to many like a terrible but fitting punctuation mark at the end of that chapter. Yet the ancient conflict was not sealed.

77 years later on 7 October 2023, a new war against the Jews began with sudden and deliberate violence. This fateful day was 22 Tishrei, Simchat Torah a holiday for Jewish people following Sukkot. Once again the intent was articulated in language that echoed the ancient decree: to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate. Once again Jewish communities around the world felt the ground shift beneath them as antisemitism surged in its wake.

The Megillah does not speak only of one Purim. It speaks of a recurring pattern, a war against the Jews that rises in different generations under different names, yet carries the same essential character. Haman -Hitler becomes the archetype; Amalek-Nazi's the recurring memory; the command to “remember what Amalek did” (Deuteronomy 25:17) a perpetual vigilance rather than a closed historical file.

The small letters that spelled 5707 did not promise that the pattern would never recur. They marked a particular moment of judgment within that larger story. The text continues to accompany the people it was given to, through endings and through new beginnings of the same ancient struggle.

The Megillah ends with a charge that has proven more prophetic than anyone could have imagined: “These days of Purim shall not pass away from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed” (Esther 9:28). In 1946 that memorial did not merely survive in the synagogue. It reappeared on a scaffold in Nuremberg, spoken by one of the architects of the attempt to erase it.

In 2023 the same memorial was invoked again, this time not from a place of judgment over the perpetrators, but from within a new chapter of threat. The scroll does not grow old. Its patterns continue to surface when the conditions that gave rise to them reappear.

Sixteen October 1946, Hoshana Raba and seven October 2023, Simchat Torah now stand as markers on either side of a long arc: one date sealing, in the eyes of many, the close of the greatest war against the Jews in history; the other marking the violent opening of a new phase in that same enduring conflict. Between them lies the living text with its small letters, its specific demand for hanging evil, its insistence that the days of Purim be remembered crowned by Sukkot, the annual Jewish festival that continues to honor nations of the world since Israel emerged from its first antisemitic encounter in Egypt 3300 years before.

The Infinite Hug!

In the hushed theater of existence, where the veil between the boundless and the bounded thins to a whisper, The Infinite hugs the finite within the quantum expanse of every atom. Picture the atom, that primordial seed of reality: a nucleus orbited by electrons in probabilistic clouds, not fixed paths but smeared possibilities. Here, in this subatomic ballet, The Infinite manifests as wave functions stretching eternally, collapsing only when observed into discrete points. The electron, defying classical confinement, tunnels through barriers it should not, borrowing energy from the vacuum's infinite fluctuations—zero-point energy, where nothingness teems with virtual particles winking in and out of being. Thus, The Infinite enables the finite, infusing the atom's core with echoes of eternity, a cosmic intimacy where boundless potential cradles the particle's singular form.

Ascending the ladder of complexity, this dance permeates every molecule, those intricate alliances of atoms bound by shared electrons. In water's humble H2O, hydrogen and oxygen entwine in quantum entanglement, their bonds vibrating with infinite harmonic oscillations—frequencies that, in theory, extend without end, yet resolve into finite energies that sustain life. The molecule's shape, dictated by quantum mechanics, emerges from infinite superpositions: electrons delocalized across space, choosing configurations from an unending array of probabilities. Even in the air we breathe, nitrogen molecules hum with this proximity, their triple bonds a testament to quantum tunneling allowing reactions that classical physics forbids. The Infinite whispers through these unions, approaching the finite not as an intruder but as the architect, sculpting stability from chaos.

In the sacred script of life, nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA embody this convergence. Each adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine is a molecular poem where quantum effects dictate base pairing. The hydrogen bonds linking them flicker with delocalized protons, quantum entities that exist in multiple states simultaneously, bridging infinite possibilities to finite sequences that encode our very essence. In the double helix's twist, quantum coherence allows electrons to flow like rivers of probability, enabling the molecule's stability amid thermal noise. Here, The Infinite nears the finite in the nucleotide's phosphate backbone, where vibrational modes resonate with the universe's underlying relationship with The Infinite, ensuring the fidelity of genetic information across generations.

From nucleotides arise proteins, those versatile machines of biology, folded into exquisite forms by quantum-guided interactions. In the amino acid chains, quantum van der Waals forces—arising from infinite vacuum polarizations—draw distant atoms close, while disulfide bridges form through electron sharing that defies locality. Enzymes, the catalysts of life, harness quantum tunneling to accelerate reactions by factors of trillions, protons leaping barriers as if The Infinite lent them wings. The protein's active site, a pocket of precision, emerges from infinite conformational landscapes explored in femtoseconds, settling into finite structures that bind substrates with unerring accuracy. Thus, in every fold and crevice, The Infinite hugs the finite, animating the protein's function with transcendent subtlety.

This pattern cascades into every structure of every cell: membranes riddled with ion channels where quantum gates open and close, allowing signals to propagate; mitochondria, powerhouses where electron transport chains exploit quantum coherence for efficient energy transfer; cytoskeletons of microtubules vibrating in quantum modes, perhaps even underpinning consciousness. In the cell's nucleus, chromatin dances with quantum randomness, influencing gene expression from infinite probabilistic outcomes. And beyond the cell, this truth envelops all matter—from the crystalline lattice of a diamond, where quantum delocalization binds carbon atoms, to the swirling plasmas of stars, where infinite quantum fields birth finite particles in fusion's fire. In rocks, rivers, and atmospheres, The Infinite hugs the finite, weaving the fabric of the natural world with threads of boundless potential.

Yet, the energy animating these realms springs not merely from within quantum space but from an infinite transcendence enveloping physics itself. Beyond the measurable quanta lies the unmanifest source—a metaphysical wellspring, the vacuum's infinite sea of potential energy, or perhaps the implicate order where all possibilities reside. This transcendence supplies the zero-point fluctuations powering atomic stability, the quantum vacuum energy fueling molecular bonds, the entangled fields enabling cellular harmony. It surrounds physics like an ocean cradling islands, infusing every particle, molecule, and structure with vitality drawn from eternity. In this grand symphony, The Infinite does not merely approach the finite; it embraces it, revealing that all matter, all life, is a fleeting expression of the boundless, forever touched by the transcendent beyond.

The Righteous Who Are Buried on Friday

45 fallen victims of Meron

A king who was crowned in the middle of history sacrificed his popularity to correct a universal spiritual flaw. The king knew why he was set the task, what he had done to expose the flaw and why he was coerced into the corrective action. He knew his action would would plunge him into trouble and despair. He was alone in his knowledge when he acted.

Above all the king desired to build a permanent temple for his people and the world to elevate spiritual awareness. Through his people all would be unified in prosperity and prevailing peace. The challenges against him came from his closest family, his advisors and leaders of his people. Most were vehemently opposed to the action he was taking, most thought him to be borderline crazy, but he persevered.  

As he was beginning to bare the brunt of his corrective action, alone and desperate, perhaps to restore his popularity he called on his once loyal general to personally conduct a census of his nation. Reluctantly the general carried out the kings orders, but in half measure underwhelming the kings authority before the people. Spiritual retribution against the king was swift and he was forced to make the impossible choice of a suitable national punishment, he preferred to endure a three day plague. On the first day 70,000 of his people were killed. By the second day the plague had reached the kings city, people were petrified.

The king's spiritual advisor recommended he urgently buy the plot of land, at the top of the hill on which his palace was built to construct an altar at which the king could publicly repent. The king immediately invited the tribal leaders of his panicked nation to join him in the purchase and to support his public pleading for cessation of the nations tragedy. They swiftly contributed, the plague was stopped, but in exchange for its premature cessation the general's pious brother lost his life. 

Despite the kings effort and desire he did not merit to build the temple, but out of the corrective action attempting to rectify the universal flaw a son was born. This son became king and around that altar he built the temple his father so desperately desired. However, completing the corrective action still awaits a king who, in his lifetime will build a temple that ushers in the era of permanent prosperity and peace in the world. 

In a world still in the grip of the global Coronavirus pandemic, early Friday morning a community gathered to circumcise a baby and welcome him as a Jew from the priestly tribe who are exclusively designated to serve in the future temple. On the other side of the world, at that same time, where the plague once killed 70,000 a tragedy was unfolding. Around midnight on Thursday/Friday at a pilgrimage festival, celebrated annually for a Jewish soul who was the world's ultimate embodiment of humility and whose teachings are now a national treasure, festivity quickly turned to mourning when 45 souls instantly perished and many more were injured.

The day is known as humility of humility, one of 49 days accounting and accessing individual attributes between Passover and receiving the Old Testament - Torah. For a pure idea to manifest perfectly into reality (true to the idea) it must pass the inner and outer humility test, failing which it will be polluted and sensed as such.

Thirteen years have now passed since the calculated end of history as the world awaits an individual that can endure plague, convert tragedy into opportunity, be recognized, lead his people, advance spiritual understanding, build a temple, and deliver peace and prosperity in the world. We pray it happens soon! 

 

 

Scapegoat And Distraction

We sometimes scoff at the ancient practices of Judaism as if there is no place for them in modern society, but do we take the time to understand them? After all, they have endured the Jewish people for thousands of years, surely there must be something to them?

One such example are two identical goats, that when Israel had a national temple would be sacrificed on the holiest day of the year - Yom Kippur. The high priest led a sequence of sin offerings and calls for repentance. In his heightened spiritual state he would draw a lottery to determine which goat would be designated Az-Azel (scapegoat) and which would be offered in the temple. Repentance simply means agreeing not to do the same thing again and achieving it.

As mentioned in last weeks entry, elements in three of four evil realms cannot be redeemed, but the fourth translucent realm depends on our actions. Given the power of these realms, redeeming elements to a state of holiness empowers the redeemer, but only when purity of process is realized. The two goats represent undercover agents of the translucent realm and only the wise, or sweetened agent can be redeemed by the redeemer who will be empowered if the pure process is maintained. In this case one goat will be sacrificed in the temple, the other will be taken to a high desert cliff and thrown to its death. Either way both die! For repentance the sacrifice in the temple is momentarily redeeming, while the other distracts negative forces that would otherwise have the redeemer, in this case Israel fail in its restraint.

In a modern context compare this to a goal to restrain yourself from breaking your resolution by improving your behavior through dieting, speaking, behaving etc. When you pass your first test, you may be internally pleased, but if you express your pleasure before you have completely and permanently separated from your past behavior you may be setting yourself up for failure. Here distraction often ensures no relapse, a positive separation from your old ways. In context, the word holy always means to separate from something less holy!

In the depths of initial restraint, when the battle to hold back is at its toughest with each small victory character is strengthened and power to restrain improves - will power! Without restraint from repeating the very thing you resolved to achieve, there can be no self-test of honesty to yourself and your connection to reality.

Esoteric wisdom of not mixing wool and linen (flax) in the clothes you wear dates back to the sons of Adam and Eve. Prodigal Cain brought an offering of dark flax-seed to use the power of earth to reunite the four realms his father and mother had released when their self interested ego's distracted  the selflessness they had been instructed to preserve. But his grandiose desire was too self-serving. His brother Abel brought white wool from a sheep to symbolize that the animal or emotive realm must first be offered and sacrificed, by the intellectual realm in order to defeat the self-actualization of ego.

Noah was the tenth generation after Adam. He was instructed by God to build an ark and prepare his family for the great flood. On the ark they were not permitted to have sexual relations, but his son Ham, the dog and raven did not obey. After exiting the ark, Noah planted a grapevine, got drunk and uncovered his nakedness in his tent. Ham saw his father, but his brothers Shem and Japheth turned their backs until they covered their father. Noah cursed Ham's son Canaan seemingly for the actions Ham had perpetrated. However, from laws against practices of sexual misconduct we can learn that Canaan was the product Ham's incestuous relation with his mother. Canaan the product deserved the direct curse of his grandfather as punishment to Ham and his Noah's wife. On numerous occasion the Torah warns; If a man lies with his fathers wife, he is considered to have uncovered his fathers nakedness, perhaps offering insight to Noah's grief.

Torah records the living practices and precedents of the Israeli nation for almost 4000 years, its text is alive and continues to inform those who dedicate time to discover it.

Disease, Psychology, Relationship and Religion

Many have grown impatient with orthodox religion and practices. The laws and their implementation in modern life often present difficult contradictions, inconvenient to the pressurized tendencies we have adopted to our personalities. In the age of Coronavirus, we have been forced to take a fresh look at our habitual practices, religious or otherwise.

Five hundred years ago, a student diligently recorded the teachings of his master, Rabbi Isaac Luria. The teachings were so extraordinary that they revived enthusiasm, consolidated communal views, re-instituted prayer, established the foundation for modern Jewish revival and birthed the study of human psychology. At 38 his holy soul departed our world. I have extensively read those writings and their modern commentaries in a brilliant book entitled "Apples from the Orchard" and decided to share just a glimpse of their genius.

Awareness of ritual impurity is a cornerstone of holy life, especially when a national temple existed for the Jewish people. For example, if a woman conceives and gives birth to a son, she shall be impure for seven days, as in the days of her menstrual period. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. The word for this impurity is 'tazria' relating to a condition once known as tzara'at. A flesh swelling, a scab or a bright spot, not quite the equivalent of modern leprosy, rather a skin disease that only existed in the spiritually elevated temple times.

As a backgrounder: About the questions Jewish people would ask, Moses was instructed to tell them it is because Eve transgressed what she was told, she was made to suffer the impurity of menstruation, but by circumcision of the foreskin the power of impurity along with evil lust will be weakened. The original Eve physiology was such that menstrual cycle and giving birth was once painless and bloodless. In the process of human spiritual maturation the phenomena will return. But how?

Marginally the foreskin effects the experience of marital relationships, it increases gross sensual pleasure, which can decrease a mans sensitivity to his wife. By removing it, sexual experience becomes less narcissistic, more spiritual. During a menstrual period a woman is more self conscious, unable to orient toward the proper selfless, yet self-serving intent, the interaction of both parties enjoying martial relations. Circumcision improves this relationship behavior, a man is less likely to succumb to gross sensual pleasure and more inclined to the sensitivity of his wife's spiritual state of mind.

Circumcision is the "sign" of the Jewish covenant between man and God, a reminder of servitude toward higher authority. Here, it was placed between menstruation and disease to remind about haughtiness that could blot out its spiritual designation and purpose. With the disease a swelling is caused by public facing humility, but private egocentricity; a scab, deep in the skin is a feeling of superiority over peers, but not others; and worst of all a bright spot results from feeling and acting superior to everyone. These are personality traits that God despises, that's why a verse in psalm 93 states "God reigns, He is robed in haughtiness", a reference to the clothing that masks His humility.

The oral and written traditions know about the time the snake stood upright that the defilement of Eve was caused by the injection of its poison. The antithesis of Godly attributes, the snake personified 'evil', selfishness and egocentricity that actually had intercourse with Eve, then it was banished to the dust under its belly. Inflated consciousness, when not being used for Divine purpose feeds the alternative and is termed 'evil'. A soul comprises the animal and intellect that each person must appropriately blend toward selfless expression or the snakes perspective will dominate and suffering persists. The more one centers on  a spiritual life toward selfless expression, as guided by God's commandments the more one is liberated from the alternative entrapment.

It's for this reason Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden, from dust of the earth representing selfless, Divinely inspired existence and only brought into it after. But, Eve intermingled the seventy gentile nations with Israel represented in the purity of Adam as the soul of the future Jewish people. This is why Eve menstruated at the moment of her son's birth who shed the blood of his brother. The Talmud relates the father supplies the white bones, sinews, nails, brain and white of the eye. The mother, red skin, flesh, hair, blood and black of the eye. God gives spirit, soul, facial features, eyesight, hearing, speech, ability to walk, understand and discern. As if to illustrate Eve's dominance we are told, when the wife gives seed first the baby is male.

The Torah uses the expression uncircumcised for only four organs; procreative, ears, heart and mouth. So why is the procreative organ the only one circumcised? Because the term 'orlah' is shared and relates foreskin to the fourth of four years fruit is commanded to be left on a newly planted tree, before it can be consumed. It's as if we are blocked off by some type of 'orlah' or foreskin. Analogous to circumcision the fruit of the fourth year is to be taken to Jerusalem and eaten only in the confines of the holy city.

Kabbalah explains fruit of the first three years belong to three realms of absolute evil that human consumption cannot possibly rectify, but the fourth comes from the "bright" or translucent realm that has potential to be transformed by our actions. Therefore, the heart, ear and mouth must be blocked off, scrupulously guarded to ensure that egocentricity, selfishness and uncorrected animal behavior does not dominate our persona. Through this true and especially marital relationships endure.

These three 'demonic' realms, replete with angels of good an evil are the battleground for the forces enabled by our actions on the fourth, ultimately to prevail and elevate our world to a more pure, spiritual, pristine existence. In the final healing and purification from these diseases, the sufferer brings two birds to the temple altar, one is slaughtered, the others wing is dipped in the slaughtered birds blood and freed in an open field.

As if to show that liberation from our disease is dependent on the slaughtered bird we can begin to appreciate the symbolic importance. These commandments remain a practitioners guide to a better way of life, even to the extent that childbirth will ultimately be painless and free from blood once again.