"Introduction to the #Zohar: The Wisdom of Truth by #Rabbi #YehudaLeibHaLeviAshlag addresses with extraordinary precision the questions serious learners carry but rarely find answered: what #Torah and #mitzvot are actually for, why we suffer, how the soul relates to G-d, what the Zohar is and why it matters now. The #BaalHaSulam wrote this from inside the catastrophe. In his final section he writes that all the glory of #Israel in #Poland and #Lithuania has been reduced to a handful of refugees in the #HolyLand, and that it falls to those who remain – #sharithapletah – the surviving remnant, to repair what has been broken. That weight runs through every word.

He opens with six questions, none of them rhetorical..."

https://jewishpress.com/the-ladder-is-not-the-goal/

"#JosephAlbo: Collected #Writings, #edited by #ShiraWeiss, is an important and welcome contribution to the study of #medieval #Jewish #philosophy, making the thought of the #Spaniard Joseph #Albo (1380-1444) newly accessible to contemporary readers.

Bringing together a full presentation of #Sefer #haIkkarim along with Albo’s lesser-known responsum, this volume offers both breadth and depth, illuminating a thinker often overshadowed by figures like #Maimonides (1138-1204) and his own teacher, #HasdaiCrescas (1340-1410/11). The #book is 1753 pages long, and contains the original #Hebrew on the left-hand pages and an easy-to-read modern #English #translation on the right.

Albo’s approach to #Judaism diverged from Maimonides ‘ emphasis on rationalism. He was influenced by #Crescas, who emphasized faith and the observance of #mitzvot (divine commands), an easier form of Judaism than the rigors of Maimonides’ rationalism."

https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2026/03/20/an-important-easy-to-read-philosophical-book/

The Chafetz Chayim's Affirmative Mitzvah 3:
To love God.

As 'obvious' as this one might seem, I feel like it goes under the radar. Or at the very least, gets overlooked. Taken as given. A baal teshuva looking to get himself speedily acquainted with the whys and wherefores might say: "Well, of course, 'love', yadda yadda yadda. Now what nusach do I use for Sim Shalom?"

I often find myself guilty of this - more concerned with the external hurdles than the internal ones. Not wanting to stand out in the wrong way. But if you are to have a relationship with God at all, what does that really entail without love? Your relationship with God can't be going through the motions. It's not a marriage of convenience. You can't just have the fear either, because although hollow fearlessness can accompany carelessness, a loveless fear sounds like the worst of both worlds.

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#Judaism #Mazeldon #Mitzvot

The Chafetz Chayim's Affirmative Mitzvah 2:
To know that God is one.

Judaism, as you may have heard, is monotheistic. There is only one unmoved mover.

This has a lot of knock-on effects, one being that it prevents splitting. Take Job. You can't blame everything on the adversary just because he suggested the test, because God let it to go ahead. He created the world of Job as a happy man and a miserable man. He's responsible for both. He is not only the 'God of good things'.

Now, I don't mean to make God sound like Marilyn Monroe. It's not that if you can't handle him at his worst, you don't deserve him at his best. It's the human determination to anthropomorphise everything, and we do it to God the most. Even 'he' is just shorthand, after all.

It's that your connection to God, and knowing of God, has to be with a God that is not a figurehead to an activity or a thing or an ideology. God just *is*. God is a fact of life that we adjust to, and not vice versa.

#Judaism #Mazeldon #Mitzvot

Chafetz Chayim Affirmative Mitzvah 1:
To know that God exists.

The mitzvot are a list of actions, some encouraged and some outlawed. So for the very first one to be to 'know' something doesn't seem very active... right?

I argue that to 'know' is an action, much in the same way that you only 'know' your feet are on the ground when you actively contemplate that fact. It's the affirmative opposite of 'don't think of a pink elephant'!

We go to shul to participate, not just listen. We say the Amidah silently to ourselves, therefore we experience it individually.

We build our Judaism actively, never passively. If an atheist questions God's existence, they are more religiously engaged than the ambivalently observant. If a Jew meditates on the existence of God, in aspects infinite or tangible or colossal in scale, then that act is a mitzvah.

Hey, you might look the same as when you meditate on what you to eat for lunch, but it's a lot more spiritually potent.

#Judaism #Mazeldon #Mitzvot

I feel the mitzvot - as in the concept of us having a specific list of them - has been especially present around me a lot lately. Because of this I'm going to be focusing my daily study on them, one by one.

Specifically the Chafetz Chayim's list of those that are still observable today, as right now I don't want to focus on the specifics of temple sacrifice...

...and particularly the affirmative ones, so I don't spend 20 days zooming in on what exactly constitutes incest.

Wish me luck!

#Judaism #Mazeldon #Mitzvot