Let us see one more important introduction to the Bible. The first three words of the Bible are “In the beginning God created” (א א ר ית בּ ׁ אש ר בּ-ים ִ ה ֹ ל). The continuation of the verse is “the heavens and the earth” (ָּ מַ יִם וְאֵ ת הָ אָ רֶ ץ ׁ אֵ ת הַ ש), but the first three words are the words of the act of creation itself. The numerical value of these three words is 1,202.
1202 is also the exact value (gematria) of the names of the three parts of the Bible: Torah (ה ר ֹ תּ ו), Nevi'im (ים ִ יא ִ ב נ), and Ketuvim (ים ִ תוּב ְ כּ), which in English are known as the Five books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings. This in itself is an amazing equality between the names of the three parts of the Bible and the three first words of the Bible. It means that the creation of the world is performed through the channels of the Divine letters, the word of God as it appears in all three parts of the Bible. As we explained, the three parts of the Bible correspond to the three mental faculties, which then descend into all the emotional levels of the soul, both mind and heart connected.
Abraham as the Father of All Nations
There is another very important phrase that appears in Genesis in relation to the first of the three patriarchs, Abraham, who is the father of all righteous Gentiles. The Torah explicitly states that Abraham is “the father of all nations” (יִם ֹ ן גּו ֹ אָ ב הָ מו). How is he the father of all nations? When the nations believe in the God of Abraham and follow the way of the God of Abraham, then all the nations are the children of Abraham. He is their father. Not only is he the first patriarch of the Jewish people, but then he is also the father of all believing nations.
Usually, one speaks of righteous gentiles as Bnai Noach, literally meaning “children of Noah.” The question can be asked, why do we call them the children of Noah? Why not call them Bnai Adam, the children of Adam, the first man? To be a good child of Adam is to be what's called a mensch, a good person, an honest individual. To be a child of Adam does not mean that a person observes any of the commandments that were finalized and given to Noah. It just means being a good human being.
Actually, the first thing demanded of us, is to be a good son of Adam. The sages teach that, “Civility precedes Torah” (רָ ה ֹ אֶ רֶ ץ קָ דְ מָ ה לַ תּ ו ְ דֶּ רֶ ך). Being a good person in one's relationships with other people precedes even receiving the Torah. So first the person must be a Ben Adam, a mensch, a son of Adam. All of us must be Bnai Adam, children of Adam.
But then if we accept our role as children of Adam, if we know, if we learn that Noah and all his descendants, Noah followed the deluge, the flood, when all of humanity was destroyed except for him, except for Noah and his children. When he came out of the ark, he finalized, God gave him the final form of the seven commandments that God wants humanity, his children, to observe. Those who properly observe these seven commandments, are called Bnai Noach.
But we said that there is another level, a further level, which we can call an upgrade. What we are now explaining in this teaching is that the world was created so that humanity would upgrade from time to time. The children of Adam were intended to upgrade to become the children of Noah. Then the children of Noah are meant to upgrade and become the children of Abraham. This is something which is very real and very practical. It pertains to humanity, right now, this very day. All of humanity certainly is both able and deep down in its heart even desires to become children of Abraham. The Jewish people are known as Bnai Yisrael, meaning “the children of Israel.” Israel is the higher name given to the patriarch Jacob.
Bnai Yisrael means either born Jews or righteous Gentiles that convert fully to Judaism and become an integral part of the Nation of Israel and are also called Bnai Yisrael or “Children of Israel.” This is the final upgrade possible for humanity before the appearance of the King Messiah. At that time, we will all recognize that we are all children of God himself. All of these are upgrades possible for all human beings.
What we are now trying to explain is that the time has already come to use what we shall call new terminology. Instead of the customary term, Bnai Noah, we want everyone to become Bnai Abraham—sons of Abraham. That is what the Torah says. The Torah says that Abraham is the father of a multitude of nations (Av Hamon Goyim), the father of all nations.
From a Son of Noah to a Son of Abraham
What is the difference between being a Ben Abraham, a child of Abraham, a son of Abraham, or a daughter of Abraham, and being part of Bnai Noah? The difference is regarding the most essential of the seven commandments given to Noah—not to worship idols, not to bow down to idols, not to think that there is a plurality of gods. That is false, a lie, an illusion.
However, since the children of Noah are already commanded to believe in one God, we might think that there is no difference between the children of Noah and the children of Abraham? In fact, there is a big difference between the two. We find that one of the verses in Genesis, which describes Abraham, says that Abraham called out to the whole world, in the name of God, who is described as “Kel Olam” (אֵ ־ל לָם ֹ עו), which should be translated as “God-world.” God is not as we might expect “the God of the world,” which in Hebrew would read “Kel HaOlam” (אֵ ־ל לָם ֹ הָ עו). Meaning that according to Abraham’s call, God and the world are virtually identical. This is not meant to limit God in any way (saying that He is the world and nothing more), but rather to say that the world is a reflection of God Himself. The world is not separate from God, it is not an independent entity nor a separate reality.
Now, to be a Ben Noah, a child of Noah, one must believe in one and only one God. That means that you believe that no other power creates reality and no other power directs and leads reality. All providence is solely from one God. A Ben Noah believes that God is the creator of the entire universe, and can even to go on to believe, as taught in Chasidic philosophy by the Ba’al Shem Tov, that God creates the world every split second. This means that the process of creation is an ongoing process. A ben Noah can believe and even experience the world being created every second.
We are taught that young children can actually feel the continuous recreation of the universe. When you get older, there is a kelipah (a shell), as it were, that prevents you from directly experiencing recreation at every moment. But it is possible to do so. You just have to remove the shell, the barrier, and you can see. All of this can be a real experience and yet, a Ben Noah’s belief in God means that God and His Creation—God and the world—are not the same. There are two things. God creates the world. He created it in the past and He creates it in the present. So, there is God and there is the world. And God is one, meaning that only God creates the world and only God has providence over it. If you believe this, you are already considered a good gentile and you are a son of Noah.
But to be a son of Abraham, you must upgrade and take one step further by knowing that everything is one. That God is one with the world and He is in the world. What's more, the world is, in a sense, is within God himself. It is all God—Kel olam—God is world and there is no other. They are not two different entities: God and the world. If one comes to that realization and to this ultimate truth, then he has upgraded himself from being a son of Noah to becoming a son of Abraham.
From a Son of Abraham to a Son of Israel
But then a person can continue to upgrade himself or herself to become a son of Israel, part of Bnei Yisrael. Any righteous non-Jew can join the people of God, when he or she moves even further and recognizes that the one God has given commandments to humanity, to people, and to His chosen people He has given 613 commandments. He or she can then commit and dedicate themselves to perform these commandments righteously. Once he or she has proclaimed this before a court, they become a child of Israel, a Bnei Yisrael.
After that, the next stage is to reveal, in a totally revealed manner, that we are all sons of God, of the one God. And since God is one with the world, He is also one with us. In fact, He is first and foremost one with us.
Creation, the Bible, and Abraham’s Proclomation
In one of our earlier teachings, we said that there is another important phrase in the Torah that has the same values as the Torah’s first three words of the Torah, “In the beginning God created” (ים ִ ה ֹ־ל ֱ א א ר ית בּ ׁ אש ר בּ ) and the names of the three parts of the Bible, “Torah, Prophets, Writings” (ים ִ תוּב ִים כּ יא ִ ב ה נ ר ֹ תּו). This phrase is the one we have been describing Abraham, “[Abraham planted a tree in Beer Sheva] and he proclaimed there the Name of Havayah, God-world” (א ר ק ִּ יַ ו ם ל ֹ־ל עו ם י־הוה א ׁ ש ם בּ ׁ ש). Again, Abraham did not proclaim the Name of “the God of the world,” which would imply two separate entities, but “the God-world”—only one thing.
Now even more remarkable is that those last three words, “Havayah God-world” (־ י־הוה א ם ל ֹ ל עו ) have the exact same value as the word “He created” (א ר בּ). Meaning that the words that first three words, “he proclaimed there the Name of” (א ר ק ִּ יַ ו ם ׁ ש ם בּ ׁ ש ) have the same value as “In the beginning, God” (ית ׁ אש ר בּ ...ים ִ ה ֹ־ל ֱ א ). We see here a most beautiful and amazing three-way relationship between Creation—as described in the Bible’s first three words—and the three parts of the Bible, and Abraham calling out to all human beings that the God is the God-world.
God and Nature are the Same
Now note that Abraham’s proclamation includes two Names of God. The first name is Havayah, the Tetragrammaton, the essential Name of God, “[Abraham planted a tree in Beer Sheva] and he proclaimed there the Name of Havayah,” referring to God’s supernatural (or transcendent) aspect, as explained in one of our previous teachings. The second Name that Abraham used in his proclamation that God and the world are one is Kel (אֵ ־ל), which is actually the first two letters of God’s Name Elokim (הִ ים ֹ אֱ ־ל)—God’s imminent or natural aspect, the way in which He is one with nature. We can say that these first two letters of Elokim that make up Kel are the seed of Divinity revealing itself as nature. Thus, the Name Kel is the revelation that God and nature are the same.
Earlier, we described three different understandings of the relationship between God and Creation. The first is the normative understanding that the Torah’s first words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” means that God performed a one-off creation of our reality. According to this interpretation, creation was a one-time event. The second interpretation is Abraham’s God-world stance, where God and creation are essentially the same. The understanding that stands as an intermediate between these two poles is the continuous creation, whereby God is constantly creating reality at each and every moment anew.
The first interpretation imagines creation to be similar to the act of a carpenter making a chair. Once made, the chair continues to exist in its form independently of the carpenter. Likewise, once created, Creation continues to exist in its present form, seemingly without any dependence on the Creator. The second interpretation introduces the continual dependence of Creation upon the Creator. As such, Creation is nothing like the act of a carpenter making a chair. Without what is described as God’s word to create reality, nothing in reality can exist. And so, God’s word that brings it into being becomes an essential element of any part of Creation. In this second, intermediary interpretation, it is left to the observer to focus either on God’s word that sustains Creation, or to focus on the elements of Creation, whose sustaining utterance comes from God, and which therefore are dependent or nullified to Him. Still, there is no identity between God and Creation.
This becomes possible only according to Abraham’s God-world teaching. Identity between the two means that any particular element of Creation is not null and dependent on God’s utterance but is rather the expression of God’s absolute being.
Rahab’s Faith
A most powerful illustration of these three modes of faith in God as Creator can be found in the figure of Rahab, the woman of Jericho who aided Joshua’s spies. After Jericho was conquered, Rahab converted to Judaism and was married to Joshua himself. But, prior to that, when she spoke to Joshua’s spies she described her faith in God with the words, “for Havayah your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth below” (אֱ ־ י־הוה כִּי הֵיכֶם ֹ ל הוּא הִ ים ֹ אֱ ־ל ָּ מַ יִם ׁ בַּש מִ מּ ַ עַ ל וְעַ ל הָ אָ רֶ ץ מִ תּ ָ חַ ת ). As such, she was describing her awareness that God constantly sustains all that is above and below through His utterance. As such, she was a true “daughter of Abraham.”
In the Pentateuch, Moses uses an identical phrase to describe the faith expected from the Children of Israel but adds a few key words. He says, “Know this day and keep in mind that Havayah alone is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is no other” (וְיָדַעְתָּ ם ֹ וּ הַ י תָ ֵֹב ׁ וַהֲש ָ אֶל־לְבָבֶך כִּי י־הוה הוּא הִ ים ֹ הָ אֱ ־ל ָּ מַ יִם ׁ בַּש מִ מּ ַ עַ ל וְעַל הָ אָ רֶ ץ מִ תּ ָ חַ ת אֵ ין ד ֹ עו). The sages explain that the words added, “there is no other” in Hebrew indicate that not only is God sustaining all being through His continuous utterance, but that even that which is non-being is also God. That which is non-being is referred to as the “void” or “empty space” of Creation (ֹ חֲלָלו ֶל ׁ ש לָם ֹ עו) by the sages. This refers to non-being, or the “contraction” (tzimtzum) in Kabbalah, indicating that there is no place that is void of God and hence the “contraction” is only a metaphor, but in truth God is Omnipresent and even more so: God is one and the same as everything including the contraction. This is the higher faith of God-world believed by the Children of Israel. Why then is there a contraction? What is its purpose? Contraction, i.e., the metaphoric concealment of God’s presence, is needed by a person so that when they are nullified to God, they are included within the Divine. But, when the Jew knows that even the “void of Creation” is entirely God too, then the Contraction is no longer necessary. If we were to restate the previous statement using the terminology of the sages, we would say that even the “void of Creation” is “the Omnipresent” (ֹ מו ֹ מְקו ֶל ׁ ש לָם ֹ עו).
The sum of these two terms, “void of Creation” (ֹ לו ָ ל ֲ ח ל ֶ ׁ ש ם ָ ל ֹ עו) and Omnipresent (ֹ מו ֹ קו ְ מ ל ֶ ׁ ש ם ָ ל ֹ עו) is 1218, or the sum of the six permutations of the Torah’s first verb, “created” (א ר בּ). This verb also means “to present openly,” and thus Creation is the open presentation of God Himself.
