Ariel Cohen Alloro – Lord’s Prayer, Our Father, Pater Nostre – אבינו שבשמים – Part 1 of 2

בס״ד

Ariel Cohen Alloro – Lord’s Prayer, Our Father, Pater Nostre – אבינו שבשמים – Part 1 of 2

“Our father…” – Cochmah

“Who art in Heaven…” – Binah

“Hallowed be your name…” – Daat

“Your kingdom come…” – Chesed

“Your will be done…” – Gevurah

“On Earth as it is in Heaven…” – Tiferet

“Give us this day our daily bread…” – Netzach

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us…” – Hod

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” – Yesod

“For yours is the Kingdom, the Gevurah, and the Tiferet.” – Malchut

Video Transcript:

“Shalom!

I have a request this week to talk about the ‘Lord’s prayer’ – the prayer of the New Testament, [and] of the Christians. “Our Father in Heaven…” Of course, the prayer is parallel to the Ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah, based on the concepts that are in the Bible. All the Kabbalah is based on things that are written in the Bible. So we start…

The prayer starts with “our Father.” Like we said many times, ‘Wisdom’ (חכמה), the ‘Yud’ (י) of the name of G-d, what’s called the ‘point of wisdom,’ is called ‘father.’ So Avinu, “‘our father,” will be ‘Wisdom’ (Cochma). 

Now the place of the father in heaven… The place is like the world, the heichal, the Temple, where the father goes in. This is the ‘mother,’ this is ‘Binah’ (understanding). So this is ‘Shebashamayim,’ “that is in Heaven.” Always the ‘world to come,’ the paradise, is related to the concept of the mother in Kabbalah. It’s like the root of the soul as thought, where the soul exists as thought. The neshama (soul) is called, ״nishmat Sha-kkai tevinem” (“the breath of the Almighty gives understanding;” Job 32:8). The neshama has to do with ‘understanding.’ So the place of the soul is what we call the mother, the Binah. Paradise like Gan Eden. ‘Gan Eden,’ ‘Olam Haba,’ all are concepts of the world to come, or what we call the place from where the soul came and to where the soul goes, from where we came and where we go. We came from the mother and we go back to the mother. We come from physical mother and we go back to spiritual mother. It’s the same concept. 

So “our father that is in heaven, your name will be holy (yitkadesh shimcha).” Here we have the concept of ‘holiness’ in ‘daat’ (knowledge) that is related to the ‘crown.’ Usually in Kabbalah, the concept of holiness is in ‘wisdom.’ Holiness and purity is father and mother, usually, but like we say many times, it’s always a switch between what we call the father and the son. They are always connected together and even in the Amidah (in the prayer of the Jews).

The first three blessings are parallel to Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov, the same three concepts. And the third blessing that is Yaakov’s is “Baruch ata hashem hakhel hakadosh (the holy G-d).” Holiness in our prayer appears in this place too. It’s interesting to see the comparison. The first prayer is ‘Magen Avraham.’ It’s the prayer related to ‘Avraham avinu.’ Abraham is from the word ‘Av,’ which is [father], ‘wisdom.’ After, the second prayer is parallel to Yitzhak and it has to do with the ‘raising of the dead.’ “Baruch ata hashem mechayeh hametim (who gives life to the dead). “ And (third is) “Baruch ata hashem hakhel hakadosh.” Here we have, “yitkadesh shimcha,” so it’s very parallel to the first three blessings which the Jews pray too.

After he says, “tavo malchutcha (Your kingdom will come).” This is parallel to the ‘chesed’ (lovingkindness). Alright, so we see here that from the point of view of Jesus, the ‘kingdom’ is ‘love.’ This is like the “G-d of avraham, the G-d of Yitzhak, and the G-d of Yaakov.” All the ten sefirot are three, three, three, and one. You can see the building of the prayer is three that are one thing, another three that are one thing, and another three which are another thing, and another one which is like a conclusion as the ‘kingdom.’ At the end, when he will talk about the kingdom, he will say, “because you have the kingdom, the gevurah, and the tiferet,” so you see that Jesus in two places, from his point of view, the chesed which is the graciousness, which is ‘Abraham avinu,’  is related from his point of view to the ‘kingdom,’ what is love. In Judaism, the ‘kingdom’ is more of Yitzhak, of ‘gevurah,’ but we talk about the ‘kingdom’ of Mashiach Ben Yosef, which is a spiritual kingdom, which is ‘love.’ 

So “Your kingdom will come,” is something that is just love, a revealing of the love of G-d and “your will be done (Yease retzoncha)” this is ‘rule,’ this is commandments that we have to follow to do the will of G-D, so this is ‘Gevurah.’ “Your will be done,” which means we have to follow all kinds of rules which the king gives you an order to do them. 

Now ‘tiferet’ is always connected between both of them. In one way, you can say this is the body and the soul, “the heavens and the earth,” so in ‘tiferet’ is the connection of the two forces of ‘Arvaham ben Yitzhak (son of Isaac).’ So you say “bashamayim gam baaretz (in heaven and in earth too).” So this is the ‘sefira of tiferet.’ Tiferet means a mix of all the colors, the beauty of all of the colors together. It’s not just one color, it’s both colors together. All the middot (attributes) from here have to do with the ‘attributes of the heart.’ This was the brain. Father is the cochma, this (Heaven) is the binah, this (holiness) is the daat. This is the ‘brain.’ Now from here is all the heart. There are six attributes of the heart and the main one is the middle one called, ‘tiferet.’ The main quality which has to do with the heart is tiferet which is called ‘mercy’ too. So here we have a unity between the two (opposite) forces that are Avraham and Yitzhak.

“Any connection here on the body and blood of Mashiach?” 

Yeah, we see that Yitzhak has to do with the blood and Avraham has to do with the body, but from what they were ordered from G-d. Avraham was spiritual and G-d send him to go to Eretz Yisrael and Yitzhak who was super-spiritual, he sacrificed himself, he’s not allowed to leave Eretz Israel. We can see this in both ways, which one is spiritual and which one is the body. ‘Avraham’ equals 248, which is number of the bones, so he has to do with the body and Yitzhak has to do with the ‘Shasah’ (שס״ה), with the blood, with the 365 commandments. We’ve talked about this, but it doesn’t have to do with the prayer. Basically, “bashsmayim” has more to do with the blood and “baaretz” has to do more with the body, obviously. Usually the land, “baaretz” has to do with the ‘kingdom,’ but in the order he puts things, we have here “bashamayim” and “also in the eretz, (land).” He probably meant about the sefirah of ‘tiferet,’ about the two forces. In ‘shamayim’ (שמים) itself you have shin (ש) which represents fire and mayim (מים) which is water, so tiferet is many times called, ‘shamayim.’

“Is this like the middle point of the Star of David?” 

Yeah, maybe. This is another section of three, so now we start to be more personal. We now have individual requests to have bread, to eat. So this is here in the ‘Netzach.’ The netzach is like to win, to fight, to be a winner of life, to survive. ‘Survive’ is a good word for ‘netzach.’ So we ask here for the bread. “It’s also eternity?” Also, Netzach has to do with life and with eternity, but to survive, to win, we need food. So here we ask for food.

In Hod, we ask for forgiveness. Like we forgive others, we ask for forgiveness. In Hod, we see that forgiveness depends on Hodayah (confession), which means to go to the priests and say, “I’m sorry, i did this and this and this. I did a sin”. Hod, Hodayah, Lehodot, “You were right.” It’s like a loser. This (netzach) is the winner and this (hod) is a loser. Lehodot means to confess. So we see a strong connection between asking forgiveness and to confess. We have to confess about the sin we did always. We have to say to G-d, “I did this sin and this sin and this sin.” We have to confess and then I ask forgiveness for what I did. This is the ‘right leg’ (netzach), like a winner will say, “I am always right.” It’s like self-confidence. This can also be not in holiness, this kind of being right. “I am always right,” but this is the direction like self-confidence (Bitachon).

I now talk about the netzach, the asking for bread. Lechem (bread) is money, security depends on money. To be self-confident depends on the ‘right leg,’ which represents gold and silver, like we explained in the past when we talked about the legs of the ‘horse.’ Money gives you confidence and money is bread. “Also spiritual food?” All kinds of food, it can be clothing, a house, a woman, everything that we need in this world, here we ask for it. A winner is somebody who succeeds to get anything he needs in the world. He’s a millionaire who has everything he needs. This is the personality which will become a rich person. It’s a personality which needs its opposite in the soul. We start with the left. “Yelech bitom lech bitahcon, (The one who goes with simplicity…),” He’s hod with temimut (simplicity), “… he will go with security” (Proverbs 10:9). We have to start with this (Hod). It means I have confessed I was wrong, I made a mistake, I’m not perfect. To walk with G-D, to worship G-D starts with the ‘left leg,’ from the left you get to the right, to ‘self-confidence.’

I get that Christians know the prayer, so I said it in Hebrew, but everyone knows the details of the prayer because it is written really clear in Matthew 6. That is parallel to the ‘sixth time,’ in “to be healed.” We said that the 28 chapters are parallel to the 28 ‘times’ of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes 3), the book that Shlomo wrote that we read on Sukkot – Ecclesiastes. He talks there about a “time to do this, a time to give birth…” That’s the first one, so the first chapter (of Matthew) is “Avraham gave birth to Yitzhak, Yitzhak to Yaakov,” etc… After is “the time to die,” so the second chapter talks about the death of all the children in Bethlehem,. Herod killed all the children in Bethlehem, etc. So number 6 is a “time to be healed.”

We can say that 90% of all the prayer people do in this world is for good health. Maybe they will pray for themselves or someone they know, that they will be in good health. So most of the serious prayer people do in this world has to do with people being healed. So somebody is sick, so we ask that people pray for it and we pray for people that we know are sick, so most of the prayer that we do has to do with this problem of sickness, the request to be healed from sickness. People pray because they have a habit to pray so they pray this and this, because those are the words of the prayer, but really when people pray is when they have a life danger to someone they love or themselves, then really they pray. Most of the people don’t pray because they don’t have bread, because most of the people or Christians in the world, you can say they have what to eat, at least most of them. I talk about a real prayer that is a cry to G-d, when does it happen? This kind of prayer is only when we are sick and someone we know is sick…”

To be continued with Part 2…