There are numbers of articles and videos that use the name
"Kabbalah", yet the mass majority do not deal with
Kabbalah at all, but rather it is often questionable esoteric subjects.
The Kabbalah is the esoteric explanation of the Creation and part of the Torah she be al pe. It shows the unfolding of the worlds, the role of man, the creation of the
world and the ones above it, the lights that influence the world, and more. These writings are based on ancient Jewish texts, mostly the Zohar.
Were does Kabbalah fit in to the Torah? it is the SOD or secret, when we look at the Torah as a field we see that it is split into 4 parts, know as Pardes.
What is Pardes?
PaRDeS is the abbreviation of Pshat, Remez, Drash and Sod - פרדס.
Let us define what these four levels are:
Pashat is the ‘simply understanding’ i.e. Hashem told Moshe Rabenu to instruct Am Yisrael a certain mitzvah/commandment and this is what you shall do. It is a simple understanding of a HaShem’s words via Moshe Rabenu. This is the pshat.
Drash is a deeper explanation of a word, verse, paragraph and so on. The Drash or Drasha is to delve deeply into a meaning of context that is learned. To give a lecture about one verse from the Drasha then we can learn many things in drash, going even deeper in knowledge and understanding of the
context.
Remez is the gematria. The beginning letters and end letters of the learned context can reveal even more secrets in the text. This is Remez.
The Sod holds the secrets of the Torah. This basically sums up Kabbalah, which in Itself holds many Torah secrets. Kabbalah is the Sod. This is Sod.
These four parts Pardes of our Holy Torah. Likened very much to the Ten Sefirot and their multiple sefirot within each of the ten sefirot. For example: Take one Pshat. Inside this pshat is its own internal Remez. We can find an example of this from Rashi works. Rashi's commentaries are known as the
pshat. Yet, we can also find a Remez that comes from Pshat. Inside the pshat understanding we can find Drash and Sod too.
The part of Sod that I'm involved with is Kabbalah. What I can give over is Pshat of the Sod. I cannot explain the Sod of the Sod, the secret of the secret. This level of Torah secrets is beyond explanations with words. What I can give over is the overall introduction to assist a student to build their keylim/vessels in order that
may arrive at the Sod understanding on his own.
The Sod of the Sod are the Torah teachings that cannot be commonly reached. The deeper secret that is more internal. There are limits to whatever we are able to speak about so the Pshat level, The simple understanding of all the Pshat of the Pshat, Pshat of the Remez of the Drash and Pshat of the Sod are all permissible to learn and discuss.
The Remez and Drash of the internal Pardes can be a little bit complicated. complicated and the Sod of each one of those that is something that should be kept very very gently should be handled with the with care , so it doesn't mean that it should not be spoken about at all but it should be by very very special and unique and qualified Rabbi to be able to give it over right way.
