Kabbalistic Insights
by Thiago Moshe
Michael Berg's teaching on the word shofar
and the three moments it carries inside it
There are only hours left. And the idea running through this whole class is easy to say and hard to live: as Rosh Hashanah goes, so goes the entire year. Michael Berg opens the Zohar in Vayikra, at the section the Rav insisted on studying every year before Rosh Hashanah, and then turns to the Ari's central concept about a single word. This is not a class about a ram's horn. It is a class about why last year's connection was not enough, and about the one tool that can change that.
Michael Berg gives the exact definition of both words, and it is the map of the entire class. Din means separation and limitation, that which has been cut off from the rest. Chesed v'rachamim, kindness and mercy, means continuity. The work has a kabbalistic name: Nesirah, to cut away the judgment and sweeten it. And there is only one tool that can do it.
Michael Berg opens by saying that when we study, we do not study for information. We study to receive the consciousness and the elevation we need to maximize the Rosh Hashanah connection.
The line he repeats at the end works as the key to everything that comes before it: regardless of what you understood or did not understand, the simple fact of gathering has already elevated you and already purified you. Read this page that way. Not as information to store, but as a preparation already happening while you read.
In the Zohar Vayikra, section 302, Rabi Elazar tells what he saw in his father. Through the rest of the year Rabi Shimon bar Yochai would accept many people leading the prayers. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, no. Whoever would lead, whoever would blow the shofar, spent three full days with him beforehand.
First to make sure the consciousness and the understanding were right. And then, ledakale, to be purified. Michael Berg is careful to say this is not ancient history. It is an additional layer of purification that only Rabi Shimon bar Yochai can give, after all the teshuvah and all the work of Elul, and it is a gift to whoever is connected to him.
Section 308. Banai, la titchalun. My children, do not be afraid. Michael Berg acknowledges there is reason to come to Rosh Hashanah with seriousness and reverence, because life, health, livelihood and family are all decided there.
But the Zohar's instruction is different. Ha'ana kaim al pitcha. I am standing, waiting for you at the door. This is not a courtroom with a judge on the other side. It is someone waiting for you at the entrance.
This is where the class turns. The Creator does not say "blow the shofar". He says izdarzu behayoma v'havu li cheila, hurry on this day and give me strength.
Michael Berg explains what that means with a line that dismantles a great deal: my Creator is not your Creator. There is only one Light, and that Light wants to share without limit and at every moment. What differs is the vessel. The amount of strength your Light of the Creator has is different from the amount mine has, because each of us stands in a different place of spiritual development.
The work of Rosh Hashanah, then, is not the blowing. It is the giving of strength, through consciousness, desire, prayer and the sound, so that the Light of the Creator can remove all judgment.
Elokim is the name that represents the strong manifestation of the Light of the Creator. Michael Berg insists it is not a negative name. Whatever negativity you lived through this year was not negativity: it was the light of Elokim revealed in full force into a vessel that had not done the proper preparation, and so it manifested as din.
That is an entire rereading of the year behind you. It is not that something was done against you. It is that the light arrived too large for the vessel that was ready to receive it. And the work, therefore, is not to ask for less light. It is to prepare the vessel.
The kabbalists teach that the letters forming a word are the intrinsic energy of that word. Shofar has the numerical value 586, and Michael Berg warns that knowing this on its own means nothing. What matters is that the word divides into three: the Shin, 300. The Vav and the Pe, 86. The Reish, 200.
And the sound of the shofar appears exactly three times in human development. At Sinai, where it is written b'kol shofar aleihem hofa'ta, and the whole revelation was a manifestation of the light of the shofar. At every Rosh Hashanah. And in the time the prophets speak of, v'haya bayom hahu yitaka b'shofar gadol, when the great shofar will sound.
Elokim spelled in full. The first time humanity received the tools and the wisdom to take control of its own life. The potential of perfection.
Elokim simple. The middle of the process, once a year, every year. The bridge.
Elokim Beribua, Elokim squared. Alef, alef-lamed, alef-lamed-hei, growing to complete revelation. The end of pain, suffering and death.
Rabi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto says the only way to ensure our Rosh Hashanah transforms all the judgment that Elokim represents is to tie it to the end. The shofar of Rosh Hashanah exists to connect Sinai and pull us toward the Final Correction.
There is a famous section in the Talmud, in Yoma, about exactly this: when the angel of death hears the sound of the shofar he becomes afraid, bahil v'lo bahil, because perhaps this is the moment when all pain and all suffering are removed and he ceases to exist.
And then Michael Berg offers the most uncomfortable proof in the class. Did you have judgment this year? Probably yes. Did you experience immortality this year? Probably not. So last year's connection, whatever it was, was not in its proper form.
It is written in Beresheet, about the creation of the first human being, vayipach b'apav nishmat chayim: there was a body, and the Creator breathed into it the soul of life.
Michael Berg points at something easy to miss. The shofar is the only spiritual tool into which we invest our own breath. Every other one uses the hands, the body, the voice. And the reason is that what is really happening is not you awakening a connection. It is the Creator breathing a new life into you.
That is why, he says, there has to be an element of the former self dying in order to receive that breath. And it is no coincidence that the Shabat before Rosh Hashanah is the one in which Moshe leaves this world.
Rav Ashlag calls it Arvut. The question that measures everything is not how much you studied, but how much your circle grew. How many people did your thoughts, desires and actions come to be about this year?
✦ This page is a synthesis of Michael Berg's class in preparation for Rosh Hashanah 5787, on the Zohar Vayikra 302, 308 and 312 and the Ari's teaching on the word shofar. The words are his. The arrangement is mine. Synthesis and adaptation by Thiago Moshe · Kabbalistic Insights.
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