Regarding Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16:29 declares: “And this shall be to you a law for all time: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial.” The last part can be translated more literally as: “you shall afflict your souls” or, perhaps better in a biblical context, “your bodies.” This is the source for the Jewish practice of fasting on Yom Kippur.
The Zohar (Achrei Mot 40:237) cites Leviticus 16:29 and then focuses on the single word nafshoteichem, “your souls,” taking it as a prompt for reflection on the mystical understanding of the process of teshuvah, or repentance. In the mystic’s view, teshuvah has a powerful impact not just on the individual, but on the Divine. Here is Daniel Matt’s beautiful translation of the passage:
Your souls, surely, for the matter depends upon the soul. It has been taught: On this day all joy, all radiance, and all leniency of the worlds depend on Supernal Mother, from whom all springs issue and flow. Then all those lamps shine, glowing in radiant joy until all is sweetened, and then all judgments are bathed in light, and Judgment is not inflicted. Therefore, you shall afflict your souls.
Zohar, Achrei Mot 40:237
Let’s unpack what this means. The Zohar underscores the cosmic effect of an individual’s process of teshuvah, which positively impacts what we might call the grand life-flow of Divinity — in other words, the complex workings of the sefirot. This is teshuvah’s ultimate purpose, the Zohar teaches, and that realization is drawn directly from its interpretation of the word “your souls” — spoken as a spiritual and moral directive to the reader.
How exactly does teshuvah positively impact the life-flow of Divinity? Working on one’s self, indeed “afflicting one’s soul,” or restricting and disciplining the physical self, is presented by the Zohar as resulting in an overflow of compassionate and merciful energy from the upper sefirot. The sefirah Binah (Understanding) in particular, the third of the ten, is characterized in this text as Supernal Mother, and presented as the source of an overflow of compassionate energies that sweeten, soften and even neutralize the otherwise potent and harsh forces of another sefirah: Gevurah (Discipline/Judgment).
In this characteristically lyrical zoharic mythology, the “self-denial,” or the torment of the bodily self — also a stand-in for the act of doing teshuvah — directly leads to a down-flowing river of inner-divine energy, a luminous life-force that sweetens the other force of divine judgment and severity with compassion, mercy and leniency. The harsh inner-divine forces of judgment are bathed in a river-stream of divine light, the light of forgiveness, the light of compassion. This radiance ultimately yields a transformative and calming fragrance, a sweet aroma that settles and soothes the energies of potentially destructive judgmental anger within God.
Here the Zohar is offering a taste of its stunning mystical poetry and spiritual power: Its description of the sefirot and the heavenly realm blends metaphors of scent, luminosity and water. The lyrically wondrous combination of water and light is characteristic of the Zohar’s Aramaic wordplay, insofar as the word for light is nehora and the word used for river is nahara. The calming, sweet water-light fragrance that flows from Binah, the Supernal Mother, is said to bathe Gevurah. This evokes a spiritual cleansing, a purification through immersion in holy waters (as in a mikveh) in which the one who immerses is transformed and assumes a new status of purity. The Aramaic phrase that Matt ably translates as “bathing” could equally be rendered as “dwelling in light” or “present within the light.” But however one renders it, the sense of a transformative moment is clear:
On this day all joy, all radiance, and all leniency of the worlds depend on Supernal Mother, from whom all springs issue and flow.
This language of flowing springs, found extensively in the Zohar, is a favorite image for the flow of divine emanation, the current of the divine life-force. The key biblical text is Genesis 2:10: “A river issues from Eden to water the garden…” In this case, divine water-light descends from the womb (alternatively: fountainhead) of Binah within God. It flows in response to acts of teshuvah performed by individuals. This sweetly fragrant river of light then washes over the severities of lower inner-divine judgments, calming and transforming the divine response to human transgression in parallel to the subsequent verse in the biblical text, Leviticus 16:30: “For on this day, atonement shall be made for you to purify you of all your sins; you shall be pure before God.”
As we are about to enter into Yom Kippur, the great holy day of introspection and self-transformation, it is incumbent upon us to bring to mind and heart the ways in which we need to work on ourselves, to return to our better selves, to repair the various transgressions and hurtful deeds that we have done. In doing that inner and outer work of repentance and repair, of teshuvah, we seek that force of compassionate calm within our deepest self, the overflow and emergence of divine compassion. We pray that it may soothe and calm the forces of judgment and severity within us, whether self-directed or projected onto others. That the powerful, loving divine force of luminous and sweet compassion may bring tranquility to the fires of judgment within and without.
This piece was originally published as part of an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria called A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone. Sign up for the entire series here.
