Jewish Kabbalah and the Epicurus Paradox - part 1

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or He can, but does not want to; or He cannot and does not want to. If He wants to, but cannot, He is impotent. If He can, but does not want to, He is evil.

But if God can and wants to abolish evil, then why is there so much evil in the world?

Epicurus

There are many who still ask themselves today (in the past it was an absolute must among philosophers) the problem of Evil. Unfortunately, we know very well ourselves what it is. But where does it come from? Who put it in this world, and why? Philosophers referred to this enormous pile of inextricable questions with the formula "Unde Malum" (Evil, from where?).

And do you think that Kabbalah could not deal with this? Of course it could. Because Kabbalah is not a pastime made of glyphs, graphs, drawings, puzzle games of anagrams and cryptography, but a form of wisdom (which today we would call science) and a set of techniques developed and handed down to help us and support us in the big and small problems of life, given that we intend to use this life to direct it in the direction of the sacred and the Divine.

Many today (very many) remain there on "objective" and "realistic" positions of an agnostic or atheist type, waiting for someone to demonstrate that it is possible to get out of the so-called Epicurus paradox.

Already.

Now let's simplify a bit to get to the point that interests us today. Let's try to do it without forcing or distorting the solutions that history shows us that Humanity has attempted to practice. I would stay for now only in the field of Western European and Mediterranean tradition, leaving aside the refined and truly persuasive and profound spiritualities and philosophies of Eastern Traditions. Some have decided that if you can't beat Evil, then give it another name and make friends with it. Alister Crowley and his companions had a real talent in this sense. It seems that in Tangier at the beginning of the last century Crowley even managed to actually materialize a Demon that obeyed his commands. Not all that great, eh?

Many, however, cannot accept that God and Evil have some kind of connection. God would be the Absolute Good and therefore Evil would be an antagonistic manifestation that emanates from the Antagonist par excellence, Satan or whoever. And above all, Evil is done by Man, he commits evil in the acts of his life and based on the exercise of his "free will"; and he does it because he is corrupt by nature and prone to giving in to temptation because he is weak, if he is good, or he does it because that is his way of acting, his winning strategy and his personal pleasure, if he is evil.

But here we fall back into the paradox of Epicurus unless we bid farewell to Monotheism and embrace Dualistic forms of the Gnostic , Manichean etc. etc. type where alongside an Absolutely Good Principle there arises and is placed in continuous contrast with an Evil Principle which is the monopolist of evil.

Some religions are based on the discovery of the existence of a Radical Evil or on the supervening, at a certain point, of an Original Sin. In these cases, a need for Redemption would arise that comes to us from outside the World, through the work of a Redeemer who manifests himself to achieve what Man, now corrupt, cannot do alone. Paul of Tarsus , the creator of most of Christianity, thought exactly this way.

But if we are among those who think that it is crucial to be able to configure a Single and Only First Principle from which all reality springs and that it is necessary to do everything to connect to It and to return to reunite with It, and in It, at the reasonably foreseeable end of time (as well as at the end of our physical life, which is certain), well, then we must search carefully and intelligently and verify whether reality itself does not suggest a different solution to us and the sacred text does not expressly tell us, for its part, that a different vision exists, and is practicable.

In Judaism, and therefore also in traditional Jewish Kabbalah, THERE IS NO ORIGINAL SIN. And there is no concept corresponding to the Western Satan (a Hebrew word meaning "he who supports the contrary thesis" ) also because they do not want to leave room for imaginative elaborations, which then end up creating an Anti-God, Evil One, who is inconceivable in a monotheistic vision. Satan, the Demon, and all the paraphernalia and the ethical, philosophical, theological annexes and connections etc. etc.: these things are an exclusive elaboration of the Christian doctrine and therefore I do not deal with them.

If there is no original sin then there is no need to configure a need for redemption.

Without redemption there is no need for a redeemer.

Man is in the condition to return to God, to reconnect with His Grace , to do His Will (the mitzvot), to operate theurgically as a co-creator, to achieve the perfection of the unfolding, still in progress, of the Creation of which he is a part. And all this with his strength, with his intelligence, with his heart and with the decisive and constant help of the Torah , which HaShem has confidently entrusted to his hands, in this world. The Torah is Here, it is no longer in Heaven, as Rabbi Yochanan already enlightened us, many centuries ago. It is in our availability and in our responsibility.

So what would this solution be? Where does Evil come from? We can figure it out ourselves. But Isaiah (or whoever wrote the part that was put into written form in the book called Isaiah) also tells us this, just to be sure, chapter 45 , verse 7. I report it in full, with the original text, in the following slide:

The translation is mine, and I have tried to be as literal as possible, in a form that is understandable today. It agrees, of course, with all the teaching of Kabbalah that follows from it.

I think this will come as a shock to many. I do not believe this is a passage normally read on Sunday in church. If it is read, it is obviously read in the bogus translation in any Western language where the Hebrew word "Ra" , which then as now means EVIL , and nothing more, is translated as Calamity, Tempest, Blizzard, Force of the Elements, Wrath, Punishment, Chastisement, and a whole series of obvious translations that censor the original text and replace it with a solution more palatable to the Christian view.

Evil is called in Kabbalah with an Aramaic expression: Sitra Achra , literally "The other side" . And Evil comes from Gd. He conceived it and put it in the world as an essential tool for the homeostatic self-regulation of the system and as a presence that at all levels, in a dualistic reality like ours, allows us to highlight the Sitra HaQedushà , the "Separated Side Reserved for HQBH" = the Good and the Sacred, acting as the negative space that delimits the figure and distinguishes it from the background "as well as and together with the outline" of the image itself. On the Tree of Life, Evil is present . Continuing to use the metaphor of the Tree, it is a sort of "shoot" or secondary branch that develops from the sefirah G'VURAH or GHEBURAH, if you prefer. This is the hypostasis of the Divine (which like all the other sefirot contains within itself ALL the divine and IS NOT a separate part of it) in which Divinity comes to manifest itself (entirely) through the "filter" of Strength, Justice, Rigor, the Ability to arrest and contain, Severity.

As we know well, however, if balance, harmony and centering are lost, then one overflows and goes "off-screen" . If one ends up off-screen, Justice becomes Inquisition, Rigor becomes Pettiness, The Ability to Contain becomes Greed, Possessiveness, Control, Dictatorship, Oppression, Persecution, Severity becomes Hatred and Cruelty.

Or rather, Evil.

Fabrizio Piola