Communication Sciences Department of the Torah Science Foundation

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Six Days of Creation, Six Millenia

However, there is another explanation for the significance of the twenty-third of Elul, which brings us closer to understanding the base drive behind terror. It also gives us further insight into the problem of the world today, which, according to Kabbalah, is the problem of this whole millennium and the problem that prevents the advent of Messiah.

The explanation offered by Hassidism is based upon the idea that each of the days of creation corresponds to one thousand years, as seen from the verse in Psalms “One thousand years are considered in Your eyes like yesterday or the day before as they pass”. As we shall see, this is particularly significant concerning the two days before the twenty-fifth of Elul, which mark the beginning of creation.

The sixth day of creation is parallel to the sixth thousand years of creation, the current millennium.13

Two Days of Delights

In the previous interpretation mentioned above, we said that there was a primordial world of seven days that existed before the creation of this present world, this being the primordial World of Chaos that collapsed and died. This was a negative phenomenon of which our sages say that before He created this world, God created other worlds with which he was not satisfied, “Boreh olamot u’machrivan,” He created worlds and He destroyed them. This interpretation appears in the Midrash and corresponds to the concept in Kabbalah that there was a primordial World of Chaos, in which the kings reigned and died one after the other.

However, the Hassidic interpretation suggests another concept which is purely positive. These two thousand years are the time during which the light of the Torah shone inwardly, towards God, before He took the light and turned it outwards, thus creating the world. This era is a time when the light shone upon God, as it were. This is described as God having delights with the Torah. However, the six hundred thousand letters of the Torah represent the souls of Israel, thus this is the time when God was having delights with the souls of Israel, before their creation. Before He decided to create the world, God actually consulted with those souls who themselves are the letters of this primordial Torah, and according to the counsel that they gave Him, the decision was made, “Let's now use this energy—this light—to create reality.” Thus God’s desire to dwell in the lower worlds was realized.

In relation to the higher worlds, lower reality is called a grave in Kabbalah. God has a totally incomprehensible passion to create and enter the lowest realm of existence. There is a verse in Psalms that reads “When I descend all the way down into the abyss and I find You are there,” the very essence of God is there, in the deep abyss. This is the culmination of God’s existential passion to dwell below.

According to this interpretation, therefore, the two days before the twenty-fifth of Elul correspond to these two millennia. This is based on the verse [“...shaashuim yom-yom”]. The sages interpret the phrase “yom yom”, “day day”, to mean two millennia, because as mentioned, each of God’s “days” is a thousand years. Thus, the verse itself is clearly alluding to the fact that these are two days relative to the following six days of creation. The first of those two days called “shaashuim yom-yom,” is the twenty-third of Elul. After those two days of having delights with the primordial Torah, come the six days of creation, concluding with Rosh Hashanah, the day on which Adam was created.

[The first question to ask is: Why God need two millennia to take delights in His primordial Torah? Why was one millennium, one day, not sufficient? The general explanation in Hassidism is that the Torah is chochmah and binah, “Orayta me'chochmah nafka.” Before the creation of the world, the Torah is the wisdom and understanding of God. However, once the Torah begins to be the channel of creation through which God creates the world, it descends into the realm of the attributes of the heart, which are the six days of creation. [In Kabbalah the six days of creation parallel the six sefirot from chesed to yesod, and Shabbat is malchut, which ascends to the higher sefirot, but firstly it is malchut, the seventh day of creation. The six days of creation from kaf-hey b'Elul until Rosh HaShanah are from chesed to yesod.] This is the light, or the vector force, of the Torah turning outwardly. However, during the two days preceding the week of creation, the Torah was in its origin, in the mind of God, as it were, in the sefirot of chochmah and binah. This explains why there were two days, one is chochmah and the other is binah. These were the days of delights, during which God took delight in the Torah for Himself. Whilst the Torah is in its source, in its origin of chochmah and binah, it is called, “or ha'meir l'atzmo,” light that shines to itself. However, as soon as it leaves its origin to create reality, it becomes “or ha'meir l'zulato.”]

The first of these two days corresponds to the origin of the lights of the Torah, while the second day corresponds to the origin of the vessels.

13. There is a beautiful allusion to this idea in the very first verse of the Torah. This verse contains seven words, six of which have an alef in them, giving a total of six alefs in the first verse. The letter alef also means elef, one thousand or a thousand years. We can therefore see that in the very first verse of the Torah there is an allusion to the fact that the world was created to exist in the way that we experience it, for six millennia. The alef of the word “veha’aretz” represents the current millennium.

Now, here is a most amazing phenomenon, for if we note the position of each alef, we will see that their positional numbers from the first letter in the 28 letters of the first verse reflect a beautiful idea. The first alef is the 3^rd letter of the verse, in the word “bereishit”. The second, the alef in “bara,” is the 9th letter; the alef in “Elokim” is the 10th letter; the alef of “et” is the 15th letter of the verse; the alef of “v’et” is the 23rd letter and the final alef is the alef of “ha’aretz”, is the 26th letter of the Torah. 26, as we know, is the numerical of God’s name, “Havayah.” God’s name does explicitly not appear in the whole first account of creation, only in the second account. However, if we add all the first five positional numbers of the six alefs, 3, 9, 10, 15 and 23, we reach a total of 60 which, when added to the last positional number of 26 equals Elokim. Thus, we can see that it is the sixth alef, paralleling the sixth millennium, which is equal to God’s Name and also completes the name Elokim. The name Elokim is the third word of this verse and there is a Kabbalistic explanation that in a certain way, the third letter, which is the first alef, corresponds to the third word, which is God’s name Elokim.

From here, we can see that Elokim is actually 60 plus 26. However, 60 is the value of the word “kli”, vessel. This expresses another idea taught in Kabbalah, that the name Elokim is the vessel of Havayah—“kli Havayah.” The division of the sum of the positional numbers of the letters alef in the first verse upholds this idea. If we follow this linear progression, adding the number 60 once more, we see that “kli Elokim” equals “olam,” the world.

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