Baal HaSulam's Introduction to Zohar Chapters 1-3

(1) In this introduction [to the Zohar] I would like to clarify certain ideas that many have touched upon, much has been written on, but still its depths has not been perceived. My questions are:

(2) 1. What is our essence?

(3) 2. What is our role in this reality, that each of us is but a small link?

(4) 3. When we look around us, we see that humanity has many faults, but when we think about the One who created us, we should be superior and perfect; for a high caliber manufacturer (Creator), necessitates a quality product.

(5) 4. Why would a loving Creator, create beings, many of whom suffer throughout their lives. Shouldn't a compassionate Creator create goodness, and especially not create pain?

(6) 5. How is it possible that from an eternal Creator, who has no beginning nor an end, beings are created that cease and are gone?

(1) In order to clarify these [questions] in their entirety, we must initially make some inquires (about the Creator) not in areas that we are forbidden to discuss, in other words about the Creator's essence, which we have no knowledge whatsoever, but in an area where such knowledge is a Mitzvah, that is, concerning His actions. As the Torah commands: "Know the G-d of your forefathers, and worship Him". And it is also written, in "Shir HaYichud": "You [G-d] are known through your actions".

(2) The first inquiry is: How do we envision that G-d created something from nothing, "ex nihilo", that was not included within G-d Himself before He created it. For it is evident to those who investigate this matter, that there is nothing that is not included within G-d. Furthermore it is obvious, that one cannot give something, unless he possesses it himself.

(3) Second inquiry: Even if we acknowledge, that G-d has the power to create "something from nothing", in other words something completely new, not found in G-d Himself; what exactly is that "something" that G-d created from "nothing".

(4) Third inquiry: What the Kabbalists say that the soul of man, is a part of G-d Himself in that there is no difference between the soul and G-d, only that G-d is the whole and the soul is a part [of G-d]. And they compared this to a stone separated from a mountain, that there is no difference between the stone and the mountain, except that the mountain is "all", and the stone is a "part". However, the stone is quarried from the mountain by a tool used for that purpose. But what is the tool that separates the soul from G-d Himself. In other words, at what point is it called soul and not G-d Himself.

(1) Fourth Inquiry: Since the "other side", and the "shells" (evil) are distanced from G-d's holiness an infinite distance, how is it possible that evil emanates from G-d Himself, and not only that, but that G-d also sustains it.

(2) Fifth Inquiry: The matter of resurrection of the dead. Since the body is finite and from the moment of birth, the end result will be death and burial; and furthermore, the Zohar states, that the body must completely rot before the soul can enter Eden, why the need for the resurrection of the dead. Couldn't G-d just delight the soul, without the body? Even more perplexing, concerning the resurrection of the dead, it is written, that G-d will resurrect each body with the defect that it had before death, so that no one should say, this is not the same person that died, and only later will G-d heal that person from their prior defect. Why should G-d take into account what other people say, to the point that He has to resurrect the dead with all their defects, and only later heal them.

(3) Sixth Inquiry: It is stated in the Zohar (Tazriah 40), and also in Tractate Sanhedrin (37a) that all the spiritual worlds, and our physical world with all that it contains, were created for even just one person, since each person is the center of the universe. It is difficult to understand, how a person whose worth appears to be so small as compared to all of reality, how can he be the center of the universe? And especially when we compare man to the spiritual worlds, whose boundaries and pinnacles have no limit. Why would G-d create all these worlds just for one man? What benefit is there to mankind, from all this?