Question:
I'm a bit of a cynic. I've always thought the Bible was a creation of man, used for the sake of keeping people in line. But I've been reading your emails and Yehuda's books and I'm starting to question my long-held beliefs. My first question is, what is the true purpose of the Bible?


Answer:
The true purpose of the Bible is summed up in its most famous line: Love your neighbor as yourself. To understand the importance of this verse, we can look to what the sages have said about it.

Rav Akiva wrote that this lesson is the general rule of the entire Bible. Rav Ashlag explains Rav Akiva's statement to mean that the individual teachings of the Bible are only particulars to enable us to achieve the one goal of Loving your neighbor as yourself.

Unfortunately, many people are under the impression the Bible is a book of laws the Creator wants us to follow. This misunderstanding leads people to blindly and religiously check off as many items as they can on 'the checklist.'

This then leads people to think that this is the essence of religion: to perform a certain set actions by rote. As the Kabbalists teach us, the truth is almost the exact opposite. The purpose of the Bible is to transform us. Our purpose in life is to become like the Creator, thereby becoming one with it. This is based in the spiritual law that when two spiritual beings are exactly alike, they become one.

Once we become one with the Creator, we are one with endless joy and happiness, one with fulfillment, for this is the essence of the Creator.

What we need to change and transform is what the Kabbalists call our Desire to Receive for the Self Alone. Whether we call it ego or selfishness, it is this natural inborn human trait to care only about ourselves that separates us from the Creator, from true fulfillment.

Our job in this world is to transform ourselves from beings that care only about ourselves to beings that care more about others, or what the Kabbalists call Desire to Share. This, in short, is the purpose of our lives. The Bible is the tool that the Creator gave to us to assist in this process of transformation.

This then is what Rav Akiva was telling us: The entire Bible is only particulars to assist us in achieving the teaching, Love your neighbor as yourself, or, in other words a complete transformation to Desire to Share.

This is also the explanation of a story found in an old spiritual text. It is said that a certain man came to the sage Hillel and asked him to teach him the entire Bible while he was standing on one leg. Basically, he wanted a very condensed version of the entire Bible. Hillel told him, "What you do not want done to you, do not do to others," which is another way of saying, Love your neighbor as yourself. Hillel was teaching the same thing as Rav Akiva, that the entire goal of the Bible is to assist us in transforming ourselves from Desire to Receive for the Self Alone into Desire to Share.

This understanding is so important, but unfortunately, because it is a well-known statement, it is more often than not forgotten, or at least not held in as high regard as it can be. I am grateful for your asking.

If we truly understand the impact of this teaching, it can direct the focus of our spiritual work and how we gauge our spiritual development.

Gauging our spiritual development is not about whether or not we are performing spiritual actions as if we were simply completing a spiritual checklist. To determine if we are indeed growing, we want to notice if our Desire to Share has grown stronger. We want to ask two crucial questions:

Do I care about others today more than I did yesterday?
Do I undertake more actions of sharing and caring?

If the answers are yes, then we are developing spiritually. But if we are not sure, or the answer is no, then all the so-called spiritual actions that we perform are obviously not bringing us true spiritual development and growth.

These are the most important spiritual questions, ones that cut straight to the heart and soul of the Bible's reason for existence.

Blessings and Light,

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