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![]() Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain, Founder & Spiritual Director DONMEH WEST Published Originally As The Lost Sheep of Israel Monographs in Psychology and Religion, Number 11 Institute for Noahite Studies, 1986
This extended lecture is based, in part, on my monograph, The Lost Sheep of Israel: A Kabbalistic Analysis of Spiritual Identity, published in 1986 by the Institute for Noahite Education of Hermosa Beach, California. It has been out of print for many years, but its findings are particularly relevant to the growing body of scientific evidence for a DNA marker that sets the Jewish people apart from other genetic groups, even those with whom they have been found to share a common biological ancestor such as the Arab peoples. (For the scientific data on the DNA "Jewish Gene," search for that subject, and also the "Kohain Gene," in the links section of the Donmeh West website. For the time being, what follows is divided into four parts:first, as found in this section, a line-by-line, Kabbalistic midrash on the Book of Genesis; secondly, an empirical study of the so-called "mixed multitude," or the crypto-Jews among the Gentiles; third, a discussion of the Lost Sheep of Israel and Repairing the Face of God, and finally a Case History of the Lost Sheep of Israel. But now, our midrash begins:
Now, why are Cain and Abel omitted from this roster of Adam's sons? (As they also are from the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.) The answer will seem bizarre, convoluted and full of digressions, shifting from one Biblical quotation to another, and from that, in turn, to the Zohar; but out of this exegesis will emerge a Theory of Origins based on a synthesis of Written Torah, Oral Torah and the theology of C. G. Jung. We begin our answer on the sixth day of creation when "God created man with His image."; (Gen. 1:27). Nevertheless (and this is the great mystery) God later says, "THERE WAS NO MAN TO WORK THE GROUND" (Gen. 2:5). But if man had been created in Genesis 1, why was there "no man" around in Genesis 2 to "till the ground?" The answer: Only the second creation is called by the Bible "a living creature" (Gen. 2:7) because only he receives a "breath of life," or Soul, from God (ibid); granted, the first creation is "blessed"; by God, but only the second is sanctified. In other words, God created two Adams, and not one: the first (Gen. 1:26) he "blessed" but did not ensoul with "the breath of life"; the second (Gen. 2:7) he created, but this time with a soul, because the first was not fit to "till the soil" of Eden -- which is to say, to bring the Kingdom of Heaven into fruition. The first is called "beasts of the field" (Gen. 1:24), while the second is called, "Adam", or Man, as described in the passage:
"Yahweh God said, 'It is not good for MAN to be alone. I will make a helpmate for him.' So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild beasts . . . These he brought to the man . . . But the man did not find a suitable helpmate from among them." (Gen. 2:18) About this passage and its direct implication that God brought all the "wild beasts" to Adam for him to choose a helpmate from among them, the Zohar says:
"Alas for the stupidity and blindness of men who do not perceive the mysteries of the Torah and do not know that by 'the beasts of the field' are designated the unlearned [first creation] . . . The 'beasts of the field' were like [soul-less] animals among men." (Zohar 1:128a-b)
In other words, he was their leader, the first "man" created in Genesis 1:26 who was "fruitful and multiplied" with his female counterpart ("Lilith"), thus creating the "beasts of the field", or the "unlearned" and "soulless" mankind referred to in the Zohar. Moreover, the Zohar states, this Serpent Nachash (who, Rashi brings down, walked upright "like a man"; until he was "cursed"; by God to "crawl on [his] belly and eat dust" in Genesis 3:14), this Nachash was "the ideal form of . . . the Satan" (Zohar 1:35b). Thus, Nachash was to the "first" creation what Adam was to the "second"; -- a prototype of a specific species -- the significant difference between them being, as I pointed out at the beginning of this lecture, that the second Adam received a "living soul", but Nachash (the first Adam) did not. In the next section we shall consider the meaning of the passage, "And Yahweh God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone'." (Gen. 2:18)
Just as there was a First and Second man, so too was there a First and Second woman. The first is called "Lilith", alluded to in the passage, "And out of the ground Yahweh God formed every beast of the of the field" (Gen. 2:19). On the other hand, the Second woman is the one rightly called "Eve", and her creation is described in the passage, "Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman" (Gen. 2:22). Consequently, the Second woman, Eve, was the Second Adam's wife, as it states, ". . .And [Yahweh] brought her to the man" (Gen. 2:22); but the First woman, Lilith, was the First man's wife because they were both called "Beasts of the Field" in that they were created from the "soil of the ground".
According to Rashi, Nachash (the Serpent form of the Satan) sexually desired Eve when he saw her naked and having intercourse with Adam. Thus, the Zohar states:
"Two beings [Adam and Nachash] had intercourse with Eve [the Second woman], and she conceived from both and bore two children. Each followed one of the male parents, and their spirits parted, one to this side and one to the other, and similarly their characters. On the side of Cain are all the haunts of the evil species; from the side of Abel comes a more merciful class, yet not wholly beneficial -- good wine mixed with bad."(Zohar 136b) And even more specifically:
"Nachash injected his impure semen into Eve and she absorbed it; therefore, when Adam had intercourse with her she bore two sons -- one from the impure side [Nachash] and one from the side of Adam; and Abel [the second] bore a resemblance to the higher form, and Cain [the first] to the lower." (Zohar 154a) Therefore, neither Cain nor Abel was a "full son" of Adam, but instead also carried the seed (or gene) of Nachash; and each was the prototype for a later species of mankind. The question that always arises, of course, is how could Abel, who was killed by Cain, become the progenitor of any species, let alone one that was "good wine mixed with bad." The Oral Torah answers:
"Cain rose up against Abel and killed him because he was jealous of Abel on account of Abel's WIFE, as indicated by the words, 'and it came to pass when they were in the field,' the word 'field' signifying a woman." (Zohar 1:36b) As I point out later, this wife of Abel -- according to the Zohar, Rashi and other works of Oral Torah -- was his twin sister. Thus, Abel had taken his twin sister for a wife, and from this incestuous union came the later species of "good wine mixed with bad," or genetically recessive throwbacks, so to speak, to their mutual parentage from the side of Nachash. Also, we are told, it was to steal this woman and make her his own that Cain killed Abel and had sexual intercourse and offspring with her. As it is written, "And Cain knew his wife and she conceived." (Gen. 3:17) So it was that the brothers Cain and Abel had sexual intercourse with their sister, and from this inbreeding came the "mixed multitude" spoken of in Torah, which was two species of mankind: From the side of Cain came the evil seed (gene) of Nachash tempered by the holy seed (gene) of Adam; and from the side of Abel came the holy seed of Adam corrupted by the "evil semen" of Nachash. (Zohar 1:36b)
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