Kabbalah Library

66. And you are a Tania who is helping you, meaning you are helping yourself more than everyone because you are the whale of the sea of the Torah, since the master of all the fish is called a “whale,” after the Torah, of which it is written, “For they are a graceful garland on your head.” And in you, as it is written, “Man and beast You save, Lord.”

Man is Tifferet, of whom It is written, “If a man dies in the tent,” and the Torah exists only in one who puts himself to death over it, and there is no death but poverty. And the beast, these are the peoples of the earth, who surrender like a horse or a mule under the authors of the Mishna.

67. In the meantime, Rabbi Shimon came. Moses opened and said, “Authors of the Mishna, who is a whale?” Rabbi Shimon said to him, “He is the one whose degree is the middle pillar and righteous, of whom it was said, ‘a body,’ which is Tifferet, ‘and a covenant,’ which is Yesod, ‘we regard them as one.’ He grows at sea, in upper Ima, Bina, in which we unify the twenty-five letters in ‘Hear O Israel’ to the Creator, and twenty-five letters in ‘Blessed be the name of His kingship forever and ever,’ which amount to ‘sea,’ fifty. And he is in her; he is in that sea, Bina.”

Moses said, “Indeed, a whale stands by the seashore, and the world stands on its fins. The whale is the righteous who is the foundation of the world, on which the whole world stands.” Rabbi Shimon said, “Happy are you, Moses.”