by
Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain, Founder & Spiritual Director
DONMEH WEST


"Then Cain said to Yahweh: 'My punishment is greater than I can bear. See! Today you drive me from this ground. I must hide from you, and be a fugitive and a wanderer over all the earth. Whoever comes across me will kill me.' Yahweh replied: 'Very well then, If anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for him [by me].' So Yahweh put a mark on Cain, to prevent whoever might come across him from striking him down. And Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden." (Genesis 4:13-16)

The "Holy Sinner" -- he who sins, who lives beyond conventional morality, yet carries in himself the grace of God for others to receive -- is he on whom there rests the "Mark of Cain" -- the Holy Spirit -- bestowed on him by God for reasons only He alone can know. This "Mark of Cain," this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is neither punishment nor rebuke, as commonly (and mistakenly) believed, but a protection of the Holy Sinner placed there by God "to prevent whoever might come across him from striking him down." Even Paul declared it:

"If I should decide to boast, I should not be made to look foolish, because I should only be speaking the truth; but I am not going to in case anyone should begin to think I am better than he can actually see and hear me to be.

"In view of the extraordinary nature of these revelations [I have], to stop me from getting too proud I was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to stop me from getting too proud! About this thing, I have pleaded with the Lord three times for it to leave me, but he has said, 'My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness.' So I shall be very happy to make my weakness my special boast so that the power of Messiah may stay over me, and that is why I am quite content with my weakness, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Messiah's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:6-10)

So even Paul bore in himself the Mark of Cain -- the "thorn in the flesh" -- that both tormented and exalted him. And why? Because the sinner is, or can be, far closer and more precious to God than the Saint. Consider the words of the Talmud and Tomer Devorah:

"The Righteous cannot stand in the place of a penitent sinner." (Tomer Devorah, Sepher-Hermon edition, 1974, p. 58)

Without sin, there is no repentance, and without repentance there is no closeness to God. Indeed, repentance brings us into the Glory of God, but sin is that which makes repentance possible. Therefore without sin, we cannot know God, and without the Knowledge of God we are dead. In the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

"And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:4-5)

Thus, the Holy Sinner sins on behalf of others, is punished for his sins on behalf of others, is crushed for his sins on behalf of others -- and by his sinning, they are healed. But the Mark of Cain protects him from their condemnation, from their ignorance by which they see him only as "someone struck by God, and brought low" for his having done in public what they covet in secret. His public humiliation, therefore, is a substitute for theirs; it is no longer necessary for them to sin in order to repent -- he has done it for them.


THE BLACK SEA COVERED IN A FEARSOME DARK


"Jacob Frank (1726-91) will always be remembered as one of the most frightening phenomena in the whole of Jewish history: a religious leader who, whether for purely self-interested motives or otherwise, was in all his actions a truly corrupt and degenerate individual." -- Prof. Gershom Scholem (The Messianic Idea in Judaism, Schocken Books, 1971, p. 126)

Nevertheless, this Jacob Frank -- whom Scholem here rightly describes as "one of the most frightening phenomena in....Jewish history" and a serious religious leader who was, at the same time, "truly corrupt and degenerate" -- could make such profoundly spiritual statements as:

"An aspect of the Godhead, a true aspect, grew in me like a pearl that grows of itself, and I have no man to whom I might reveal the true matter." (Trans. by Harris Lenowitz, Sayings of Yakov Frank, Tree Books, 1978, p. 16)

and also:

"There is no longer a need for Commandments and Prayers, but only to listen and do and go on until we come to a certain hidden place."(Ibid, p. 20)

as well as:

"When you are fit to come to Esau then the curse will be lifted from the earth and it will turn to gold and then there will be neither chill nor heat, but temperate clime. And every day, roses will bloom for one hundred and ten years and the sun will shine indescribably and it will always be day and never night, for night is the world's punishment." (Ibid, p. 29)

It was this striking contrast between his profound spirituality on the one hand, and his "corrupt and degenerate" behavior on the other, that marks Jacob Frank, as it does others in the Sabbatian tradition (including myself), as a "Holy Sinner." Nevertheless, he, like they, was holy -- or the reverse face of holiness -- just as the Hebrew letter Sin is the same as, but the obverse of the Shin:

   

Notice that this letter -- which, according to Kabbalah, represents both Divine Power and, at the same time, Corruption -- is essentially the same in both representations -- except when called "Sin," the corresponding daglesh (or "dot") is above its left-hand branch, but when called "Shin" it is above the right-hand branch, thus corresponding to the Right- and Left-Hand columns of the Ten Sefirot:


   
   
LEFT-HAND COLUMN     RIGHT-HAND COLUMN
   
(3) Binah/Mother ("Imma")
(5) Gevurah/Severity
(8) Hod/Forces of Evil
 
    (2) Chokmah/Father ("Abba")
(4) Chesed/Mercy
(7) Netzach/Forces of Good
 


And this Left-Hand column is said to represent the negative side of God's supernal form, while the Right-Hand column is said to represent His positive side. In the same way, the Holy Sinner is to the Righteous Saint what the Hebrew letter Sin is to the Shin -- exactly the same, but with a different emphasis. Of this bifurcation in the nature of God and, therefore, those in whom He plants Himself, Jung writes:

"Faced with this difficulty, [Job] does not doubt the unity of God. He clearly sees that God is at odds with himself -- so totally at odds that he, Job, is quite certain of finding in God a helper and an 'advocate' against God. As certain as he is of the evil in Yahweh, he is equally certain of the good.....Yahweh is not a human being: he is both a persecutor and a helper in one and the one aspect is as real as the other. Yahweh is not split, but is an antimony -- a totality of inner opposites and this is the indispensable condition for his tremendous dynamism."(C. G. Jung, Answer to Job, par. 567)

Thus, the Holy Sinner (such as Sabbatai Zevi, Jacob Frank and, God help us, even you and I) complements the Righteous Saint (such as Rebbe Nachman of Breslov) and is, therefore, an "indispensable condition" for completing and actualizing the inner "dynamism" of God.

But the Holy Sinner is not a criminal: "corrupt," yes; "degenerate," perhaps, but a "criminal," no. His actions may offend us, even repel us, but they do not damage us --except insofar as we find them socially and morally unacceptable. But the Holy Sinner sins -- whatever his sinful (but never criminal) actions may be -- always for the sake of God and never for himself. Therefore God, not man, judges the Holy Sinner in all his actions. We may look upon him as "a thing despised and rejected by men.....struck down by God" (Isaiah 53:3-4) -- or, in the vernacular, as a "dead-beat" and "low-life" -- but in the eyes of God, and on our behalf, he is His "Other Side" -- the that compliments the and, therefore, whether we like it or not, completes the Face of God. In the words of Jacob Frank, with whom we began this lecture:

"[Sabbatai Zevi] turned to me and asked, 'Are you this Jacob the Wise? I have heard of you -- that you're a hero and have soul. I, too, went to the place you are going, but I don't have the strength to go on. If you want to, be strong! and The Name will help you. Many Fathers have taken on this burden and failed.' And there he showed me through the window a depth like the Black Sea covered in a fearsome dark. And to the side of the depth I saw a great mountain reaching up to the heart of the sky. And I called out: Come what may! I am going! God help me!"(trans. by Harris Lenowitz, Sayings of Yakov Frank, Tree Books, 1978, p. 12)





BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES:
| Sabbatai Zevi | Jacob Frank | Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain |
| A Critical Re-Assessment of Sabbatai Zevi |
| Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain's Professions of a Holy Sinner |
AUDIO LECTURES ON KABBALAH BY REB YAKOV LEIB HAKOHAIN:
| The Zohar |
ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF "YALHAKIAN" NEO-SABBATIAN KABBALAH:
| Knowing the Unknowable |
| A Brief Note on Enlightenment |
| A Neo-Sabbatian Discourse on the Son of God |
| A Primer of "Yalhakian" Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah |
| Participating in the Continuing Incarnation of God |
| Sabbatai Zevi's 'God of the Faith' | Evolution of the Ego |
| Two Torahs of Kabbalah: Torah D'Atziluth & Torah D'Beriah |
| On the Limits of Antinomianism | The Transformation of God |
| Commentary on the 13th Century "Treatise on the Left Emanation" |
| A Selection of Neo-Sabbatian Quotations Culled from Various Sources |
KABBALISTIC WRITINGS OF REB YAKOV LEIB HAKOHAIN:
| Commentaries on Rabbi Azriel of Gerona's 12th Century Text, "Explanation of the Ten Sefirot" |
| Kabbalistic Genetics of the Holy Seed & Reclaiming the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel |
| A Commentary on the Book of Job | Kabbalah and the Interpretation of Dreams |
| To Die for the People: A Kabbalistic Reinterpretation of the Crucifixion of Jesus |
| The Shemot Shel Katzar Tikkunim: Revealing the Concealed Names of God |
| The Christian Myth of Melchizedek vs. Hereditary Jewish Priesthood |
| The Apocrypha of Jacob Frank | The Tikkun of Raising Animals |
| Appointment in Smyrna: A Neo-Sabbatian Odyssey |
| Sabbatai Zevi and the Mystery of the Red Heifer |
| The Kabbalah of the Hindu Mantra "OM" |
| The Mystery of the Middle Column |
| The Hidden Structures of Water |
| Exegesis on the Rod of Aaron |
| Book of Silence |
ROADMAPS TO GOD:
| Ten Sefirot of Jewish Kabbalah | Sufi Lion of Bektashi Islam |
| Mandala of Tibetian Buddhism | Seven Chakras of Tantric Hinduism |
| Ox-Herding Pictures of Zen Buddhism | Rosarium Pictures of Christian Alchemy |
GENERAL INFORMATION:
| Donmeh West Home Page |
| Schedule of Live Online Classes | Links |
| Join Donmeh West |

  All original material on this website is ©2004 Donmeh West and may not be reproduced in any manner without written permission.