This article was originally published in 2016.
Every month has a different Tetragrammaton combination that is the conduit, the channel, through which all the Light and blessings of that month come down. The four letter combination for this month of Taurus, Iyar, is Yud Hei Hei Vav. Each combination of these ancient letters has a different gift, and the kabbalists teach that the Light and gift of wisdom is what comes down from these four channels into this month; therefore, I strongly recommend meditating upon the Yud Hei Hei Vav throughout the month in order to truly connect to the Light and blessings available.
A few years ago when I was in Israel, I had the merit to see some of the writings of Rav Ashlag, the founder of The Kabbalah Centre. When he first began studying with his teacher, Rav Ashlag in the 1920s, Rav Brandwein says in a letter, “…as you have told me, I make sure that every single day I study from your teachings.” And Rav Ashlag in his Introduction to the Ten Luminous Emanations (published as And You Shall Choose Life) quotes a section from the kabbalists in which they make very clear that the only cure against our innate Desire to Receive for the Self Alone and ego is study. And, in another letter, Rav Brandwein later writes to his student Rav Berg that study, the deeper study, is the food of the soul; just as when you feed the physical body, it is strong, and when you starve it, it is weak, so, too, is it with our soul. If we feed it wisdom consistently, it becomes alive, and it can feel.
Therefore, Rav Brandwein tells Rav Berg you have to make sure that every single day is infused with a deep study. And it is important to keep reminding ourselves of this. If any of us thinks that we are going to be spiritual, that we are going to be connected to the Light of The Creator, that we are going to change, that we are going to accomplish what our soul came into this world to accomplish without dedicating whatever amount of time we have each day to study, to feed the soul, we are wrong. We can be a sharing person, we can be a spiritual person, we can be making all the connections we need to make, but if we do not feed our soul consistently, it is impossible to accomplish what our soul came to this world to do.
We have the opportunity in this month of Taurus, a month which gives us the gift of wisdom, to stop fooling ourselves into thinking, “Today I was a spiritual person, because I shared and made connections,” and start studying the deeper wisdom every day, and start to truly feed our soul.
