Kabbalah Kronicles 30 – Jello and Whipped Cream

Uncle Zally / Zalman Velvel

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Today’s Kabbalah Klass contained only men, and there was total chaos and confusion … even more than the classes on love.

The Rabbi asked, “Do we really exist?”

We said, “Yes.”

We figured this was going to be an easy lesson.

Then he followed with, “No, you don't exist.”

That’s when the chaos and confusion broke out.

Rabbi Itchy explained the beginning of the universe, Kabbalistic Style. There was no Big Bang Theory, no black holes, no Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. There was just God, by Himself.

What was God doing?

If you listen to our comedy CD, “Kabbalah You,” you know the answer – nothing.

So God made a chair. Why?

Because if you’re doing nothing, you might as well sit down. (You can use it, go ahead.)

However, to Kabbalah, this is no joking matter. It has absolutely no sense of humor when it comes to the proof of existence. Kabbalah states that if you believe there is only one God, then in the Beginning, there was nothing but God, all by Himself. No parents. No evil twin. Just God.

How long He was by Himself, God only knows. He didn’t create Time yet. It could have been a billion zillion years, or it could have been a blink of God’s eye, which is about seven times bigger than the Sun.

So God created a Tzim Tzum. Don’t try to pronounce it, only Hebrew speakers can. It means an empty space.

God then filled that Tzim Tzum with the world, and life. He made it separate, apart from Himself.

Why?

So we would have the free will to love Him, or ignore Him.

Except Kabbalah doesn’t really believe we are separate from God, or that anything is apart from God.

Kabbalah believes that everything is, and will always be, a part of God, and our only existence comes from being a part of God. In other words, without God we don’t exist. We are not separate from God, we are God, and it is an illusion that we are separate.

Think about that. You don’t exist. Only God exists.

So what does Jello and Whipped Cream have to do with Kabbalah?

When I was 18 and in my second semester of college, I changed my major from Pre-Med to Philosophy. (How’s that for foresight on the dollar value of an education?) Well, in Philosophy 101 class, we were discussing the proof of existence, a la Descartes.

Descartes said, in typical French fashion, “Je pense, que je suis.”

I think, therefore I am.

After learning this, I went wandering around campus, driving my friends crazy. When they asked me how I was doing, I answered, “What difference does it make? I’m not really here.” If they doubted me, I asked them how they knew they were really here.

After a week of this, my friend Buck, a worldly Italian from the Bronx, got sick and tired of listening to me. We were in the lunchroom, and he had a big dish of Jello with whipped cream on top, like the one to the left.

He picked up the dish, and asked, “You really don’t think you’re here?”

I said, “Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

I repeated, “Yes.”

Then he threw the dish at me. The Jello bounced off. It was no proof of existence, one way or the other.

The whipped cream was a different matter. It was all over my face, in my hair, and dripping on my shirt and pants.

From that day forward, I never doubted my existence.

By the way, whenever David and I are writing comedy, he makes me put a Tzim Tzum on the page, a space where a joke needs to go. To him, whenever there is a space with nothing in it, it needs a joke. And David, like God, never runs out of jokes. Thank God.

And like food, it’s a sin to waste a joke. There are over a billion Chinese people in bad need of a laugh … they are so exhausted from making chatskis for the world.

By the way, I think I found my sense of humor again. I discovered that while the air in Israel makes you smarter, the air in Fort Myers makes you funnier. Come on down when it’s snowing and find out. Stop in at Chabad and take a Kabbalah Klass with us.

Bring some Grey Goose Vodka and Chivas Regal with you.

You will get very spiritual, and even funnier after that.

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