ספר ויקרא

Every human being, until he became a viable human being, ‎had to undergo three stages in that development, insemination, ‎embryonic existence in the mother’s womb, pregnancy, and ‎birth. The stage we described as insemination is understood in the ‎parlance of Kabbalists, as ‎התעוררות‎, a form of awakening, arousal, ‎which calls on man’s heart to serve his Master, the Creator. The ‎stage known as pregnancy is reached when an individual is ready ‎and willing to fulfill G’d’s commandments. Finally, birth, is the ‎stage when man is actively engaged in performing the ‎commandments of the Torah. This is what our sages in Rosh ‎‎Hashanah 4 alluded to when they said, quoting psalms 45,10 ‎נצבה שגל לימינך בכתם אופיר‎, “a consort stood at our right decked in ‎gold from Ophir.” They understood the psalmist to say that as a ‎reward for the Israelites deriving more pleasure from serving the ‎Lord than the average person experiences when engaging in ‎marital intercourse, ‎שגל‎, they have been rewarded with gold from ‎Ophir. [the source of the most precious gold. Ed.]‎On the face of it, we must wonder what prompted the ‎psalmist to make a comparison between a physical sensation, ‎such as having sexual relations, with the spiritual experience of ‎serving the Lord?The performance of the sexual act is often an act of indulging ‎one’s libido in sins of the most severe kind, so what bearing does ‎this have on how we serve the Lord?‎‎I believe that what the psalmist, a descendant of Korach, had ‎in mind when he said this was that the sexual act consists of ‎reciprocal parts played by the ‎משפיע‎, the initiator, the male, the ‎משפיע‎, and the recipient, the woman, the ‎מקבל‎. This is the reason ‎why the sages chose to emphasize the feeling of lust of the ‎person indulging in initiating forbidden sexual intercourse, as it is ‎contrasted by the psalmist with the exact opposite, the ‎overwhelming desire by the Jewish man to please his Creator by ‎performing His commandments with an enthusiasm similar to ‎the sinner enjoying forbidden sex.This is also what the Zohar we quoted had alluded to ‎when he said that from the moment a woman has become ‎pregnant she concentrates exclusively on looking forward to the ‎day she gives birth to a male infant. The “woman” in the ‎‎Zohar is a simile for the collective soul of the Jewish people, ‎כנסת ישראל‎, and the term “pregnancy,” refers to the moment ‎when the Jewish people made the decision to serve the Lord, ‎whereas the “birth” in that line of the Zohar, refers to the ‎time when the Jewish people collectively have made good on their ‎resolution to serve the Lord. When the “woman” in the ‎‎Zohar is viewed as looking forward anxiously to giving birth ‎to a male child, the simile describes the hope of the collective soul ‎of the Jewish people to perform its service of the Lord in such a ‎manner that it is recognized as ‎זכר‎, male, as then it will be the ‎trigger for releasing G’d’s largesse in abundant measure ‎throughout the universe‎