Before The Waters

1 · Sons Of Elokim

“And it came to pass when man began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them. And the sons of Elokim saw the daughters of man that they were good, and they took for themselves wives from all whom they chose. And Hashem said: My spirit shall not contend evermore with man, for he is also flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of Elokim came in unto the daughters of man and they bore for them; they are the mighty ones who were of old, men of name.”

At first glance, these verses pass before the eye like a cloud laden with thunder: heavy, charged, but not yet releasing their rain. For the Torah relates them in a manner of remez, brief allusion, and immediately afterwards speaks explicitly of the corruption of creation: “And the earth was destroyed before HaElokim, and the earth was filled with violence. And Elokim saw the earth, and behold, it was destroyed, for all flesh had destroyed its way upon the earth.”

It is thus understood that there is an inner connection between the episode of the “sons of Elokim” and “the Nephilim… in those days and also afterwards,” and the state of “vatishacheis ha’aretz lifnei HaElokim” and “vatimalei ha’aretz chamas.” Yet precisely here the Torah is most withholding: it mentions strange beings, names them only once, gestures to their being “mighty ones of old, men of name,” and then passes on to the decree of the Mabul, as if it suffices that we know they existed, without knowing who and what they were.

And we find indeed in the words of Chazal and the mefarshim that this concealment is reflected. In Bereishis Rabbah it is brought that “bnei Elokim” are the dayanim, the judges, as it is said “Elokim nitzav ba’adat Keil”—and so explains Rashi, that they are the princes and rulers who were called by the name Elokim because the power of judgment was given into their hand. And the Ramban brings also another opinion, that “bnei Elokim” are malachim, for the term Elokim is used regarding supernal beings as well, and he inclines to say that there is contained here a sod, a secret which is not to be expounded at length in peshat.

Seemingly, according to the opinion that they were judges and princes, the whole narrative is a matter of social corruption: those in authority misused their power, took women by force, and this led to a society of robbery and injustice until the earth was filled with chamas. And according to the opinion that they were malachim, there is a wondrous and awesome matter, that beings from a higher world descended and mingled with flesh and blood, and from them came forth the Nephilim. Yet in either way of understanding, questions remain.

For if “bnei Elokim” are merely human judges, why does the Torah here use such a lofty and unusual expression, which in all the rest of Torah is reserved for G‑dly names and for exalted beings? If the intent is to criticize the corruption of leadership, it could have said “the mighty” or “the rulers,” as it says in other places. And if the Torah nevertheless chose the term “bnei Elokim,” it indicates that even in their being judges there was some reflection—albeit in a greatly diminished way—of an Elokus-character, of a trace of Divine power and stature in the earthly system. Thus the problem is not simply that ordinary men sinned, but that a certain reflection of Elokus in the world’s order itself became perverted. This is already a different kind of breakdown.

And according to the opinion that they are malachim, the difficulty is yet stronger. For why does the Torah, which is Toras Emes and not, G‑d forbid, a book of legends, mention such a matter only in passing, without explaining its context, its cause, and its consequence? Moreover, this narrative seems central to the entire atmosphere of the generation before the Mabul. If in truth malachim descended and from them came forth a generation of Nephilim, beings who were “mighty ones of old, men of name,” then it is from here that we must understand the radical state of the world which necessitated a Mabul that erased almost all existence. Why then is the matter hidden and covered?

Additionally, it must be understood, why does the verse emphasize, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards”? If the intention is only to inform us about that era, it would have sufficed to say “in those days.” The addition “and also afterwards” hints that what began then did not end with the Mabul, but continued in some fashion even later. But how is this possible, if the Mabul washed away all that existed, and Noach alone remained, and those with him in the teivah?

Furthermore, what is the very meaning of such hybrid beings, if we follow the opinion that “bnei Elokim” are malachim? For the concept of a mixture of spiritual and physical in a single creature is foreign to the ordered seder hishtalshelus as we know it; malachim have their path and man has his, and each world retains its boundary. If, however, we say that the Torah is speaking only in metaphor and not about a real occurrence, then the entire narrative becomes, G‑d forbid, like a parable without explanation—and this is impossible in Torah.

We must therefore say that in these verses the Torah is opening before us an entire inner drama, but in the manner of a closed hint, such that only to those who contemplate in the light of the words of Chazal, of the Zohar, and of Toras HaChassidus, does the outline of the matter begin to appear.

And indeed we find in the Zohar that the generations before the Mabul did not merely sin in the simple sense, but that through their deeds “itarun dinin ila’in,” they aroused supernal judgments, and they disturbed the balance of the upper and lower waters established on the second day of Creation. The division of the waters is the foundation of the world’s stability, that there should be a measured separation between what is above and what is below, between the concealed and the revealed. When this separation is disturbed from below, the configuration of all the worlds is shaken.

From this it is understood that the corruption of those generations was not only that people stole and committed immorality, but that their whole way of being in the world interfered with the cosmic order of boundaries between higher and lower. This is already hinted in the language “vatishacheis ha’aretz lifnei HaElokim”—that the very aretz, the world as world, was twisted before the Name Elokim, which is the Name of measure and order, the Name through which the worlds are structured. The blemish was not only in the individuals but in the relation of creation to Elokus.

And this is the connection to “bnei Elokim” and “Nephilim.” For the very phrase “sons of Elokim” indicates a point where the Name Elokim, which is usually associated with concealment and natural order, appears in a bechinas ben, a mode of extension and projection downward. There is here a place where the Divine attribute that sets boundaries produces an issue that moves toward their crossing. Similarly, the term Nephilim, from the root nefilah, fall, indicates beings whose very being is a falling out of place, a descent from their proper station into a realm that cannot truly contain them. Their existence is itself a symptom of the breach between upper and lower.

However, all the above is still only in the plane of understanding in olam—the cosmic order. In Toras HaChassidus, every event in Torah must be contemplated in the threefold measure of olam, shanah, nefesh: world, time, and soul. That is, the same pattern appears in the structure of the worlds, in the unfolding of history, and within the inner world of each individual nefesh. Only when we perceive the event simultaneously in these three aspects do we begin to apprehend its pnimius.

According to this, the question is deepened. For if the matter of “sons of Elokim” and Nephilim is so foundational that it touches the division of waters in olam, then it must also express a turning point in shanah—the historical flow of generations—and in nefesh—the inner life of man. In shanah we indeed see that from the time “man began to multiply upon the face of the earth,” a new epoch began, culminating in the Mabul and the new covenant with Noach. But in nefesh, what is the inner state alluded to by “when man began to multiply,” by “the sons of Elokim saw the daughters of man,” and by “the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards”? What is this charged atmosphere, in which the boundaries between higher and lower are thinned, in the soul’s own avodah?

If we content ourselves with a rational-historical reading—that once there were wicked rulers who took what they desired, and there were violent men of great physical stature called Nephilim—then the inner necessity of the Mabul remains unintelligible. For why would such sins, which unfortunately recur in many eras, demand the erasure of almost all life? And more, why would the Torah, which is eternal, set aside precious verses to inform us of this particular instance of political immorality and social violence, if not because there is here an archetype of a more profound dynamic, one that recurs in many forms “also afterwards”?

We are therefore compelled to seek a deeper pnimiyus in the term “bnei Elokim” that will unify the different opinions of Chazal—judges, princes, malachim—and that will reveal what is this bechinas ben emerging from the Name Elokim, how it relates to the disturbance of upper and lower waters, and what is the meaning of Nephilim as hybrid beings that strain the earth’s capacity to bear them.

On the basis of all the above, it is possible to say that the Torah here alludes to a category of beings and forces that stand precisely at the boundary between worlds: on the one hand called “sons of Elokim,” on the other hand interacting with “daughters of man.” Their very role is to carry down something of the Divine into the human, and therefore their corruption effects a deep distortion in olam, shanah, and nefesh alike. The explicit elaboration of this category is not stated in the verse itself, for Torah chose here to clothe the matter in hint and brevity; but in the words of Chazal, especially in the midrashim which speak of certain malachim who descended to this world, we begin to hear the continuation of that which the verse merely opens.

And this will be the inyan to be explained: who are these “sons of Elokim” in their deeper identity, what is their shlichus in descending toward man, how from their descent comes to be the existence of Nephilim, and how all this prepared the world for the decree “I will blot out man whom I have created.” Through this will be clarified also the Zoharic teaching that the generations before the Mabul aroused supernal dinim and disturbed the balance of waters, and we will understand in olam, shanah, and nefesh the strange, charged atmosphere of that epoch which stands at the threshold between the first world and the world renewed after the Flood.

2 · Descent Of The Watchers

And to understand this, it is necessary first to clarify: what is this general inyan of malach descending into olam ha’asiya, into a place of gashmiyus and bechiras ha’adam. For at first glance, this is a contradiction in terms.

Malachim, as is known from the words of Chazal and as explained at length in Toras HaChassidus, are called “omdim”—they stand. Their whole metzius is a particular middah, a fixed mode of feeling and ratzon toward Elokus: Michoel is chessed, Gavriel is gevurah, Refael is rachamim, and so on. They are burning with an ahavah or yirah, but this ahavah and yirah is by them in a kviyus; they do not move from one mode to its opposite, nor do they have true choice to redefine their identity. Neshamos Yisrael, by contrast, are called “holchim”—they walk, they go, for their essential koach is daas, which can be po’el a hiskashrus panimis with Elokus in ever-new ways, choosing, rising, falling, and rising again.

If so, when we speak of malachim sent as shluchim into lower worlds, it is generally to carry out a determinate shlichus without the element of nisayon and choice in the inner sense. The malach is an extension of the Divine middah into a specific inyan; he is not a ba’al bechirah in that shlichus.

How then can there be such a thing that malachim descend to this world in a manner of nisayon, in a place of taavos and confusion, as told in the midrashim concerning Shemhazai and Azael—that they asked to descend and prove that they could withstand earthly temptation? This seems utterly foreign to the very definition of malach.

However, we find in the Nevi’im a different kind of description of malachim, not only as messengers of acts, but as “irin v’kaddishin”—“watchers and holy ones,” as it is written in Daniel in the matter of Nevuchadnetzar’s dream, that “by the decree of the watchers is the matter, and by the word of the holy ones is the sentence.” And the Zohar and the mefarshim there explain that “irin” are a particular category of malachim whose avodah is to oversee and to watch over the seder ha’olamos, to gaze, as it were, from the higher realms into the lower, and to testify and to arouse din or rachamim according to what they perceive.

It is already understood from this lashon “irin”—from the root er, awake, and also from re’iyah, seeing—that their inyan is a certain hisbonenus, a contemplative watchfulness; they are not only shluchim to perform a given act, but they stand as eyes of the higher worlds upon the lower. And “kaddishin” indicates that even in this watching, they remain holy, separated, belonging to the realm of kedushah.

Yet precisely because their tafkid is to be poised at the threshold between the higher and lower—to “look down” and evaluate—there is, so to speak, in their avodah a taste of daas: they are the “knowledge” of the higher worlds as it is turned outward toward the lower. And it is this category that is alluded to in the term “bnei Elokim”: they are the offspring of the Divine Name of judgment and tzimtzum, Elokim, as it is mispashet outward to supervise and structure creation.

On this basis we can approach the words of Chazal that speak more openly of an episode that the Torah itself clothes in great concealment. In Yalkut Shimoni and in Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer it is related that in the days when the generation of Enoch began to corrupt their way—when men began to “call in the name” not of Hashem, but of intermediaries and idols—there arose a kitrug above. The malachim said: “Ribbono shel olam, did You not say, ‘Let us make man…’? See now, man has become corrupted; You should have made the world through us instead.”

They claimed, as it were, that beings of pure ruchniyus, not weighed down by a guf and yetzer, would have fulfilled the Divine intention in creation without falling. And the Holy One, blessed be He, answered them: “I know that were you to descend to that world of physicality, you too would be drawn after its temptations.” But they persisted, saying that they would remain faithful. And the midrash concludes that the Holy One said: “Descend and dwell among them,” and two great malachim descended—Shemhazai and Azael—and in the end, they too stumbled in the inyan of arayos and in teaching destructive chochmos to mankind.

Now, this whole narration is wondrous. For first, how can malachim complain against the creation of man; do they not know the Divine wisdom which chose dafka a nefesh in a guf as the primary vehicle of Dirah Betachtonim? Second, what does it mean that Hashem, so to speak, responds to their ta’anah by allowing them to descend and be tested; is this merely a punishment, or is there some deeper to’eles in such a yeridah? And third, how could it be that malachim of such exalted level as Shemhazai and Azael come, G‑d forbid, to such gross sins that the midrash associates with them?

The matter will be understood by prefacing the description given by the Rambam of the generation of Enoch. He writes that in those days, men erred and thought that since Hashem created the heavens and set them to rule over the earth, it is fitting to honor these intermediaries, to bow to the stars and celestial spheres, to build temples for them and to offer sacrifices, and through this, to find favor with the Supreme King who appointed them. That is, their avodah zarah began not from a denial of the true G‑d, but from a distortion within the very concept of Elokim—the Divine power as it is invested in nature and in the sarim of the nations. They took the “bnei Elokim” in their upper root—that there are indeed mesharsim above who are channels of Divine shefa—and they severed them, as it were, from their Source, giving them independent standing.

This itself aroused a great awakening Above in the bechinas “irin v’kaddishin.” For when the lower beings misperceive the intermediaries, the intermediaries themselves are drawn into a crisis of identity. The very malachim who are appointed as sarim over forces of nature, over chochmos of the cosmos, find that below, their reflection has become an object of worship. This stirs in them a powerful question: what is their true standing and relationship to man? Are they mere invisible channels, or do they have some direct connection with human daas, that they should be known and honored?

In such a matzav, there can arise a ruchnius’dike “ambition” within the category of irin, that they seek to descend in an open, revealed way, to “prove,” so to speak, that if only the Divine service were carried out by purely spiritual beings, the world would be perfected without the confusions of guf and yetzer hara. This is the inner content of the midrash’s dialogue: it is not coarse jealousy, but a deep spiritual test of the very structure of seder hishtalshelus—whether the path to Dirah Betachtonim must go through the concealment and struggle of a human soul, or if perhaps there is another way.

And the answer from Above is that the very nature of an “ir v’kaddish” is bound up with being at a distance. His kedushah, his wholeness, is preserved precisely because he watches from above and does not enter the field of confusion and choice. Were he to descend into the place where Elokus is utterly concealed, his fixed middah would not suffice; he would lack the flexibility of daas to transform that concealment from within. Therefore Hashem says: “If you will descend, you too will stumble,” not as a punishment but as a statement of ontological fact: the structure of a malach is not suited for the avodah of bechiras ha’adam.

Nevertheless, in order that this truth should be revealed not only as a Divine assertion but also as a lived reality within the worlds, the descent of certain irin was indeed permitted. And here we come to the inyan of “yeridas ha’or b’keilim” in its most acute form.

For in general, when a great or, a high light, descends into keilim that are not sufficiently refined, two opposite possibilities can result. Either the keilim become uplifted and purified by the ohr, ohr, conversely, the ohr is distorted and enclothed within the coarseness of the keilim, becoming a nourishment for kelipah. This is the secret of how all deios ra’os and kochos hara’im in the world derive from some shever ha’kelim—some fallen greatness.

The “bnei Elokim” in their upper root are a sublime ohr: a daas elyon that knows the created realms from Above, with clear perception of how each inyan is only a levush for Elokus. When that ohr descended into the keilim of olam ha’asiya—the physical earth, with its gold and copper, its cycles of sun and moon, its passions and fears—those keilim were not yet refined through Torah and mitzvos. The world stood in a primordial na’arus, a raw youthfulness, without the inner discipline that comes from Sinai. In such a world, the descent of watchers carried great risk.

Thus the midrashim relate, in the manner of mashal, that these malachim taught mankind various chochmos: they revealed the secret of metalwork, of forging iron for weapons and for tools; they instructed in adornment and cosmetics, in how to magnify physical beauty; they taught the courses of the stars and the manipulation of hidden forces, the beginnings of sorcery and occult arts. All these inyonim, in their shoresh, are forms of daas: to know the properties of creation, to harness them for a purpose, to shape matter according to a tzurah.

In a rectified seder, such knowledge would be a hashra’as ha’or in keilim of kedushah: metal would be used for mizbeach and for building a mishkan, adornment would be for the sake of “zeh Keili v’anveihu,” to beautify mitzvos, astronomy would lead to “mah rabu ma’asecha Hashem,” and so on. But when the ohr of these watchers entered keilim not yet purified, the knowledges themselves became detached from their Source and served as tools for chamas and zimah. Weapons were forged for violence, adornment for promiscuity, astrology for fatalism and idolatry, occult arts for domination and fear.

This is the inner meaning of Shemhazai and Azael “sinning” with the daughters of man. It is not only a story of personal failure, though that too is related; it is the moshol for a cosmic nefilah in which a daas elyon, whose very role was to watch and remain holy, became entangled in the taavos of the lower world. The “sons of Elokim” no longer remained only judges and princes in the sense of hidden sarim channeling Divine gevurah; they took on a quasi-human posture, entering into intimate union with the “daughters of man,” i.e., with the human faculty of imagination and desire, producing a mixture that belonged fully to neither realm.

And here we can already perceive how this yeridah of the watchers prepared the ground for the emergence of Nephilim—beings in whom the ohr of the upper worlds was harnessed by coarse keilim, as will be explained in the continuation. For when a great or falls into a kelipah, the result is a gadlus distorted, a power that exceeds the proper measure of the world. The technological and spiritual revolution ignited by the watchers—on the one hand, an acceleration of human mastery over nature; on the other, a deepening of avodah zarah and moral corruption—created, in olam, shanah, and nefesh, a climate in which such hybrid giants could arise.

According to all this, the term “bnei Elokim” in the Torah hints, in its pnimiyus, to these irin v’kaddishin who descended, who were meant to remain holy watchers but became instead participants, and through whose fall the balance between upper and lower waters was further disturbed. Their story is not separate from that of man but is rather its most extreme expression, its visible and tangible fruit.

3 · Giants In The Earth

For once the “sons of Elokim” ceased to be only watchers and became, so to speak, husbands and fathers within the lower world, there must follow a dor, a type of being, that carries within his very etzem the irbuvya of two realms. And this is what the Torah calls Nephilim.

For the very term “Nephilim” is from the loshon of nefilah. And Chazal in their way are mechalekim in the meaning of this nefilah. On the one hand they say that they are called Nephilim because they caused others to fall, that fear of them fell upon people, or that through them the world fell. On the other hand, there is the simple sense that they themselves were fallen, giants who had fallen from their proper place. And according to the pnimiyus of the inyan, these two are one, for one who is himself a nefilah from a great height necessarily drags down with him all upon whom he leans, all who become entangled with him.

However, we must understand: If they are a nefilah, a fall and a defect, how is it that the Torah immediately adds upon them a loshon of greatness and praise, “hem hagiborim asher me’olam, anshei hashem”? At first glance “giborim” and “anshei hashem” sound like a maalah, a praise—that they were mighty, that they possessed a certain shem, a renown. How does this fit with the picture of corruption and chamas? And furthermore, why does the Torah need to tell us of their might and renown altogether, if the purpose is only to recount the sins that brought about the Mabul? It would have sufficed to say that there were wicked men, men of violence. Why this emphasis that they were “from of old, men of name”?

אך הענין הוא, that here the Torah is revealing a very deep sod about gadlus d’kelipah. For there is gadlus in kedushah, an expansiveness of ohr and chayus that comes from hispashtus ha’nefesh in Elokus, and there is also gadlus in sitra achra, which is a swelling and inflation that comes from the gathering of fallen sparks into vessels that are not ra’uy for them. And the chiddush is that in order for there to be a Mabul, a total breakdown requiring a new briah, it is not sufficient that there be stam resha’im. There must be a perversion of gadlus itself, that the very inyan of greatness and might should be hijacked by kelipah, to the point that greatness manifests as terror and renown manifests as tyranny.

This is alluded to in the expression “hem hagiborim.” The word “heim” in Chassidus often indicates a pointing with the finger, as if to say: these and no others. “These are the giborim”—the ultimate embodiment of gevurah drawn into the wrong side. For the root of gevurah is very high; it is the power of tzimtzum and gevul that allows anything finite to be, and in its shoresh it is bound up with the Name Elokim. When gevurah descends in kedushah it becomes the strength to restrain oneself, to stand firm against temptation, to conquer the yetzer. But when that same gevurah is drawn into kelipah, especially via the fall of the “sons of Elokim” whose inyan was gevurah, it appears as physical might, domination, the ability to impose one’s ratzon upon the world and upon others.

Thus the Nephilim were literally giborim in the simple sense—towering in bodily stature, powerful beyond the normal teva of man, as the Midrash describes that their steps spanned fields, their arms could uproot trees, their very voice could cause lesser men to tremble. But in pnimiyus this was only the outer levush of a deeper fact: that they held within themselves an accumulation of gevurah-energy fallen from a great height. The ohr of the watchers, together with the gevurah of the name Elokim that had been misapplied in the dor of Enoch and those that followed, all this collected into composite beings whose very existence testified to an irbuvya of almin, a mixture of worlds that should have remained separate.

And this is the meaning of “asher me’olam.” The simple mefarshim explain: they were from early times. But in pnimiyus “olam” is also concealment and worldliness, and “me’olam” can hint to a continuity, that they drew their might from an ancient, concealed root. These were not stam strong men; they were the historical condensation of a process that began “mi’olam,” from the very first concealments and distortions in the relationship between Elyonim and Tachtonim. The mistaken service of intermediaries in the generation of Enoch, the descent of the watchers, the misuse of the arts they taught—all of this is “me’olam,” from the very fabric of worldliness itself, and the Nephilim are its crystallization in flesh.

And “anshei hashem”—here too Chazal are divided, whether the intent is praise, that their name filled the earth, or condemnation, that they made themselves names in rebellion. But according to the derech haChassidus, both aspects are necessary. For the side of kelipah always seeks a shem, a separate identity, a sense of yeshus and self-subsistence. The more or it steals, the greater that shem becomes. Thus, their “name” was indeed great, for they bore within themselves sparks from lofty roots; and precisely thereby their corruption became more notorious, more entrenched. They were “men of the name” in the sense that they weaponized the koach ha’shem, the power of identity and reputation, for selfish glory, turning renown into a tool of fear and control.

To make this more tangible in the level of moshol, one can picture—according to the way of drush—their cities and courts. Enormous walls hewn from cyclopean stones, fitted with a mastery of metal and geometry taught by the fallen watchers; palaces whose pillars were carved with signs of the stars and constellations, for they had taken the chochmah of the heavens and made of it an idolatrous code; treasuries filled with weapons of bronze and iron, for the arts of forging had become instruments of conquest. Around their tables were spread foods in measure that could sustain many cities, for their appetite was commensurate with their size, and their very eating was a devouring of the world’s bounty, leaving scarcity and hunger in their wake.

In their courts, the same daas that had been intended to reveal the Divine order of creation was now turned into systems of sorcery and political ritual. They ruled not only by the sword but by the manipulation of fear and wonder—eclipses interpreted as omens, metals as talismans, adornments as means to ensnare hearts. And the people, having long since accustomed themselves to see intermediaries as powers, now saw in these Nephilim semi-divine rulers, bowing to them, inscribing their names on monuments, telling stories of their feats. Thus the inyan of “anshei hashem” was fulfilled in the most literal way: their shem became the axis around which society revolved.

All this is not only colorful description, but has a precise shoresh in the inyan of irbuvya d’almin. For in Kabbalah it is explained that the worlds are arranged in seder and havdalah: each olam has its own laws and boundaries, its own type of chayus. The upper waters must remain above the rakia, the lower waters below. The spiritual species—malachim, neshamos, kochavim—each have their distinct domain; and even within the physical, there is a great emphasis in Torah on the separation of species: “behemah behemto, ish ish,” and the many dinim of kilayim, not to mix together animals, seeds, garments that belong to different kinds.

And Chassidus explains that these halachos of kilayim are not only agricultural or zoological discipline, but a projection of a deeper truth: that when one mixes in an improper way between realms that should remain distinct, there is created a confusion of lights and vessels, an irbuvya, that gives rise to monsters—forms that cannot endure in the true seder ha’briya. The kashrus of the world depends upon the right chibur of domains, and when that chibur is distorted, something like a Nephili is born.

The Nephilim, then, are the ultimate kilayim. On the chitzoniyus, a mixture of “sons of Elokim” and “daughters of man,” beings who do not fit cleanly in either category. In pnimiyus, they are a chibur of gevurah and taavah, of sublime daas and coarse imagination, of upper-water chochmah and lower-water desire. Such a being cannot be described as merely human sin. He is a walking irbuvya d’almin, a place where the borders of worlds have been breached.

From this we can understand why their very existence placed a strain not only on human society but on the aretz itself. Chazal say that their terror filled the earth, that men could not traverse the roads, that the cry of the oppressed rose upward because of them. But more deeply, when a vessel is too small or of the wrong kind to contain the or that has entered it, there is a constant pressure, like a storm in the firmament. The earth—meaning both the physical planet and the bechinah of malchus that is called aretz—was being asked to hold within its limited dimensions giants whose roots were in worlds far above. It is as if the very ground protested under their steps, unable to bear the weight of such misdirected greatness.

This is the inyan of gadlus d’kelipah. For true gadlus, in kedushah, widens the world; it makes more space for Elokus, it refines the keilim so that they can hold more or in a way of menuchah. But gadlus of kelipah narrows the world, though it appears outwardly as expansiveness. The giant’s palace, his appetite, his armies, his fame—all take up space, but it is a space of suffocation. Others are crowded out, the poor are oppressed, the weak have no standing. Even the elements of nature are overtaxed: forests felled to build his cities, mines exhausted to forge his weapons, fields drained to feed his table. This is the opposite of dirah lo yisbarach; it is a dirah for ego, and the world groans under it.

And according to this we can also understand why it is specifically in the context of the Nephilim that the Torah says, “vatimalei ha’aretz chamas.” Chamas is not only theft; it is the taking of more than the measure, an occupation of space beyond one’s rightful chelek. The Nephilim’s existence was itself a perpetual act of chamas, for they embodied a measure of ohr and of koach that did not belong in such keilim and in such a way. The very laws of proportion in creation were violated, and the result was a saturation, “vatimalei”—no room remained for modesty, for simple humanity, for quiet avodah.

Thus, when it says later that “vatishacheis ha’aretz lifnei ha’Elokim,” that the earth was corrupted before Elokim, we can now hear also: before that very name of gevurah whose distortion had produced these giants. The attribute of Elokim, seeing its own fallen reflection in the world—its own gevurah turned to tyranny, its own power of boundaries turned to conquest—demanded tikkun. The tension between the high shoresh of these forces and their low expression in the Nephilim reached a point where the only possible resolution was a radical unmaking, a return of boundaries to their primal state.

For in a limited way, as long as sin remains within the ordinary dimensions of man, there is room for gradual repair—a flood of tears, a refinement of middos, a Torah given later that can contain and sweeten. But where there is an irbuvya of worlds engraved into the very bones of giants, where hybrid beings stride upon the earth and the entire atmosphere of olam, shanah, nefesh is saturated with their gadlus d’kelipah, then the seder itself cries out. The distinction between upper and lower waters, already weakened in the days of Enoch and by the descent of the watchers, is now in danger of total collapse from below, as it were: the lower waters reaching upward through these giants, claiming for themselves a stature and a shem not theirs.

Therefore, the answer from Above must come in the very language of waters and of boundaries, as will be explained. The same gevurah of Elokim that had been drawn down and misused in the Nephilim will be revealed from its true side as “kol maayanai bach,” as a Mabul of purifying waters that reestablishes the division of realms. The earth that could no longer bear the giants will be submerged, its surface erased, so that a new, modest world, with proper measures and distinct species, can emerge from the teivah of Noach. And the inner mechanism of this unmaking and remaking—how the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were opened, and by which malachim and supernal forces—this is the next inyan.

4 · Opening The Firmament

And this is the meaning of what is written: “On that day, all the fountains of the great deep were split, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” It is not merely a description of much rain and many springs, but a precise account of a cosmic act in which the very seder that had been established on the second day of Bereishis is, for a time, reversed and then renewed.

For we must understand: why does the pasuk divide the Mabul into two distinct movements—“fountains of the great deep” from below, and “windows of the heavens” from above? If the intention were only to inform us of the quantity of water, it would have sufficed to say that waters came from all sides. Moreover, the expression “arubos hashamayim,” windows of the heavens, implies a fixed existing structure with apertures that can be opened or closed, and Chazal indeed say that these arubos are literal openings in the firmament, guarded by malachim appointed over the waters stored above the rakia from the time of Creation. Why then were these arubos created at all, if for generations they were to remain sealed? And why is their opening reserved precisely for the time when the earth is filled with chamas and giants stride upon it?

To understand this, we must return to the second day. There it is said, “And Elokim said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between waters and waters.” And concerning that day alone the Torah does not say “ki tov.” The Zohar and the teachings of Chassidus explain that the lack of “ki tov” is because on that day there was an act of separation without yet the revelation of its purpose; gevurah was revealed—division, boundary, concealment—but its ultimate tovas ha’birurim, that through this division the lower world will become a dirah lo yisbareich, was not yet in actuality.

Thus the rakia of day two stands as a kind of suspended question in Creation: waters above and waters below, a crystalline barrier between them, but the inner intention of their division not yet fully manifest. The upper waters are those that stand “above the firmament,” close to their Source, constantly praising and yearning; the lower waters are those that were sent “below the firmament,” to become seas and rivers, to be involved in concealment, in this world of tzimtzum and multiplicity. And Chazal say that the lower waters wept and cried: “We too wish to be before the King,” until they were appeased with the promise that upon them would be brought the salt of the korbanos and the nisuch hamayim on Sukkos.

From this it is understood that there is a primordial tension in the waters themselves: a longing of the lower to reunite with the upper, and a corresponding restraint from Above that maintains the separation for the sake of the ultimate purpose. This restraint is not only a metaphysical principle, but, as the midrashim say, is enacted through appointed sarim, malachim of water and of gevurah, who stand guard over the seas below and over the treasuries of waters above.

There are angels over every river and ocean, and there are also supernal guardians over the reservoirs of rain and dew. Among them is Gavriel, whose very name hints at gevurah and at the union of fire and water; he is described in the words of our Sages as the one who can take coals of fire and place them in the midst of waters without either being extinguished. This indicates that the governance of water in Creation is bound up with a very subtle gevurah, capable of holding opposites—chessed and din, flow and containment—without collapse. These malachim are thus a kind of “watchers of the waters,” who from the time of Bereishis stand at the arubos hashamayim and at the depths of tehom, ensuring that the upper waters do not break their bounds and that the lower waters do not swallow the land.

According to this, we can now understand why the arubos were created as actual apertures. For the division of day two is not an absolute severance; it is a measured concealment, like a curtain that can be drawn aside when the time comes. The firmament itself, as the Zohar describes it, is like a translucent crystal, hammered and spread between the waters, with certain places thinned and prepared as windows, through which in due time there can issue forth either a gentle rain of blessing or, if necessary, a torrent of din. Thus already embedded in the architecture of Creation is the possibility that the upper waters will one day descend in a manner of Mabul, should the lower realm so distort the gift of separation that the very existence of the rakia becomes endangered.

For this is what occurred in the generations before the Flood. Through the descent of the watchers and the rise of the Nephilim, the lower waters—symbolizing materiality, physical drives, and the coarser consciousness of this world—had stretched themselves upwards, as it were, appropriating forms and measures that belong only to the side of the higher worlds. The giants’ very bodies had become living claims against the firmament: “We too are of the heavens, we too hold dominion between above and below.” In such a condition, the distinction enacted on day two is not merely blurred; it is falsified. The apparent bridging of worlds in the giants is not a holy unification but a counterfeit, a kilayim of realms.

Therefore, measure for measure, the rectification must touch precisely that original division. The gevurah that, until now, had held the waters apart must be turned to a different expression: not to maintain the current diseased separation, but to dissolve the false forms that had been erected within it and to reestablish a wholesome boundary. Hence: “all the fountains of the great deep were split, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” Two movements, coordinated from Above, correspond to the two sides of the original separation.

From below, “the fountains of the great deep were split.” The tehom rabbah, the abyss that underlies the crust of the earth, is itself a residue of the lower waters’ concealment. Its fountains are held in check by malachim appointed over the depths, whose tafkid is to prevent the seas from covering the land and to keep the subterranean waters from bursting forth. When the decree of the Mabul was issued, these guardians received a different command: to stand aside, to allow the lower waters themselves to rebel, to surge upward and erase the boundaries that they had, until then, observed. This is the undoing of the Nephilim from their own side, as it were: the very earth that had sustained their enormous bodies now erupts in waters that undermine and dissolve those bodies and their cities.

Simultaneously, “the windows of the heavens were opened.” Here, too, the malachim-waters who had stood for generations at the arubos, yearning to pour forth, now heard a new command. The crystal firmament, which until then had held the upper seas in perfect stillness, trembled; hairline fractures spread like lightning across its expanse; the appointed watchers of the waters stepped aside, and through the prepared apertures the supernal seas began to descend. In the language of moshol, we may picture vast gates of water, blue and luminous, long restrained, now swung open by these sarim of rain and storm, releasing a roar of returning waters that fell not as gentle drops but as sheets, as if the very ocean above were being poured upon the world.

And yet, even this terrible descent is not simply destruction. The Sages counted the days of the heavy rain as forty, and the teachings of Chassidus explain that this number is not incidental, but indicates that the Mabul functioned as a mikvah for the world. For the minimum measure of a mikvah is forty se’ah, and the halachic effect of a mikvah is to purify a person from tumah by immersing his entire body in waters that are stationary and gathered, “mayim she’einan she’uvin,” waters that retain their connection to their source. So too the waters of the Mabul were not merely meteorological, but were the upper waters themselves, descending while still bearing the imprint of their supernal origin. Their falling for forty days was the immersion of the entire globe into a mikvah of Elokus, washing away the tumah of the irbuvya and refining the very chomer of the earth.

However, we must beware of a superficial understanding. Purification by immersion is not annihilation. The person remains the same person; what is removed are the extraneous accretions of tumah that clung to him. Likewise, the Mabul did not erase the world in the sense of returning it to absolute tohu. Rather, it dissolved the corrupted forms—the towering structures of gadlus d’kelipah, the engravings of the watchers’ arts into flesh and stone—so that the basic elements of earth, water, air could be reconfigured in a new seder, humble and fit to receive a covenant. In this sense the harsh waters are ultimately sweetened and elevated, just as in the inner avodah the tears of bitterness can become a wellspring of joy.

And here enters the inyan of Noach and the teivah. For if the Mabul were only unmaking, there would be no place for survival at all. Yet we see that in the very midst of the din a small measure of the world is preserved, enclosed within a structure of wood and words. Noach, the ish tzaddik, becomes the bearer of a hidden nekudah of bris that is not touched by the waters, even as the teivah itself floats upon and is surrounded by them. Chassidus explains that the teivah is a miniature world, with its own internal seder of species, its own boundaries of pure and impure, all measured and commanded by Hashem. It is thus the prototype of a rectified reality, sheltered within an ocean of unmaking.

From the perspective of the supernal governance, the malachim of water and gevurah are thus given a double task. On the one hand, they unleash the Mabul, breaking the crust of the earth and opening the arubos hashamayim; on the other hand, they must bear upon their hands, as it were, this fragile teivah, ensuring that the very same waters that destroy the giants will carry and protect Noach. This is the inner paradox of the Mabul: the same gushing of waters that erases distorted greatness becomes, for the remnant chosen by Hashem, a mikvah of ascent, lifting them above the old world so that they may disembark into a new one purified.

Accordingly, the “not good” of the second day is now, through the Mabul, brought toward its tikkun. For the gevurah that once only separated now is revealed also as the power to cleanse and to reset. The upper and lower waters meet in a torrential embrace, not as a permanent collapse of boundaries, G‑d forbid, but as a temporary immersion that allows the lower to be reconstituted in a state more aligned with the upper. After the forty days, the arubos close; the crystalline firmament is mended; the guardians of the waters return to their stations. Yet something has changed: the earth that emerges from beneath the receding waters is not the same earth as before. Its chomer has passed through a mikvah; the traces of giants have been washed from its surface; its capacity to bear future corruptions is now held within a different covenantal frame.

All of this, however, remains so far on the level of olam—the cosmic drama of waters and firmament, of sarim and arubos. To grasp the full depth of the Mabul as a model for our own avodah, and to understand how the saga of watchers, Nephilim, and the opening of the firmament reappears in every generation and within every nefesh, we must now turn to the sod of “after the giants,” as will be explained in the continuation.

5 · After The Giants

And with this we can return to that which the Torah emphasizes after the Mabul, in the covenant given to Noach and his sons, that “no more shall there be a flood to destroy the earth,” and as a sign of this covenant there is set “My bow in the cloud.” At first glance, this is difficult. If, as we have explained, the Mabul was itself a tikkun, a mikvah of the world, why should there be a promise that such purification will never recur? If the immersion is so beneficial, should it not be available whenever corruption accumulates? Moreover, the sign of this promise is a keshet of colors, a refracted beauty that appears specifically in the cloud, in the condensation of the very waters that once were instruments of destruction. What is the inner connection between this multicolored arc and the assurance that the firmament will not again be opened in such a way?

The explanation is that the covenant after the Mabul does not mean that the world will never again need purification. Rather, it means that the mode of purification has changed. Before the Mabul, the world’s materiality stood in such a state that only a breaking of the crust, an unmaking of forms, could rectify it. After immersion, however, the chomer of the world is altered; it becomes capable of bearing inner work, of being refined from within without first being dissolved from without. The promise “no more a flood” is thus a declaration that the tikkun ha-olam will henceforth be through a different path—through Torah and mitzvos, through inner Mabulim within the nefesh—so that the waters of consciousness and emotion will rise and fall in measured tides, but will not again overwhelm the very vessel of existence.

And this is why the sign is a rainbow. For the rainbow is formed when one simple white light is refracted by the thickness of the air and the droplets of the cloud into many distinct colors. Chassidus explains that this hints to the new relationship between Or Ein Sof and the worlds: before the Mabul, the light of Elokus relating to the world was more in the mode of peshitus, undifferentiated simplicity, which, when encountering coarse vessels, produced either blinding overwhelm or gross distortion. After the Mabul, the same light is now manifest through the colors of the middos—chesed, gevurah, tiferes, and so on—each ray measured and suited to the kelim of creation. The keshet in the cloud is thus the image of sublimation: the very cloudiness of the lower waters, their opacity and density, now becomes the prism through which a more beautiful and variegated revelation appears.

In this sense, the covenant is not that the firmament forgets its opening; on the contrary, it remembers it in the form of the rainbow. The rakia “bears the scar,” as it were, of its cracking, but that scar has been transformed into a covenantal sign. The memory of catastrophe becomes a source of color, of compassionate restraint. When the attribute of Din is aroused, as it were, and the measure of mankind’s corruption would justify a deluge, the sight of the keshet evokes the prior immersion and the new capacity of the world to be rectified without erasure. “And I will see it, to remember the everlasting covenant”—the very act of looking at the refracted light sweetens the potential severity.

This also sheds light on the cryptic phrase that the Nephilim were “in those days, and also afterwards.” For if the Mabul has washed the earth and the covenant has sealed the upper waters, what room is there for giants “afterwards”? Chazal hint that certain residues of that world remained, in the form of singular figures that survived through attachment to the teivah or through other furtive channels. These later giants, however, no longer constituted an all-pervasive atmosphere; they were islands of old-world distortion within a post-Mabul creation. Their very persistence serves to teach that even after a great immersion there remain sparks and shadows of the prior state, not in order to threaten the new covenant, but so that the avodah of the generations will have material to refine.

On the level of nefesh, this means as follows. The watchers, as we have described them in olam, exist as well within the soul: they are the sudden irruption of supernal insight, the flash of understanding, the lofty ideal that descends into consciousness. When such a “watcher” remains bound to its Source, it serves as a holy malach, standing guard at the boundary between the higher daas and the lower faculties, channeling understanding in a manner that refines character and deed. But when the insight becomes self-conscious, when a person begins to take pride in the very fact that he “sees from above,” then the watcher has begun its descent into taavah. The idea seeks expression in action and influence, not for the sake of the idea but for the sake of the self. This is the beginning of Nephilim within the nefesh.

For the Nephilim, on this inner plane, are not physical giants but inflated configurations of ego and charisma: the sense that “I” am towering, that my understanding, my talent, my spiritual sensitivity, place me above others and exempt me from ordinary boundaries. Such an inner giant may indeed be born from a union of something heavenly with something earthly—the person’s genuine, lofty capacities with his very human need for recognition and control. When this mixture is left unchecked, it builds inner cities and palaces of self-importance, it terrorizes the more innocent parts of the personality, and it fills the inner earth with chamas—violence, resentment, and manipulation.

It is then that a Mabul of thoughts and feelings may break forth within a person. At times this flood comes as despair, as a torrent of anxieties and self-criticisms that seem to threaten the very structure of the self. At times it comes as an overwhelming longing for teshuvah, a grief over one’s distance from Elokus. In either case, the same waters that could drown also have the capacity to purify. If one allows these thoughts simply to swirl chaotically, without teivah and without covenant, they become destructive. But if one builds within the mind and heart a teivah—a defined space of words of Torah and tefillah, of simple emunah and kabbalas ol—then the flood of emotion can bear that teivah upward, washing away the corrupt engravings of ego while preserving the essential “Noach,” the point of favor and tranquility within.

This is the inner fulfillment of “no more a flood to destroy the earth”: that within each person, the waters of his mochin and middos need not annihilate his sense of self. The avodah is to transform the inner Mabul into a mikvah, to immerse the giants until their distortion dissolves, yet to emerge with a stronger, humbler, more colorful individuality—the rainbow self, in which the simple light of the neshamah shines through the particular middos in beauty and diversity.

And just as this is true in nefesh, so is it in shanah and olam in our present era. In every generation there descend “watchers” into the world—new sciences, technologies, cultural powers—that extend sight and knowledge far beyond prior limits. These forces, in their root, are emissaries from above, opportunities to draw Elokus into new keilim. Yet we have seen how quickly such watchers can fall, how easily they can be seized by Nephilim-like systems and personalities, by empires of economy and media, by structures that inflate themselves to godlike stature and demand the worship of man. The question is not whether such watchers will descend—they already have, for this is the decree of hashgachah for the later generations—but whether they will become guardians of a dirah betachtonim or servants of a renewed gadlus d’kelipah.

Here enters the chiddush of the Seventh and Eighth Generations. The Seventh Generation, from the Alter Rebbe until our Rebbe, has the tafkid to draw down the Shechinah into the lowest place, to reveal that the world itself is the teivah, that everything can be made into an ark of Elokus if only the correct measurements, the halachos and directives of Torah, are followed. This generation experiences floods of information, of distraction, of upheaval; yet precisely these torrents can be transformed into a mikvah when they are harnessed through limud haTorah, hafatzas hamaayanos, and concrete mitzvos. The Eighth, emerging, adds the dimension of shemini—lamalah min hateva—revealing that even the lower waters themselves, the very tech, the sciences, the global culture, can be sublimated, not only restrained. The covenant of the rainbow in our time is the recognition that the colorful diversity of human expression, of disciplines and arts, need not be feared as a potential deluge, but can refract the simple light of Elokus into ever more facets of His dwelling.

Mythically, one can say that in our days the watchers have been bound from their prior license; the wild Nephilim of history—the totalitarian giants, the “god-kings”, the priestly castes that claimed heaven—are fading into legend. Yet their names remain as warnings inscribed in the collective memory. The firmament of the world-order has been mended after many openings—exiles, destructions, upheavals—but each scar bears the memory of prior floods, now transmuted into colors of compassion and wisdom. The inner sarim of the waters have learned, as it were, a new mode: to rain gently, persistently, through the daily flow of influence and inspiration, rather than to burst forth only in catastrophic torrents.

Thus the practical avodah that emerges from all the above is threefold. First, to guard the boundaries within and without—to distinguish clearly between holy and profane, between a watcher that remains attached to its Source and one that has begun to fall; to refuse mixtures that blur the essential separation between Creator and creation, even as one engages the world. Second, to elevate the fallen sparks of knowledge—to take the arts and sciences, the cultural tools and systems of our age, and return them to their root by using them to reveal Elokus, by inscribing within them the letters of Torah and the ethic of chesed and tzedek. And third, when the floods of life arise—whether as suffering, as confusion, or even as an overpowering yearning—to enter the teivah of words of kedushah, to allow oneself to be immersed yet not destroyed, to trust that these waters too are held within the rainbow-covenant and can become a mikvah for renewal.

In this way, the saga of the sons of Elokim and the Nephilim, of watchers and giants and the opening of the firmament, is revealed not as a distant, archaic myth, but as the ever-present map of our own inner landscape and of history itself. Each of us contains within a watcher that longs to look and to descend, a potential giant that would seize greatness for itself, and a firmament whose openings and closings are the rhythms of our mind and heart. Through the covenant given after the Mabul, and through the avodah of the generations culminating in ours, we are empowered to bind the watcher to its mission, to dissolve the giant in the waters of humility, and to transform every flood into a higher dwelling for the One who said and the world came to be.