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IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano met with Annika Söder, Vice Minister at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, during a bilateral meeting held at the Agency headquarters in Vienna, Austria on 13 June 2016.
Photo Credit: Dean Calma / IAEA
The Secret - Sod
Science now knows that within the DNA of each single cell is the pattern for the entire life of each individual.
An age-old Jewish tradition recorded in the Babylon Talmud tells of a secret - that each embryo inside the womb learns the entire Torah, the complete Jewish law as revealed by G-d to Moses on Mount Sinai.
At birth, an angel comes and touches us on the upper lip, leaving the unexplained mark beneath the nose and causing us to forget all that we have learned. The rest of our lives are then spent in a journey to regain the knowledge of that lost memory.
In this enigmatic painting, entitled The Secret (Sod in Hebrew), the Chouraquis combine this idea with the mystic Kabbalah concept that G-d's entire creation, including the Torah, is encapsulated within the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet – seen here pulsating within the unborn child.
For generations, the Torah has been likened to an Orchard. In Hebrew the word for orchard or grove is פרדס (pardes) which gave us the English word Paradise. And Pardes is the original Garden of Eden with its two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.
The sages saw the path to knowledge of the Torah like a journey through the Orchard or Garden, slowly getting to realize and know the deeper truth of things.
They saw the root letters of the word pardes P, R, D, S as an acronym (a word made from the first letters of an abbreviation – like NATO) which represent the four levels of learning.
P stands for pshat which means simple – and speaks of the simple level of what the words of the Torah explicitly say.
R stands for remez meaning clue. In everything the Torah says there is also an allegorical meaning, thus the level of remez is the indication of the greater truth that stands behind what is being said.
D stands for drash which is the level of understanding that is come by as a result of the synthesis of the first two, the literal and allegorical meanings.
Then comes the highest level of understanding. Represented by the S for Sod, meaning Secret, this is the level of Kabbalah wherein all the mystical Secrets of the Torah are finally revealed.
Many are the paths a person can take through the Orchard. One may be to just wander through, enjoying the shade of the trees and eating their fruit. Another is a more serious journey of service to life, in which one learns to plant and nurture the trees, to graft strong branches and care for the tender fruit.
Whatever your chosen path, meditation upon this profound picture, The Secret, will enhance your journey of personal and spiritual awakening.
This is Geirsstadakirkja - a reconstruction of a tiny chapel that was found by archeologists. I wanted to upright that bench, and get a shot of the sunny-side of this church, but there was a fence in front of us.
As we were shooting photos, a man herded sheep from his truck (by honking at them) down the rural road behind us.