The Peace Prize

Just nine months into his first term as President of the United States, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nine is incomplete because it is not yet ten–completion as in the Ten Sefirot/Luminaries also known as the Tree of Life.

The last of the 18 prayers affixed by the Rabbis 2000 years ago to be said three times a day is a prayer for peace because without peace all the other blessing are incomplete. The president made a point about the irony of a peace award in the time of war.

Sholom/Peace also has the meaning of complete and undivided. Peace is the promise of the future in every generation throughout the world; the world is formed in the fashion of the human being and the three lobes of Scandinavia correspond to the two hemispheres of the brain and the third eye located in the forehead. The peace prize being awarded in Norway has the sense of the cerebral ideal.

The Cabala explains peace as being whole and indivisible; when God is called One the meaning is Wholeness without lacking, able to be all places at all times to everyone. We pray to God for peace because of the distance between conceiving of peace and actually bringing peace.