14 Mar Vayikra; Publication from Ve’abita – HaRav Yitzchak Ginsburgh
Ve’abi
ta
An anthology from the shiurim and farbrengens of Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh
“Open my eyes so that I may see
the wonders of Your Torah”
02 What is truth? (part 4)
Making the Sun Stand Still 20 Parashat Vayikra:
Self Sacrifice
21 “Quickly in its Time” (part 2)
Secrets of the Final Redemption 26 Questions and answers from Rav Ginsburgh’s correspondence 27 Harav Ginsburgh’s North American
Purim Schedule: New York and Toronto see Below…
Ve’abita is a weekly anthology of Rav Yitzchak Ginsburgh shlita’s recent teachings, including complete shiurim, short excerpts from shiurim, and material written specifically for the anthology.
Ve’abita, which takes its name from the verse (Psalms 119:18), “Open my eyes and I will see the wonders of Your Torah” (גַּל עֵינַי וְאַבִּיטָה נִפְלָאוֹת מִתּוֹרָתֶךָ) is printed weekly by American Friends of Gal Einai, a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading knowledge of the Torah’s inner dimension.
What is truth? (Part 4)
Making the sun stand still
Transcribed, edited, and annotated by Rabbi Moshe Genuth
(Continued from Ve’abita for parashat Terumah)
The connection between truth and making the sun stop – Audience answers
In the past few monthly classes, we have been talking about truth, which we discussed in some detail. The first half of our previous class looked at truth from a purely Torah perspective. At the end of the last class, we introduced the stories of three great souls who were able to make the sun stand still: Moses, Joshua and Nakdimon ben Gurion.
Joshua’s story is the most wellknown as it is described explicitly in his book,1 and implies that if the disciple (Joshua) had the power to make the sun stand still, it follows then that so did his Rebbe (Moses). Thus, the sages teach us that indeed Moses did the same.
Finally, we saw the story documented in the Talmud about this very wealthy Jew who provided water for all the Jews who came to the Temple. He had to purchase the water from the Roman governor, and he made a stipulation that if he returned the water by a certain date, that would be his payment, but
- Joshua 10:12-14.
if not, he would have to pay an incredible amount. The day came and there had been no rain so he could not fulfill his part of the deal. And yet, at the very end of the day, after the sun had seemingly set, there was a miracle that there was a great deal of rainfall. But, since it seemed that the day had ended, he still owed the money. So Nakdimon went to pray again in the Temple and asked God to show that He has those whom are beloved to Him in this world,” i.e., the Jewish people. The clouds cleared and the sun came out, showing that it was still day, even though the clock showed that it was already night. It was a tremendous sanctification of God’s Name, that God made the sun stand still in the heavens and postponed the night. This showed the world that God has a people, He has a Temple and that He listens to the tzaddikim.
We calculated and found that the numerical values of the names of these three individuals Moses,
Johsua, and Nakdimon (מֹ ֶׁשׁ יְהוֹשַֻׁעַ נְַקְדִּימֹוֹן ֶּבֶּ גּוּרְיֹוֹן) equal 3 times the value of “truth” (אֱֶמֶת), i.e. 1323 equals 3 times 441. Thus, the average value of each name is “truth.” What then is the connection between being able to make the sun stand still and “truth.” Thinking independently
For the first time in these classes, we asked the audience to write back with ideas or a thought about what might be the relationship between the sun standing still and “truth.”
I was pleasantly surprised that many people responded. The audience participation was greater in this case than it is at the end of every class when we have time for questions and answers. It shows that we all have the power to be inspired to create new understanding in Torah. The Tanya states[1] that every soul that comes into the world must bring forth all the novel ideas that it can in order to complete its part in this world and to realize its full potential. The thoughts that were written were all very deep and insightful. Since there were so many different thoughts expressed in these responses, what we will do is to take all the colors and paint a rainbow with them, or as we call it in Kabbalistic parlance, we will make a partzuf, a model out of the responses, ordering them together as they correspond with the sefirot.
The first thing we will do today is to present these different responses and correspond them with the seven attributes of the heart. We will start with loving-kindness, whose inner quality is one of love. Continue with fear whose inner quality is awe, then with beauty/compassion, victory/trust, acknowledgment/acknowledgment, foundation/truth (in the sense of fulfillment, the power of a person to fulfill him or her self, to realize our potential), and finally kingdom whose inner quality is lowliness.
Loving-kindness (love)
Loving-kindness is the special attribute associated with Abraham, the first Jew. Several people said that the common denominator of these three tzaddikim was that what they did, they did purely as an act of loving-kindness for the sake of the Jewish people. Their only goal was to help the Jewish people. We might describe this as their act of love, the inner experience of loving-kindness, was an act of true love for others. Someone who acts out of true love for his people is given the power to transcend nature, to rule over nature, which here materialized as making the sun stand still.
The first appearances of “truth” in the Torah
One might expect the word truth to appear at the Torah’s very beginning. It does indeed appear, but not explicitly, rather only in what is called a remez, an allusion. The final letters of the Torah’s first three words spell, “truth” (-בְּ רֵאִׁשׁת בָָּרָא ֱאֱלִֹהֹם). In this manner, the word “truth” appears six times in the story of creation.[2]
The first time the word “truth” appears explicitly is in parashat Chayei Sarah. It was Eliezer, Abraham’s servant that used the word three times. The first time he says, “Blessed be Havayah, the God of my master Abraham who has not withheld his loving-kindness and
his truth from my master”[3] (ַוַיֹּאֶמֶר ָּבָּרךְ
הוי’ אֱ־לֵֹהֹ אֲדִֹנִי אַבְרָָהָם אֲֶׁשׁ לֹאֹ עַָזַב חְַסְדֹּוֹ וַאֲִמִתֹּוֹ מִֵעִם אֲדִֹנִי). Eliezer was sent to search for a suitable wife for Abraham’s son, Isaac. In his search he beseeches God to do him loving-kindness and show him a sign that one of the girls coming down to the well he is at is suitable for Isaac. The sign was that when he asks her to draw water for him, she will offer to fill the troughs for the benefit of his camels as well. Immediately when he completes praying a girl appears and does exactly as Eliezer had described in the sign. He praises God for guiding him and in thanks mentions God’s loving-kindness and his truth (חְַסְדֹּוֹ וַאֲִמִתֹּוֹ), the connection that is our sub-topic. A few verses later, he retells the entire event over to Rebecca’s father and brother and then again praises, “God, who has led me on the path of truth.”[4] Last month, we spoke about Reb-
be Pinchas of Koritz who worked for 21 years on the attribute of truth. It is told that as he walked down the street, he would recite the phrase, “Guide me [God] along the path of truth” (נָחִֵנִי ַּבֶַּרֶךְ אֱֶמֶת), which is based upon these words spoken by Eliezer. Eliezer mentions truth a third time when he tells Rebecca’s family that if they send her with him, they will have done loving-kindness and truth with his master, Abraham, “If you would do loving-kindness and
וְַעַתָּ ה ִאִם יֶשְֶׁכֶם) [5]truth with my master”
.(עִֹׂשִׂי חֶֶסֶד וֶאֱֶמֶת ֶאֶת אֲדִֹנִי
Truth as an agent of matchmaking and transformation
There must be a connection between making a good shidduch (match between a man and a woman) and truth, since the first three times the word “truth” appears, they are spoken by Eliezer who came to make a match between Isaac and Rebecca. We saw that the first time the word “truth” is alluded to is in the final letters of the Torah’s first three words, “In the beginning God
created” (בְּרֵאִׁשׁת בָָּרָא ֱאֱ-לִֹהֹם); but there as we saw the order is תאם, which is actually the root of the word which means to “match” and from which stems the word for “my twin”
(תְּאוֹמִָתִי). A couple that are a good match are like twins. “My twin” is the highest praise that the Almighty, represented by the groom in the
Song of Songs, calls his beloved wife.[6]
Eliezer himself went through a metamorphosis. Eliezer traces his lineage to Canaan, Ham’s son who was cursed by Noah (the sages say that he was Canaan himself[7]) (as a descendant of Canaan) and then went through a metamorphosis and became blessed. Thus, truth is also related to real transformation. It makes the cursed Eliezer transform into one who is blessed, as Laban said, “Come, the one whom God has blessed”[8] (בֹּוֹא ְּבְּרךְ הוי’). In fact, the Arizal says that Eliezer’s soul will become part of the soul of the Mashiach.[9][10]
We already saw that 3 times the value of “truth” (אֱֶמֶת) equals the names of Moses, Joshua, and Nakdimon ben Gurion. Since Eliezer was the first to use the word in the Torah, it is fitting to add his name to these three. The value of his name (אֱלִיעֶֶזֶר) is 318, one of the most important gematriot in the Torah, since when Abraham went to save Lot, his nephew, the Torah recounts[11] that he gathered 318 of his disciples. The sages[12] say that these 318 disciples were actually just Eliezer, his servant and disciple, whose name equals 318. three times we can add that to his name Eliezer which equals 318 (alluded to when the Torah describes that Abraham took with him 318 soldiers to fight the four kings, and the sages based on this equality say that Eliezer alone constituted all of Abraham’s army). If we add 318 to the 3 times 441, we get 1641, which is the value of “truth” in what is known as primordial numbering (מְִסְפָּ ר קִדְִמִי). In primordial numbering, every letter is equal to the sum of all letters from alef to that letter. This is one of the most important number mappings in Kabbalah). So to calculate the primordial value of “truth” we have that: א becomes א whose value is 1 מ becomes אבגדהוזחטיכלמ whose val-
ue is 145, and ת becomes אבגדהוזחטיכלמנסעפצקרשת whose value is 1495 (the sum of all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet).
And their sum is 1641. All this was to say that loving-kindness is the key to controlling nature and being able to stop the sun.
The first instances of “lovingkindness” in the Torah are out of fear
Eliezer was the first to use the word “truth,” and he immediately connected it with “loving-kindness.” But he was not the first to use “loving-kindness” (חֶֶסֶד). Rather, loving-kindness is found three times before Eliezer’s use of the word. The first time the word appears it is used by Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Lot was not a very righteous person. After he was saved by the angels from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he asks of God (through the angels), “You have been so gracious to your servant, and have already shown much of your loving-kindness in order to save my life.”[13]
The second mention of loving-kindness is by Abraham who apologized to Avimelech, King of the Philistines for having said that his wife Sarah was his sister (out of fear that he would be killed because of her). He explains that wherever they went, he asked his wife, “This is your loving-kindness that you can do with me; wherever we go, say,
‘He is my brother.’”[14]
The third mention of loving-kindness in the Torah is made by Avimelech who implores Abraham to make a vow, “Therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my kith and kin, but will deal with me and with the land in which you have sojourned as per the loving-kindness with which I have dealt you.”[15]
If we pay close attention, we will find that the first three instances of loving-kindness appeared as a result of some fear, while Eliezer’s is the first time that the loving-kindness is pure, without any accompanying fear. Pure loving-kindness is true loving-kindness, just as Eliezer coined the idiom “loving-kindness and truth.” A beautiful allusion to this can be found in the fact that in the first three appearances of “loving-kindness” (חֶֶסֶד) it is accompanied with: the letter kaf, “your loving-kindness” (חְַסְדֵּךְ) or “as per the loving-kindness” (ַכַּחֶֶסֶד).
Indeed, the value of all three of these words, ”loving-kindness”
(חֶֶסֶד) plus the letter kaf (כ)—is 92, the value of “fear” (פַַּחַד)! This observation strengthens our identification of Eliezer as the first to mention loving-kindness in its pure state.
A true kindness
Our delving into the connection between loving-kindness and truth was meant to impress upon us that these two ideas indeed go together. The power that these three souls had to make the sun stand still emerged from their self-sacrifice for the Jewish people. Their self-sacrifice to act with loving-kindness towards the Jewish people. Following this reasoning, we may say that pure loving-kindness is truth and it grants the person performing it miraculous super-powers.
How do we know that loving-kindness and truth go together in the idiom of the sages? Before, let us note that the sixth and seventh of the 13 attributes of God’s mercy are “great loving-kindness and truth” (וְַרַב חֶֶסֶד וֶאֱֶמֶת). From it comes the idiom “loving-kindness and truth” (חֶֶסֶד וֶאֱֶמֶת) which appears 13 times in the entire Bible.[16] The value of this idiom is equal exactly to “groom and bride” (חָָתָן וְכָָלָה), which seems to imply that the groom is the loving-kindness and the bride is the truth, respectively. I might think that it would be the opposite, but this is what comes out of this equality.
The idiom the sages derive from “loving-kindness and truth” is “true loving-kindness” (חֶֶסֶד ֶשֶׁל אֱֶמֶת). It means that you did an act of kindness without any thought of ever being repaid. When is this possible? For instance, when one attends a funeral and attends to the person who has passed on, because obviously the deceased cannot return the kindness performed with him or her. But of course, this doesn’t have to be just in the context of a funeral. Any kindness that a person does can be true kindness as long as there is no self-interest or expectation of receiving a reward involved. It is ok to feel good about the opportunity granted you to do good, but you cannot mix in an ulterior motive. True kindness has super-natural power.
“Do what is true because it is true”
In the Laws of teshuvah,[17] the Rambam writes that serving God from love (loving-kindness), is how we are commanded in the Torah to serve God, and it means that a person does the truth because it is the
truth (עוֶֹׂשֶׂ הָאֱֶמֶת ִמִפְֵּנֵי ֶׁשׁהּא אֱֶמֶת). He performs what is true for the sole reason that it is true, not for any other reason, not for reward and not for fear of punishment. This is what it means to serve God from love.
If you have any thoughts of the reward you will receive for your actions, that is not considered serving God out of love, but rather serving him out of fear. The Rambam explains that such service out of love was how Abraham served God. In fact, this was the reason that Abraham is considered the first Jew; he was the first person in the world to perform the truth it is truth. This is one of the most important passages in the Rambam’s entire work.
If you really love someone, you do what is true for the sole reason that it is true. All of this was the first thought expressed by several people who proposed that the power to make the sun stand still was given to those who acted with true love and loving-kindness out of absolute identification with the Jewish people.
Might (fear, or awe): Second nature
We continue with another proposal. A student who has been with us for many years recalled that one of our teachings from the past was that
the value of “truth” (אֱֶמֶת) is also the value of, “second nature” (טֶַבַע שִֵׁנִי). Everyone is born with a first, innate nature. Serving God is to develop a mature second nature.
You might think that what is innate, the way you are born, is your true nature. But we are taught that the initial state of our nature, the one that is innate, is actually still chaotic and not yet rectified. Similarly, when God first created the earth, it was chaotic. Or, to use the Kabbalistic language of the Arizal, the first world created is called the World of Chaos and it shattered and broke. Then God rebuilt a second world which was rectified. In the same way, your true self is your second nature. If you merit, you will find this true self in yourself through your maturing in life. Obviously, this is a process of transformation.
If you can transform your first nature into a second, more rectified nature, then you also have the power to do that to the natural world. You can take the unrefined state of nature and transform it into a state in which it is willing to do God’s will. Thus, if the sun needs to stand still in order to bring about the Jewish people’s victory in a war, or in order to declare as Nakdimon said, that God has a beloved people, then nature will make that happen. Miracles are nature’s “second nature”
Following this fundamental Chassidic observation, the proposal was that these three souls were able to mature or transform out of their first nature into their second nature. Every such process of transformation requires a great deal of might and is thus related to the sefirah of might. In Hebrew, “nature” (הַטֶַּבַע) has the identical numerical value as God’s Name, Elokim (ֱאֱ-לִֹהֹי), which is the holy Name associated with the sefirah of might. And if a person can do this to himself and identify with a second more rectified and mature nature and overcome his first nature, then he can also take the laws of nature and transform them into something new. God created the world so that it should abide by His will, regardless of whether His will manifests as the regular laws of nature or whether they are miracles. If you were able to transform yourself from your first nature to your second nature (something which in and of itself is quite miraculous), then you would be granted the power to do the same for nature at large. If the sun must stand still in order to ensure the victory of the Jewish people, then it will, as that is the sun’s second nature. This is a very beautiful thought.
Both the first and second nature of everything is related to the Name Elokim. And it is Elokim itself, the Name associated with might that gives the strength necessary to promote transformation. If a particular soul has the power to transform itself, then it also has the power to transform reality. If you would like to create political change for instance, you would like to change the leadership, then you first have to do the same inside yourself. Beauty (compassion): The power of Torah
The third thought presented by those who wrote in was that the common denominator of these three souls is that they were all connected to Torah.
Moses and Joshua: Torah in thought and speech
Moses of course gave us the Torah, and the Torah is called “the Torah of Moses my servant”[18] (זְִכְרוּ תּוַֹרַת
מֶֹׁשׁ עְַבְדִִּ י). Another verse says, “Torah was commanded to us by Mo-
ses”[19] (תּוָֹרָה ִצִוָָּ ה ָלָנוּ מֶׁשׁ) and this is the first verse taught to a child. Moses is the most connected to Torah.
What about Joshua? Joshua was a king and leader of the Torah people, but the first thing that God says to him is that all your success in leading the people and conquering the land depends on one thing, your “learning Torah day and night”[20]
). Moses gave the וְהָגִיָתָ בֹּוֹ יוָֹמָם וָלַיְָלָה)
Torah to Joshua and so all his success was dependent on his engaging in the learning of Torah every day and night, never stopping.
The difference between them was that Moses is like the sun, giving the light of the Torah and Joshua is like the moon, who receives the light and reflects it to the Jewish people. Sometimes it is explained that the difference between Moses and Joshua is like the difference between thought and speech. Joshua explicitly told the sun to stand still. But, how did Moses make it stand still? With his power of thought. Even when Moses is speaking the words of the Torah to the Jewish people, it is clear that he is hearing the words in his mind as they come directly from the Almighty. But, for Joshua to pick up the light of the Torah he has to continually repeat the Torah’s words, day and night.
Nakdimon ben Gurion:
Supporting Torah
What about Nakdimon? His relationship is that he is the “supporter” of the Torah (תְּמִָכִין דְּאוֹרָיְָתָא). He was a wealthy man and he supported the Sanhedrin. Unlike some of the people, he did not oppose the Sanhedrin in their decision that it was useless to fight the Romans as we explained last time in short.
There are instances in which the cause is greater than the effect. The Rebbe Rashab named the Chabad yeshivas in honor of the supporters of the yeshivah, “Tomchei Temim-
im” (תּוֹמְֵכֵי תְּמִיִמִים) indicating that it is even more worthy to call a yeshivah in the name of those who support it than it is to name it after those who study in it. This is a specific example of when the cause is greater than the effect. The contract between the supporters and those who learn in the yeshivah is like the one made between Yissachar and Zebulun, two of the twelve Tribes.[21] Yissachar spent all of his time learning Torah and Zebulun dedicated himself to trade in order to make a living for the both of them.
The Talmud says that Nakdimon’s original name was Boni (בוני),[22] which means someone who builds (the name Nakdimon, which stems from the root “to make stand still,” was given to him after the incident we are dealing with). Every day we say in the morning prayer that the scholars of Torah are those who build the world. It follows then that since the cause is greater than the effect that those who support the builders (the scholars) are also called builders. The greatest building that we build is the Temple. Obviously, Nakdimon also had a very strong affinity with the Temple, hence another meaning behind his original name, Boni. In all, we have discovered that Nakdimon too had a strong connection with Torah. As a result of his continuous support for those who study Torah, when the moment of truth came and he was called upon to support the people frequenting the Temple, he did so with personal sacrifice.
Changing the world with Torah All three individuals, each in his own way, united with the Torah. Moses as the one who innovated Torah, Joshua through his tireless study of Torah over and over again, and Nakdimon ben Gurion through his support for Torah. And they all
are equally good (כֻֻּ לָָּ ם שִָׁוִים לְטוָֹבָה), and there is nothing good as Torah.[23]
It is written that when God created the world, He did so by looking in
[24].(אְֶסְתַַּ כֵֵּ ל בְּאוֹרָיְָתָא וּבְָרָא עָלְָמָאthe Torah (
Since the Torah is the blueprint of creation,[25] if you are connected to the blueprint you can control nature that was created on the basis of the Torah. The very first discourse published by the Lubavitcher Rebbe[26] focuses on exactly this idea: that reality can never object to what it says in Torah, because reality is at its very essence dependent on Torah for its existence.
So these three individuals, by virtue of their identifying with the Torah were granted the power to control nature according to their own understanding. This explanation naturally corresponds to the sefirah of beauty (tiferet), which is directly associated with Torah. Beauty’s archetypal soul is the patriarch Jacob who is the pillar of Torah as apparent from his description as, “a man dwelling in tents [of Torah].”[27]
Victory and
Acknowledgment: The tzaddik decrees and the Wealthy individual prays
One individual made an important observation, that there is a difference between how each of the three made the sun stand still. Moses and Joshua made it stand still in what the sages describe as the power given to the righteous individuals (a tzaddik), “a tzaddik decrees and God performs”[28] (ַצַדִ יק גּוֵֹזֵר והקב”ה מְַקַיֵם). A truly righteous soul has the power to decree something and God makes it happen. Moses did this by merely thinking, while Joshua actually uttered words. He commanded the sun and the moon, “The sun over Givon stand still, and the moon over the valley of Ayalon.”[29] These are both decrees and cannot be categorized as a prayer.
However, Nakdimon is reported to have prayed to God. He went into the Temple and beseeched the Almighty. This observation is very insightful and differentiates between Moses and Joshua and Nakdimon. A true tzaddik has the power to decree and the Almighty performs the decree. Though not all of us have the power to decree, we all have the power to pray.
These two ways for acting to change reality explicitly correspond to the two sefirot of victory and acknowledgment (נֶַצַח וָהֹוֹד). To decree is the power of victory. The sages describe a situation in which a tzaddik decrees and the Almighty agrees as a victory, as it were. In effect, the Almighty says, “My children are
.(נִצְחוִֹנִי בָָּנָי, ִנִצְ חוִּנִיvictorious over me” (
Sometimes it is even against, as it were, God’s original will. There is a related statement regarding the victory of the righteous over God, as it were. It states that, “God decrees and the righteous individual annuls
). Like a ה’ גּוֵֹזֵר וְַצַדִ יק מְבֵַּטּthe decree” (
parent, God takes pride in the righteous when they win against him, like a parent playing a game with his child and seeing his child win. This is a very profound phenomenon. Victory is also the primary sefirah of Moses in the Torah.
But, as we said, Nakdimon went into the Temple to pray. We already mentioned that Nakdimon had a special connection with the (second) Temple during its final years. The ability to enter the Temple is akin to acknowledgment, which is also known as glory. We learn this from the verse we recite every morning during prayer, “To You God is the greatness, the might, the beauty, the victory, and the acknowledg-
ְלְךָ הוי’ ַהַגְֻּדֻלָּ ה) [30]ment [or splendor]”
וְַהַגְ בוָּרָה וְַהַתִּפְאֶֶרֶת וְַהַנֵַּצַח וְהַהֹוֹד). The sages explain what each of these attributes (which are also the names of the emotive sefirot) refer to one of the explanations for “acknowledgment,” or “splendor” is that it refers to the splendor that is the Holy Temple. Thus, an individual that has the strength to enter the Temple and pray in order to provde for the people coming to the Temple is related to acknowledgment. Again, he does not force God to change reality through a decree that he makes, but rather through supplicative prayer in the Temple. Nakdimon asked God that He reveal that He has a beloved people in the world; he did not ask Him to save his money.
Incidentally, the sefirah of acknowledgment is also related to money, as it relates to economics.[31] All rich people have an affinity to money, which means that they also have a special relationship with the Temple and that is what they should ultimately use their money for—to build the Temple. In addition, the two sefirot, victory and acknowledgment together are called, “the
supporters of Torah” (תְּמִָכִין דְּאוֹרָיְָתָא), a term that we saw earlier in relation to the sefirah of beauty, which is the Torah. What we learn from this is that the “supporters of Torah” are the righteous individuals (like Moses and Joshua) who make decrees and the wealthy individuals (like Nakdimon) who have the power of prayer. Together, they support the Torah just as the two legs support the body.
It is written that Rebi, Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi the Mishnah’s author honored the wealthy because in the future, when the Mashiach comes, the individuals who are both wealthy and righteous will give their riches in order to build the Temple.
This is then the fifth answer to our question and all these answers were given by people responding to our question from last time.
Foundation (truth): A small
vessel that contains a great amount
Concentration in time
In the continuation of the verse from Chronicles quoted in the previous section, we find, “To You God is… for all in the heavens and in the
earth” (ְלְךָ הוי…’ כִִּ י כֹֹל בַּׁשָּׁמִַיִם וּבָאֶָרֶץ). The words, “for all” (ִכִּי כֹֹל) refer to the sefirah of foundation. The value of these two words is equal to “foundation” (יסוד). In the human form, foundation corresponds to the organ of procreation. The sages explain that it is, “a small organ that contains all.” The secret of creation is the secret of contraction or concentration. This in itself is a miracle: when something small contains all. In Chassidic teachings the power of procreation contained is described as the power of the infinite. The procreative organ shows that something small can contain everything.
How does this relate to truth and making the sun stand still? The idea is that perhaps for the sun to stand still means not that there were more hours in the day (the literal reading of the Bible found in the rabbinic sources[32][33]) but that what happened was that time became concentrated and many things occurred together in a small span of finite time. Why did Joshua want the sun to stand still? Because he needed time to complete his defeat of his enemies. Either he could be given more hours in the day to complete his goal and this would be akin to the sun standing still, or the miracle could be the opposite and instead of there being more time, what usually takes a long time would be possible in a short period of time. Time would in a sense concentrate. The miracle of self-fulfillment
Actually, we are taught in Chassidut33 that all self-fulfillment requires the concentration of one’s efforts. No one ever has enough time to fulfill his mission in life. That might seem very frustrating. No one will ever have enough time to complete his mission in life. How do you overcome this existential frustration? Only with a miracle. But the miracle is not that you will get a thousand years or ten-thousand years to live. Because that also might not be enough. The miracle is of a different kind: it is to be able to concentrate and include in a small amount of time a great deal of actions. The miracle thus is one of quality and not of quantity.
This is what it means to have,
“long days” (אֲִרִיכוּת יִָמִים). Every day is full. The first to have such a life with long days was Abraham, the first Jew. The Torah relates, “And Abraham was old, and he came with all his days.”[34] He came with all his days, because they had all been filled beyond their natural capacity. That is the secret of foundation and is also referred to as the “rectification of the covenant” (תִּ קּוּן הַבְִּרִית). When a person rectifies his organ of the covenant, he lengthens his days. From an objective to a subjective miracle
What this does to our understanding of the miracle of making the sun stand still is that it changes it from being an objective miracle to being a subjective one. It is explained elsewhere that Ze’er Anpin (represented mainly by the sefirah of beauty, tiferet) is relatively subjective, while the sefirah of kingdom is relatively objective. The transition between them is found in the sefirah of foundation. To be able to do many things in a short amount of time gives you the feeling that time has stood still, be it that the sun has stopped for 24 hours or even more (as per the different opinions found among the rabbinic sages regarding the amount of time that the miracle took place). Objectively, perhaps only 12 hours have elapsed, but you complete an infinite number of things. The explanation associated with foundation is thus a subjective take on what it means to make the sun stand still.
Kingdom (lowliness): the world stood still
When we arrive at kingdom, we find an even more subjectively oriented explanation for the connection between truth and making the sun stand still. The idea is that perhaps the “sun standing still” is a metaphor. The idea her is, as someone wrote in their answer, that it felt as if time had stood still. This person wrote that it might be like, “When President Kennedy spoke, it seemed that the world stood still.” Instead of President Kennedy, we could write “when the Mashiach speaks.”
This is a beautiful thought because this is exactly what happens psychologically in the face of truth. The reason for this is that we live in a world of deceit. The truth is concealed. Hearing the truth is no unnatural that if it is revealed, nature stops, the world stops. The truth has now come out.
This is a reflection of the sefirah of kingdom. Though Kennedy was not necessarily an embodiment of true kingdom, many people felt that this was a very powerful revelation of what true kingdom, true leadership might be like. Ultimately, this is the experience we will have when the Mashiach will speak. We will feel that everything has stopped.
All these ideas that people expressed have truth in them. Each one is a different hue, a different color, reflecting another sefirah in the soul. I really enjoyed reading all the different responses that were sent in by people around the world.
What we need to do is to add the intellectual sefirot. All the explanations that were given relate to the emotive sefirot, the seven lower sefirot. But, for a partzuf, a model of anything to be complete, it has to include the higher intellectual sefirot: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.
Knowledge: Standing a test
Standing and steadfastness
The word that is used in the Torah for making the sun stand still in the Tanach is “stand.” First, it is written, “the sun was still and the moon
stood”[35] (ַוַיִדֹּם הַׁשֶּׁמֶׁשׁ וְיָרֵַחַ עָָמָד) Then it continues that, “the sun stood” (ַוַיַּעֲמֹֹד הַׁשֶֶּׁמֶש). The entire description of the miracle is included in a single verse. A short verse whose most important words are “still” (ַוַיִדֹּםֹ) and “stand”
.(ַוַיַּעֲמֹֹד)
One of the most important meanings of “to stand,” in Hebrew and in other languages (such as English) is to stand a test (לַעֲמֹֹד בְִּנִסָּיֹוֹן). Abraham was tested ten times by God, and he stood through all the tests.[36] His greatest test was the Binding of Isaac. Against all logic and feeling,
Abraham took Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah, bound him, and prepared to slaughter him as an offering. At the moment that he took the knife and was about to sacrifice his son, the world stopped. The heavens opened and an angel appeared saying, “Stop, this is not what God asked you to do. It was just a trial; a test.” Even though you thought you heard God command you to sacrifice Isaac, what He actually commanded you to do is to bring him up the mountain, not to make him into a sacrifice.[37] The fact that Abraham was able to stand through this trial is his inheritance to his children, as the sages say, “The actions of the patriarchs are a sign for their children.”[38]
In Tanya [39]it says that everyone in this world was created to withstand trials, regardless of what your mission in life is. Tests and trials are intrinsic to this world. If you succeed it means that you stood, that you endured the trial. In Hebrew something that is durable is called steady or steady-state (עִָמִיד). There is another good word in English that reflects this idea: “steadfastness.” This word implies not only a resolute strength to resist the difficulty of any test, but also quickness. A castle is called a stronghold of fastness. In the story told by Rebbe Nachman of the lost princess, she is kept in a fastness, in a castle. Withstanding a test makes the world stand still
What happens when a person can withstand a test? We are all here to do exactly that in our lives. It says in Chassidut that at that moment, faith is transformed and becomes knowledge. This is based on the verse, “For God is testing you in order to know whether you love God with all of your heart and with all of your soul.”[40] The test is thus, “in order to know,” to transform faith in God into consciousness of God. All trials are trials of faith, to see if you truly believe. There seem to be other types of tests that do not involve faith in God, for instance tests of seduction. But, these too, and we can look at Joseph’s seduction by Potiphar’s wife are at their core trials of faith. If you stand through the test, you transform your faith in God to new knowledge of God. That is why they are necessary in this world. Without them we would never come to truly know God.
If a person has stood a trial, it is then that he becomes capable of stopping the sun. At the moment of standing the trial, the whole world stops. It means that when great tzaddikim do something, all of the heavenly bodies and all the angels come down to look at this incredible phenomenon: that a simple person has done something so amazing. When Abraham took the knife in his hand to sacrifice Isaac, the world stopped. Every Jew can attain this level, for, “All of your people are tzaddikim.”[41]
When we read the story about Nakdimon after the fact, it seems like a great story. But, what we may not realize is that for Nakdimon, the whole situation was a terrible test. Even after the rains fell and the cisterns were filled with water, it was still a test and he had to go once again into the Temple to beseech God to perform a miracle, and as we have stressed, Nakdimon did all of this is in order to sanctify God’s Name before the entire world.
Thus, in short, when you are able to stand a test, all of nature stops to look at you. This is actually the greatest thing that God has created in His world: a human being who is able to stand a test. When it came to Moses and Joshua, they too had to stand a test. For them it required strengthening their essential faith with God’s very essence, to believe that indeed if they would decree something that was needed for revealing God’s love for his people, God would indeed follow their decree and perform the necessary miracle.
Understanding: Eternal standing
Higher than the ability to stand a test there is another form of “standing.” To stand also means to be eternal. One of the most important words used in our generation is sustainability. In our world, when we say that something is sustainable, we are ascribing to it an ability to endure. But, because our world has a beginning and an end to it, this word does not yet indicate true eternity. True eternity can only be found in the world of truth (עָלְָמָא דִּקְשֹׁוֹט). Where is this world? It’s not in this world. It is located in, “the mother principle” (ִאִמָָּ א) to use Kabbalistic terminology. In the world of truth, everything stands, it is there eternally. This is what is known in Judaism as the World to Come (עוָֹלָם הַָּבָּ).
This idiom of standing appears in the Haggadah: “It stood for us,” (וְִהִיא שֶׁעָמְָדָה), which equals “truth” (אֱֶמֶת). This is one of the most important meaning of truth: something that stands eternally. It is God’s Divine Presence called the Shechinah that stands with us eternally. The Shechinah is the “mother principle,” in Kabbalah. When we came out of Egypt, God fulfilled His promise and He will do so again in the future to come.
In the haftarah (selection from the Prophets) for parashat Vayeira, we read that the prophet Elisha came to a woman who had nothing in her house except for a cruse of oil[42] and told her to bring as many empty vessels as she could and to start pouring oil into them. When the vessels were all full, she sent her son to borrow vessels from the neighbors. Eventually these too were filled with the miraculous oil from the one cruse she had and when there were no more vessels to be found, “the oil stood”[43] (וְיַעֲמֹֹד ַהַשֶֶּׁמֶן). The simple meaning of this phrase is that the oil stopped flowing. But the sages say[44] that it stood eternally, meaning it was enough to keep her alive until the resurrection of the dead. This oil was eternal. This is another example of standing in the sense of eternal standing.
This woman was also faced by a test and she stood through it. The result was the miracle of the oil as it manifested through Elisha. But the fact that the oil became eternal, it stood forever, suggests that this was no longer the oil of this world—it had become the oil of the World to Come, which is eternal. Whatever stands or is sustainable is actually that which is eternal. Unlike animals man stands erect, on his two feet. This is because man was originally meant to live forever. It was only the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge that made man mortal like the animals. To stand is to live forever.
Thus, if you are connected to the World to Come, you can make things stand still. What this means is that by making the sun stand still, Joshua not only made it stop, it made it eternal. He connected the sun to its eternal aspect. Joshua himself was connected with the World to Come, with eternity, and did the sun a kindness by revealing its own eternal nature.
Wisdom: Truth at the speed of light
Wisdom is related to light. Wisdom also always goes together with understanding, they are the father and the mother principles. There is an important verse that we spoke about earlier this year, “Send your light and your truth, they will guide
.(שְׁלַח־אוְֹרְךָ וַאֲמְִתְּךָ הֵָמָּה יַנְחוִּנִי) [45]me”
We are asking God that light and truth should guide our lives. Everyone has to have in front of them God’s light and truth.
How does Rashi explain this verse? This is one of the most astounding comments made by Rashi. He writes that “your light” refers to the Mashiach and “your truth” refers to the prophet Elijah. According to Rashi, when we ask the Almighty to send us His light and His truth, we are actually asking Him to send us Elijah and the Mashiach. There are thus two ingredients in the redemption: light and truth and they both appear together. Light is associated with wisdom. The beginning of the manifestation of truth is in wisdom. From there it descends all the way down to kingdom.
One of the answers provided by those who wrote in their ideas called upon’s Einstein’s theory of Relativity. That person did not elaborate, so we will do so as we understand the idea. Perhaps he meant to say that according to relativity, when an object reaches the speed of light, time stops for it. If a person is all light, all his thoughts are about the Torah and the Torah is called light. If all a person has in his mind is Torah then he himself becomes like light (that of course travels at the speed of light) and time stops for him. According to Rashi to think about God’s light is to think about the Mashiach all the time. Like the Lubavitcher Rebbe said to stop thinking about anything else, to stop talking about any other topic, and to dedicate all of one’s thoughts and speech to the Mashiach. The Mashiach himself reaches the speed of light and then, according to Einstein, time stops— the sun stops.
That’s a thought at the level of wisdom. These three souls, these three tzaddikim Moses, Joshua and Nakdimon became light, as the verse says, “the light of the tzaddikim is
joyous”[46] (אֹוֹר ַצַדִּיִקִים יִשְָׂמָח) and the letters of “joyous” (יִשְָׂמָח) permute to spell “Mashiach” (מָשִׁיַחַ). Wisdom is directly above loving-kindness in the Tree of life of the sefirot. Thus, just as loving-kindness and truth go together, so do light and truth. There is an aspect in which wisdom is above time, just as physical light appears to be in Einstein’s theory.
Crown: The unmoving mover
I originally thought that this would be the final class on truth, but thanks to all the people that sent their answers in, we will probably need another class if not a few more. For now, let us complete this class by covering the explanation that corresponds to the crown.
Going back to our first class in our series on truth in philosophy, we return to Greek philosophy, which connects us with Channukah. More than just representing the battle against the Greeks, Channukah also represents the need to fulfill the verse, “God has given beauty to Jephet, when he [Jephet] dwells in the tents of Shem,” indicating that we believe there is wisdom among the nations, but that this wisdom is incomplete until it has been integrated into Torah—until it is used to reveal God in nature.
The Rambam takes a great deal of non-Jewish wisdom from Aristotle. Notable among what he takes and converts into Torah is Aristotle’s concept of God. Even Aristotle believed in God in a philosophical sense. He called Him, “The unmov-
). In כַֹּחַ ַהַמֵּנִיַעַ הַבְִּלְתִּ י מִתְנוֹעֵַעַing mover” (
Hebrew, this particular aspect of the Creator, that He is the prime mover of everything is known as “the
.(סִַּבַּ כָָּ ל ַהַסִּבֹּוֹתcause of all causes” (
This is the ultimate “I.” Why do we say this? Because, one of the most beautiful allusions to the idea of describing the Creator the way Aristotle did can be found in the word “I,” in Hebrew. The Jewish grammarians say that “I” (אֲִנִי) in Hebrew comes from the root meaning “to cause” (ִאִנָה), as in the verse, “And God caused it to happen to him”[47]
(וְהֱָאֱ-לִֹהֹי ִאִנָה לְיָדֹוֹ). What this means is that when God days, “I am God,” following Aristotle’s definition, we can say that He is saying, “God is the cause of all causes.” Causation for Aristotle means motion, change, and time. Thus to be the prime mover is to be responsible for all three. The Rambam believed that Aristotle got this right and therefore adopted it from Greek philosophy.[48]
Now God is the cause, the mover of all things, yet He Himself does not move (He has no cause). If a human would be absolutely true becomes one with God (Rabbi Nachman of Breslov[49] calls this attaining
necessary existence, מְֻחֻיָָּב ַהַמְִּצִיאוּת), he would also become one with this concept of God being “the unmoved mover.” A person that is true with himself and true with other people, true with God (the three aspects we spoke of in our previous class on truth) connects with this aspect of the Creator. He too become something that stands. As such, he too becomes an unmoved mover. He receives the power to move and cause everything.
In Torah, this power is epitomized in the mitzvah of the mezuzah, whose name literally means “to move.” But, the mezuzah itself does not move at all. Thus, it epitomizes the concept of the unmoved mover. The truth can thus connect you with God’s aspect of being the unmoved mover and then you too can decide whether the things around you will move or not move.
To summarize, this is the partzuf (model) of all we have discussed:
crown
the unmovable mover
understanding wisdom
eternal standing truth at the speed of light
knowledge
standing a test
might loving-kindness
second nature true love
beauty
the power of the Torah
victory and acknowledgment
the tzaddik decrees and the wealthy prays
foundation
a little that holds a lot
kingdom
the world stands still when truth is revealed
| Self-Sacrifice
Written by Rabbi Yossi Peli. Translated by Rachel Gordon. |
The olah (burnt offering) and the chatat (atonement offering) sacrifices represent two ways to come close to God: selflessness and lowliness
The Torah portion of Vayikra delves into the realm of sacrifices. A sacrifice is not merely a technical act. It must be accompanied by deep introspection that leads to inner transformation. There is an individual requirement to confess even without offering a sacrifice.[50] Nonetheless, the mitzvot of teshuvah and confession appear with reference to the sacrifices. Jewish law requires that together with the sacrifice, the sinner must repent, otherwise it does not atone for the sin.
The words “sacrifice” (קָרְַּבַּ) and “coming close” (הִתְקְָרְבוּת) are related to the same Hebrew root (ק־ר־ב). God abhors a sacrifice that is not an expression of coming close to Him. The Prophets state: “‘Why do I need the profusion of your offerings,’ says God.”[51]
Every day we pray that the Temple services be reinstated. For the time being, we can occupy ourselves with the deeper significance of this service. By contemplating two different types of sacrifice, the olah (burnt offering), and the chatat (sin offering), we will see how this service is relevant to us today.
Burnt Offerings and Sin Offerings
Maimonides[52] enumerates four types of sacrifice: burnt offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings and peace offerings. The burnt offering and the sin offering are the two principal sacrifices that atone for sin. The guilt offering is a category of sin offering, and peace offerings are not sacrificed for atonement.
The most stringent punishment for any sin is the severance of the soul from its conscious connection to God. One example of a sin punishable by severance is desecrating Shabbat. The sinner is only liable to this penalty if he sinned intentionally. If someone unintentionally transgressed because, for example, he forgot that it was Shabbat, his soul will not be severed from its connection to God. Instead, he is obligated to bring a sin offering. A sin offering is an obligatory sacrifice offered after unintentionally transgressing a sin that is punishable by severance of the soul.
The Burnt Offering – Elevation and Nullification
A burnt offering also contains an element of atonement (therefore one must confess over it[53]). Nonetheless, this is atonement for subtler sins – such as not performing a positive commandment,[54] or for sins that an individual planned to do, but in practice, did not perform. [55]In either case, the sages define a burnt offering as a “contribution,”[56] as if the individual is presenting a gift to God. In contrast to a sin offering, a burnt offering can be offered electively.
As its name implies, the olah (עוָֹלָה), the “burnt offering” is burnt completely. Psychologically, this represents the individual’s upward movement toward God, aspiring to the peak of selflessness. Striving to reach God, the individual’s consciousness is elevated until it is integrated in His essence. By overcoming his innate egocentricity, the individual’s personality rises and is nullified at its Divine source. The ego has no existence of its own. Once it is nullified, the individual becomes aware that all that exists is Divinity.
The olah atones for sins that have no explicit atonement in the Torah. The sinner places his hands on the head of the animal before it is slaughtered and confesses his sin.
“God is strict with the righteous to a hair’s breadth.”[57] Even the greatest tzaddik (righteous individual) needs to atone for his sins. “There is no righteous individual in the world who does good and does not sin.”[58] Each time one reveals a flaw in one’s actions, a subtler flaw is exposed. Whereas a regular person may elect to sacrifice a burnt offering for not wearing tzitzit, for example, a more righteous individual may choose to do so because he has not given generously enough to charity. A regular person might bring a burnt offering for not saying Kiddush on Shabbat, a righteous individual may do so for thinking an impure thought. Disciples of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk once found him doing heartfelt teshuvah (repentance) over the fact that when he was an infant he bit his mother while she was nursing him.[59] The righteous individual’s upward trend towards selflessness is accompanied by his enthusiasm to contribute his entire being as a gift to God. The sages refer to the souls of the righteous as “the sacrifices of Israel” (אִֵׁ יִשְׂרֵָאֵל).[60] Their souls are sacrificed on the altar on high.[61]
Blood from a sin offering is placed upon each of the four horns at the head of the altar. In contrast, blood from the olah (the burnt offering) is sprinkled at two points at the base of the altar. It is handled less than blood from a sin offering. Blood is “the soul” of the animal,[62] corresponding to the soul of the sinner. The entire offering is burnt on the altar, thus the blood too is nullified and included in Divinity. By identifying with his sacrifice, the soul of the sinner is rectified. His soul is burnt up in love of God, as in the poignant words of Rabbi Yehudah Halevi,14 “I will sacrifice my only soul to Him as
.(לְקָרְַּבַּ אַקְִרִיב לֹוֹ ֶאֶת נַפְִׁשׁ הַיְחִיָדָהan offering” (
The Sin Offering – Lowliness
King David said of himself, “I am lowly in my eyes,”15 referring to his positive sense of lowliness towards God. Although lowliness is similar to selflessness, they are two different types of service. In some ways, they are opposites.
A selfless individual rises upwards, nullifying himself in God’s Divine light. He transfers his sense of existence to God and lives with a sense that God is close to him. In contrast, a lowly individual senses his distance from God and His light. Way down in the depths, he is well-aware of the perils of his situation. He holds on by the skin of his teeth to prevent himself from sinning. Lowliness is existential dependence on God’s great compassion, and total reliance on His support. The lowly individual is shamefully aware of his own concrete existence. His awareness intensifies his sense of lowliness. The lowly individual is far-removed from the sublime ideal of selflessness.
Plummeting into the abyss by unintentionally profaning the Shabbat, for example, triggers the sense of lowliness in the soul. It comes with the realization that, had I been sensitive enough and sufficiently nullified to
.בִּלְבִָבִי מִשְָּׁכּ אֶבְֶנֶה14 In his poem,
15 2 Samuel 6:22.
God, I would never have sinned. The very fact that the sin was unintentional testifies to how truly distant I am, so much so that I sinned because of a lack of attention. If it had been truly important to me, it would never have happened! The obligatory sin offering is an expression of my lowly state.
In contrast to the burnt offering, only certain limbs of the sin offering are burnt on the altar. This reflects the sinner’s sense that the sin separates between him and God. The sacrifice is an appeal for atonement. “Blood is the soul,” with which I sinned by not supervising the minutiae. Atonement comes by paying special attention to the blood, the life-force of the sacrifice.
Lowliness reflects the consciousness of the month of Tishrei, when we are preoccupied with repenting for our sins. The most sacred sin offering is offered on Yom Kippur. Blood from the Yom Kippur sin offering is brought directly into the Holy of Holies.
The service of lowliness reflected in the sin offering has a certain advantage over the service of selflessness, the burnt offering. Lowliness exposes my essential, existential dependence on God. Identifying with the sin offering penetrates the innermost depths of the soul, to refine my deepest flaws.
| Secrets of the Final Redemption – Part 2
Translated excerpts from Rav Ginsburgh’s Be’itah Achishena |
In the order of the Torah portions, parashat Vayikra is always read in proximity to Rosh Chodesh Nisan. The first sacrifice detailed in the parashah is the burnt offering. During the month of Nisan, we are liberated from the straits of Egyptian bondage. It is a time of renewal and redemption, when we can escape the evil inclination that constricts our souls. In Nisan we aspire to become righteous individuals whose souls are on fire for God, sacrificed on the altar, Heavenwards. On the first day of Nisan, after the dedication of the Tabernacle, Moses relayed the portion referring to the burnt offering to the Jewish People.
Achieving Messianic Reality
Stage 3: Identifying the Ways to Bring Mashiach
The strong desire that awakens in a person to bring the Mashiach requires the ability to apply his goals in a manner both rectified and balanced. This can be accomplished through in-depth and exacting study of the redemptive process. Intense study provides the tools with which to identify the proper direction that must be taken in reality. A person who is well versed in how the Kingdom of Israel should function, who the Mashiach is and what actions he is likely to take to rectify reality, is capable of identifying the “windows of opportunity” and the processes that actually lead to the redemption. He then understands how to advance his Messianic goals. The Rebbe expected that intense study on the redemption would lead people to consult with each other and to discover a resourceful and creative way to bring the Mashiach. Stage 4: Living in the Messianic Reality
The Rebbe emphasized time and again that the Mashiach is already here, and that we have already accomplished everything necessary to bring the redemption. If so, what is left for us to do? The only work on our part is to “open our eyes” and “live with the Mashiach.” This can only be done by studying about the Mashiach, which creates a “Messianic atmosphere” in our consciousness, and makes us residents of “the Land of Mashiach.”
To accomplish this change in how we perceive reality and to actually live with Mashiach, we must overcome two obstacles:
The first obstacle is in our heads.
It is created as a result of our perception of superficial reality. This obstacle fades when we contemplate on the inner dimension of reality. In Torah Or by the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Schneor Zalman of Liadi, it is explained that every reality has an outer shell of death and evil, and an internal kernel of life and good. The main choice that a person makes in life is between the inner dimension of reality or its outer, superficial shell. When a person chooses good, the outer shell of that reality becomes permeated with the power of the assertive knowledge that searches for the good, internal light hidden within it.
The second, more major obstacle is the inner obstacle, which is in our hearts. It is created by the feeling that Mashiach is far away from me and irrelevant to my life. This obstacle is removed when we become “personally acquainted” with the Mashiach and the redemption, and realize that it is possible and imperative that Mashiach comes in our generation, and that we “deserve” Mashiach.
It is important to note that this main, internal obstacle to the redemption stems in large measure from the question of our deserving the redemption. Many people mistakenly believe that the miraculous Mashiach is incongruous in our lowly generation. It seems to them that we have certainly not changed for the better, and if anything, our spiritual situation has only deteriorated. If so, they reason, how can Mashiach come in our time?
This mistaken presumption is based on a basic misunderstanding of the Mashiach and the generation in which he arrives. When we change our consciousness and break through the obstacles in our heads and in our hearts, we have already brought about the major part of the redemption. As the Rebbe emphasized in his discourse on the 28th of Nissan, the appalled distress that we feel from the fact that we are still in exile applies for the most part to our internal exile, the exile of our souls in our relationship with the Divine. As is explained in Kabbalah and Chassidut, the first stage of the redemption is the redemption of the soul. When many souls – which are sparks of God’s Divine Presence — are redeemed, we attain the redemption of the Divine Presence. This in turn brings about the redemption of the nation in our physical reality.
This concept is beautifully expressed in the following mathematical equation: The Hebrew words for “soul, Divine Presence, nation”
(נְשָָׁמָה שְׁכִיָנָה אוָּמָה) equal 832, which is the product of 32 and 26, or “heart” (ֵלֵב) times “Havayah” (‘הוי), God’s all-inclusive Name. This is also the numerical value of “the Land of Is-
(אֶֶרֶץ יִשְׂרֵָאֵלrael” (
Stage 5: The Torah of Mashiach
“Living the Messianic reality” does not only mean to live in the external reality that Mashiach affects in the world. The main innovation of Mashiach is the “Torah of Mashiach.” Study of this new dimension of the Torah is the most inner aspect of life in the Messianic reality.
The way to attain the inner dimension of the Torah of Mashiach is to study about the redemption and Mashiach in the teachings of Chassidut. When we study about the redemption as based upon the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov and his disciples, we have the opportunity to taste the Torah of the Mashiach. This taste propels us across the threshold to the inner dimension of life with the Mashiach – to live with the Torah of Mashiach.
Conscious Determination and the Secret of Chashmal
Conscious Determination
Conscious determination is the essential power of the Jewish soul to change reality in general, and to hasten the coming of Mashiach, in particular. The four stages of conscious determination exactly parallel the four stages of progress toward Messianic reality brought about by studying about the redemption:
- True faith in the objective
- Strong will to achieve goal
- Using intelligence motivated by strong will to determine plan of action
- Identifying changes and living in desired reality
There are two dimensions to the fourth stage of living in the Messianic reality:
The outer dimension, in which one opens his eyes to see that what he has learned already exists in reality.
The inner dimension (parallel to Stage 5 in the previous chapter), in which one sees that although not everything that he learned has already been realized, the study itself is the study of the Torah of Mashiach, and he himself is already living in the Messianic reality. The Secret of Chashmal
The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that every rectified process follows three stages, as hinted at in the mystical word chashmal from the Workings of the Chariot in the first chapter of Ezekiel.
The first stage, chash (“silence”), is submission and inner silence when faced with a given reality.
The second stage, mal (“circumcision”) is separation of the good from the bad (as when the foreskin is circumcised from the holy Jewish body).
The third stage, mal (“speaking”) is sweetening, when the Divine essence is revealed in reality. This leads to “speaking” to all about the revelation of the Divine reality.
The process of creating Messianic reality also parallels the Ba’al Shem Tov’s model of submission, separation, and submission, with which we will continue next time.
| Questions and Answers
from Harav Ginsburgh’s correspondence |
Question: Is Judaism a race?
Answer: The entire Torah is based on the fact that Israel is God’s chosen people. The choosing and clarification process of Israel began with the creation of the world and the sin of Adam. Abraham, the first Jew, was born 20 generations later. Abraham is the secret of “the clean coming from the unclean,” as Abraham was the son of an idol worshipping father. Thus, the clarification and distillation process of the Jewish people continued through the Egyptian exile and the giving of the Torah. Even within the Jewish people there are different levels and branches; Kohanim, Levites, Israel, and the royal lineage of the house of David, about whom it is written in Isaiah, “And a branch will emerge from the trunk (race) of Jesse.”
Q: I had a turbulent childhood and it is affecting me now, as an adult. It is as though my bad feelings and memories block my energy for life. How can I get past my dark thoughts and memories and make progress in my life?
A: One must strive for gadlut mochin, expanded consciousness, a state in which we overcome the impressions of our past. A person who is still ensnared in psychological impressions is in a state of contracted consciousness. To achieve expanded consciousness, one must be focused not on himself, but rather, on God. Thus, a sincere expansion of consciousness, according to Chassidut, is the process by which a human being becomes more and more devoted (both mentally and emotionally) to reflecting God in his own life – in thought, speech, and action.
Q: What is the correspondence of colors to the sefirot? A: The colors are arranged according to the sefirot as follows:
keter (crown)
white (transparent)
binah (understanding) chochmah (wisdom) infrared
ultraviolet da’at (knowledge)
black and white (including all shades of grey)
gevurah (might) chessed (loving-kindness) red
blue tiferet (beauty) yellow
hod (acknowledgment) netzach (victory) orange
purple yesod (foundation) green
malchut (kingdom) brown
Q: I was married to a non-Jewish woman and my children, who are now in their teens, are not Jewish. I wish that they were! How does
Judaism look upon the children of a Jewish father?
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A: When a person has a Jewish father, it is desirable and actively recommended that he convert to Judaism. You can recommend to your children to check out Chabad, send them books, direct them to information online, etc.. The main thing is not to pressure them at all. All should be done in a pleasant way, while clarifying that although they are not halachically Jewish, they do have Jewish roots, and their conversion would be looked upon positively. May we merit to see all the lost souls return to their source, “Uva letzion go’el!”
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[1] . Epistle 26 (p. 145).
[2] . Genesis 1:1, 1:4, 1:21, 1:27, 1:31, and 2:3.
[3] . Ibid. 24:27.
[4] . Ibid. v. 48.
[5] . Ibid. v. 49.
[6] . Song of Songs 5:2.
[7] . Bereisheet rabbah 60:7.
[8] . Genesis 24:31.
[9] . See Sha’ar hapesukim to Chayei sarah (c.
[10] ).
[11] . Genesis 14:14.
[12] . Bereisheet rabbah 43:2.
[13] . Genesis 19:19.
[14] . Ibid. 20:13.
[15] . Ibid. 21:23.
[16] . Ibid. 24:49; 47:29; Exodus 34:6; Joshua 2:14; 2 Samuel 2:6; 15:20; Psalms 25:10; 61:8; 85:11; 86:15; 89:15; Proverbs 3:3; 20:28.
[17] . Hilchot teshuvah 10:2.
[18] . Malachi 3:22.
[19] . Deuteronomy 33:4.
[20] . Joshua 1:8.
[21] . Bereisheet rabbah 99:8.
[22] . Ta’anit 20a.
[23] . Avot 6:3.
[24] . Zohar I, 134a and II, 161a.
[25] . Bereisheet rabbah 1:1.
[26] . See Likutei Sichot Vol. 1, parashat Bereisheet. Also, see our Hebrew volume Lichyot im hazman on this discourse.
[27] . Genesis 25:27 and Rashi there.
[28] . See Ta’anit 23a.
[29] . Joshua 10:12.
[30] . 1 Chronicles 29:11.
[31] . See our article, “The Torah Academy.”
[32] . See Yalkut shimoni, Bereisheet 7 and Vayikra 513.
See (the ma’amar) Lo tihiyeh meshakeilah .33
[33] from Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Shneer.(sohn (towards its end
[34] . Genesis 24:1.
[35] . Joshua 10:13.
[36] . Avot 5:3.
[37] . Bereisheet rabbah 56:8.
[38] . See Sotah 34a.
[39] . Epistle 11. See also Likutei torah Devarim (Re’eh) 19b and Derech mitzvotecha 185b.
[40] . Deuteronomy 13:4.
[41] . Isaiah 60:21.
[42] . 2 Kings 4:2.
[43] . Ibid. v. 6.
[44] . Bereisheet rabbah 35:3.
[45] . Psalms 43:3.
[46] . Proverbs 13:9.
[47] . Exodus 21:13.
[48] . See the Guide to the Perplexed II:introduction and II:1.
[49] . Likutei moharan 52.
[50] See Maimonides Hilchot teshuvah 1:1.
[51] Isaiah 1:11.
[52] In his introduction to his commentary on Seder Kodashim.
[53] Maimonides, Hilchot ma’aseh hakorbanot 3:14.
[54] Rashi, Vayikra 1:4.
[55] Nachmanides, Vayikra 1:4.
[56] Zevachim 7b.
[57] Baba Kama 50a.
[58] Ecclesiastes 7:20.
[59] Divrei Chayim for Shabbat Shuvah.
[60] Amidah prayer.
[61] Menachot 110a and Tosafot ad loc.
[62] Deuteronomy 12:22.