Wisdom and Wonder

ESSAY:
Wisdom and Wonder
What came before the world, and what came before what came before the world
A Slumber and a Headache
A vision of life on the return journey

And Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of Israel, saying: This is the thing that G-d has commanded: A person who shall vow a vow to G-d, or swear an oath, to bind his soul with a bond—he shall not profane his words. He shall do according to all that proceeds from his mouth

The laws of the Torah are more than a list of do’s and don’ts. They are G-d’s “blueprint for creation,” describing and defining the reality we inhabit.

The laws of Shabbat, for example, are not simply a series of instructions as to what we should or should not do on the seventh day of the week; they also define this day as a holy day—a time-period whose very essence and substance is saturated with a heightened degree of divine presence.[1] When the Torah commands us to put on tefillin, it is not just instructing us to perform a certain action; it is also establishing that a particular physical object (in this case, an assemblage of leather boxes and straps and parchment scrolls), when formed and used in accordance with the divine will, becomes a holy object—an object in which the divine reality is more pronounced than in other, ordinary objects.

But it is not just the Torah that possesses this authority. We, too, have the ability to define, with our words and actions, the very nature of our environment. The laws of nedarim (“vows”) grant this authority to ordinary, mortal man. These laws, commanded by G-d to Moses, dictate that a person’s words have the power not only to obligate himself to perform certain actions (as when a person enters into a business contract) or to forbid certain actions to himself (such as when he takes a vow not to drink wine)—but they also have the power to imbue the avowed or disavowed object with sanctity. In the words of the Talmud, “Things bound by an oath possess an intrinsic holiness.”[2]

Thus the Torah uses the term peleh, “wonder,” in referring to the power of the vow.[3] That the mitzvot of the Torah should have the power to define reality is only natural: the Torah is, after all, the revealed wisdom and will of the Designer and Creator of reality. But that a human being should, simply by uttering a few words, determine the degree of G-d’s closeness to a part of His creation is indeed an amazing and wondrous thing.

Even more amazing is that the power of the vow exceeds the power of the mitzvah! According to Torah law, an act of mitzvah has full significance only when it is performed by a person who has attained the age of maturity (12 for a girl and 13 for a boy). Thus, if a twelve-year-old boy were to fashion a pair of tefillin, they would remain ordinary pieces of animal hide. On the other hand, the law states that the vow undertaken by a child who is only nearing the age of maturity (i.e., an eleven-year-old girl or a twelve-year-old boy) does sanctify the avowed object.[4]

A child below the age of maturity lacks the degree of intellectual awareness (daat) required by Torah law to lend significance and import to one’s action. This is consonant with the above definition of Torah as the “wisdom of G-d”: in the world of wisdom, a “mindless” deed is not a deed. But in the world of wonder, to which the concept of vows belongs, the state of the child’s mind is not a handicap. On the contrary, the child possesses the quality of wonder in an even greater measure than his or her more “mature” peers.

“Two things,” says the Midrash, “preceded G-d’s creation of the world: Torah and Israel. Still, I do not know which preceded which. But when Torah states ‘Speak to the Children of Israel...,’ ‘Command the Children of Israel...’—I know that Israel preceded all.”[5]

In other words, since G-d created the world in order that the people of Israel might implement the divine plan for existence outlined in the Torah,[6] it follows that the concepts of “Israel” and “Torah” precede the concept of “world” in the Creator’s mind. But which is the more deeply rooted idea within the divine consciousness—Torah or Israel? Does Israel exist so that the Torah could be implemented, or does the Torah exist to serve the Jew in the fulfillment of his mission and the expression of his relationship with G-d? If the Torah describes itself as a communication to Israel, deduces the Midrash, this presumes that the concept of “Israel” is primary to that of “Torah.”

The law of vows is an expression of Israel’s precedence to the Torah. Torah might be the wisdom of G-d, but the Jew is the wonder of G-d, and thus imbued and empowered with a holiness that is not contingent upon the boundaries of reason.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Av 20 and 21, 5744 (August 18 and 19, 1984)[7]

These are the journeys of the children of Israel who went out of the land of Egypt... And Moses recorded their travels and encampments, in accordance with the command of G-d

This is comparable to a king whose child was ill, and he took him to another place to heal him. On their return journey, the father recounted all their stations: “Here we slept,” “Here we were cooled,” “Here your head hurt.” By the same token, G-d said to Moses: Recount for them all the places where it was that they had angered Me

The Exodus marked our birth as a nation; our entry into the Land of Israel, the attainment of our national and spiritual maturity. In between, we had to undergo a 40-year journey through “the great and fearsome desert, [a place of] venomous snakes and scorpions and thirst for lack of water.”[8]

This journey had forty-two stations. Some, like the year-long stay at Mount Sinai, included moments of sublime revelation. Most, however, were accompanied by doubt, strife, betrayal, and the perpetual contest between man and G-d. In the end, however, they resulted in the attainment of “the good and broad land”[9] that was the objective of the journey.

The human story is likewise the story of a journey through a great and fearsome desert, fraught with physical and spiritual dangers and direfully lacking the waters that quench the thirsting soul of man. In the end, however, in spite of all the strife and tribulation, we will achieve our objective of a promised land blessed with the goodness and boundlessness of the Divine.

And when we do, we will look back at all the stations of our journey and see them for what they truly were: challenges and opportunities that paved, rather than impeded, our advance through the desert. Rather than the pitfalls and obstacles as which we first experienced them, we will recognize them as rungs in the ladder that have raised us to this elevated perspective.

This is the deeper significance of the “return journey” made by the king and his child in the above-cited parable by the Midrash. The Midrash compares G-d’s instruction to Moses to record all the stations in the nation’s journey through the desert to the story of a king traveling with his child to seek a cure for the child’s illness. On their return journey, as they passed through the stations at which they had originally stopped, the king reminded his child: here we slept, here we were cooled, here your head hurt.

The journey from Egypt to the Holy Land was a one-way journey: the Jews did not return to Egypt, nor did they physically revisit their encampments in the desert. But on the eve of their entry into the Holy Land, they were able to look back upon their forty-two encampments and reexperience them in a different light: not as a people venturing from Egyptian slavery toward an unknowable goal through a fearful wilderness, but as a people who, having attained their goal, could now appreciate how each way-station in their journey had forged a particular part of their identity and had contributed to what and where they were today.

The great and fearsome desert we each must cross is the product of what the Kabbalists call the tzimtzum (“constriction”): G-d’s creation of a so-called vacuum within His all-pervading immanence, a bubble of darkness within His infinite light that allows man the choice between good and evil.

“Behold,” says the Torah, “I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil... Life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. Choose life.”[10] In order that our choice of life should be meaningful, there must also be the choice of death; in order that the good we do should have value and significance, we must be made susceptible to evil and its enticements.

Three conditions are necessary to create the possibility of free choice in the heart of man:

a) There must be a withdrawal of the divine light and the creation of the “vacuum” that allows the existence of evil.

b) It is not enough that evil exist—it must also be equipped with the illusion of worthiness and desirability. If evil were readily perceived for what it is—the suppression of light and life—there would be no true choice.

c) On the other hand, an absolute vacuum would shut out all possibility for choosing life. Thus the tzimtzum must be mitigated with a glow, however faint, of the divine light that empowers us to overcome darkness and death.

Therein lies the deeper significance of the three stations in the Midrash’s metaphor, “Here we slept,” “Here we were cooled,” “Here your head hurt.”

“Here we slept” refers to the withdrawal of the divine vitality in order to create the tzimtzum.[11] “Here we were cooled” refers to the mitigation of the tzimtzum with a faint glow of divine light.[12] And “Here your head hurt” is a reference to the many contortions that cloud our minds and confuse our priorities, leading to a distorted vision of reality and misguided decisions.

All these, however, serve a single purpose: to advance us along the journey of life and to imbue the journey with meaning and worth. Today we can only reiterate to ourselves our knowledge of this truth; on the return journey,we shall revisit these stations and see and experience their true import.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Shabbat Mattot-Massei, 5725 (July 31, 1965) and on other occasions[13]

[4]. There are various opinions among the halachists as to the precise period of “near-maturity” (mufla hasamuch l’ish—another use of the term peleh in relation to the vow). All agree, however, that there is a time period in which a person, though still below the age of maturity regarding the mitzvot, has the power of sanctification by vow (see Talmud, Niddah 45b; Rashi, ibid., 46a-b; Mishneh Torah, Laws of Vows 11:1; Likkutei Sichot, vol. XXVIII, pp. 191-198, and sources cited there).

Another “wondrous” quality of the vow is that it transcends the limitation of the Torah’s division of the universe into “pure” and “impure” elements. Tefillin that are fashioned from the hide of an impure (i.e., non-kosher) animal have no holiness whatsoever; but a person can consecrate an impure animal with a vow, by vowing not to derive benefit from it or by pledging to donate it to the Holy Temple (see Derech Mitzvotecha, ibid.)

[12]. Cf. Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit 12:15: “A king had empty glasses. Said he: ‘If I fill them with hot water, they will burst; if I fill them with freezing water, they will crack.’ What did the king do? He mixed hot and cold and poured it into them, and they stood. In the same way, G-d said: ‘If I create the world with the attribute of mercy, there will be much sin; [if I create it] with the attribute of judgment, how will the world survive? So I shall create it with both mercy and judgment, and hopefully it will survive.’”