In an Earthern Vessel

ESSAY: In an Earthen Vessel
The difference between oil and water, gold and clay, male and female

TRNSCRIPT: The Rebbe on the Six-Day War
A war, said the Rebbe, that was fought in El-Arish, in Moscow, and in Buffalo, New York

And G-d spoke to Moses, saying: A man whose wife shall stray and commit a betrayal against him... that man shall bring his wife to the Kohen... And the Kohen shall take holy water in an earthen vessel...

Numbers 5:11-23

Life, as described by the Kabbalists, is a marriage of body and soul. The soul—the active, vital force in the relationship—is its “male” component. The body—the vessel that receives the soul and channels and focuses its energies—is the “female” element in the relationship.

Common wisdom has it that spirit is loftier than matter and the soul superior to the body. Indeed, the soul of man maintains a perpetual awareness of its Creator and Source, while the body, susceptible to the enticements of the material, is often the culprit in man’s tendency to forget, stray and betray.

But this is a “male” vision of life. There also exists another perspective on reality—a perspective in which passivity is superior to activity, being is greater than doing, and earthiness is truer than abstraction. A perspective in which the body is not, at best, no more than a servant of the soul, but is itself a conduit matrix of the divine.

Our sages tell us that there will come a time when the supremacy of the female will come to light. A time when the physical will equal and surpass the spiritual as a vehicle of connection to G-d. A time when the soul shall draw its nourishment from the body.[1]

Therein lies the deeper significance of the laws of the sotah (the “wayward wife”), legislated in the fifth chapter of Numbers:

A man who suspected his wife of unfaithfulness (and had evidence  that substantiated his suspicions[2]) was to bring her to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. There the Kohen (priest) would fill an earthen vessel with water from a Temple well and mix in earth from the Temple ground. He would then inscribe the oath of faithfulness (Numbers 5:19-22) upon a parchment scroll, which he also placed in the “bitter waters” until the words were dissolved in the water. The “wayward wife” would then drink of the water.

If the woman had been indeed guilty of adultery, the “bitter waters” would spell her end. In the case in which her husband’s suspicions were unjustified, they not only exonerated her, but actually enhanced her relationship with her husband and the productivty of her marriage.

It is significant that the “wayward wife” was vindicated by means of holy water placed in an earthen vessel. This is in contrast to a law regarding the kindling of the Chanukah lights, which instructs that one should avoid kindling them in a clay lamp or other earthen vessel, as the placement of oil in such utensils yields unaesthetic results.[3] Indeed, the lights in the Holy Temple, after which the Chanukah lights are modeled, were lit with the finest olive oil in a candelabrum of pure gold. While the Chanukah lights are not held to such a high standard of purity and refinement, they require a clean-burning fuel (oil or wax) and a utensil of metal or other “clean” material.

The Chanukah lights proclaim the supremacy of spirit over matter.[4] It is only natural, therefore, that something of such a “spiritual” and “male” character would shun the earthen vessel. The spirituality of Chanukah is also expressed in its oil, whose nature is not to mix with other liquids but to rise above them, as spirit holds itself aloof from the physical and the earthly.

But there is also a fluid of another sort. “The Torah has been compared to water,” writes Rabbi Schneur Zalman in his Tanya, “because just as water tends to descend from a higher place to a lower place, so has the Torah descended from its place of glory, which is the will and wisdom of G-d... until it has clothed itself in physical things and in matters of this world.”[5]

When a soul contemplates his body and finds her a “wayward wife” contentious to his spiritual goals, his wont may be to lay the blame on her femininity—on her physicality and earthiness. But if he truly desires to achieve harmony between them, he must learn to incorporate her feminine vision into their marriage. He must learn that life is more than spiritual oil flickering in vessels of purest gold. He must learn that it is also water—water that gravitates earthward to fill the most material containers with its divine essence.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Shabbat Nasso 5720 (June 4, 1960) and on other occasions

The Rebbe on the Six-Day War

The following is a transcript of the Rebbe’s remarks given in a private meeting on Av 5, 5727 (August 12, 1967), shortly after the Six-Day War, as recalled by Rabbi Chaim Gutnick of Melbourne, Australia, and published (in Hebrew) in Kfar Chabad Magazine, issue no. 806:

...Three times in our generation, G-d has granted us an opportunity for the beginning of the Redemption. But these opportunities were missed, and it is the Jewish leadership which is to blame.

The first opportunity was in 1948. You know that I have a particular enthusiasm for Rashi’s commentary on the Torah. Well, Rashi says regarding the waters of the Flood that, at first, G-d brought down “rains of blessing”[6] upon them and waited to see if they would repent; only after they failed to do so did this turn into the very opposite of “rains of blessing,” G-d forbid.[7]

In 1948, G-d sent “rains of blessing.” This was a time when even the Russians supported the Jewish people against the British, who had attempted to annihilate the nation of Israel. This was a time of opportunity. But the Jewish leaders stood by and debated whether or not to make mention of G-d’s name in the “Declaration of Establishment.”[8] Thus the Redemption was put off by fifty years.

The second opportunity was the Sinai Champaign [of 1956]. If the Jewish people would have believed that their salvation would come from G-d rather than from French MIGs and British warplanes, all would have been different.

But never has there been an opportunity such as this one. This was a war won by Torah and mitzvot. There can be no doubt of this. A Jew in Moscow recited Psalms, and a Jew in Buffalo, New York, put on tefillin, and this helped the Jews defeat their enemies in the Land of Israel.

If the Jewish leaders would have utilized the opportunity to rouse the people to the observance of Torah and mitzvot, our situation today would be entirely different. Think about it: a young man in Israel was summoned, handed an Uzi, and told: “Leave your wife and children at home and go to El-Arish to fight.” In every war there are draft-dodgers; here, no Jew, not even one for whom the word “Jew” is nothing more than an appellation, refused to fight. It was a time when the entire people of Israel were in a state of “We shall do and we shall hear.”[9] When this young man fought at El-Arish, his Torah and mitzvot fought for him. The Shechinah (Divine Presence) came down into the trenches to assist the soldier fighting on the borders of the Land of Israel.

If the Jewish leaders would have told that soldier to utilize the reserves of faith and courage that were revealed in him during the war toward a commitment to Torah and mitzvot, with the same “We shall do and we shall hear,” he, and the entire Jewish nation, would have responded, and everything would have been different. But again the leaders were silent, and the great opportunity was lost. They were too timid to tell the Jew the truth: that this is the time for a return to Torah.

The very first chapter of the first section of the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) begins not with Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles of Faith,” but with the Rama’s ruling that “One should not be intimidated by mockers.” Why? Because when one does not fulfill this rule, one is prevented from fulfilling the entire Shulchan Aruch. Perhaps I speak too sharply, but the Jewish leadership is bankrupt. They avoid me because they know that I will demand of them to speak the truth. Their timidness to speak the truth, contrary to the rule, “One should not be intimidated by mockers,” is holding back the Redemption.

Jews must be told to keep Torah and mitzvot. I initiated the tefillin campaign—this is only the beginning. My hope is that through the mitzvah of tefillin, the Jewish people will be brought closer to other mitzvot—to keep kosher and Shabbat, and ultimately the entire Torah. My aim is that millions of additional hands should become tefillin-wearing hands.

The Jewish people will respond when spoken to about Torah and mitzvot. Not only teenagers—also forty-year-olds, people advanced and established in their lives, are ready to hear the truth, if only their leaders will speak it to them.

We still have not lost the opportunity. It’s still not too late. Now it is August.[10] If we will do our job, if the sheluchim[11] will do their job and tell the world the truth, we can bring the Redemption..