Garments

ESSAY: Garments
How to see through the disguise even as we participate in the masquerade

INSIGHTS: Wealth
Wealth is immaterial to the Jew: it’s spiritual

A TELLING STORY: Experience
A homeless host comforts an imprisoned liberator

 “The righteous emulate their Creator,” say our sages.[1] If you want to know how to behave in a given situation, see what G-d does.

On the whole, G-d chooses to run His world in accordance with a series of unchanging (and thus predictable) behavior patterns—what we call “the laws of nature.” It would be just as “easy” for Him to rain down manna from heaven as to cause grain to grow and flour and water to bake into bread; but with the exception of one forty-year period in our history, G-d has consistently chosen to nourish us via natural bread from the earth rather than miracle bread from the heavens.

So we, too, manage our lives in accordance with the rules of nature. While we believe with complete faith that G-d is the sole provider of life and sustenance, we labor to construct the natural vehicles through which His providence may flow. We know that to be nourished by a piece of bread supposedly produced by human hands is no less a “miracle” than to be nourished by “bread” falling from the heavens; nevertheless, we do not sit around waiting for manna to rain down upon us, but devote hours, energy and talent—resources that could have been devoted to “holier,” more spiritual pursuits—to plowing, sowing, milling, kneading and baking, or to earning the money to pay others to produce our bread.

In the 12th chapter of Genesis, we find our model for this approach to life in the behavior of the first Jew, Abraham. G-d had commanded Abraham to take up residence in the Holy Land; but when shortly thereafter a famine swept through the land, Abraham journeyed to Egypt, where there was bread to be had. Approaching Egypt, a land notorious for its depravity, Abraham realizes that he is in mortal danger on account of the beauty of his wife, Sarah, and he tells her to say that she is his sister, lest he be killed by an Egyptian coveting her beauty.

The famine in the Holy Land and Abraham’s travails in Egypt are counted among the “Ten Tests” which established the depth and invincibility of his faith in G-d.[2] At first glance, however, it would seem that Abraham “failed” these tests: he did not stay in the Holy Land, trusting that G-d would provide for him even under conditions of famine; he did not assume that if G-d desired that he live, no lust-maddened Egyptian could take his life.

In truth, however, a disavowal of the natural tools of life does not imply a greater faith in G-d. Indeed, to do so is to go against the divine desire that we live within the natural world as G-d’s “partners in creation.”[3] The true test of faith lies in how a person regards his natural activities. Does he consider them the source of his achievements? Or does he recognize that they are merely “garments” within which G-d enclothes and disguises His essentially supra-natural sustenance of our lives?

Abraham’s faith did not prevent him from going to Egypt when the natural sources of nourishment ceased to function in the Holy Land, or from resorting to connivance and deceit to ensure his safety when his life was threatened. Indeed, the fact that he could take these actions and experience their apparent success in bringing him material gain and, at the same time, relate to G-d as the sole source of his safety and enrichment, was the ultimate proof of his faith in G-d.

But G-d, on occasion, does perform “miracles”—events in which the cloak of consistency and predictability is swept away and His involvement in our lives stands denuded from the garments of nature. In this, too, we are enjoined to emulate our Creator: there are occasions in our lives that call for a “miraculous” response, for a mode of behavior that utterly disregards the dictates of nature and convention.

These, however, are the exception rather than the rule, to be employed under exceptional circumstances in our lives, or by exceptional individuals whose entire lives emulate the miraculous dimension of G-d’s relationship with our reality.

Such an individual was Abraham’s great-grandson, Joseph. When Joseph was incarcerated in an Egyptian prison and did a good turn for a fellow prisoner, the chief butler of Pharaoh, he availed himself of the opportunity to request of him:

In three days’ time, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your station.... But remember me when your situation is improved. Pray, do me a kindness and make mention of me to Pharaoh, and have me taken out from this house.[4]

Joseph, however, is criticized for his behavior; indeed, he is punished for placing his trust in man rather than relying solely on G-d. “The chief butler did not remember Joseph, but forgot him,” and he was left to languish for two more years in Pharaoh’s dungeon.[5]

What for Abraham was desirable behavior and a demonstration of his faith in G-d, was a breach of faith for Joseph. For Joseph belonged to that select group of righteous individuals whose mission in life is to emulate their Creator in the miraculous, rather than the natural, plane of His relationship with His creation.

These two approaches to life were personified by two great Talmudic sages— Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. In the words of the Talmud:

It is written: “And you shall gather your grain.”[6] What does this come to teach us? But since it says, “This book of Torah shall not cease from your mouth [and you shall study it day and night],”[7] I would have thought that one must take these words literally; comes the verse to teach us, “you shall gather your grain”—conduct yourself also in the ways of the world. These are the words of Rabbi Ishmael.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: If a person plows in the plowing season, sows in the sowing season, reaps in the reaping season, threshes in the threshing season, and winnows when there is wind, what shall become of the Torah? But when Israel does the will of the Almighty, their work is done by others, as it is written, “And[8] strangers will stand and graze your sheep...” [9]

The Talmud concludes: “Many did like Rabbi Ishmael, and succeeded; like Rabbi Shimon, and did not succeed.”

In every generation, a few elect “Josephs” rise to a state of utter aloofness from the ways and cares of the material world, exemplifying the truth that, in essence, there is literally “none else besides Him.”[10] But for the vast majority of us, the path through life is the path blazed by Abraham: a path in which G-d clothes His involvement in our lives in the garments of nature and we employ the resources and norms of our physical existence as the implements of our relationship with Him.

Based on a letter by the Rebbe dated Kislev 2, 5707 (November 25, 1946)[11]

As the sun began to set, a deep slumber fell upon Abram; and, behold, a dread, a great darkness, descended upon him. And [G-d] said to Abram: “Know that your children shall be strangers in a land not theirs, [where] they will be enslaved and tortured ... and afterwards they will go out with great wealth.”

Genesis 15:12-13

For much of our history, we have indeed been “strangers in a land not ours.” There was the Egyptian Exile that preceded our birth as a nation; the Babylonian Exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple; the Greek Exile during the Second Temple Era; and our present exile, which began with the Roman destruction of the Holy Temple in 69 ce and from which we have yet to emerge after more than nineteen centuries under the hegemony of alien powers.

Exile—galut, in Hebrew—is much more than a person’s physical removal from his homeland. A person in exile is a person severed from the environment that nourishes his way of life, his principles and values, his spiritual identity. In exile all these are in jeopardy, for the onus is now on him alone; he must call upon his own resources of resolve and perseverance to survive. In the words of our sages, “All journeys are dangerous.”[12]

Why are we in galut? Galut is commonly regarded as a punishment for our national and individual failings. Indeed, the Prophets repeatedly describe it as such, and in our prayers we lament the fact that, “Because of our sins, we were exiled from our land.”[13] But if galut was solely punishment for sin, its intensity would gradually diminish as the sins that caused it are atoned for; yet we find that galut grows darker and deeper as it progresses. Furthermore, our state of galut was foretold to Abraham in his covenant with G‑d as an integral part of the Jewish mission in history long before the sins for which it atones were committed.

A clue to a deeper significance of galut can be found in the “great wealth” that G-d promised to Abraham as the result of his children’s sojourn in the land of Egypt. Indeed, this promise is a recurrent theme in the Torah’s account of the Egyptian Exile and the Exodus—to the extent that one gets the impression that this was the very purpose of our enslavement in Egypt.

In G-d’s first communication to Moses, when He revealed Himself to him in the burning bush and charged him with the mission of taking the Jewish people out of Egypt, He makes sure to include the promise that, “When you go, you will not go empty-handed. Every woman shall ask from her neighbor, and from her that dwells in her house, vessels of gold and vessels of silver and garments... and you shall drain Egypt [of its wealth].”[14]

During the plague of darkness, when the land of Egypt was plunged into a darkness so thick that the Egyptians could not budge from their places, the Jewish people—whom the plague did not affect—were able to move about freely inside the Egyptians’ homes. This, says the Midrash, was in order that the Jews should be able to take an “inventory” of the wealth of Egypt, so that the Egyptians could not deny the existence of any valuable objects the Jews asked for when they left Egypt.[15]

And just prior to the Exodus, G-d again says to Moses: “Please, speak into the ears of the people, that each man ask his [Egyptian] fellow, and each woman her fellow, for vessels of silver and gold.” G-d is virtually begging the Children of Israel to take the wealth of Egypt!

The Talmud explains that the Jewish people were disinclined to hold up their departure from Egypt in order to gather its wealth:

To what is this comparable? To a man who is locked up in prison and is told: “Tomorrow you shall be freed from prison and be given a lot of money.” Says he: “I beg of you, free me today, and I ask for nothing more” ... [So G-d had to beseech them:] “Please! Ask the Egyptians for gold and silver vessels, so that the righteous one (Abraham) should not say: He fulfilled ‘They will be enslaved and tortured,’ but He did not fulfill ‘and afterwards they will go out with great wealth.’”[16]

But certainly Abraham, too, would have been prepared to forgo the promise of “great wealth” if this were to hasten his children’s liberation. Obviously, the gold and silver we carried out of Egypt was an indispensable component of our redemption.

The Talmud offers the following explanation for the phenomenon of galut: “The people of Israel were exiled amongst the nations only so that converts might be added to them.”[17]

On the most basic level, this is a reference to the many non-Jews who, in the course of the centuries of our dispersion, have come in contact with the Jewish people and have been inspired to convert to Judaism. But Chassidic teaching explains that the Talmud is also referring to “souls” of a different sort that are transformed and elevated in the course of our exiles: the “sparks of holiness” contained within the physical creation.[18]

The great Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria[19] taught that every object, force and phenomenon in existence has a “spark of holiness” within it—a pinpoint of divinity that constitutes its “soul,” its spiritual essence and design. This “spark” embodies the divine desire that the thing exist, and its function within G-d’s overall purpose for creation. When a person utilizes something to serve his Creator, he penetrates its shell of mundanity, revealing and realizing its divine essence.

It is to this end that we have been dispersed across the face of earth: so that we may come in contact with the sparks of holiness that await redemption in every corner of the globe.

Every soul has its own “sparks” scattered about in the world, which actually form an integral part of itself: no soul is complete until it has redeemed those sparks related to its being. Thus a person moves through life, impelled from place to place and from occupation to occupation by seemingly random forces; but everything is by divine providence, which guides every man to those possessions and opportunities whose soul is intimately connected with his.

Thus the Torah relates how Jacob risked his life to retrieve some “small jugs” he had left behind after crossing the Yabbok River.[20] “The righteous,” remarks the Talmud, “value their possessions more than their bodies.”[21] For they recognize the divine potential in every bit of matter, and see in each of their possessions a component of their own spiritual integrity.

At times, a person might be inclined to escape galut by enclosing himself in a cocoon of spirituality, devoting his days and nights to Torah study and prayer. But instead of escaping galut, he is only deepening his entrenchment within it, for he is abandoning limbs of his own soul—his sparks of holiness —in the wasteland of unrefined materiality.

It is only by meeting the challenges that divine providence sends our way, by utilizing every bit of material “gold” and “silver” toward a G-dly end, that we extricate these sparks from their galut, achieve a personal redemption, and hasten the universal redemption when “The great shofar shall be sounded, and the lost shall come from the lands of plenty, and the forsaken from the lands of stricture, and they shall bow to G-d on the Holy Mountain in Jerusalem.”[22]

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Passover 5721 (1961)[23]

Chassidic master Rabbi Nachum of Chernobyl (1730-1797) devoted much money and effort to ransoming Jews who had been imprisoned by the poritzim (feudal overlords) of Eastern Europe for their failure to pay a debt, for some real or imagined offense, or, often, for no reason other than the caprice of the local poritz.

On one occasion, Rabbi Nachum was himself arrested on some trumped-up charge and found himself in dire need of the very help he extended to others. As he sat in a dank, underground cell wondering what he might have done to deserve such suffering, he had a vision in which he was told:

“Abraham’s labor of love was the mitzvah of providing hospitality to travelers. It was for this reason that G-d instructed him, ‘Go, you, from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.’[24] By becoming a homeless wayfarer himself, he was able to better appreciate the needs he filled in others and the depth of his kindness to them.

“It is for this reason, Reb Nachum, that it was decreed that you suffer imprisonment: in order that you gain a deeper appreciation of the mitzvah to which you have devoted your life.”