An Outsider’s View: Jethro and Moses

August 21st, 2014

Why was he called Yitro (“his addition”)? Because he added a chapter to the Torah—[the chapter] “And you should see [to choose] from the people…”

Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 27:7

The Torah was communicated to us through Moses; indeed, the prophet goes so far as to refer to the word of G-d as “Moses’ Torah.”[1] On several occasions, however, other individuals are given credit for the revelation of a particular section. Thus we are told that the section dealing with laws of the “Second Passover” (Numbers 9:6-14), which came as G-d’s response to a group of Jews who were ritually impure yet refused to reconcile themselves with the fact that they could not participate in the Passover offering, “ought to have been related by Moses, like the rest of the Torah, but these people merited that it be revealed by their initiative.”[2] The same is said regarding the laws of inheritance (Numbers 27:6-11) whose revelation was prompted by the daughters of Tzelafchad,[3] the penalty for desecrating Shabbat (Numbers 15:35-36) prompted by the “wood gatherer,”[4] etc.

Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, is also credited with a section of Torah. Indeed, his name (Yitro, in the Hebrew, meaning “his addition”) was given him “because he added a chapter to the Torah.” In this, the case of Jethro is unique. In all other instances, nothing was “added” to the Torah—these were laws that would have been included in the Torah in any case, for without them the Torah is not complete; it was only that instead of being communicated directly to Moses as was the rest of the Torah, certain individuals had the merit to be involved in the process of their revelation.[5] Only Jethro’s section is referred to as an “addition”—something that would not have been part of the Torah were it not for his initiative. In other words, the Torah was complete without this section, and Jethro added something to it.

What was Jethro’s addition? What did it contribute to our understanding of the divine wisdom?

Delegated Authority

When Jethro arrived in the Israelite camp, he was shocked to discover that Moses was serving as a one-man educational and judicial system for a community of several million souls.[6] “Why do you sit alone,” he asked his son-in-law, “and the entire people stand about you from morning till evening?”

Moses replied: “The people come to me to seek G-d. When they have a matter of dispute they come to me, and I judge between a man and his fellow. I teach them the laws of G-d and His instructions.”

Said Jethro: “It is not good, this thing that you are doing. You will wither away, both you and this people who are with you… you cannot do this alone.” Jethro went on to suggest that Moses select from among the people “able men, those that fear G-d, men of truth, who abhor profit” and appoint them as arbiters and judges. Moses would continue to teach the people “the laws and the instructions … the path they should follow and the deeds they should do.” But the application of these laws to the daily life of the camp, the resolution of questions and the settlement of disputes, should be delegated to these men. “They shall judge the people at all times: the great matters they shall present to you, and the minor things they shall arbitrate themselves.”

Moses accepted and implemented Jethro’s plan, appointing “captains of thousand, captains of hundred, captains of fifty and captains of ten.” The people were themselves entrusted with the application of the divine law to their daily lives, while Moses confined his role to teaching them the laws and deciding the most difficult issues. [7]

A Reluctant Mouthpiece

A similar thing had occurred four months earlier, when the people of Israel assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah from G-d. [8]

The divine voice pronounced the first two of the Ten Commandments (“I am G-d…” and “You shall have no other gods…”). But the people felt that they were incapable of receiving a direct communication from G-d. “You approach,” they begged Moses, “and hear all that the L-rd our G-d will say. You tell us all that the L-rd our G-d will say to you, and we will listen and do.”

Moses was deeply disappointed to hear this: it was his desire that the people should receive the entire Torah directly from the mouth of G-d. But G-d said to him: “I have heard the words that the people have spoken to you; they have spoken well… Go say to them: ‘Return to your tents.’ And you remain here with Me, and I shall relate to you the commandment, the statutes and the laws which you shall teach them…”[9]

Moses was not only a great and holy man; he was also Israel’s leader—the greatest leader we have ever known. He was a “faithful shepherd”[10] to his people, feeding their bodies and nourishing their souls, sensitive to the individual needs of every member of his flock.[11] Moses did not “overestimate” his people when he desired that they receive the Torah directly from G-d; on the contrary—he perceived their true and ultimate potential, and as a true leader, he endeavored to actualize it. In Moses’ eyes, the people of Israel were capable of assimilating the highest revelations; under his leadership, they could actually have achieved this.

But the people did not want to relate to G-d on this level. They wanted to receive the Torah with their own, self-actualized, faculties, not with the sublime powers that Moses could summon forth from the depths of their souls. They wanted that their experience of Torah should be true to how they are to themselves, rather than how Moses sees them.

G-d agreed. After having been exposed to the divine essence of Torah (as contained within the first two commandments), they would receive the Torah not as a supernal “voice” from Heaven, but as ideas formulated in a human mind, as words articulated by a human mouth and put in writing by a human hand. They would receive the Torah via the mind, mouth and pen of Moses.

The Outsider

Having learned the divine laws from Moses, how were they to be implemented in their daily lives? How were they to be translated into guidance for raising a child, righting a troubled marriage or resolving a dispute between neighbors?

One might go to Moses. He received these laws from G-d; his knowledge and understanding of them is absolute. His application of them is certain to be the clearest, most unequivocal rendition of the divine law.

It is true that Moses is a million miles away from the petty neighbors’ dispute he is being troubled to resolve. But it is also true that the two litigants standing before him are certain to be elevated by the experience. In the presence of Moses, they, too, are capable of rising above the pettiness of their conflict. In the presence of Moses, they, too, are capable of relating to the pure principle being expounded, and of applying it to their relations back in their neighborhood.

This was how it was done until Jethro arrived in the Israelite camp.

Jethro was an outsider—a convert to Judaism who was not even present at the revelation at Mount Sinai.[12] Moses saw the people of Israel from the inside—in the light of their highest potentials, from the perspective of the inner core of their souls as they are one with his in the singular soul of Israel. Jethro saw them from the outside—their everyday selves, their petty cares and conflicts. He saw them as they are apart from Moses, while Moses saw them only as they are in the presence of Moses.

So he suggested to Moses that the people of Israel learn to govern themselves, to arbitrate their disputes, to apply the laws of Torah to their lives. Moses was to remain the sole source of these laws, but their implementation was to be achieved by a multi-tiered body of magistrates and counselors at every level of the community (“captains of ten, captains of hundred,” etc.). This way, the divine law would permeate their lives on every level, not only at the apogee of their being.

This is what Jethro “added” to the Torah. Without his addition, the Torah was complete. Indeed, there was no real need for Jethro’s system, for Moses could always be counted on to raise the lives of his people to the level on which he expounded the word of G-d. But their understanding and practice of Torah would have remained something that Moses had empowered them to attain, not something they had attained on their own. Jethro’s system made the Torah the personal achievement of every Jew.

More significantly, Jethro’s initiative was accepted and implemented by Moses, and written into the Torah. Were it not for Jethro, the Torah would have remained “Moses’ Torah”—a guide to life for Moseses and Moses-elevated Jews. After Moses’ passing, a system such as Jethro’s would have been established, to “bring down” Moses’ Torah to a lesser generation. But Jethro insisted that Moses delegate of his capacity to interpret the Torah to the sages of his generation, and by extension, to the sages of all generations. Because it was Moses who established this system, it was incorporated as a section in Torah, making it an integral part of the divine communication to man. Because of Jethro, the Jew who studies and lives Torah today is relating to the divine “original” rather than to a human interpretation.[13]

This essay on Jethro and Moses is based on an address by the Rebbe, Shevat 15, 5735 (January 27, 1975).[14]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: judgement, self-government
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I Am Who I Am: The Names of G-d

August 21st, 2014

I Am who I Am
Exodus 3:14

I Am with you in your present distress, and I shall be with you in future exiles and persecutions
Rashi on verse[1]

When G-d appeared to Moses in the burning bush and charged him with the mission to take the people of Israel out of Egypt, Moses said to the Almighty:

“Behold, I will come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The G-d of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they will say, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?”[2]

G-d replied to Moses: “I Am who I Am… Tell the children of Israel, ‘I Am (Eh‑he‑yeh) has sent me to you.’ ”[3]

An Anonymous G-d?

To name something is to describe and define it. So G-d, who is infinite and undefinable, cannot be named. Indeed, G-d has no name, only names—descriptions of the various behavior patterns that can be ascribed to His influence on our lives. In the words of the Midrash, “G-d said to Moses: ‘You want to know My name? I am called by My deeds. I might be called E‑l Sha‑dai, or Tzevakot, or Elokim, or Ha‑Va‑Ya‑H. When I judge My creatures, I am called Elokim. When I wage war on the wicked, I am called Tzevakot. When I tolerate the sins of man, I am called E‑l Sha‑dai. When I have compassion on My world, I am called Ha‑Va‑Ya‑H…’ ”[4]

Therein lies the deeper significance of the question that Moses anticipated from the children of Israel. “What is His name?” they were sure to ask. “What type of behavior are we seeing on the part of G-d in these times? You say that G-d has ‘seen the suffering of His people in Egypt,’ has ‘heard their cries,’ and ‘knows their pain,’ and has therefore sent you to redeem us.[5] Where was He until now? Where was He for the eighty-six years that we are languishing under the slave-driver’s whip, that babies are being torn from their mothers’ arms and cast into the Nile, that Pharaoh is bathing in the blood of Jewish children? What name is He now assuming, after eighty-six years in which He has apparently been ‘nameless’ and aloof from our lives?”

G-dly, But Not Holy

As explained above, each of the divine “names” describes another of the attributes by which G-d has chosen to relate to His creation: Elokim describes G-d’s assumption of the attribute of Justice, Ha‑Va‑Ya‑H His assumption of Compassion, and so on. “Eh‑he‑yeh” (“I am”), the name by which G-d here identifies Himself to Moses, connotes G-d’s assumption of Being and Existence.

This is why there is some question as to whether the name “Eh‑he‑yeh” should be counted among the “seven holy names of G-d.” Torah law forbids erasing or defacing G-d’s name, the very ink and paper (or other medium) having assumed a holiness by virtue of its representation of something that relates to the divine.[6] While there are many “names” and “adjectives” that describe G-d’s myriadly-faceted involvement with His creation, there are seven primary divine names to which the strictest provisions of this law apply. Yet despite the fact that Eh‑he‑yeh is considered the loftiest of divine names,[7] it is not included in certain versions of the seven-name list as it appears in the Talmud and the halachic authorities; indeed, the final halachic conclusion is that it is not one of the seven holy names.[8]

The reason for this paradox is best understood by understanding the meaning of the term “holiness.” What makes something “holy”? Holy (kadosh in the Hebrew) means “transcendent” and “apart.” G-d is holy, for He transcends our earthly reality; Shabbat is a holy day, for it is a day of withdrawal from the mundanity of the everyday; a Torah scroll or a pair of tefillin are holy because these are objects that have visibly transcended their material state to serve a G-dly end.

The same applies to the seven holy divine names: each describes a divine activity that goes beyond the mundane norm, a divine intervention in reality—G-d as ruler, G-d as judge, G-d as provider, G-d as savior, etc. Eh-he-yeh, on the other hand, is G-d as being—G-d as the essence of reality.[9]So Eh-he-yeh is beyond “holiness”: if holiness is a feature of G-d’s transcendence, the beingness of G-d transcends holiness itself, describing a dimension of divine reality that pervades every existence even as it transcends it, and thus relates equally to them all, “holy” and “mundane” alike.

[Nevertheless, Eh‑he‑yeh is a name—that is, an assumed “behavior pattern”—of G-d’s. The very phenomenon of “existence” is part and parcel of G-d’s creation, and G-d certainly cannot defined by something He created. Utimately, the G-d can be described as a “being” or “existence” only in the sense that we speak of Him as a “provider” or “ruler”: these are mere “names,” describing not His essence but a certain perception He allows us to have of Him by affecting our reality in a certain manner.]

The Answer

This was G-d’s answer to the people’s outcry, “What is His name?!”

Tell the children of Israel, said G-d to Moses, that My name is Eh‑he‑yeh. Where was I all these years? With you. I am being, I am existence, I am reality. I am in the groan of a beaten slave, in the wail of a bereaved mother, in the spilled blood of a murdered child. Certain things must be, no matter how painful and incomprehensible to your human selves, in order that great things, infinitely great and blissful things, should be. But I do not orchestrate these things from some distant heaven, “holy” and removed from your existential pain. I am there with you, suffering with you, praying for redemption together with you.[10]

If you cannot see Me it is not for My ethereality, it is because I am so real.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks, Shabbat Shemot and Shabbat Vayeira, 5743 (January 8 and 15, 1983).[11]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: existence, G-d's names, Divine service
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Shmot, Soul & Mystical, Shmot, Spiritual, Torah | 1 Comment »

The Human Story in Twelve Words: The Book of Genesis

August 21st, 2014

The book of Genesis, the first of the five books of the Torah, chronicles the lives of the founding fathers and mothers of humanity in general and of the Jewish nation in particular: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah; Joseph and his brothers. More than history, their lives are templates of our own, in which we find the precedents for our every challenge and experience.

The book of Genesis consists of twelve sections (parashiyot), the last of which, Vayechi, is this week’s Torah reading.[1] The twelve sections of Genesis are: Bereishit, Noach, Lech-Lecha, Vayeira, Chayei Sarah, Toldot, Vayeitzei, Vayishlach, Vayeishev, Mikeitz, Vayigash, and Vayechi.

The name of a thing is the articulation of its essence.[2] Each of these twelve names embodies an entire Torah section, encapsulating the common theme and quintessential import of the section’s many narratives. So if we take these twelve names and read them in succession as a sort of shorthand or code, we get a synoptic account of the human story: the purpose of our creation, the soul’s transformation from a wholly spiritual entity to a physical human being, the manner in which we develop our self and environment, and the ultimate realization of our mission in life.

The twelve-word version of the human story reads like this:

Bereishit – Purpose
Noach – Tranquillity
Lech Lecha – Journey
Vayeira – Vision
Chayei Sarah – Invigoration
Toldot – Production
Vayeitzei – Excursion
Vayishlach – Delegation
Vayeishev – Integration
Mikeitz – End
Vayigash – Union
Vayechi – Life

Purpose

If there is one basic question that all “isms” and value systems must address, it is this: does the world exist for its own sake, or for the sake of some other, greater aim? Is there an axiomatic purpose upon which our existence turns, or is our existence its own axiom?

Bereishit is the Torah’s opening word and the name of its first section. The word means “in the beginning,” and it commences the Torah’s narrative of the world’s creation: “In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth…”. But in addition to its literal meaning,[3] bereishit expresses the axiom that G-d created the world to serve a purpose. Our sages note that the word bereishit begins with the letter bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The story of creation, the Torah is saying, does not begin with G-d’s creation of the world; there is something that precedes it and upon which it is predicated.

Bereishit is also an acronym of the words bet reishit (“two firsts”)—a reference to the two primary components of the purpose of creation, both of which are called reishit: the Torah (called reishit in Proverbs 8:22) and the people of Israel (Jeremiah 2:3). The Torah is the guidebook that outlines how this purpose is to be fulfilled, and the people of Israel are the principal actors in its realization.

Tranquillity

Having established that creation has a purpose, we now proceed to the name of the second Torah section, Noach, which conveys what this purpose is: to transform a chaotic existence into a harmonious world.

“G-d desired a dwelling in the lowly realms”—in these words our sages describe G-d’s motive for the creation of the world.[4] The “lowly realms” is our physical world—a world whose coarseness and diversity belie the sublimity and singularity of its divine source. G-d desired that this lowly realm be transformed into a “dwelling” for Him—a place that is receptive to His presence, a place in which He is “at home”; that this diverse and strife-torn environment be transformed into a tranquil world, a world at peace with itself and its Creator.[5]

Noach (Noah)—the name means “tranquillity”[6]—achieved this on a microcosmic level when he created an island of tranquillity amidst the raging waters of the Flood: a floating island which contained specimens of every animal, bird and plant, and in which, for 365 days, the lion lived in peace with the lamb. Of course, Noach’s messianic world was temporary and embraced only a tiny corner of creation; the divine desire is that we transform the entire world into a “Noah’s ark” of tranquil perfection.

Noach also means “satisfaction”—a reference to the fact that this purpose has significance only because it satisfies the divine desire for “a dwelling in the lowly realms.” The creation of a tranquil world cannot be an end in itself—had the world not been created, there would have been no strifeful entity upon which tranquillity need be imposed. The endeavor of making the world a home for G-d is meaningful only because G-d desires it.[7]

Journey, Vision and Invigoration

The created existence is purposeful, the purpose being the satisfaction of the divine desire for a tranquil home on earth. To fulfill this purpose, the human soul is dispatched to the physical world, imbued with a vision of the purpose, and granted the ability to integrate this vision into all components of its psyche and character.

Lech-Lecha (“Go, you”), the third section of Genesis, derives its name from its opening verse, “And G-d said to Abram: ‘Go, you, from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”[8] This, say the Chassidic masters, is the command issued to every soul before it enters this world: depart from your lofty origins, from your state of oneness with G-d, to journey to an unknown, alien place. Descend from your spiritual birthplace to enter a physical body and world, for this is “the land that I will show you”—the arena in which your mission in life will be fulfilled.

The soul, however, does not go alone. It is fortified with a vision (Vayeira—“And He revealed Himself,” from the verse “And He (G-d) revealed Himself to Abraham”[9]) of the divine truth, a vision that will be its guiding light in its effort to make the world a place that is hospitable to the divine presence.

But a vision alone is not enough. Unless the vision saturates the soul, permeating its every nook and cranny, it will be little more than an abstract theory or a “religious belief,” with limited effect upon the person’s day-to-day life. If our vision of G-d is to serve as the focus of our lives, it must become the object of our will, the vista of our mind and the yearning of our heart.

This is the message implicit in the name of the next Torah section, Chayei-Sarah (“The Life of Sarah”). The fifth section of Genesis begins with the verse, “And the life of Sarah was one hundred years, twenty years, and seven years.”[10] In the language of Kabbalah, the number “one hundred” represents the faculty of will, “twenty” connotes the intellect, and “seven” refers to the emotions;[11] the Torah is telling us that all aspects of Sarah’s psyche and personality were invigorated by her soul’s vision of G-d.

Production, Self-Extension and Delegation

We know why we’re here, and that we have been supplied with the vision and spiritual resources to carry it out. Now it’s time to get to work.

The word Toldot—the name of the sixth section of Genesis—means “progeny” and “products.” “The toldot of the righteous,” say our sages, “are their good deeds.”[12] The bricks out of which the earthly “dwelling for G-d” is constructed are the mitzvot, the deeds which transform a physical resource into an object of the divine will.[13]

Sanctifying one’s own life and surroundings through the performance of mitzvot is not enough: one must also extend oneself (Vayeitzei—“And he went out”) to places and people that lie outside one’s immediate environment. The Torah section of Vayeitzei relates how Jacob left the holy environment of his father’s home and the study houses of Shem and Eber, where he had spent the first half of his life in “the tents of Torah,”[14] to journey to pagan Charan and the manipulative Laban, where he had to contend with a hostile and materialistic world for twenty toilsome years. But it was here that Jacob attained the peak of his personal growth and where he founded the nation of Israel.

Vayishlach (“and he sent,” from the verse, “And Jacob sent angel-messengers to his brother Esau”[15]) connotes the next step in our efforts to make the world a home for G-d. What are we to do when we have extended ourselves to the utmost of our capacity? When we have reached out to those individuals and places that are at the very extremity of our communication skills and our ability to impact the world? We should then extend our reach even further by delegating and empowering others as our agents. Our influence upon others should not be limited to affecting their lives, but also to transforming them into teachers and developers who will in turn affect people and places that we ourselves could never reach.

In Torah law, this concept is known as the principle of shelichut. In the words of the Talmud, “A person’s shaliach (agent) is like himself,” and the shaliach’s actions and accomplishments are attributed to the one who empowered him to act in his stead.[16]

Integration

When a thief is breaking into your home, goes the Chassidic saying, there are basically two things you can do. You can holler, “Thief! Thief!” and drive the thief away; or you can capture the thief and teach him an honest profession.

On the more elementary level, we can make the world a more G-dly place by chasing the thief away. We can stimulate the positive in ourselves so that it overpowers our own negative instincts, and work to similarly bring out the good in others; we can seek to impose a divine harmony upon a basically divisive and belligerent world.

But like the banished thief, the world has not really changed. A better, holier, more peaceful world has been imposed upon it, but underneath this new order, the “old” world remains. It has been vanquished, not transformed; suppressed, not elevated.

After a person has gone through the “production,” “excursion” and “delegation” phases of his mission in life, the next step is to integrate these gains into the fabric of reality.

Vayeishev (“And he settled down in tranquillity,” from the verse “And Jacob settled down in tranquillity in the land of his father’s dwelling”[17]) is the “settling in” of our G-dly deeds to become the permanent, intrinsic state of our world.

End, Union, Life

The completion of the “integration” phase marks “the end” (Mikeitz, the name of the tenth section of Genesis)—the realization of the end-goal of creation. The divine home is now complete; the world has become a harmonious abode for its Creator.

The “end” itself has three stages, as successively deeper dimensions of the world’s divine harmony come to light. In the first stage, the world is a perfect “vessel” or vehicle for G-d. A further stage reveals its union (Vayigash—“And he approached”—the name of the eleventh section) with its divine source: not only is the world completely receptive to its Creator, but it is revealed to be one with the divine reality, an expression of G-d’s all-embracing truth.

The highest expression of creation’s fulfillment is the eternal life (Vayechi—“And he lived”) that is the hallmark of the final phase of the Messianic Age. Death is a most natural phenomenon in the world in which we live today—an imperative of the finite and temporal nature of the physical. But the physical was not always mortal. The world, as G-d created it, had the capacity for eternal life—death came only with the first sin of man, with the first breach between G-d and His creation. In a world that is one with G-d, a world that is in complete harmony with its source, there is nothing to disrupt the flow of vitality from the Creator to creation.

The Torah section of Vayechi describes Jacob’s demise: his parting words to his children, his passing, and his funeral. Yet the section’s name—the one word that conveys its essence—means “And [Jacob] lived.” Vayechi expresses the axiom that, in truth, “Our father Jacob did not die.”[18] Jacob’s life is immutable, because it is a life in the ultimate sense of the word: life as an exercise of harmony with the divine.

Bereishit to Vayechi, the section names of Genesis chronicle the most basic truths of our existence: that life is purposeful, its purpose being to satisfy the divine desire for a home on earth; that the soul descends to earth furnished with a vision of G-d and the capacity to integrate this vision into its self and character; that man must sanctify his life with acts of goodness, extend himself beyond his “natural” environment, further extend himself by delegating of his powers to others, and labor to not only command but also transform reality; that our efforts will invariably result in a world united with its G-d; that life—pure and eternal—is the ultimate expression of the divine in man.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Kislev 18, 5750 (December 16, 1989).[19]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: Rebbe, purpose of life, creation
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Vistas of Repentance

August 21st, 2014

People think that teshuvah (repentance) is only for sinners. But even the perfectly righteous individual must do teshuvah—must return to elevate his perfect past to the level of his more perfect present.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

You stand in this moment. Many such moments lay behind you. Many more, G-d willing, before you. In each of these moments there is, there was, there will always be a choice. A decision of importance or one concerning a simple day-to-day task. A choice between disciplining your child or accepting his or her behavior as a natural part of development. A choice on how to spend ten dollars or an evening, whether or not to respond to a comment, ask a question or think a thought.

At a certain point you have lived long enough to have made many choices and to be able to see the consequences they have wrought. From this vantage point, elevated by maturity, you now see that every choice you made was made in ignorance. You recognize that the full impact of each choice was not seen at the time, and had it been, then perhaps another choice would have been made, or the same choice, but with much more trepidation, less spontaneity, and a total absence of frivolity.

The remorse this awareness brings drives you to seek audience with the Heavenly Court. An audience to seek forgiveness not for your sins, but for the decisions you made in wisdom, with consideration, with moral righteousness; for the actions you were so sure at the time were right. Only now, when you have lived long enough to see their consequences, when you are old enough to view them through a lens ground from experience and the wisdom and understanding that only experience can yield, did you see how very foolhardy you have been.

Children are the best example. Loving parents do for their child what they believe to be best. Their actions are considered, discussed, wrestled with. Expert advice is sought, no expense spared, every opportunity cultivated. And yet, as the years pass and your child grows, as his or her personality and character begin to emerge, as he or she faces life, succeeds, fails, rejoices and despairs, we, as parents, see the imperfections of our children, and our own failings. With our spouse, we sit late at night at the kitchen table, sipping our coffee, and talk of the things we could have, should have done. In great detail, we are able to trace each flaw and imperfection in our children to a choice that we made, an action we took, an opportunity we let slip by. And after we are done blaming ourselves and each other, ultimately we conclude that we did the best that we could. And in a strange way, this is the final dismay.

If you bothered to examine in similar detail the other choices you’ve made, you would come to the same conclusion. Each was flawed and limited and in its wake created consequences you could not foresee. Then, even though your mistakes and limitations could be excused by lack of knowledge, you would still desire to stand before the Heavenly Court and ask forgiveness. For these consequences, as unintentional as they may have been, are now very real and exist with  a life of their own.

Repenting in Advance

After you’ve lived enough years, you know that the future is as soon as yesterday and that ten or twenty years from now exists today. You know that just as you are asking forgiveness today for the consequences of actions taken ten or twenty years ago, so ten or twenty years from now you will be standing asking forgiveness for the actions you took today.

Even your repentance is limited. For you can only repent for what you know, and your knowledge is meager. Ten or twenty years from now you will remember standing before the Heavenly Court today, and it will appear almost childlike. Because ten or twenty years from now, you will see even more of the aftermath of your actions. And you will desire to once again seek atonement for them knowing that every newly realized consequence requires its own repentance.

And now, knowing this, you arrive at the decision that stands before you today: Your aspirations and what you do with them. Your child and how you treat him. Your wife. Husband. Work. Bank account. Friend. Neighbor. Mitzvah. Temptation. Vacation. Anger. Love. And all the rest.

You stand in fear and trepidation. You know that today’s choice will create a future reality that you cannot possibly know. You are about to release an arrow from the bow and you are already responsible for whatever target it hits, whether you aimed at it or not.

Poised to act, you have an image of yourself standing twenty years from now; prepared to release the arrow, you are already looking back, repenting your ignorance, the narrowness of your vision, the lowliness of your vista, the targets your arrow will strike as its flight continues past any destination you aim for. Yet the moment of choice has arrived. The time of action. The imperative of doing.

What do you do?

How can you possibly make a move? With the weight of this awareness, will you ever laugh again, be spontaneous, frivolous, fun loving, joyful?

Yet, miraculously, you act. You release the arrow. You laugh. You sing and you dance. Because ultimately, through your years, you have learned that G-d loves you. You are joyous precisely because there is a Heavenly Court before which you can stand and receive forgiveness and understanding and love. You laugh precisely because you know that behind the imperative of doing the very best you can is the futility of doing anything more than you can. You breathe deeply and release a smile because you know that G-d wants no more from you than you are able to do and has already given you everything you need with which to do it. You dance because this is your freedom: to dance your part in G-d’s creation with grace and courage and faith. And you sing knowing that you are only one voice in the chorus, and that the symphony is endless, ultimately perfect, yet paradoxically, dependent on you.

And finally you realize that the failings and limitations, errors and miscalculations, even the consequences that cause the blood to rush to your face in shame are also a part of your limited perspective, your narrow vision, your lowly vista. For if you could climb high enough you would see that the reason the Heavenly Court grants its forgiveness is that ultimately there is nothing to forgive.

From the highest plateau you would see that you are dancing your part perfectly. You always have. And you always will.

By Jay Litvin

Tags: teshuvah, Alter Rebbe, personal growth, choice
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Bereishit, Soul & Mystical, Months & Holidays, Yom Kippur, Personal Life, Spiritual, Torah, Emotions & Psychology, Vayigash | No Comments »

Dreamworld: Joseph’s Dreams

August 21st, 2014

As the book of Genesis takes up the story of Joseph, the narrative meanders through a succession of dreams: Joseph’s dreams, which incensed his brothers and drove them to sell him into slavery (Genesis 37:5-11, 19-20); the dreams of the Pharaoh’s butler and his baker, which Joseph interpreted in prison (40:5-19); and Pharaoh’s dreams, which elevated Joseph to the second-highest office in the most powerful empire on earth (41:1-44).

The result of all this dreaming was the Egyptian galut (exile)—the first galut experienced by the Jewish people and the source of all their subsequent galuyot.[1] The Children of Israel settled in Egypt, where they were later enslaved by the Egyptians, and where they deteriorated spiritually to the extent that, in many respects, they came to resemble their enslavers.[2] When G-d came to redeem them, He had to “take a nation from the innards of a nation,”[3] entering into the bowels of Egypt to extract His chosen people from the most depraved society in the history of mankind.

A dream is perception without the discipline of reason. Here are all the stimuli and experiences we know from “real” life—sights and sounds, thoughts and action, exhilaration and dread. Indeed, everything in a dream is borrowed from our waking lives, for “a person dreams only of his daytime thoughts.”[4] But everything is topsy-turvy, defying all norms of logic and credulity. In a dream, a tragedy might be a cause for celebration, a parent might be younger than his child, and one might witness “an elephant passing through the eye of a needle.”

Galut was born out of a succession of dreams because galut is the ultimate dream—a terrible, irrational fantasy embracing the globe and spanning millennia. A dream in which crime pays, the good die young, and G-d’s chosen people are slaughtered with impunity. A dream in which what is right is seldom “realistic,” and non-existences such as “evil,” “ignorance” and “death” are potent forces in our lives.

The surreality of galut pervades our spiritual lives as well. Only in galut can a person arise in the morning, purify himself in a mikvah,[5] pray with ecstasy and devotion, study a chapter of Torah, and then proceed to the office for a business day of connivance, deceit and manipulation. “Hypocrisy” is not an adequate description of this phenomenon—in many cases, his prayer is sincere, and his love and awe of G-d quite real. But he inhabits the dream-world of galut, where antitheses coexist and inconsistencies are the norm.

In the real world, such absurdities were impossible. When the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) stood in Jerusalem and bathed the world in divine daylight, no man with a residue of spiritual impurity (tum’ah) could approach G-d until he had undergone a process of purification. That G-d is the source of life and that sin (i.e., disconnection from the divine) is synonymous with death was no mere conceptual truth, but a fact of life.[6] In the real world that was, and to which we shall awaken when the dream of galut shall evaporate, the spiritual laws of reality are as apparent and as immutable as—indeed more apparent and immutable than—the physical laws of nature.

But there is also a positive side to our hallucinatory existence. In the real world, a true relationship with G-d can come only in the context of a life consistently faithful to Him; in the dreamworld of galut, the imperfect man can experience the divine. In the real world, only the impeccable soul can enter into the Sanctuary of G-d; in the dreamworld of galut, G-d “resides amongst them, in the midst of their impurity.”[7]

We daily await the divine dawn that will dispel the nightmare that, for much of history, has crippled us physically and spiritually. But in the moments remaining to our dream, let us avail ourselves of the unique opportunity to be “inconsistent” and “hypocritical” in the most positive way: by overreaching our spiritual capacity, by being and doing more than we are able by any sane assessment of our merit and potential.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Kislev 19, 5717 (November 23, 1956)[8]

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: exile, reality, Exodus from Egypt, Egypt, Rebbe, dreams
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Bereishit, Biblical, Beliefs & Concepts, Torah Personalities, Moshiach & Redemption, Torah, Joseph, Mikeitz | 1 Comment »

The Three Lives of Jacob

August 20th, 2014

“Everything that happened to the Patriarchs,” writes Nachmanides in his commentary on the Book of Genesis, “is a signpost for their children. This is why the Torah elaborates its account of their journeys, their well-digging and the other events [of their lives] … these all come as an instruction for the future: for when something happens to one of the three Patriarchs, one understands from it what is decreed to occur to his descendants.”[1]

The Torah devotes more than twenty-five chapters (Genesis 25-50) to the life of Jacob, the third and “choicest of the Patriarchs”[2]—a life which spanned three lands:

a) The Holy Land, where he spent the first half of his life[3] secluded in “the tents of Torah.”[4]
b) The Mesopotamian city of Charan, where he spent 20 years in the employ of “Laban the Deceiver,” fathered 11 of his 12 sons, and amassed “much sheep, as well as maids, servants, camels and asses.”[5]
c) The land of Egypt, where he resided for the last 17 years of his life.[6]

Many events, triumphs and tribulations crowd each of these three epochs in the saga of Jacob. But each period also represents a particular state of affairs in Jacob’s life and in his relationship with his environment, providing us with three major “signposts” by which to negotiate our own lives’ reiteration of the lives of our ancestors.

Sovereignty, Struggle, and Subjugation

To what extent are we the master of our circumstances? Rare is the individual who could offer a single, consistent reply to this question. Rather, we recognize various states of dependency and control, various degrees of mastery over our lives. Generally speaking, we experience three such states: sovereignty, struggle, and subjugation.

We each harbor a vision of a transcendent self, of a soul, pure and inviolable, at the core of our being. This self, we are convinced, is not subject to the caprice of circumstance, remaining forever aloof from the shifting dictates of society and convention. And though this core self is not always accessible to us, there come moments in our lives—“moments of truth,” we call them—in which it asserts its will over every and any influence save its own internal truth.

But these moments, for most of us, are few and far between. More often, we are in a state of struggle—struggle with our environment, with our own habits and behavior patterns, with the passions of our divided hearts.

While a state of struggle indicates that we have not attained full mastery over our existence, it is also a sign of life: we have not succumbed. We are resisting the forces that seek to sway us from our internal truth; we are engaging them and battling them. Indeed, this is life at its fullest and most productive—even more so, in a certain sense, than those “moments of truth” of resolute perfection.

But we also know times of powerlessness and subordination. Times when we are faced with circumstances which we have neither the ability to control nor to even resist; times when it seems that life has been stopped dead in its tracks, arrested by an impregnable wall of helplessness and despair.

Jacob

Jacob was a tzaddik—a perfectly righteous person who never for a moment ceased to exercise a full and unequivocal mastery over his life.[7] But within the context of his perfect existence, he experienced the equivalents of all three states of life described above.

His years in the Holy Land were years of tranquil perfection—years in which nothing alien to his quintessential self intruded upon his life of Torah study, prayer and service of G-d.

His Charan years were characterized by challenge and struggle. There he locked horns with Laban the Deceiver and bested him at his own game;[8] there “heat consumed me by day, and frost at night; and sleep was banished from my eyes.”[9] In the words of Esau’s angel to Jacob upon Jacob’s return from Charan, “You have struggled with G-d and with men, and have prevailed.”[10]

For the last seventeen years of his life, Jacob lived in the land of Egypt. If Charan was “the object of G-d’s wrath in the world,”[11] Egypt was “the depravity of the earth”[12]—the most G-dless and debased society of all time. In Egypt, Jacob was forced to pay homage to Pharaoh,[13] the arch-idol and demigod of the land. Upon Jacob’s passing in Egypt, his body was in the possession of the Egyptian “physicians” for 40 days, who embalmed it after their custom.[14] Indeed, the reason why Jacob commanded Joseph to bury him in the Holy Land (a feat which required much maneuvering and manipulation to secure Pharaoh’s consent[15]) was that he feared that, in Egypt, his body and gravesite would become an object of idolatry.[16]

Jacob’s Egyptian years thus represent what, in the context of his perfectly sovereign life, were a time of subjugation to an alien power. Yet the Torah regards these as the best years of his life![17] For Jacob knew to exploit the very circumstances which, on the face of it, inhibit and arrest one’s vitality and achievement, as circumstances to foster the strivings of his soul and further its aims. Indeed, it was here in Egypt, under the rule and subsequent enslavement of the Pharaohs, that Jacob’s descendants were forged into the people of Israel.

The Signposts

“Everything that happened to the Patriarchs … is decreed to occur to their descendants.” Not that they occur in exactly the same manner. Our own moments of transcendence seem fleeting and inconsequential in comparison with Jacob’s decades of tranquil perfection in the Holy Land; our own struggles seem wan and inept when measured against Jacob’s Charan years; our own lives under circumstances of subjugation and oppression seem black indeed when set against Jacob’s Egyptian period. Yet the three lives of Jacob are “signposts” that guide, inspire and enable our own.[18]

Jacob’s life in the Holy Land empowers us to experience moments of true freedom—moments in which we assert our true will over all forces, both external and internal, that seek to quell it.

Jacob’s Charan years inspire and enable us to not only persevere in our struggles but to revel in them, to experience them as vibrant and exhilarating periods in our lives.

And Jacob’s Egyptian period teaches us how to deal with those situations in which we feel overpowered by forces beyond our control. It teaches us that these times, too, are part and parcel of our lives; that these times, too, can be negotiated with wisdom, dignity and integrity. That these times, too, can be realized as vital and productive seasons of our lives.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Vayeitzei 5750 (1989)[19]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: Rebbe, light and darkness, Egypt
Posted in Bereishit, Biblical, Torah Personalities, Torah, Vayishlach | 2 Comments »

A Day in the Life of a Jew

August 20th, 2014

A productive life requires an awareness of time’s inexorable flow and a system for time management. To this end, we consult a variety of paper or electronic grids in which the day’s expanse is segmented into hours and minutes and appropriately color-coded into time-allotments for work, meals, leisure and repose.

The reliance on calendar, clock and appointment book is one we share with all hour-conscious inhabitants of planet time. As Jews, however, we are also guided by a more subtle calendar, a more spiritual clock: the calendar and clock of history. As Jews, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are as central to our concept of morning, noon and evening as the sun’s arc across the sky; Adam, Moses and King David mark our year as prominently as the turning of the seasons; and the twelve sons of Jacob, progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, are as basic to our daily schedule as the twelve numerals etched on our clock-face or the twelve spiral-bound pages hanging on our wall.

The Twelve Sons of Jacob

As related in the Book of Genesis,[1] the twelve sons of Jacob were born from four different wives and are divided into three general categories:

a) The six sons of Leah—Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun.

b) The two sons of Rachel, Jacob’s primary wife and “the mainstay of the house” of Israel[2]—Joseph and Benjamin.

c) The four sons of the two “handmaidens,” Bilhah and Zilpah—Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

A similar division defines their roles as signposts in our daily lives: the sons of Leah embody the activities on our daily schedule, the sons of Rachel represent the primary modes of Jewish life, and “the sons of the handmaidens” run as the auxiliary themes through our day that accompany our every action and endeavor.

Synagogue, Study Hall and Marketplace

A day in the life of a Jew begins with prayer, the “service of the heart.”[3] The first conscious thoughts of the day, and its first uttered words, are of our awareness of G-d’s presence in our lives and our indebtedness to Him for our every living breath.[4] And though formal prayer must by necessity wait until one has gotten out of bed, washed, dressed and rushed[5] to the synagogue, it is the very first item on our daily agenda. In the words of the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), “The time for reciting the morning prayers begins at sunrise…. From the onset of the time for prayer, a person is forbidden to visit one’s friend … to attend to one’s personal affairs, or to embark on a journey, before praying the morning prayers.”[6]

After the morning prayers, the Jew proceeds “from the synagogue to the study hall” for a daily “set time for Torah learning.”[7] From there he ventures out into the “secular” world to attend to his material affairs and the business of earning a living.[8]

These three activities are chronicled by the sons of Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah represent the various phases of prayer and its “service of the heart”; Issachar represents the study of Torah; and Zebulun represents the Jew’s foray into the marketplace.

The Service of the Heart

Prayer is a “ladder set upon the earth whose head touches the heavens.”[9] This ladder consists of four rungs—Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; or love, awe, integration and self-abnegation.

The heart of man is home to hundreds, if not thousands, of identifiable emotions. But in a most general sense, we recognize two primary drives: the impulse to approach and come near, and the impulse to recoil and withdraw. To the first category belong such emotions as love, yearning, and kindness; to the second category, feelings such as awe, fear, reverence and humility.

The repertoire of the heart also includes emotions that combine both these motions of self. A mature emotional relationship will include feelings that are both loving and revering—feelings that integrate a striving for closeness with a restraining awe.

Indeed, such a synthesis of love and awe is the heart’s highest form of emotional expression. But an even greater achievement of the heart is the negation of emotion. For all emotions, whether of the self-extending, self-contracting or “integrating” sort, are a form of self-expression; and to truly relate to someone or something that lies beyond the self, one must divest oneself of every vestige of self-interest and self-regard.

These are the four rungs in the ladder of prayer. In the first phase of the “service of the heart” (which culminates in the first section of the Shema), the objective is to develop a feeling of love towards G-d, a yearning and craving to draw close to Him. The second phase (coinciding with the second section of the Shema) is the development of feelings of reverence and awe toward G-d. The third phase (associated with the blessing “True and Enduring,” recited between the Shema and the Amidah) is the fusion of love and awe in our relationship with G-d. In the fourth phase (attained during the silent recitation of the Amidah) we transcend emotion itself, abnegating all feeling and desire to achieve an utter commitment and unequivocal devotion to G-d.

In the terminology of Kabbalah and Chassidism, love and awe are the eyes and the ears of the heart. Sight is the most intimate of the senses; hearing, the most distant and detached.[10] Hence love—the heart’s yen to draw close—is its faculty of “sight,” and awe—the heart’s impulse to retreat and withdraw—is its sense of “hearing.”

Reuben, whose name derives from the Hebrew re’iyah, “sight,” and who was so named by his mother because “G-d has seen my suffering; now my husband shall love me,”[11] thus represents the first stage of prayer—the element of “love” in our service of the heart. Simeon—from shemi’ah, “hearing,” so named in response to the fact that “G-d has heard that I am rejected”[12]—represents the second stage of prayer, the heart’s recoil in reverence and awe. Levi, meaning “attachment” and “cleaving” (his birth prompted Leah to say, “Now my husband shall cleave to me, for I have borne him three sons”[13]) represents the union of love and awe in the third stage of prayer. And Judah, whose name means “he who concedes” (“This time I shall concede thanks to G-d,”[14] proclaimed Leah upon Judah’s birth) represents the fourth rung in the ladder of prayer—the self-abnegation to G-d we express in the silent Amidah.[15]

The Partnership

Before his passing, Jacob summoned his twelve sons and “spoke to them … and blessed them, each according to his blessing.”[16] Two hundred and thirty-three years later, Moses did the same with the twelve tribes of Israel, who now each numbered several tens of thousands of souls. Jacob’s and Moses’ blessings express the individual character of each tribe and its distinct role within the community of Israel.

Jacob’s blessings to Zebulun and Issachar were:
Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea; a harbor for ships shall he be…. Issachar is a strong ass,[17] couching down between the fences….[18]

Moses’ parting words to the two tribes were:
 Rejoice, Zebulun, in your excursions, and Issachar in your tents.[19]

Our sages explain:
Zebulun and Issachar made a partnership between them. Zebulun dwelled at the seashore, and would go out in his ships to engage in trade and make a profit, and support Issachar, who sat and occupied himself with the study of Torah.[20]

Issachar and Zebulun thus represent the other two major items on the Jew’s daily schedule. After climbing the four rungs of the heart to serve G-d in prayer, the Jew moves “from the synagogue to the study hall” to bind his mind to G-d through the study of the Torah, G-d’s communication of His wisdom and will to man. Following that, the Jew goes out into the world as a businessman or professional, to “know Him in all your ways”[21] and do “all your deeds for the sake of Heaven.”[22]

For every Jew, whether by vocation a “Zebulun” or an “Issachar,” includes both activities in his daily schedule. The most involved businessman or laborer is not free of the obligation to study at least “one chapter in the morning and one chapter in the evening.”[23] And even the most faithful occupant of the tents of Torah and its most ardent “beast of burden” is also a citizen of the material world: by necessity and design, he, too, participates in the give-and-take of economic life, and is told that this, too, must be made part and parcel of his life as a Jew and his relationship with G-d.[24]

Joseph and Benjamin

“All the prophets,” says the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yochanan, “prophesied only regarding [the rewards of] the baal teshuvah. But regarding the perfect tzaddik— ‘No[25] eye has beheld it save Yours, G-d.’”[26]

Rabbi Yochanan, remarks the Talmud, is expressing an opposite opinion from that of another sage, Rabbi Abbahu, who stated: “In the place that the baal teshuvah stands, the perfect tzaddik cannot stand.”[27]

Tzaddik means “righteous one”; baal teshuvah means “one who returns.” In the most literal sense, a tzaddik is a person who lives his entire life in complete conformity with the divine will, while a baal teshuvah is a penitent—a person who has digressed from the proper path but subsequently repents his failings and returns to a life of goodness and obedience to G-d’s will.

In a broader sense, tzaddik and baal teshuvah are two modes of existence—two approaches to everything one does in the course of one’s day, from prayer and its “service of the heart,” to the study of Torah, to one’s dealings in the marketplace.

In the tzaddik approach to life, a person focuses wholly upon the good in himself and his world. He sees his mission in life as the endeavor to cultivate his own positive traits, the goodness he sees in others, and all that is pure and holy in G-d’s world. Anything negative is to be suppressed and rejected, and utterly disdained. When evil must, by necessity, be combated, this is to be achieved not by engaging it, but by rising above it—by increasing the goodness in oneself and in the world so that the evil simply dissipates as darkness melts away before a great light.

The teshuvah approach is to deal with the negative in oneself and one’s environment: to struggle with it rather than reject it, to transform it rather than transcend it; to uncover and extract the kernel of goodness implicit within every object and force in G-d’s creation.

As the diverse opinions of Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Abbahu convey, each approach has its advantages over the other: the approach of the tzaddik attains heights which “no eye has beheld save” G-d’s, while the approach of teshuvah achieves a place on which “the perfect tzaddik cannot stand.”

The tzaddik’s “service of the heart,” undisturbed by any negative emotions and drives, unleashes the heart’s holy passions with a purity and perfection that the baal teshuvah cannot even hope to approximate. The baal teshuvah’s prayer, on the other hand, is a war—a war between the good and evil strivings in his heart, between its G-dly and animal passions. But this war, this struggle, fires his love, awe, attachment and self-abnegation to G-d to an intensity unparalleled by that of the tzaddik. And the process of this struggle offers the opportunity to ultimately vanquish the enemy and transform it into an ally—to strip the heart’s profane strivings of their profanity and redirect them as holy strivings.

The tzaddik’s Torah study, unclouded by erroneous suppositions and false leads, assimilates the divine wisdom with a purity and perfection that the baal teshuvah cannot know. On the other hand, the teshuvah mode of learning, which struggles through a maze of fallacies and misunderstandings in its pursuit of truth, attains a depth of knowledge and a degree of identification with its subject which cannot be achieved by a mind that follows an unobstructed path to the core of every idea. Indeed, in the teshuvah approach to Torah, the refuted arguments and the dispelled falsehoods themselves reveal dimensions of the divine truth that cannot be accessed by the tranquil study of the tzaddik.[28]

When the tzaddik deals with the material world, he focuses directly and exclusively upon those resources which he enlists in his service of G-d; everything else simply does not exist for him. Thus the tzaddik achieves a perfect sublimation of material aspects of his existence, and remains unsullied by his involvement in the give and take of material life. For the baal teshuvah, on the other hand, the marketplace is a minefield of negative influences and temptations, which invariably taint him and, at times, even overpower him. But his struggle with these alien elements, and his ultimate triumph over them, means that they, too, become part and parcel of his “knowing G-d in all your ways.” Hence, the baal teshuvah achieves a broader, more comprehensive service of G-d in his material life than the tzaddik, for his relationship with G-d includes elements of G-d’s creation which remain outside the sphere of the tzaddik’s “perfect” service.

The name “Joseph” means “he shall add”—upon Joseph’s birth, his mother expressed the hope that “G-d shall add to me another son.”[29] The deeper significance of these words is that Joseph represents the endeavor of teshuvah to “add another son”—to transform all that is “other” and alien in oneself and one’s world into a “son,” thereby adding it to the positive and holy realm of one’s existence.

“Benjamin” means “son of the right”—Jacob so named Rachel’s second child because this was the only one of his sons to be born in the Holy Land.[30] Benjamin thus represents the utter righteousness and pristine holiness of the tzaddik.

Four Motifs

The four “sons of the handmaidens”—Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher—are four motifs that accompany the daily life of the Jew: judiciousness, engagement, blessing and saturation.

“G-d gave me justice,” proclaimed Rachel upon the birth of Jacob’s first son by her handmaiden, Bilhah, and named him Dan, Hebrew for “judgment.” [31] “Dan shall be the judge of his people,” said Jacob in blessing him before his passing. [32] If you meet a person, says the Talmud, who is forever insisting on justice, this is a sure sign that he is from the tribe of Dan.[33]

“Naphtali” means “engagement” and “connection”—Bilhah’s second son was so named by Rachel to signify the fact that “I have engaged my sister, and I have prevailed.”[34]

Both Jacob and Moses blessed Asher with the blessing of oil. “His bread is saturated with oil,”[35] said Jacob; “He dips his feet in oil,”[36] blessed Moses. In Torah law and Chassidic teaching, “oil” signifies the quality of saturation: the nature of oil is that when it comes in contact with something, it “permeates it in its entirety.”[37]

Finally, “Gad” means “blessing” and “good fortune.” “Good fortune has come,”[38] said Leah upon giving this name to Zilpah’s elder son.

As the Jew prays (Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah), studies (Issachar) and deals (Zebulun), whether with the perfect holiness of the tzaddik (Benjamin) or the transforming struggles of teshuvah (Joseph), the “four sons of the handmaidens” attend his every deed and endeavor: a judiciousness that measures everything against exacting standards of right and wrong (“Dan”); a sense of connectedness to G-d and perpetual engagement with Him (“Naphtali”); a “holistic” approach to life, in which one is fully invested in what one is doing so that it saturates one’s thoughts, feelings, and every nook and cranny of one’s being (“Asher”); and the recognition that we cannot do it on our own—that everything we achieve must be aided by G-d’s blessing our efforts with success (“Gad”).

Based on the Rebbe’s writings and talks, including a reshimah (journal entry) entitled “The Daily Schedule”[39]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: time
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Biblical, Beliefs & Concepts, Personal Life, Torah Personalities, Daily Life, Life Cycles, Torah, Business, Work & Money, Vayeitzei, Prayer, The Twelve Tribes | 13 Comments »

Abraham’s Tent

August 20th, 2014

The sukkah is a makeshift hut in which the Jew dwells during the seven-day festival of Sukkot. In commanding us to leave the stability and safety of our homes for this temporary and vulnerable structure,[1] the Torah explains that this is to remind us of how G-d sheltered us (with the miraculous “clouds of glory”) in our forty years’ journey through the desert from Egypt to the Holy Land.[2]

Yet the sukkah also has a more ancient origin, dating back four hundred years before the Exodus from Egypt to Abraham, the first Jew. In the 18th chapter of Genesis we read of Abraham’s legendary hospitality for the desert wayfarers passing by his home. Still ailing from his circumcision three days earlier, Abraham stationed himself at the doorway of his tent to await any possible guests; when he saw three travelers approaching, “he ran toward them… and bowed to the ground. And he said: ‘My Lord! If I have found favor in your eyes, please do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be fetched, and wash your feet; and recline yourselves under the tree. I will fetch you some bread and you shall sate your hearts; only them shall you pass on…”[3]

Says the Midrash: In the merit of Abraham’s inviting his guests to “recline yourselves under the tree,” G-d sheltered his descendants in the desert and later granted them the mitzvah of sukkah.[4]

Generic Mitzvah

Indeed, our own sukkot in many ways resemble the resting place that Abraham offered his guests in the shade of his tree. The meaning of the word “sukkah” is a structure whose function is to provide shade;[5] thus, the most important part of the sukkah is the sechach, the roof-covering, which must be dense enough so that “the shade [in the sukkah] is greater than the sunlight.”[6] And the sechach must consist of materials which, like Abraham’s tree, “grow from the earth”—branches, reeds or other unfinished vegetable matter.[7]

Yet there is also a primary difference between our sukkah and Abraham’s tent. The law is that the materials of the sechach must be detached from their source of growth in the earth. Thus, a sukkah that is covered by a trellis of vines that are still connected to their roots, or that is built under a tree so that it is shaded by the tree’s still-connected branches, is invalid for use in the observance of the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah.[8]

The sukkah is unique among the mitzvot of the Torah in that it embraces the totality of the person: the mitzvah of sukkah is that a person should conduct all his activities—eating, resting, studying, socializing—inside the sukkah for seven days.[9] (With other mitzvot, only certain parts or faculties of the person are involved in the fulfillment of the divine will—e.g., Torah study involves the brain, prayer the heart and the faculty of speech, tefillin the arm and head, matzah the digestive system, etc.) Thus the mitzvah of sukkah is often cited as representative of all the mitzvot.[10]

If dwelling in the sukkah is the generic mitzvah, understanding both the similarity and the difference between our sukkah and the “sukkah” of Abraham will illuminate the nature of our relationship with the Patriarchs, and explain how our deeds derive, yet also differ, from their achievements.

The Decree

Our sages tell us that our forefathers studied the Torah and fulfilled its commandments many generations before it was “officially” given to us at Mount Sinai.[11] Yet it is the revelation at Sinai, rather than the legacy of the Patriarchs, that is the essence of our covenant with G-d and our commitment to observe the mitzvot. In the words of Maimonides:

“Everything that we avoid doing or that we do today, we do only because of G‑d’s command to Moses at Sinai, not because of any communication by G‑d to earlier prophets. For example, we refrain from eating [the flesh of] a limb taken from a live animal not because G-d forbade this to Noah,[12] but because Moses forbade it by commanding us, at Sinai, that this prohibition should be observed… We do not circumcise ourselves because our father Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household, only because G‑d commanded us through Moses that we should circumcise ourselves as did Abraham….”[13]

The Midrash[14] explains the difference between the pre-Sinaitic mitzvot and the mitzvot we observe after Sinai with the following metaphor:

Once there was a king who decreed: “The people of Rome are forbidden to journey to Syria, and the people of Syria are forbidden to journey to Rome.” Likewise, when G‑d created the world He decreed: “The heavens are G‑d’s, and the earth is given to man.”[15] But when He wished to give the Torah to Israel, He rescinded His original decree, and declared: “The lower realms may ascend to the higher realms, and the higher realms may descend to the lower realms. And I, Myself, will begin.” As it is written, “And G‑d descended on Mount Sinai,”[16] and then it says, “And to Moses He said: Go up to G‑d.”[17]

The human being is the crown and apex of G-d’s creation, a creature whose intelligence and spirituality distinguish him as a class above the other creatures with which he shares G-d’s world. Yet man, too, is part of the “lower realms”; man, too, is finite and mortal, and even his highest achievements cannot transcend his finiteness and mortality. At least, that was the state of affairs for as long as the decree dividing between heaven and earth was in force.

But at Sinai G-d rescinded this decree, Himself descending to an earthly mountain and inviting man to “go up to G-d.” Man was empowered to live a G-dly life, to think G-dly thoughts, speak G-dly words and do G-dly deeds. The 613 mitzvot of the Torah were established by G-d as vehicles of connection to Him, as bridges between Heaven and earth.

The mitzvot as performed prior to Sinai were lofty deeds, spiritual deeds, deeds representing the heights of human achievement. Yet they were human deeds. Deeds striving upwards toward Heaven, yet never truly transcending their earthly base. It was only after Sinai that a human act could be freed of its earthbound roots to soar to the “higher realms” and assume an infinite and eternal significance.

Climbing the Mountain

Yet the revelation at Sinai did not take place in a vacuum. It was preceded by twenty-six generations of human endeavor, twenty-six generations in which man refined and perfected his finite self in preparation for the encounter with G-d at Sinai.

Thus, when G-d descended to earth to breach the frontier that separated the supernal from the terrestrial, He did not come down to the Israelite camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, only to the mountain’s summit. One might ask: if G-d had come all the way from the infinite yonder to visit our finite earth, could He not have descended another few thousand feet, instead of troubling the 80-year-old Moses to climb to the top of the mountain? But this expresses the terms on which G-d made Himself accessible to us at Sinai. First, said G-d, I want you to attain the greatest heights of which you are capable; first, I want you to develop your own potential to its utmost; then, I will meet you at the summit of human achievement and free you from its bounds.

Therein lies the significance of Abraham’s sukkah tree and its relationship to our post-Sinai sechach-covered sukkah. Before Sinai, a mitzvah could, at most, be a tree; its branches reaching heavenward—perhaps even to great heights—yet rooted in and nourished by the earth. Man could develop and refine himself, yet could not transcend his terrestrial foundations. But after Sinai, our sukkot can, and must, be made with branches cut free from their earthly roots. After Sinai, a mitzvah must entail a departure from the merely human and rise to a self-transcending bond with G-d.

At the same time, it was Abraham’s sukkah that was the cause of our receiving the gift of sukkah from G-d—just as the branches that cover our sukkot must first sprout from the earth and grow and develop in their earth-bound state. First we must develop our own, human faculties—our limited understanding, our subjective feelings, our mortal achievements—before these can be “cut loose” from their earthly moorings to serve as true vehicles of connection with G-d.

Based on an entry in the Rebbe’s journal, dated Sukkot 5702 (1941),[18] and his talks on various other occasions.

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber

Tags: Jewish law, mitzvot, Mt. Sinai, sukkah, Moses
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Tishrei, Bereishit, Biblical, Months & Holidays, Abraham, Sukkot, Torah Personalities, Vayeira, Torah | No Comments »

Abraham Departed From Self to Self

August 20th, 2014

G-d said to Abram: “Go to you, away from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”

Genesis 12:1

What drives a man to leave his “land, his birthplace, and his father’s house” for an unknown destination? Yet driven we are, in search of something more than what our parents, teachers—indeed our very nature and genes—have to offer. Our lives are a ceaseless search for identity, having rejected the inborn and acquired identity of our birth and youth.

A sizable portion of the book of Genesis is devoted to the life of Abraham, the first Jew. Most curiously, however, we first meet Abraham rather late in his celebrated life: the first event of Abraham’s life described in detail by the Torah occurred when he was seventy-five years old! By that time, Abraham was able to look back upon a lifetime of fruitful—indeed unprecedented—achievement. As a young child, his inquisitive mind discerned a greater truth implicit in the workings of the universe, and he came to know the One G-d.[1] A lone man pitted against the entire world,[2] battled the entrenched pagan perversity of his time, bringing many to a life of monotheistic belief and morality.[3]

But then came an event of such significance that it eclipses the first seven and a half decades of Abraham’s life. An event that marked the forging of a new phenomenon—the Jew—and redefined the journey of life.

The event was G-d’s call to Abraham to “Go to you,[4] from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” Now that you have realized the full capacity of your conscious powers, go on to you. I will show you a place that is the essence of your own self, a place that lies beyond the “land,” “birthplace,” and “father’s house” that you know.

Instinct, Environment and Reason

The countless factors involved in making us what we are can be generalized under three categories: the natural, the impressed, and the acquired.

We begin life already programmed with the drives and inclinations that form an inborn psyche and character. Then begins, from the moment of birth, the influence of our environment, as parents, teachers and peers impress their manners and attitudes upon our souls. Finally, a third and overriding influence comes with the attainment of intellectual maturity: man, alone among G-d’s creatures, has been granted an objective intellect with which he can, to a great extent, control the stimuli to which he is exposed and the manner in which they shall affect him. With his mind, he is empowered to develop himself beyond—and even contrary to—his genetic and conditioned self.

This is the deeper significance of the words “your land,” “your birthplace” and “your father’s house” in G-d’s call to Abraham. Eretz, the Hebrew word for “land” and “earth,” is etymologically related to the word ratzon—”will” and “desire”; so “your land” also translates as “your natural desires.” “Your birthplace”—molad’techa—is a reference to the influence of home and society. And beit avicha, “your father’s house,”[5] refers to man as a mature and rational being, forging his mind-set, character and behavior with the transcendent objectivity of the intellect.

By conventional standards, this constitutes the ultimate in human achievement: the development of one’s natural instincts, the assimilation of learned and observed truths, and the remaking of self through the objective arbiter of mind. In truth, however, the intellect is still part and parcel of our humanity, remaining ever subject to the deficiencies and limitations of the human state; while it may surmount the confines of the inborn and the impressed, ultimately, the intellect is never truly free of the ego and its prejudices.

But there is a higher self to man, a self free of all that defines and confines the human. This is the “spark of G-dliness” that is the core of his soul—the divine essence that G-d breathed into him, the “image of G-d” in which he was created. The eretz that G-d promised to show Abraham.[6]

In his journey of discovery, Abraham departed the “land, birthplace and father’s house” of his native Mesopotamia; he must have obviously rejected the pagan culture of Ur Kasdim and Charan. But this is not the departure of which we are speaking in the above-quoted verse. For Abraham received this call many years after he had renounced the pagan ways of his family and birthplace, recognized G-d, and had a profound impact on his society. Still he is told: Go! Depart from your nature, depart from your habits, depart from your rational self. After rejecting your negative, idolatrous origins, you must now also transcend your positive and gainful past. Reach beyond yourself, albeit a perfected self.

Human perfection is simply not enough. For anything human—even the objective, transcendent intellect—is still part and parcel of the created reality, ever subject to and defined by it. Yet G-d invites us—in His first command the first Jew—to experience that which transcends all limit and definition: Himself.

But first we must “go to you.” Go away from your finite self, to come to the “you” that only G-d can show you—the you that is one with Him.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Lech Lecha 5750 (1989). [7]

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

Tags: teshuvah, purpose of life, Abraham, Rebbe
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Bereishit, Biblical, Abraham, Lech-Lecha, Personal Life, Torah Personalities, Home & Family, Torah, Emotions & Psychology | 1 Comment »

Noah’s Flood

August 19th, 2014

In the 600^th year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on this day, all the fountains of the great deep broke open and the windows of the heaven were opened… And the waters of the Flood were upon the earth…

In the 601^st year… on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth dried.

Genesis 7:10-11; ibid. 8:13-14

The discrepancy between these two dates] represents the eleven days which the solar year is greater than the lunar year; hence the Flood lasted a complete year.

Rashi, on Genesis 8:13.

You’ve designated the weekend for some quality time with your family when the phone rings; naturally, it’s an emergency at the office which requires your immediate involvement. You’ve set aside the evening for volunteer work in your community; instead, you spend it with your neighborhood mechanic attending to another eruption of car trouble.

Few of us, fortunately, have faced a “real” flood in which torrents of water threaten to engulf one’s home. But we’re all familiar with the experience of being flooded with the cares of material life, of being swamped with all sorts of matters demanding our attention just when we were finally getting down to the things which are truly important and precious to us.

The Chassidic masters explain that this is the contemporary significance of the great Flood which the Torah describes in the seventh and eighth chapters of Genesis. A basic tenet of Chassidic teaching is that everything in the Torah is eternal, its “historical” events ever-present realities in our lives. Noah’s Flood is the prototype for a challenge which we all face: the flood of material concerns which threatens to smother the flame of spiritual striving we harbor in our souls.[1]

Indeed, our sages tell us that Noah’s Flood began as an ordinary rainfall, which the misdeeds of man caused to escalate into the Flood. In other words, in their proper proportion and context as a regulated means to a higher end, the metaphorical waters of materiality are a beneficial, life-nurturing rain; but when allowed to overstep their bounds, they become a destructive deluge.

The deeper significance of Noah’s Flood is also reflected in the fact that it began and ended in the second month of the Jewish year, the month of Cheshvan.

The first month of the year, the festival-rich month of Tishrei, is wholly devoted to spiritual pursuits: the renewal of our commitment to the Divine Sovereignty on Rosh HaShanah; repenting our failings on Yom Kippur; celebrating our unity as a people and G-d’s providence of our lives on Sukkot; rejoicing in our bond with the Torah on Simchat Torah. The following month, Cheshvan, marks our return to the “daily grind” of material life. On Cheshvan, rain begins to fall in the Holy Land and the Israelite farmer plows and sows his fields, signifying the return to a life that derives its nourishment from the earth. It is no coincidence that Cheshvan (also called Mar-Cheshvan—mar meaning both “bitter” and “water”) is the most ordinary of months —the only month of the year without a single festival or special occasion.[2]

The Jewish Calendar

Noah’s Flood commenced on the 17^th of Cheshvan in the year 1656 from creation, and ended on Cheshvan 27 of the following year.

The biblical commentaries explain that the Flood lasted exactly one year, and that the 11-day discrepancy in the dates represents the 11-day difference between the solar and lunar years.

This reflects the fact that different components of the calendar are based on a variety of natural cycles which do not easily lend themselves to synchronization. The month derives from the moon’s 29.5 day orbit of the earth; the year, from the 365-day solar cycle. The problem is that 12 lunar months add up to 354 days—eleven days short of the solar year.

Most calendars deal with this discrepancy by simply ignoring one or the other celestial timekeepers. For example, the Gregorian Calendar (which has attained near-universal status) is completely solar based. Its 365 days are divided into 12 segments of 30 or 31 days, but these “months” have lost all connection with their original association with the moon. There are also calendars (such as the Moslem Calendar) which are exclusively lunar-based, with months that are faithfully attuned to the phases of the moon. Twelve such months are regarded as a year, but these “years” bear no relation to the solar cycle (a given date in such a calendar will, in certain years, fall in the midst of summer and, in other years, in the dead of winter).

The Jewish calendar is unique in that it reconciles the solar and lunar time-streams. By employing a complex 19-year cycle in which months alternate between 29 and 30 days and years alternate between 12 and 13 months, the Jewish calendar sets its months by the moon, and its years by the sun, combining lunar time and solar time into a single system while preserving the integrity of each.

For the sun and the moon represent the two sides of a dichotomy which bisects virtually every aspect of our existence—a dichotomy whose differences we must respect and preserve even as we incorporate them in a cohesive approach to life.

Light and Darkness

In previous essays, we have explored various aspects of the solar/lunar polarity: the contrast between the surety and consistency of tradition on the one hand, and the yen for flux, innovation and creativity on the other[3]; the male/female dynamic, which imbues us with the passion to give and bestow on the one hand, and the capacity to accept and receive on the other.[4] On this occasion, we shall dwell on another aspect of this cosmic duality: the twinship of spirit and matter.

The spiritual and the material are often equated with light and darkness. Indeed, a number of religions and moral-systems regard the spiritual as enlightened, virtuous and desirable, and the physical-material side of life as belonging to the “forces of darkness.” The Torah, however, has a different conception of spirituality and materiality—a conception embodied by the solar/lunar model.

The sun is a luminous body while the moon is a dark lump of matter.Yet both are luminaries.[5] Both serve us as sources of light, the difference being that the sun’s light is self-generated, while the moon illuminates by receiving and reflecting the light of the sun.

Spirituality is a direct effusion of divine light. When studying Torah, praying, or performing a mitzvah, we are in direct contact with G-d; we are manifestly revealing His truth in the world. But not every thought of man relates directly to the Divine Wisdom; not every word we utter is a prayer; not every deed we perform is a mitzvah. G-d created us as material creatures, compelled to devote a considerable part of our time and energies to satisfy a multitude of material needs. By necessity and design, much of our life is “lunar,” comprised of the “dark matter” of non-holy pursuits.

Dark matter, however, need not mean an absence of light. It can be a moon—dark matter serving as a conduit of light. It’s all a matter of positioning. The moon is dark matter positioned in such a way as to convey the light of the sun to places to which it cannot flow directly from its source. Placed in the proper context, the material involvements of life can serve as facilitators of divine truth to places which, in and of themselves, are not in the “direct line” of spirituality and holiness. The proceeds of unavoidable overtime at the workplace can be translated into additional resources for charity; the unplanned trip to the mechanic can be the start of a new friendship and a positive influence on a fellow man.

A Complete Year

Our lives include both a solar and a lunar track—a course of spiritual achievement as well as a path of material endeavor. These orbits do not run in tandem—at times they clash, giving rise to dissonance and conflict. The simple solution would be to follow a single route, choosing an exclusively solar or exclusively lunar path through life. But the Jewish calendar does not avail itself of the simple solution.

Our calendar insists that we incorporate both systems in our time-trajectory: that we cultivate a solar self—thoughts and feelings, deeds and endeavors, moments and occasions of consummate holiness and spirituality; and at the same time develop a lunar personality—a material life which reflects and projects our other, spiritual self.

This is also the lesson implicit in the 365-day duration of Noah’s Flood. The deluge of material concerns which threaten to overwhelm our lives can be mastered and sublimated. The Flood can be reconciled with the solar calendar and made part of a “complete year” in which lunar and solar time converge and the moon receives and conveys the light of the sun.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Motzoei Shabbat Noach, 5738 (1977).[6]

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Tags: work, materialism, time, sun, moon
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