21.2.08

missing the obvious

A Simple Jew has dealt with Rebbe Nachman's (Likkutei Moharan I:282) Azamra Torah a lot lately. Recently comparing relating the relevancy of the pomegranite, the rimon as an image in which Chazal clothed that Torah.

I wanted to extend the metaphor a little further. If even the lowliest Jew is filled with Mitzwoth like the rimon, then we could look at a rimon to illustrate how we perform Azamra.

First we look past the skin and the first inner layer of fiber. Beneath which we see some beautiful seeds peeking through. The deeper we go, the more seeds we find, but we need to keep digging past the white fiber which still hides most of the contents of the rimon.

When you really want to get at the seeds of the rimon, you don't delicately peel away layer by layer.. you crack that baby in half. All at once the full abundance is visible, and all that was needed was a little more additional brute force in the beginning.

When you try to find the good in another Jew, don't gently peek beneath the surface. Go at it with gusto, jump into the depths and immediately be awed by their spiritual beauty.

When you look at a Jew's actions and try and find something good about them, all you are looking at is the clothing of their soul, not their soul itself. When you look at a Jew's middoth, you are looking at lowest aspects of their soul. When you simply recognize that they are a Jew, you can look directly at their deepest neshamah, the yid/yud, the untaintable essence of their soul.

When we stop to look at a particular aspect of a Jew, we reduce them to a tree, when they are really the forest.

I think this is the secret of (Shir HaShirim 6:3) אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי, הָרֹעֶה בַּשּׁוֹשַׁנִּים - I am to my love and he is to me, he who looks in the shoshanim. (the Notzer Hesed explains that the shoshanah is the uncorruptible essence/point of the Jewish soul) That kind of love only comes by being overwhelmed by the whole, and not by being infatuated with particular specifics.

Ever since I learned the Notzer Hesed's comment/statement/testimony that anything negative you ever hear about another Jew is an outright lie, if I'm judging another Jew harshly, I know it's me who will suffer.

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