the end sealed in the beginning

All of creation really only takes place between two opposing forces. We learn from Chazal that HaShem thought to make the world with Hesed but needed to combine that Hesed with Din, Gevurah. The whole world is this balancing act of giving and holding back. That's why HaShem created the klippoth, the other side, they do the taking, HaShem does the giving.. in between the two, unholiness and holiness is where People were created.

We get to choose, we're the most alive out of anything in creation because we are balanced between the two. Our actions make us either alive and Holy, or dead and Unholy. That's why HaShem gave us the Torah and said, "choose life."

Out of the Ten Sayings through which HaShem created the world, Chazal teach that only the first one is a ma'amar satum, or a Sealed Saying. To me this means it's fundamentally unique. As we said, everything in creation is brought about by a balancing act, the contrariness of two opposing forces. When it came to the very first act of creation, there are no two opposing forces, there's only HaShem, (well, there's always only HaShem, but that's a discussion for another time) that first saying is Sealed because it's beyond comprehension, the initial creation of things without a duality as a backdrop, without the vacuum created by those two opposing forces.

In this Parashah VaYeChi, we learn from Chazal that Yaakov Avinu wanted to reveal the final Redemption but at that moment it was hidden from him. This is so important but to understand this we need to think a little bit about the nature of creation and the roles that will play themselves over the course of it.

Chazal teach us also that the redemption from Egypt is a microcosm of the macrocosm that will be the eventual redemption. In the final redemption the "other" side, death itself, will be obliterated from existence. Similarly, in the Exodus, The Jewish Nation emerged from the splitting of the sea alive, whereas the Egyptian Nation washed up on the shore dead.

This is a direct metaphor for the birth process, as we've written before. The placenta is what initially provides the developing baby with life, up until the moment of birth at which the baby is born alive and the placenta is born dead. The placenta is essentially the scaffolding that allows the baby to be properly "built." Once the building, the baby, is complete, the scaffolding is removed, ceases to have a function.

In the very same way, the "other" side is a temporary creation, the scaffolding upon which humanity could be created and elevated to their eventual heights, to truly be alive in the service of The King, to "choose life." At the point in which the choice is made and Humanity truly "lives," the "other" side, death, is no longer necesary, the scaffolding falls away and the creation is complete.

Just as the first step in this creation is absolutely Hidden by the fact that it is incomprehensible how the world came into being without the dual background vacuum of opposing forces, so too, the completion of that creation, our "life" beyond death, beyond the "other side" where we no longer have a counter-force to the force of Holiness is beyond our ability to conceive and so it is hidden in the very same Seal, as the first Sealed Saying.

This is why Yaakov Avinu couldn't reveal the end time, it is by its very nature always hidden.

Instead all Yaakov Avinu could do is describe the final challenges of his children prior to the end time, and this is what he did in his blessings, laying out for each one his challenges and how to overcome them.

The Original Fight Club

The Baal HaTanya teaches that the Yetzer Hara is like a wrestling opponent, the more we put up a fight the more it tries to defeat us. This leads to the question: Why fight? No matter how hard we try to fight it, it (the Yetzer Hara) will only try harder. How will we ever win? Simple, the Baal HaTanya quotes Chazal who explain that it's only because HaShem intervenes and gives us the upper hand that we are able to overcome the Yetzer Hara.

Ok. Great. So if we fight the Yetzer Hara and do mitzwoth rather than sin we will get a nice portion in the world to come. Makes good sense. The world to come is forever and this world is 120 years tops, so it makes good economic sense as well, a little investment over a relatively short period of time with a payoff better than the best pension you could possibly imagine.

Wait. Thus far it all makes sense and I'm on board. But: Chazal say in Pirkei Avot: It's better to serve HaShem not in order to receive a reward. Huh? What's the point? If I'm basically just treading water, breaking even against the Yetzer Hara, and HaShem is the one pushing me over the top... Wait a minute, why am I getting rewarded for this at all? Because it's hard to fight the Yetzer Hara, especially when you know you can't win.

Right, so we don't really deserve the reward, the reward is only there to get us to persevere in our hopeless fight. So to hell with the reward! Why fight? One more question: If we don't really deserve the reward, it's only HaShem's way of convincing us to continue with the fight, why does He want us to fight? What's in it for Him? (not much, He's already got everything) It must be in our best interest. But what could be in our best interest about it? The reward? But He's already giving us the reward anyways even though we don't really deserve it, He can just give us the reward without our having to go to all the trouble.

Why does HaShem want us to go to all this trouble? What could be of benefit to us to fight with the Yetzer Hara knowing full well our only chance to win is that HaShem will intercede on our behalf? Well, wait a second, every time we fight with the Yetzer Hara HaShem intercedes on our behalf? So, you mean that whenever we struggle against the wishes of the Yetzer Hara, HaShem will show up to save us from the imminent train wreck?

So basically, if we are fighting the Yetzer Hara all day long it means HaShem is there with us all day long, helping us out in every little conflict? HaShem is spending every day, every minute with us? Wow.

So basically, whenever we want to feel HaShem's closeness we only need to fight the Yetzer Hara, that's it? We don't need to go anywhere? We don't need to make any special preparations, just jump into whatever mitzwah is at hand rather than whatever self-indulgent distraction might be currently within our grasp? Wow.

So, I guess maybe that's what the Baal HaTanya means when he says this world is better than the world to come, because we get to be even closer to The King (HaShem) in this world. Hey, even the comment from Chazal about serving HaShem with no thought to the reward makes sense too!

Guess I'll go pick a fight.

a holy remnant

Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkun 16) brings down something from the Midrash, that Rashi apparently quotes in his commentary on Bereishith: Man is the Challah of the world.

There is a mitzwah, whenever one makes dough, to take a portion of the dough and devote it to God. Were there a Beit HaMikdash at present, this dough would be given to the Kohanim, in our days we burn it till it is inedible so that no one else will benefit inappropriately from this Holy dough.

The Rabbis teach that Man's creation was HaShem separating Challah from the world. The earth and the water were mixed into a dough, and from that dough, Challah was taken, and into that Challah, HaShem blew a divine soul.

We are a portion of the world, set aside in Holiness by HaShem, since the time of its creation.

hear me o israel

The Pri Ha'aretz teaches in Parshat Matot/Mas'ei about the nature of communication.

He explains that the speaker's words are transformed into thoughts in the mind of the listener. The letters that make up the speaker's words, are become letters of thought in the listener's mind. This is true in our interpersonal interactions, and on a deeper level still.

Our own thoughts, the Pri Ha'aretz explains, are the words of the Shechinah. HaShem voices His desires through the Shechinah as letters that make up words, and those words, in turn, become letters of thought in our minds.

Through our awareness of this, he goes on, we can bring about unifications of the upper worlds when we connect the letters of our thoughts to the voice of our thoughts, the nikkudoth of the letters of our thoughts. In this way we unite the voice, with the letters, HaShem, with the Shechinah. Those who can understand the depth of this relationship can unite KB"H and His Shechinah with their every thought.

This is a tremendously deep idea which pushes the limits of things I understand well enough to explain. For us, the dichotomy of speech into letters and voice is an interesting place to stop and examine.

It's a fairly simple thing for us to be aware of how the raw sound of our voice is modulated and broken up into words. Right? We can sing a melody, or add lyrics and turn it into a song. Without the lyrics, it's just sound. With the lyrics, suddenly our voice is transformed in a profound way.

Yet to make the leap of understanding from words to letters is a little counterintuitive. The way we learn letters, we learn them as a system of recording the sounds of speech, not as integral components of that speech. In modern linguistic theory it's pretty clear that speech evolved first, and writing much later.

Think about it further, you have non-verbal speech (body language, mannerisms, expressions) that would clearly seem to predate both speech and letters. Yet, according to Jewish tradition, the letters precede speech. Letters precede communication. Without letters, there's no communication. Even thoughts have letters.

Let's try to understand this a little, what it might mean.

We all can think for a moment and understand that no matter how quickly we speak, each of our words is rooted in thought. We think something first and then let it out as speech.

If we look at our thoughts, in the modern scientific understanding, they are a concert of nerve impulses that somehow encode the state of some concsious awareness that we would eventually break down into individual thoughts. (there are a lot of ifs here, but for simplicity's sake lets say we can somehow, at least hypothetically, break down the flow of consciousness into disparate thoughts.)

Each of these thoughts is made up of the various neurons that are firing at the moment of that particular thought. If we thought of each neuron in our brain as a unique 'letter' of thought, then we could begin to describe the letters that make up the 'words' (groups of neurons that fire in tandem) of a particular thought.

So, we can begin to grasp the idea that every one of our thoughts, let alone every one of our words, can be broken down into component parts. Calling these parts 'letter's might seem a little far-fetched, but we're far beyond where we were before. We are no longer shocked at the idea that the components of our thoughts precede those thoughts. There is something we could call 'letters' even before we can begin to discuss speech.

For me, this jump is far enough. Once we recognize that our thoughts, and yes our words, are made up of something, anything at all, then we can start to understand what the Torah means when we learn that our words and thoughts are made up of letters.

Now that we can begin to understand our thoughts being composed of letters and how the words of the speaker become the thoughts of the listener, perhaps we can reevaluate a commonly held Jewish practice.

We are encouraged by many of the greatest Hassidic Rebbes, as well as by Halachah (Jewish law) to repeat certain ideas or passages of text to ourselves out loud. The most obvious example is the Shema Yisrael. When we recite the Shema or any other prayer out loud, we are basically reinforcing our thoughts by allowing our speech to reenter ourselves and further direct, underscore, strengthen and frame our thoughts.

The more general practice of reminding yourself of particular holy ideas out loud, and the fact that Torah learning really needs (l'halachah) to be read to oneself out loud, shows just how thoroughly Judaism embraces this idea.

In fact, in this context, perhaps we can understand Na'aseh v'Nishma -- we will do and we will listen -- in a new light: Through the doing, the act of speaking HaShem's Torah to ourselves, we allow ourselves to hear it more clearly. Repeating HaShem's Torah focuses our understanding and our heart so that we may truly listen to what HaShem is telling us.

Perhaps this also explains the first verse of the second paragraph of Shema Yisrael, "and when you hear, listen!" (והיה אם שמוע תשמעו)

encountering torah

There are many statements made in the context of Chazal (Our teachers) that catch one off guard. Often our first reaction is to ascribe these statements or foreign understandings to superstitions or cultural beliefs of their era.

This is a major mistake in Torah learning. In fact it is a major mistake in any and all learning. The first rule in learning must always be to assess the internal consistancy of any teaching. If the teaching agrees with its own understandings and premises then it passes the first and most crucial test. This test is a real challenge in the learning process because it is often easier to assume poor internal consistency than it is to thoroughly explore all the possible ramifications of what is said such that there might be found a consistent underlying framework.

Once we have established the internal veracity of any teaching, then it is our responsibility to find an analog within our own understanding which would render the idea in a contemporary context. If we fail here we must assume it is due to our own limited mental flexibility.

We must of course thoroughly test this modern analog to see that it doesn't add or remove too much from the premise of the teaching. Once we have a modern analog sufficiently close to the original teaching, we can rest assured that the teaching is itself applicable in our day and age just as we originally thought.

Since we have seen the teaching is applicable we can then assume that perhaps it is our grasp of reality that is flawed. And we can approach the teaching with the assumption that it is objective truth. (Or at the very least, it is more objective (or more accurate) than our own reference frame)

[With God's help, in a future post I will explore this learn style with examples.]

it isnt easy being blue

פתיל תכלת הוא בחינת מה שאמרו חז"ל: במקום שאתה מוצא ענותנותו, שם אתה מצא גדולתו - וכן להפך

I don't understand. I don't understand Korah's halachic question to Mosheh Rabbeinu. (as reported by Rashi)

We know that there are many halachoth that even though their ways seem peculiar, any other way does not fulfill the obligation. Why did anyone think that Korah's question was legitimate?

What was Korah's question? Here it is: If you have a whole garment, and adding a little blue (tcheleth) string permits the entire thing, why wouldn't an entirely blue garment be permitted outright? (without the addition of a little blue string.)

To me it definitely seems like asking: We don't wear tefillin on Shabbath because tefillin is a sign (ot) of HaShem, and Shabbath is a sign. If I wear tefillin on Shabbath, do I need to keep Shabbath?

Of course you need to keep Shabbath!!

What was Korah's real argument, why did it hold water, and why was it still wrong?

Perhaps I could understand it like this:

Tcheleth, the blue color of the tzitzith, as Chazal explain, is there to remind us of the Kisei HaKavod (the Throne of Glory) a testament to HaShem's greatness.

Basically it could be that Korah thought that if a small testament to HaShem is good enough, then certainly an entire garment colored to declare HaShem's greatness should be even better.

We can even understand how this is at the source of his claim to the Priesthood: He saw that Shmuel HaNavi would come from his line, and Shmuel HaNavi, Chazal explain, was 'equal' to Mosheh Rabbeinu and Aharon HaKohen combined. So, Korah could have thought: Aharon HaKohen is great, no doubt, but my line is even greater and if it is an honor to HaShem that Aharon HaKohen should represent Him, it would be an even greater glorification of HaShem's name if I were the Kohen Gadol.

The key lesson that Korah, according to my limited understanding, didn't pick up on, and perhaps it's only clear in hindsight, is that HaShem doesn't want ego and glory and pride, he wants us to be humble. Chazal teach us that in the same place that you find HaShem's humility that's where you find His greatness.

We see this lesson in practice: Har Sinai was chosen as the place to reveal HaShem and the Torah because it was a small and humble mountain. Mosheh Rabbeinu was chosen to receive the Torah because he was the most humble of all men.

Humility and Greatness must always go hand in hand. This is perhaps why the tzitzith only has a little string colored to remind us of the Throne of Glory, of HaShem's might and greatness. Because on the tzitzith, where we find HaShem's humility, in a single strand among many, we find a hint at HaShem's greatness.

basics: chazal

[i'm going to do a short series called 'basics' on ideas that others have found novel, but i've always taken for granted. just some brief discussions about the basics of judaism]

We call the many generations of Torah scholars who came before us collectively Chazal, it's an acronym that is short for "Our sages, may their memory be a blessing."

People within the Jewish world, especially Israelis who have grown up their whole lives in religious environments, have asked me how it is that the secular public can treat Chazal and their collected works so lightly?

It doesn't surprise me. If you grow up in a world where your most revered academic scholars are men and women with impressive knowledge, but equally impressive egos, you naturally assume the ancient (and even present day) Torah scholars are the same.

The only way for someone to correct their perspective of Chazal is to meet one of the true Talmidei Hachamim alive today. Only through seeing a living example of something completely other than what we are used to, can we begin to understand who Chazal were.

When you speak and interact face to face with someone who has no regard for themselves whatsoever, someone who has so totally destroyed his ego, so as to exhibit true concern for his or her fellow person, only then can you begin to glimpse Chazal.

May we all merit to meet true tzaddikim and hachamim in the flesh, so that our eyes may be opened to worlds we never knew existed.

a universal how-to

I wanted to build on and discuss the previous post conflicting tasks. The intellect, as it stands has certain attributes, particular strengths and weaknesses which we know differ from person to person but are more or less common to all people. Almost everyone learns how to read and speak, to perform arithmetic, to think rationally in one form or another, to understand hints, to throw and catch, to make jokes. Yet, being that the mind is limited and must handle many complex tasks, it specializes in a few and becomes passably proficient in a larger group. As far as modern science is concerned, we go through various stages of mental growth and though we can always learn new tasks and ideas, the overhead and effort necesary to learn in later years is far greater than in youth.

The Judaic and Torah view of this is vastly different. With regard to Torah specifically we acknowledge that it always arrives as a gift from heaven. One's age or mental acuity is irrelevant, Torah is open to all to master. There is no point short of death that prevents one from being able to master the Torah. The only prerequisite to enter into the gates of Torah is the will to connect to HaShem, the unrelenting will to keep diving deeper into the sea of Torah. This is so extreme that the Gemara makes a blanket statement that anyone who claims he tried and failed to master Torah should no be believed. If s/he really tried, they would have succeeded.

Rebbe Natan explains in Likkutei Halachoth (Hilchoth Tefillin 6:37-42) that while our body is impure, our intellect is incomplete, and until our body is worked like the leather of the tefillin, until there is no further repugnant smell, then our intellect cannot be trusted. Instead we must bind our will and emunah to the Tzaddik, whose body and intellect are refined so that he may guide us. For the spiritual intellect is something else entirely than the natural intellect which we relate to.

Since it would seem that real comprehension in Torah is dependent not on our natural intellect, but on our spiritual intellect, the only thing that limits our accomplishments in Torah is our devotion to the task.

In this way, we can understand how multi-tasking is virtually impossible with our natural intellect. Still, through deep study of the Torah we may begin to access our spiritual intellect which is not constricted and bound by the same worldly limitations that make multi-tasking a challenge. When we see things in this light, it starts to become clear why things that may seem impossible become entirely elementary when we connect ourselves to Chazal and rely on their testimony to the real possibility.

Shabbath is a perfect example. Someone who grew up in a Shomer Shabbath environment barely needs to think in order to avoid performing all 39 melachoth and their many many derivatives. Yet if you were to explain what keeping Shabbath entailed to an outsider, they might easily think that such a rigorous level of observance is impossible.

What I'm trying to get to is that performing even the most complex of the mitzwoth in the Torah has more to do with (1) accepting the yolk of heaven, (2) relying on and trusting in the Rabbis throughout the ages, and (3) faith in HaShem that He will bring about your success than it does any particular mental or physical aptitude.