the prosecution rests

Sometimes, when the world is undeserving and even the Tzaddikim can't sweeten the harsh judgements, HaShem tells the Prosecution aka Satan, "Ok, you're right, I'm going to destroy the heavens and the earth."

At which point the Prosecution realizes it will be destroyed as well, and momentously the Prosecution switches gears and comes to the defense of the world, beseeching HaShem to have mercy on His creation.

[a welcome secret, brought down by the Noam Elimelech in his Likkutei Shoshanah.]

tapping in

This week has been a grueling muddle. One of those times where everything seems just a little bit challenging and every little event that pops up saps just a bit more of your quickly waning energy. And right in the thick of it, the Netiv Mitzwotecha (Emunah 4:4) reminds me of the basics:

When you are caught up in the middle of a throng of challenges, and you feel unequal to the task of overcoming it, the only way to raise up all those dinim is to shine the light of Torah on them. When we sit and learn and delve to the heart, the innermost part of the Torah through simply learning l'shma (loosely translated: for the sake of heaven) then the heavens open up and the angels ride upon the letters and words of our Torah like chariots, the inhabitants of the upper worlds rejoice, and the sweet warm light of Torah floods out upon all of our challenges.

Put simply, losing yourself in learning brings us back to basics, refocuses us, connects us with the truth once again. Just as HaShem has brought us this far, He will carry us further still.

fear the vessel

In Pirkei Avoth we learn that Yirah (fear/awe) must preceed one's Torah learning.

In the Midrash, we learn that HaShem created the world initially out of Din, (judgement/might) and then joined it with Rahamim. (Mercy)

The Ramhal (Rav Mosheh Hayyim Luzzato) along with other mekubalim, (like R' Immanuel Hai Reiki in Mishnath Hasidim) explains that this Gevurah (Din) is the initial Tzimtzum that created the empty space into which the world was created. As they explain, the Tzimtzum is the root of the creation of the kli, the vessel.

It seems to me that the reason our Yirah must precede our learning, our Hochmah/wisdom, is because we need to create the vessel first that will contain our learning.

The Notzer Hesed explains that learning the secrets of the Torah, in the Zohar and the recorded writings of the Arizal, gives us proper Yirah. He says that even young children should be educated in these secrets so that they will have proper Yirah.

From this we can perhaps even understand that the learning that we do that is not l'shmah (for its own sake) still leads to learning l'shmah, because it creates the vessel for our future learning. How does it create the vessel? Through our learning, we see how much we don't know, we learn that there is so much still to learn, we get the smallest glimpse of just how great HaShem and His Torah are. This brings us to awe, which creates the vessel for our future learning.

the judgement of the tzaddik is mercy

The Midrash speaks about how HaShem chose to create the world with Din, might and judgement, but saw that it couldn't stand so He partnered Rachamim, mercy, with it.

Many Hassidic Rebbes tackled the apparent change in HaShem's thought process, as if the Rabbis (chas v'shalom) were saying HaShem made a mistake. Of course He doesn't make mistakes, He's beyond time and infallible, so the concept of a mistake makes no sense in the context of HaShem. So what's the Midrash coming to teach us?

The Noam Elimelech has a unique take on this: He explains that there was no change, that the world still functions according to Din. But in order that the world would be able to exist, the Tzaddikim emerge in great Gevurah, great might, ascend to the root of all Din, and overcome and master the Judgement. Essentially the whole system works based on Gevurah or Din. Rachamim is the term for the victory of the Tzaddikim's Holy Gevurah over the natural Din HaShem bestowed within the system. This, he explains, is why the word 'partnered' (שתף) is used in the midrash as opposed to another word. HaShem allows the Tzaddikim through their great Holiness and desire to become partners in sustaining the world.

always getting yourself into trouble

This Shabbath I revisited one of my favorite and most personally life-changing Torahs in Likkutei Moharan (I:113) in which Rebbe Nachman brings a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov that HaShem allows us to pass judgment on ourselves.

To explain it a little better, the Baal Shem Tov says that HaShem never passes judgment on you unless both the whole world and you agree with that judgment. How does this work? He puts someone in front of you that acts in the same way that you yourself acted and you pass judgment on this person, you are then held accountable for your own actions in keeping with your own judgment of them. [see this earlier post for more detail]

In my attempt to explain this mechanism a little, I connected it to the testament brought down by the Komarna Rebbe in the Notzer Hesed, that anything bad you have ever heard about another Jew is complete and total baseless lie without any part of truth. [see this earlier post for more details on this and on its connection to the above]

Basically, the way I understand it is like so: The judgment is essentially automatic. The world is such that there is Truth, and there are the powers that conceal the Truth, 'the powers that lie.' The powers that lie are given dominion only over those that willingly give 'the powers that lie' dominion over themselves. How does one put themselves under the auspices of 'the powers that lie?' by believing in the lies.

If we look at it from a certain perspective, we can see how all of Bnei Yisrael are tzaddikim, (just as Chazal say) and when we look around, we see all manner of lies trying to convince us of the lack in one Jew or another. (But, just as Chazal tell us, if we see a Tzaddik sin, we need to believe that they did teshuvah that same day.) These lies themselves are results of our own misdeeds and they blind us from seeing the reality. If we then believe what we see, and believe the lie, then it gains power over us to cut us off from HaShem (chas v'shalom) in that exact way that we believed that other Jew was disconnected from HaShem. (chas v'shalom)

In this way sinning is a two-stage process, there is the act of sinning itself, of which Chazal say "no one sins except because a spirit of foolishness entered him." The act itself is a test from HaShem. Then the real test of the sin is whether this sin which has been given a limited dominion over us, to corrupt our perception and believe another Tzaddik is guilty of that sin,
will be believed, in which case we truly seal our own fate.

If instead we are able to ignore that bad, deny its existence in others and instead find their good points, then HaShem is willing to overlook our own failings. Still we have the matter of Teshuvah, which will help us to rectify our perception until we no longer even see lies in the actions of others, until we don't even suspect another Jew. The recognition of the reality of what we see itself is a powerful force to encourage our teshuvah, when we realize that the Jews around us are all tzaddikim, and the lies before our eyes reflect only our own failings, we will call out to HaShem that he save us from our own limitations, and we will long to be like our fellow Jews, as holy and pure as they.

comingling of waters nourishing the tree

I Always seem to take Tu B'Shvat for granted and my wife's family is blessed to really appreciate the depth and beauty of Tu B'Shvat as my father-in-law always makes a very big deal about it.

This year I decided to get a jump start on Tu B'Shvat and so I learned the few ma'amarim the Bnei Yisaschar has on the month of Shvat and on Tu B'Shvat itself.

One thing he mentioned almost as a side point really elucidated something that I had never known before, but had always related to. (He also mentions other places he goes into more depth in the matter in his sefer, and I will have to, please God, look into them to understand the matter better)

In short he explained that the Torah of Din and Gevurah, is a gradual Torah that must build from one day to the next, whereas the Torah of Hesed is a Torah we can receive all at once.

This is the essence of the machloket of Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel regarding the actual New Year of the Tree.(s) Beit Shamai says it is the first of Shvat because from his Torah, one must build from the first in order to arrive at the proper fullness of the 15th of the month. Beit Hillel says that it is the 15th of the month because the fullness of the receiving of the New Year of the Tree can happen all at once.

In this way he also explains the story of the Hillel and Shamai and the person who asked to be taught the Torah standing on one foot. Shamai drove him off because the Torah of Gevurah requires steady growth, building from one point to the next. Hillel taught him the whole Torah at once, because the Torah of Hesed can be received in its entirety in a single moment.

This really answered a difficult question I've had most of my life. I'm so much closer to the hidden Torah, and the path of Torah that comes with great ahavah and hesed, than the path that follows din and gevurah. My life really only took a turn for the better when I began to incorporate the building and planning of Gevurah Torah into my own connection with the Torah of Hesed. Until I found that balance, I faced a lot of difficulty.

With this new insight, the two vastly different Torahs of Hesed and Gevurah can start to be integrated in my daily life to achieve a Torah of Tiffereth, of beauty, rigor, and balance.

a brief snapshot of the universe

In my post of a couple of months ago Flights of Talmud, my friend YodaYid commented about entropy.. which started me thinking. Here's his comment:

I would throw entropy into the equation as well. Entropy and time are deeply intertwined (in ways I don't quite understand). And the reason we need to keep feeding ourselves is entropy - we use up our energy and need to replenish. It's also the reason food goes bad after a certain period of time. So I would suggest that entropy is the link between food and time, at least scientifically speaking.

Here is where I took it:
I've spent a lot of time in Hassidic texts over the past few years, and they jive with my own personality, between the two my mind is almost hard-wired to take everything and turn it inside out and upside down.

As (I think) I've mentioned in a few posts lately, the original Tzimtzum (that created the empty space into which the universe and everything in it was created) was in essence a revellation of God's attribute of "holding back." (din/judgement דין) This is a difficult way to look at everything: Any lack is a revellation of "holding back," not an absence. In fact, on some level, the revellation of "holding back" is really just a revellation too great to behold. A revellation, in the normal more accepted sense of the word, is actually a very metered and measured revellation on a level we are able to receive. Without the measured and metered contrast of how much revealed, how much held back, we can't perceive anything at all.

People like to think of entropy as a force in nature that is slowly ripping everything apart. Entropy is the force that works towards spreading energy evenly throughout the whole universe. Since we, as created beings, are pockets of a relatively large amount of energy packed into a relatively small space, it would seem that Entropy has it in for us.

Normally, we consider God's "Holding Back" as something that works against us, something that prevents us from growing, that hides His Light from us. Normally, we consider God's Kindness as that Light which He grants us, all of the blessings of all of the things that bring us comfort and protect us.

In reality, it is God's attribute of Mercy (רחמים) which balances and unifies the forces of God's Holding Back and God's Kindness and ensures that we receive all of God's blessings.

Entropy, rather than being seen as a destructive force, can be seen as an overly benevolent force: It is trying to evenly distribute God's blessing throughout the cosmos with complete impartiality. Entropy is actually the extreme expression of God's Kindness. Really, why should any space in the universe be devoid of God's light? Why should any space in the universe get preferential treatment over any other? Such is the logic behind the unbending Kindness inherent in Entropy. Conversely, Gravity can be seen to be an overhanded expression of God's Holding Back. The more I have, the more I have to hold on to, and the stronger will I hold on to it! The existence of the universe stems from a fine balance between both of these competing forces.

So, as we can see, Entropy is an expression of Kindness or Hesed, (חסד) Gravity can be said to be an expression of Holding Back or Din, (גבורה) and the fine balancing act that makes this universe an hospital place to live represents Mercy. (רחמים)

So, in answer to YodaYid's question about trying to lump Entropy into the attribute of God's Dominion (מלכות/שכינה) I would have to say that while God's Dominion is the attribute through which He channels His Mercy, (תפארת/רחמים) it is still an independent attribute.

[As an interesting aside, birth is another example of the forces of Kindness and Holding Back coming together in a Merciful mix. Labor is broken into intense contractions at intervals with rest periods of expansion.]

push me with the left, pull me with the right

Over at Jewish Philosopher, Jacob Stein recently posted a critical commentary on those Jews who have turned their back on their faith.

I contacted him via email because the tone sounded really harsh, and he quoted some of his sources. It seems that basically, the Jewish reaction to Jews who have fallen willfully by the wayside is twofold. On the one hand, we have the people whose roots are in Gevurah and they generally want to wipe out the perpetrator. On the other hand, we have the people whose roots are in Hesed who mostly want to approach and shower the offender with loving kindness such that he will recognise the error of his ways.

What is common to both sides is the awareness of כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה - all of Israel is responsible for one another. (More or less the all for one and one for all principle.) Both are looking to aid the individual in the best way possible.

The people who want to drive them away, and classify them as not Jewish, (or to pass judgement on them and outright kill them for which there is, by the way, (halachic and historic) precedent) are trying to protect this lost Jew from causing themselves (in addition to everyone else) any more harm.

The people who want to hold them close and persuade them through effort and affection aren't satisfied with the cessation of harm, they want to help that person to grow beyond themselves and do teshuva return to God of their own will and not only undo what they've done, but actually take all of what happened and bring it over to the side of good through kiddush HaShem, sanctifying God's name.

All of this heads back to the endless question that is the covenant of peace that HaShem gives to Pinhas ben Elazar HaKohen. Pinhas was the grandson of Aharon HaKohen, the high priest. Aharon is best known for being a rodef shalom, a tireless pursuer of peace. How could Pinhas, his grandson stray so far from that path as to slay two people in plain sight of the Jewish nation because of their transgressions against God? Did he stray at all, considering God awards him a covenant of peace in reward(?) for his action? Why do we write the vav, (ו) broken in that particular word שלום in that covenant?

Sadly, I don't have the best answers to these questions yet. I still have a lot more to learn. But I would like to leave you with two points:

First, as I've noted before, the Notzer Hesed tells us outright that any evil we have heard ascribed to another Jew is falsehood and folly. [Similarly, if someone tells you something bad about themselves, I think (halachically) that still qualifies as lashon harah and you have a responsibility to yourself to not be mekabel.]

Secondly, and I think this is the deeper point I'd like to give over. I've said it already, but I'd like to hammer it home a little better. Both the sides of gevurah and the side of hesed. They both want to bring this Jew back. All of the halachoth about violence toward such people and how to think of them more often than not is there to wake these people up, to shake them up, make them fear a little, because from fear they can come to fear God, knowing their only true salvation is to rely on God to save them. If you look at these halachoth you can see this at their heart. All of the efforts of others to love and pray for them don't work half as well as inspiring the person to pray for themselves. Similarly, we know that when people are judged harshly and mistreated by others, they are spared judgement from heaven. Sometimes through judging them harshly, we are actually opening the doors upstairs, making their way back so much easier, if they would only take it. Other times, through turning the other cheek and pursuing them with love, we are condemning them to harsh decrees from on high.

In the end, the combination of those who pursue them with love and those who drive them away with fear will, with God's infinite wisdom running the whole show, return them to their proper place. We each have to keep playing our part in every little interaction that we have.

[Here's a little clue from the text of the Torah: The broken vav (ו) in the שלום in the covenant with Pinhas (פנחס) symbolizes these two sides. Vav has gematria 6 and represents the six middle middoth, these middoth split into two columns, the right side, headed by hesed, and the left column, headed by gevurah. When both arms, the hesed, and the gevurah, are used together, then we reach peace.] [And one more gematria: פנחס + שלום = עקדת - In the world of akkudim (עקודים) all of the orot, including those of hesed & gevurah, are unified within a single vessel.]

For myself, the word of the Rebbe m'Komarna is enough, I can rest assured that through practicing the Torah of Rebbe Nachman and finding the good in them, I will bring them to the side of good, and I can take solace also in that by simply believing in these words and acting accordingly, I'm strengthing my emunath hachamim.

it's the little things really, no.. really.

a long article on Dark Energy over at Scientific American, tells of how all the various processes that determine all of the universe as we know it may depend heavily on the existence of dark energy. (A weak force that pushes everywhere away from everywhere evenly.)

It's obviously cool to think of this as gevurah to gravity's hesed. Though, in a way, it seems more like in reality it is the reverse, dark energy has more in common with hesed. It is constant and it is weak but over time it will prevail. Whereas, the universal nice guy, gravity, actually is much more gevurah oriented. It's inexorable and crushes things down into black holes, given enough time; it is very strong (relative to dark energy) but it's forces peter out over time and distance.

There was a great article about how powerful gas jets from galactic centers and more generally galactic weather had a heavy impact on star formation in distant parts of galaxies, but I don't know what happened to that article. Here's a similar one. Here's some more explanation of how galactic weather affects star formation.

Similarly we are only beginning to discover how global warming trends can affect all manner of seemingly unrelated processes upon which we rely on a daily basis.

My point here is how little we know, and how much we have to learn about seemingly mild and gradual changes affecting the universe in a profound manner. Something I mentioned in passing in a previous post about breathing. Hesed is what really makes the world go round, not gevurah, but in our day to day interactions, it seems like the effects of hesed are little to nothing. Similarly, in the early universe dark energy had very little impact. Halfway through the present development of the universe, the subtle changes dark energy had wrought on the universe were already irreversible and the trend only continues in the direction of dark energy's continued and growing influence on the universe at large. (and perhaps even on a much smaller scale as the universe continues to develop.)

This is perhaps one of the reasons we have the midrash that God first created the world with midath haDin, (gevurah) and then added midath haRahamim. (by adding hesed) If we apply it to gravity and dark energy, we end up with the first half of the development of the universe being dominated by gravity/din, and then the second half being dominated by dark energy/hesed. Obviously, dark energy is still only a theory, but the nature of lengthening, the long line, is the nature of hesed, and the short line, contracting, is the nature of gevurah. [Similarly but along different lines, time dilation is closer to hesed, whereas length contraction shares more in common with gevurah.]

Anyways, what I was getting at was this: that as our understandings grow, much of what at first might seem either detrimental or ineffective will prove to be beneficial and crucial. (Another example would be oxygen; at very early stages of the development of life oxygen was life-threatening and corrosive, but as life developed it couldn't have continued to develop without embracing oxygen as a vital element in the generation of energy.)

the mother of all cliches

Why do good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people? I don't know. Also, I don't think it helps to talk about these things in general, because 'good' things, and 'bad' things may not be as they appear. Sometimes you just miss a green traffic light, there's no way to know what was ahead of you down that road. We tend towards a nihilistic optimism; if I had made that green light, good things would have come of it, so since I missed the light, I'm justified in being annoyed about it. Murphy's law is exactly that. It could have been so good, but it wasn't so it sucked, as predicted. Instead, if we went forward with a optimistic pessimism we would be perhaps clinically depressed; might as well wait for this light, if I had caught the light things might have gotten worse. Best of all is to understand, as the Baal Shem Tov teaches us, that there isn't another possibility. This experience that you are experiencing is what you were meant to experience. Very zen, but when you hear truth, you have to acknowledge truth. This experience is the one in which you have the most potential to grow spiritually, materially, and pscyhologically.

If you truly understand that, then there's no difference between smooth sailing open highways and bumper to bumper traffic. Even if you are late for the most important moment of your life--you're not late, you're right on time. The current moment is the most important moment in your life. Duh. It's the only moment in your life.

Rebbe Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, the Maor Eynayim, breaks it down like so: (parashath VaEyra) Tzaddikim take HaShem's gevurah and din, and accept it as if it was the sweetest kindness, and in so doing, they actually realize and concretize the true sweetness that was clothed in the harsh experience. The R'sha'im, they receive only kindness from HaShem, but their actions turn that kindness into din, into difficulty. Not to worry, the Tzaddikim have it in them to take even the din of the R'sha'im and find the sweetness in it and reveal it for all.

Let's talk about the metaphysics of this a little. Gevurah or Din is constrictive and powerful. Hesed or kindness is free flowing, open to all and unstoppable. When God gives you over a lot of Hesed, kindness, it would be available to anyone to take from you. When he wraps it in a shell of Gevurah, it is packetized, guarded, and it reaches you unintercepted--it looks like din/judgement, who wants judgement? When you receive it, and you know that within is really Hesed, then its free-flowing, unstoppable nature ensures that you will receive it. When you receive straight Hesed, and you don't guard it yourself, then anyone can take it from you, it flows away from you into the hands of those who oppose you and you end up with a lot of newly-strengthened judgement all around you, a lot of din, a lot of enemies.

When a Tzaddik receives din, he knows it is just the wrapper of a big present of Hesed, direct from the source of True Kindness, HaShem.

When a Rasha receives kindness from God, he doesn't recognize it, and so it goes unprotected and is lost to the dinim which rise against him.

When a Tzaddik comes along and sees this good that has been lost to the judgement, the dinim. He can draw it back, and along with it the dinim, the judgement comes with it, because it(the din) is unwilling to let it(the hesed) go, and so, the Tzaddik takes these dinim as well and finds God's light in them, the deeper good, and turns them all to goodness.

Rebbe Nachman actually explains the whole process of how the Tzaddik does this and what the end result is in Likkutei Moharan. (Torah 17 or 18, I forget which.)

So actually, if we understood this, and were parties to really watch this all going on, then we could say that when bad things happen to good people, it is really good for those people, and when good things happen to bad people, it is actually really really good for everyone--in the end game.

What about when good things happen to good people? Ah. That can't be revealed. Moshe asks God "Show me your glory." God replies, I will cover you with my hand, and I will pass all my good before you, and then I will remove my hand and you will see my back(וראית את אחורי), but my front will not be seen.(ופני לא יראו) You will see my back, or my other-ness, the other side, which in the Zohar is the bad. But you will not see my face/front/insides. The opposite of the side, is the other side is the good side. God explains to Moshe I will reveal to you how it is that all of the things that seem bad and evil are actually good. [This is spoken of in the Zohar and the Tanya] But the things that appear good, I will not reveal to you how it is that they are truly good. [This is my own chidush, I first spoke about it at my brother Ovadiah's Shabbath Hatan.] That level we cannot receive and still live. (כי לא יראני האדם וחי)

unified field theorizing

meant to post a while back about this.. just a quick thought.
The Notzer Hesed mentions that in the olam of Keter, (Akudim, tohu?) the orot share the same vessel, so there is no longer any right or left, no longer any din or hesed, it's all hesed.

It just struck a chord in me regarding Gravity. If it turns out there's no Anti-Gravity and so there's no positive and negative gravity corresponding to positive & negative charges of the electromagnetic force, then there's an interesting corrollation here. (Yes. I am aware that negative and positive are arbitrary names for these two polarities in EM)

Not saying they are directly related, just perhaps two instances of a related template/archetype/meme.