the crown of kindness

The Zohar teaches that in Keter, the highest of the sefirot, there is no 'left' side. The left side is Gevurah, judgement, the hand that punishes and pushes away, the right side is Hesed, the hand that comforts and brings close.

We all know that somewhere deep down, God is love. That's a poor phrasing of what the Zohar is saying above, but we know it to be close to the truth.

Still, for me its comforting to know conclusively that even though Gevurah (the left) is a part of the creation, part of the divine plan, when it comes down to it at the initial seed of creation, Keter, there is no Gevurah, it's all Hesed, all infinite loving-kindness.

No more existential questions, any Gevurah we witness is unquestionably an expression of the supernal Kindness in Keter. We can bank on it.

So my question becomes this: Malchut, the Shechinah, the 'lowest' of the sefirot is a reflection of everything above it, "She has nothing of her own." So if Malchut reflects everything above, we must be able to see even this nature of Keter down here, in Malchut.

That's when I realized Shema Yisrael, which we say twice (+) a day every day, expresses exactly this idea:

שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו, ה' אחד

HaShem (the name of divine mercy) is Elokim (the name of divine judgement), HaShem is One. Whether His expression comes down as divine mercy or judgement, it's the same HaShem and His name of mercy is the name that properly describes the union of those two attributes.

The Shema Yisrael works its way from the bottom up. Israel. (bottom: the created subject) HaShem Elokeinu (middle: expression of Judgement and Kindness) HaShem Echad (top: In Keter there's no 'left' side, all of HaShem's Will is united in the 'right.')

This even does a nice job of explaining the fact that the word for "Hear [O Israel]," also means to connect or bind. We're connecting from the bottom, Israel, back to the top, Keter.

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.]

on purim, everyone's a hassid

[I can't recommend enough the Komarna Rebbe's commentary on Megillat Esther, Ketem Ofir. When I first learned the introduction a few years ago, I was blown away, in one page he managed to fit in all the Hassidut I had ever learned. Where would he go from there, if that was only the introduction? This year I found myself listening to the Megillah and wondering what each verse was really hinting at, wishing I had had more time to review and learn the Ketem Ofir.]

He mentions that Haman wanted to cut us off from being able to access HaShem's infinite Hesed, (loosely translated: Kindness) a light so pure that it cannot be affected, changed, or tainted. It reaches from one end of the world to the other and eradicates all trace of evil. For this reason, for fear of eradication, Haman wanted to separate us from it, HaShem's infinite Hesed.

How did he want to do this in practice? To begin with, how does one connect to HaShem's infinite Hesed? We serve HaShem with excitement and heat. Haman and Amalek, they're power over us is to cool us off, try and bring us back to 'cool' reason, 'cold logic.' To try and ruin the 'heat of the moment.' When we devote ourselves totally and wholly to HaShem with passion and heat, in that place, we can connect to the root of our souls, forever bound up in HaShem's infinite Hesed, from that place all the evil, all the klippot melt away, and Haman is no more. 

I think we can see this in practice through Esther HaMalka coming before the king, at great personal risk and for the sake of the nation, from that moment on, we see Haman's actions are no longer his own and a chain of uncontrollable events lead to his almost immediate downfall. The Rebbe went further in explaining the idea, more technical and more detailed, but that's not for me to give over here.

I believe this also explains why it is we are required to get drunk on Purim, to be filled with the heat of love and excitement in performing HaShem's mitzwoth. It's no coincidence that most of the mitzwoth of the day are bound up in Hesed, acts of kindness. The drink takes away the edge of the "cold logic," the cooling effect of Amalek.

One more thing that was never clear to me on Purim was the mitzwah of hearing the megillah, without missing a single word. The rest of the day is about losing da'at, about not being able to maintain an intellectual relationship but rather an emotional, in a way deeper, one. So, it's striking that we are required, on the very same day, to follow, with perfect precision and focus, a text being read aloud. In the context of our tremendous and unfailing love for HaShem this mitzwah can come into focus: When we love someone, we can't take our eyes or ears off them, every word every gesture is not only pleasing, but also vital. If we can connect to the love of HaShem inherent in the day of Purim, then listening to every word of the megillah comes as a freebie, we wouldn't pass up a single word in the story of how He saved us, everything He did for us.

something new: something borrowed

In Judaism, a central (if not the central) tenet of our faith is to make other people's needs as important to us, as our own needs. This is perhaps also the most challenging of all the demands placed on a Jew. Fear not, the is a silver lining: The Noam Elimelech explains (Parashath Re'eh) that we can actually use this effect in reverse in order to help us overcome our yetzer hara. 

Normally a person is beset by many natural tendencies, or animalistic desires. A Jew is expected to channel and master these desires until he rules them, rather than the default in which they rule him. One trick we have in this near-insurmountable challenge is that we can convince ourselves that our needs are not our own, but are external to us, borrowed perhaps from someone else. Since the yetzer hara (evil urge) encourages us to be selfish and unconcerned with the needs of others, if we convince ourselves that our own needs are "borrowed" from others, then naturally we will disdain them.

This seems very weird and unnatural, not to mention ridiculous, to think of our needs as someone else's needs. But, there is a kernel of truth there, in that these desires for worldly pleasure don't actually originate with the person, but rather with his/her yetzer hara. 

Once we have worked on ourselves and have begun to conquer this stage, the Noam Elimelech's advice really starts to pay off. Since our own needs are as devalued as the needs of others, the work to make the needs of others more important, if not as important as our own personal needs becomes a lot easier. Instead of fighting an uphill battle we've now leveled the playing field.

The question, to me, becomes why did the Noam Elimelech choose to bring out this teaching from passukim related to ma'aser and bikkurim. (both of which are offerings brought to HaShem from the blessings He has bestowed upon us.) Perhaps it is because when we recognize that everything we've received is from HaShem, and not ours to begin with, we can apply this lesson not only to the positive things we've recieved but also the negative ones, like the yetzer hara, for example. After all, everything is from HaShem.

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.

the fastest society

There is a maxim about how armies can only move as fast as their slowest unit. This applies on the macro-scale to societies and cultures and any group that can be categorized as moving in some sense.

Here we can approach a hypothetical idealistic application of Jewish principles and see how it is that a Torah lifestyle is the most efficient one for a collective of one form or another to maintain.

In a basic capitalist society, each individual in the group progresses as fast as they possibly can, the society as a whole being chained to the progress of the slowest individual. In pseudo-financial terms, the purchasing power of the poorest members of the group ultimately limits the growth of the society/marketplace.

If you look at a society based on the Torah values of helping those in need with great alacrity, you find a situation where the weakest members of the group are aided almost immediately by the strongest and fastest members of the group. In such a society, societal progress gets very close to the speed of the average individual.. instead of the speed of the slowest individual. That's a huge gain for the collective, without sacrificing individuality at all.

the one from the many

So much time and text in Hassidut has been devoted to the idea of bitul. Bitul isn't so easy to translate, though self-negation lends itself to the task. In a way it's obliteration of self. But almost any translation has a seemingly negative connotation.

Normally, we'd like to understand bitul as loosing oneself in HaShem. Connecting one's finity to God's own infinity and being lost. These understandings are beautiful and poetic and belie the practically insurmountable effort necesary to achieve such a state. Ever try to run to something infinitely far away? No point right? it's infinitely far away.

Actually the whole question of how can we relate to HaShem stems from this same idea, how can the finite ever relate to the infinite? It's only possible, as Hassidut explains, because we ourselves, at our deepest most secret core, are infinite as well, in fact, it's not even two different infinities, it's the same infinity. At our core, if we dare or care to look, is HaShem.

From this we can learn that one form of bitul, of connecting to the infinite, is sought through turning inward, through letting go of everything outside of 'me'. Then realising that the 'me' is the outside and letting go of that too, until there is no 'me' left.

But, if the inside of the inside (and so on, ad infinitum) is HaShem, then its a simple matter to realise that the outside of the outside (etc) is HaShem too. In fact, these two attributes of HaShem have names: HaShem is memaleh kol olmin - He fills everything, and He surrounds everything - sovev kol olmin.

Which means there's another way to bitul, to connect to the infinity of HaShem. This way is actually the more Jewish way. To connect to HaShem through the world. To engage the world, to transform the world from being HaShem's clothes (that which garbs and hides HaShem) into our clothes. (that which garbs and protects us from oblivion when we stare upon infinity)

When we jump into the world, and immerse ourselves in it as a means to connect to HaShem through all the multitudinous media that present itself, we find there is no nook or crevice that is not overflowing with HaShem's presence.

When we put ourselves into the throng of life in order to find HaShem and seek Him out, to act according to His wishes, His middoth, then we can be far closer to Him than we might do by stepping away from everything that isn't self.

I think this is the true bitul of Hassidut. I think it's obvious from the texts, and it might be something that everyone knows, but it doesn't seem that way, it seems like we've gotten caught up in very un-jewish ideas of what it is to 'self-negate.'

Literally 'hesed' the root of Hassidut is the negation of oneself by relating to an other.

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)

real time justice, teshuvah included inside

The Notzer Hesed, in the end of his compilation on achdut, (in the middle of Avot 6) describes the phenomenon of Tzaddikim and the hecklers who deride, accuse, and disrupt them. I've noted in the past that he says that any report of anything negative about any Jew at all is utterly unfounded. Here he comes to teach a deeper lesson about the role of tzaddikim and their doubters.

The tzaddik's soul is connected with those of many other Jews. A tzaddik's actions affect all of those who share his soul-root. Most of the work cut out for a tzaddik is rectifying his soul, and along with it, those of those connected to him. In fact, if a tzaddik is presented with a failing in someone else, it hints at a similar failing in himself. Only through finding and fixing this failing in himself can he then fix it in the other people who are connected to him as well. The Notzer Hesed relates a story about the Baal Shem Tov that he was confronted with a Jew who accidentally violated the Shabbath in his presence. The Baal Shem prayed and cried for a long time until it was revealed to him that he had mistakenly used the services of a Talmid Chacham, a learned scholar, who the Torah also refers to as 'Shabbath'.

The Notzer Hesed illuminates this relationship a level further: Those things of which the nay-sayers accuse the Tzaddik are generally areas in which the nay-sayer him/herself has actually transgressed. The revellation here is that, because the Tzaddik has not perfected and rectified the nay-sayer's soul yet, he bears the responsibility for his critic's actions. The Tzaddik is being accused of the actions which he is responsible for, even if he didn't commit those actions directly.

Finally he explains that the Tzaddik who is criticised in this world is praised in the upper worlds because all of the commotion down here means that in the courts in the upper worlds there is no need to bring any claims against him. [Apparently they only intercede in the upper courts when justice isn't being carried out down here.]

What I find beautiful about all this: Everything is moving towards exactly the end that they need, as efficiently as possible. The Tzaddik is working to perfect himself. The trouble makers point out his flaws to him. By pointing out his flaws, the trouble makers actually shield him from any interference in the higher realms. (a point made by Rebbe Nachman in Likkutei Moharan) The end result is that the Tzaddik may more quickly and more wholly fix all of those souls that are connected to his own, hastening the rectification of all those who still have what to fix. The gravy is that the Tzaddik doesn't hold those who criticise him responsible, because he knows all this and forives them for their actions, minimizing their continuing transgressions, and he thanks them for the oppurtunity to purify his own soul.

a final note:
See my reference to supreme justice in this post. It isn't for nothing that the root of the word Tzaddik(צדיק), is Tzedek(צדק), justice. As illustrated here, even God's justice is kindness. This post is also heavily related to this post on sleeping our way to redemption.

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.