be wisdomless

Rebbe Nachman teaches (Likkutei Moharan II:44) that one should serve HaShem from simplicity. So much so that we shouldn't even read scholarly investigations in support of Judaism.

Even in our halachic observance Rebbe Nachman frowned upon taking on chumroth. (stringencies in Jewish ritual practice)  Even for himself. He said that those who did take stringencies upon themselves could always further split hairs and would forever be in depression feeling as if they've never fulfilled the mitzwoth.

He went on to say, even one who is a master of the true wisdom will reach a point where he must throw all wisdom aside and serve HaShem without wisdom, in simplicity. Because in the end, there is no wisdom or understanding where HaShem is concerned.

To me this is everything I've always felt (and continue to feel) to be true. The essence of Judaism is to be simple with HaShem. Sincere and simple.

breadcrumbs from komarna

The stages of avodat HaShem are many, but it helps sometimes to have a guide. The Komarna Rebbe, in his Netiv Mitzwotecha, (Netiv HaEmunah:3 the last few letters) explains three major stages of Avodah in this world:

1. Connecting Malchut to Binah - this is accomplished through cutting oneself off from the pleasures of the world, focusing intensely on Torah study. Yaakov Avinu did this in his avodah to be Yoshev Ohalim, sitting in the tent studying rather than interacting with the enticing world at large of Esav.
   
2. Connecting Malchut to Hochmah - this next stage can only be achieved through engaging the world for the sake of HaShem with deep meditations and Yichudim while performing even the most mundane of tasks. Yaakov Avinu did this in his showdown with Lavan and all of his endeavors while away from home.
   
3. Connecting Malchut to Keter - this final stage takes us beyond the world into the realm of nothingness, where we make ourselves infinitely small in the face of constant awareness of HaShem's Greatness. We see this trait in Yaakov Avinu when he returns from abroad and turns to HaShem as the source of his salvation, rather than his own merit, saying 'I have grown small from all of Your Kindness.'

After thinking about this for a few days I asked my Rav and he agreed with my assessment of this Torah:

1. Malchut to Binah - this avodah is essentially connecting to the pnimiyut, the innermost essence, of the Torah. It corresponds to connecting to Godliness in its most basic sense, Elokut, in the nomenclature of the Baal Shem Tov. (The Baal Shem Tov says that everything in the world has three major aspects Elokut (God), Olamot (Worlds), and Neshamot (Souls))
   
2. Malchut to Hochmah - this avodah is essentially connecting to the pnimiyut of the World. Which corresponds to the Baal Shem Tov's rendering of Olamot.
3. Malchut to Keter - this avodah reaches connecting to the pnimiyut of your Soul. Which is Neshamoth according to the Baal Shem Tov.

I wish we could all experience life in a straightforward and rewarding fashion, but it seems that in our modern era we are vacillating between all three avodahs in a near-constant fashion.

Ironically, it's virtually impossible to do the avodah of Chochmah or Keter without first completing our avodah of Binah.

Since we don't generally have the luxury of stopping what we are doing and starting at the beginning, we need to be aware of and incorporate these ideas into our daily life as much as we can. Perhaps when we get to learn, we can focus on the avodah of Binah, when we're invovled in the day to day we can focus on avodat Hochmah, and when we're stuck in traffic, it's a wonderful time to work on avodat Keter.

Beyond that, we have to rely on HaShem to help us succeed despite everything that stands in our way. We may not be Yaakov Avinu, but HaShem is the same HaShem that helped Yaakov Avinu.

celebrating future independence

The Kabbalists describe some of the steps involved in creating spiritual vessels. One of the major components is that at some point the light must be removed from the vessel, this emptying out of the vessel is a crucial step in the formation and completion of the vessel. Only after the vessel is completed can the light, the contents, be returned to the vessel. This is a very abstract understanding of a very vague phenomenon, but we see how it plays out in a number of ways: We learn in the midrash that a child in the womb learns all of Torah, only to forget it when s/he is born, necessitating the re-learning of the Torah from scratch. On it's face this midrash is weird. Why would HaShem be so evil as to teach us something, make us forget it and then learn it again? When we look with the eye of a Kabbalist we can see that this 'forgetting' of Torah is the emptying of the vessel. It is only the learning and consequent forgetting in the womb that completes the vessel that is us. Only after forgetting all of Torah are we able to properly absorb and contain the Torah.

Another midrash offers a similar tale, this time however it is about Mosheh Rabbeinu. On Har Sinai, each day HaShem gave him over the whole Torah, yet each day Mosheh Rabbeinu would forget it all. Each morning they would start anew. Finally on the last day, HaShem gave over to Mosheh Rabbeinu the whole Torah as a gift and only in such a way was he able to receive it. We certainly can't understand the magnitude of HaShem's gift to Mosheh Rabbeinu, but we can see the learning and forgetting that took place as a sort of clarifying Mosheh Rabbeinu as a vessel that was fit to receive the whole Torah. When he came down from the mountain his face was glowing.

I'm sure we all often wonder what's the point of living in Olam HaZeh, only to die and then to be reanimated in Techiath HaMaytim, the resurrection of the dead? In this new light we can see death as the final completion of the body as a vessel to contain Godliness. This is perhaps why even after 120 years of perfect service Mosheh Rabbeinu still needed to go through the process of death.

Perhaps this even touches on Adam HaRishon, why was Man created as one male and female? why then was Chavah taken out of Adam and then returned to him?

This simple abstracted teaching touches on so many different questions on so many different levels, but heeding the words of our Rabbis, a wise person sees what is yet to be born. (Ezehu hacham haroeh et haNolad) There's a story about the Chabad hasidim, on the day the first Chabad Rebbe was imprisoned by the Russian government, the hasidim threw a great celebratory feast. Why, you might ask? Because they were celebrating the certainty that he would be successful and would be released. When we understand this basic idea, that it is only the removal of the light that perfects the vessel, then we can begin to see the beauty and promise in the deepest lack, the most broken heart.

It is for this reason, and with admiration and recognition to those faithful Chabad hasidim, that I propose celebrating this Yom Ha'atzmaut like we never have celebrated it before. Not celebrating the event that happened 60 years in our past, but rather celebrating, in the height of the current darkness, the independence of the Land and People of Yisrael when HaShem (may it be swiftly in our days) returns to us the light which we so sorely lack.

Everything hangs in the balance, and tomorrow we could lose it all. But we know with absolute certainty what will be in the end, a time of celebration and rejoicing beyond compare. And, if we truly know it, why not celebrate now? Why not show HaShem how deep and strong our Emunah is today?

This is the lesson of Hesed b'Tifferet; the kindness HaShem gave us clothed in the Beautiful Torah.

the pain of knowledge

DixieYid has a guest post by the author of a book explaining women's place in Judaism as well as the redemption. It's a very loaded discussion and she deserves credit for even taking on the challenge. From what I've read in her article and her discussion in the comments, it is a very well thought-out work that she compiled over the course of twenty years. I will have to read it in order to be able to rightly comment on anything she says.

I'm deeply troubled by the comments in reply to the post...
It makes me realize how superficial most of the discussion on the web is.. most especially, how much I myself participate in these superficial conversations.

I see now how lazy I am to understand part of a view and assume i understand it completely.
I see now how much time it really takes to work/digest an idea until we can truly understand and master it, such that we don't need to waste superficial words picking out specific details to debate in an attempt to avoid having to really think about something.

It troubles me. but I'm happy my eyes were at least a little opened.

not a theory but a vision of everything

[DixieYid's post reminded me that this was rolling around in the back of my mind, so I figured I'd share it--it started as a comment on his post but got too big so i moved it here.]

In Rav Aryeh Kaplan's Meditation and Kabbalah, he explains the difference between two major modes of thought, Binah and Hochmah.

Binah, he explains, is the attempt by the mind to break down ideas into meaningful relationships that create a relative structure of meaning.

Hochmah, on the other hand, is more of a momentary indivisible lightning-like inspiration.

In practice, a person needs to vacillate between the two states in order to achieve deeper insight into a spiritual matter. We jump from a momentary spark of inspiration to a mode that breaks down the spark into inter-related components. This new depth of understanding fuels further moments of inspiration and so on.

This isn't such an abstract explanation, it's actually pretty hands on if you try to work at it. Not only that, but this is actually how are brain works when we are solving problems whether we realize it or not.

The thing that always worries me most though, is what Rav Kaplan said about Ben Zoma. Of the four people who went into the Pardes (without getting into what that means) Ben Zoma was the one who went insane. Rav Kaplan explains that Ben Zoma went insane because at the moment when he was beholding an infinite experience of HaShem, he tried to analyse that experience with a Binah mode of thinking. Since the experience was infinite and not finite, Ben Zoma's mind was permanently trapped in an endless loop of deeper and deeper inter-relational understandings. This was the root of his insanity.

Why does this worry me? Because I always end up breaking things down into the various related structures. At the same time I want to see everything at once, the unique and complete related super-structure of everything. (This is essentially for me the definition of Da'ath--intimate knowledge of the universal structure of everything such that it is all united and undifferentiable, a perfect union of Hochmah and Binah modes of thought)

What scares me is how lost one can get when seeking out the edges of something infinite, what is comforting is that there is so much in the Hasidic and Jewish mystical literature that hints that it is possible.

vessels for oil

Melachim Bet perek 4 has the story of Ovadiah's wife who comes to Elisha and says she has nothing but a small bottle of oil. Elisha tells her to gather as many vessels as she can, and then to go into her house and pour out the oil into all the vessels. The oil flowed without limit, only the number of vessels put a limit on the oil. When there were no vessels left, the oil ceased to flow.

This is the secret of the world to come. Our mitzwoth and Torah and all of our actions in this world create vessels through which we are able to receive HaShem's infinite light in the world to come. The more and finer vessels we create in this world, the more of HaShem's light we will be able to perceive in the world to come. HaShem's light is infinite and so the only limit on our experience in the world to come is the vessels which we create in this world.

[Oil is one of the names used to refer to Hochmah, wisdom, in the Kabbalistic literature.]

mirrors for faces; voices not words

Ben Ish Hai, Hacham Yosef Hayyim, on parashath Bo (year 1), brings up the halachoth of Tefillin. It's clear, he says, that Tefillin shel rosh is meant to illuminate your mind, and Tefillin shel yad is meant to illuminate your heart, because hochmah (wisdom) dwells in your mind, and binah (understanding) dwells in your heart. He explains that all of your other middoth (attributes) derive from hochmah and binah. For this reason, if your heart and mind are pure, the rest of your body will follow. Especially your mouth. If you heart and mind are pure, your speech will be pure as well.

I find this interesting then, because רוח (spirit) is the level of the soul that dwells in the heart, and the Targum (aramaic translation) translates the life breathed into man as רוח ממללה a speaking spirit. So the heart is intimately related with speech from the moment of the creation of man.

On Shabbath I learned Likkutei Moharan I:19. Rebbe Nachman explains how all of us must go hear Tzaddikim face to face, because hearing them quoted second hand is not even remotely the same experience. Similarly reading from texts written by Tzaddikim isn't even on the level of hearing from someone who heard from a Tzaddik. He goes into the intricate wonders of the Holy Tongue (לשון הקודש) aka Hebrew, and how the Tzaddikim perfect their speech to such an extent that it undermines all the evil in the world. To such an extent that when one gazes upon the countenance of a Tzaddik, one sees a reflection of oneself and all of the sins one has done which results in immediate teshuvah. (This actually meshes nicely with an earlier post quoting the Notzer Hesed on wrongdoers blaming the Tzaddikim for their own sins.)

Rebbe Nachman also explains there that the key to drawing out this goodness is rooted in the heart of creation. He notes that there are 32 (לב heart has gematria 32) mentions of the name Elokim in the tale of the creation. From this point of the kollel of creation, all of the evil is uprooted. (As explained as well in Likkutei Halachot Hilchot Tzitzith:3 on the word Bereishith)

He goes into a long explanation of how Aramaic is the Tree of Knowledge and Hebrew the Tree of Life, but I'm not going to get into it now. In super-short he says that through raising up the good in the Targum - Aramaic - you return creative power to Hebrew and undermine the 70 languages which are the root of all evil. (and akin to the three klippoth of tumah)

Last night I was at a wedding here in Jerusalem. Rav Mordechai Eliyahu (former Rishon L'tzion (Chief Sepharadi Rabbi of Israel)) was the M'sader Kiddushin, Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl was there too, and all of Beit El. (the Mekubalim of the old city of Jerusalem) Talk about seeing Tzaddikim speak in person and being reflected in their faces. It couldn't have been higher unless all the Hassidic Rebbes of Jerusalem had shown up. (And if something like that ever happens, I definitely want to be there to see it!)

It's one thing to learn Rebbe Nachman's Torah on all of this, it's quite another (as Rebbe Nachman said in this very Torah) to experience it face to face. I'm so happy I got to be there, I'd been wanting to see Rav Eliyahu for a long time now. I got a brachah for my wife from him.

[There was actually an awesome encounter that very few people got to witness where (on the way from the tisch to the chupah) Rav Eliyahu stopped and asked Rav Nebenzahl to join him and walk beside him, but Rav Nebenzahl insisted on following humbly behind.]

ps. for anyone here in Jerusalem, the celebration of the Hillulah of the Rashash (רש"ש הקדוש) at Bet El (in the old city) will be sunday night and I wouldn't suggest missing it.

on binah vs. hochmah (vs. daath)

My friend YodaYid said [in a comment to my post about too much focusing on labels and self-definition] many varied things and I will try to address each one of them in an untangled manner. First of all, I'm going to avoid entirely the definitions and meanings of english words, both because I don't like to sound like an intellectual (I know, who knew?) and because whether or not an english word means something has limited bearing on how best we, as Jews(hey look! he labelled something), should focus our energies. [Also, because anything I'd have to say on the matter would probably be wrong.. stupid mongrel hard-to-understand languages. ;) ]

1. Firstly, the Rebbe Nachman quote, "ability to tell one thing from another" is by my best guess (without knowing which story it was from? Master of Prayer?) an issue of translation. It almost certainly is a poor translation of l'havin davar m'toch davar (more closely translated: "To understand one thing from another.") which is related to the idea of 'width' of understanding. In any case it leads me to an explanation of Binah, which I will get to in a minute.
2. Secondly, he touches on the concept of Machloket or a disagreement as to the proper determination of specific torah laws (halachot).
   
3. Thirdly and lastly, he brought up the issue of different modes and transmission of Torah, itself related to machlokot. (Well, he might not have noticed he brought it up but he did.)
   

I will try to clarify these points from a top down approach:

The Torah has two major perspectives, and many many others that are out of my scope. The perspectives break down into the written Torah and the oral Torah.

We learn that the written Torah has its roots in Hochmah (loosely: Wisdom)
and that the oral Torah has its roots in Binah. (loosely: Understanding) Now the written Torah is more static and less fluid than the spoken Torah, just as the written word is more permanent and less ephemeral than the spoken one. In essence, the oral Torah involves the application of the written Torah in a particular place at a particular moment. There is a lot more to the oral Torah, namely the codification of what the written Torah means and the study of the jurisdiction of the various laws.

Here we arrive at a particular paradox because Hochmah is founded in the nature of being simultaneously all-inclusive, whereas Binah's nature is to cut away and narrow things down to their essence. Yet, it would seem that the oral Torah makes the written Torah more, not less, universal. This is a misunderstanding. In practice, the oral Torah takes the one-ness of the written Torah and whittles it down into the ruling appropriate to a particular instance. The oral Torah takes the written Torah out of its universal context and places it into a specific subjective context. The oral Torah metabolizes the unpalatable written Torah, making it digestible. This is their nature. [An important side note in this regard is that Kabbalah is essentially written Torah, not oral Torah as one might think. Don't take my word for it, the R'David Pinto's Pachad David was the first place I heard this idea. I asked my Rav and He explained it more.] If we stop to think about it for a second, the Kabbalah itself has none of the practical applicability of the oral Torah.]

Now lets apply these understandings a little. Machloket, a disagreement of the applicability of a particular Torah law is obviously oral and not written Torah, because it deals with applicability, with subjective hypothetical situations. This is why throughout the oral Torah, the Mishna and the Talmud as well as all the later poskim, there are arguments where one truth is uncovered and all other opinions refuted. In the written Torah, Midrash and Zohar, all opinions are offered without any care for contradictions as all opinions are allowed to stand at once, however much at odds they may seem to be. Perhaps we can understand this fundamental difference in the nature of Machloket itself. There are two kinds of Machloket, those for the sake of heaven and those for other selfish interests. The Machloket of Hillel and Shamai, mentioned in Yoda Yid's comment, is, we are told, for the sake of heaven; whereas we are given other examples of less self-less machlokot. (That of Korach is the foremost example.) We are told that Machloket for the sake of heaven (out of the objective desire to know and fulfill God's will) will stand forever, unlike subject/selfish machlokot that will fall. In essence, perhaps because all the 'Machlokot' of the Kabbalah are by definition objective, this may be why they stand without refutation. Whereas the nature of Machloket in the oral Torah is to apply to a specific subjective situation, and so, all but the correct or appropriate opinion must be pared away.

Now, let's understand all this and how it applies to YodaYid's question:

One issue I have similar to chaim g.'s first comment: the Talmud seemingly has no problem categorizing Jews - Tzedukim, Samaritans, Hellenists, not to mention "orthodox" groups following Hillel vs. Shammai etc. As soon as you start enumerating the differences between your beliefs and those of others, you are already moving in the direction of classification. ...In other words, I think Judaism places a very strong emphasis on finding and creating structure. It's the wrong structures we have to worry about.

The Talmud, as I explained above is specifically involved in a Binah mode of thinking, a paring down of many potential applications of Law to determine which law applies in a specific setting. The Talmud itself is a codification and generalization of such a style of thinking in order that any student could reconstruct this mode of Binah.

Classification serves a purpose in the determination of one's actions day to day. But the oral Torah, the Torah of Binah, is totally informed by and inspired by the written Torah, the Torah of the unity of creation with God, Chochmah.

This was my goal in my original post. Not to deny the importance of classification and application of ideas appropriate to a particular occasion, but to reconnect that power of classification to the source of everything, to one-ness with HaShem. Of course structure is not only important, it is vital. In my thoughts on Autism post I stated more specifically that there are two major modes of functioning, ratz (Running) and shav (Returning). The post to which you responded, is involved entirely in ratz, throwing aside all structure in order to unite with God's oneness. (Though if you re-read you will see that I did delineate between good and bad structure as you suggested I should) It is in the shav mode that it is vital to return into the structure in order to affect (ie. carry out God's will in) the created world. Unsurprisingly ratz corresponds strongly with Hochmah, and shav with Binah.