wrinkled and holy like parchment paper

On Yom Kippur, when I had a lull in concentration, and no matter what I tried I couldn't focus on anything other than an old sci-fi movie, I started to think about the influential people in my life. I thought about my grandmothers and grandfathers, parents, aunts and uncles, teachers, in-laws. The only thing that stuck in my head was the texture of their skin. Holy holy holy skin, wrinkled and paper-thin.

It occurred to me then, and though it is something I've said and written in the past I understood it then in a new and deeper light, that the essence of being a Jew is being simple. Simply keeping to the laws and traditions, year after year, day after day. Your soul is always holy; infinite and holy. But in the persistence of Judaism your flesh, especially your skin becomes holy. And in that moment I understood that children are new flesh, with years and years of investment ahead in order to reach that same holiness of skin that Grandma or Sabba carry with such grace.

It is no wonder then, that the Tikkunei Zohar teaches that the skin is the organ that represents Malchut. (God's Kingship, the Word of the King)

remembering how to be a soul

It takes the soul an entire year after one dies until it remembers what it is like to be just a soul without a body. (So explains Rav Avraham Azulai) It's had so many years to get used to living in a body, it's a tremendous and sudden trauma when the soul has to fend for itself once again. A soul in such a predicament is compared to a baby bird that has to learn how to fly.

It's always interesting to gain a different perspective on life, but this is pretty far out there. How do we bring it home a little? There's a great little bit of life experience that can give us a really good feel for the smallest taste of what the soul might have to go through: 

Ever drive a rental car? Or someone else's car after driving your own car for a couple of years? Doesn't it feel weird? It's got a steering wheel, a gas and break pedal, a gearbox, etc. Yet it still feels uncomfortably different, totally awkward. Even just trying to park a different car feels weird, somehow just not right. Now, when you get back into your car, it's like..ahhh, now this is the way things are supposed to be.

Imagine your soul trying to walk around, or eat something without a body.. That's gotta be tough.

I don't even understand myself

Today I heard someone saying that. "I don't even understand myself." I think a lot of people feel that way, and it's a frustrating feeling.

When Rebbe Nachman discusses his disfavor with philosophy he explains it like so: Philosophers take a question and its answer and then rephrase them collectively in the form of a question, which then has no answer, because the answer is already part of the question.

Part of the reason I think most people don't understand themselves is because just like a philosophical question, (as defined by Rebbe Nachman) a person is a combination of two opposites whose union defies explanation.

A person has many parts, overall we can categorize them into three: a body, an animal soul, and a Godly soul. As long as a person looks at these three parts and assumes they are one part, it's impossible to make sense out of all the contradictory elements of the human condition.

The best place, I think, to begin to understand the structure of a person is to learn the first twelve or so chapters of the Tanya; the manual for self-awareness and fulfillment written by Rebbe Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe.

a new focus

כדי לבטל את רצונות היצר אפשר לעקוב אותו במחשבה פשוטה. שילוב חיי אם אני, להקדים את מקור חייך להאני הישות שלך מביא ביטול מוחלט מאני לאין: חאיניי - עיטוף האני בחיי נפשך מגלה עצם ביטולו

One of the most basic ways to work on ego is to remind yourself that you are nothing next to your soul which is literally a piece of Godliness. (חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש) The Tanya discusses this in the context of awakening divine mercy for your poor soul that has been distanced from her home (the source from which she was hewn) in heaven.

A simple idea to focus on is this: the ego, the I, is אני in hebrew. The goal is to turn the ego, the אני, into אין, into the hebrew word for nothing. This seems simple as אין and אני have the same hebrew letters, aleph yud nun. So, we should be able to just rearrange our awareness and that's it, presto! no more ego. 

Unfortunately it's not so simple. But, when we start to think of our soul, of the source of our life-force, we can represent it with the word חיי. This is the life-force we pray for when we ask HaShem for בני חיי ומזוני - offspring, life, and sustenance. The life component encompasses many things, including really the other two. So, when we focus on our soul as the root of our life-force,  חיי, we can unite it with our ego, אני, and accomplish fascinating results.

When we connect two ideas in our thoughts, we generally interweave the letters of their composition, called in hebrew a שילוב - shiluv. In the case of אני and חיי when we want the חיי to be the dominant force influencing the אני, we start with the ח from חיי and then take the א from אני and so on, alternately taking one letter from each word. When we combine the whole thing we get:

חאיניי 

In this word we see that while the חיי remains intact surrounding what's in the middle, the middle has changed from אני, from ego to אין, to nothing.

In this way we can see that by focusing on the source of our life-force, on our soul, and its importance, we can overcome our ego in a very natural almost roundabout way.

When we remember our soul, and recognize how our actions either respect our soul, dignifying her, or dishonor her, embarrasing her, we can lose sight of whether our actions are bringing us honor or power or attention or all the other things our ego likes us to focus on.

without within

We've mentioned in the past how the Komarna Rebbe explains that we need to serve HaShem from the level where we are right now. That's what HaShem wants. In the fourth path in his sefer Netiv Mitzwotecha, he explains that HaShem hides Himself within the creation, within our lives. Now, if we knew HaShem was hidden, then He wouldn't be very hidden, would He? So instead He even hides the fact that He is hidden from us. (This is a teaching originally of the Ba'al Shem Tov)

The Komarana Rebbe adds that the geulah itself already begins with the recognition that HaShem is hidden from us. Once we know HaShem is hidden, the knowledge that He is with us, hidden or not, can give us so much excitement and happiness that we already break free of the bonds of galut.

This meshes nicely with another Torah from likkutei Halachoth, (hilchot birkoth HaShahar 3:5-8) in which Rebbe Natan explains that often we are convinced we have a very lowly soul and are incapable of serving HaShem which brings us great disappointment and great failures.

Not so, he explains, the soul of even the lowliest of Israel is such a lofty thing that entire worlds and endless cadres of beings depend entirely on this soul for their continued existence. Even the lowest soul is so much greater than every other created entity, it is a piece of infinite Godliness.

So, when we are low and think HaShem is far from us, and we have no ability to bring about His closeness, we only need to look within ourselves and remember that our soul is awesome in its grandeur and there in this place, at the root of our soul, HaShem is never distanced from us. Not even by so much as the thickness of a human hair.

if you can't join em, beat em [1/2]

As we've mentioned previously, we think of food as something physical that we eat in order to give us life. That's one level, but there's a deeper truth in which the food itself is all but extraneous, it is purely a vehicle, a means, a vessel that contains the life force which HaShem gives to us.

We learn that the manna, (מן) was pure spiritual life, it didn't have any physical 'clothing.' This matter greatly troubles the Pri Ha'aretz on parashath Beha'alotecha (Rav Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk) who says that it is our understanding that the evil that one does is a function of the physical part of the food we consume. In the desert, when we were consuming food with no physical nature, how was it possible that people would fall in sin, whether it be a minor rebellious act, or a major infraction of Torah?

He explains that the equation isn't quite so simple. Yes, the physical side of food has the potential to weigh down a person and make them more physical, but the result ultimately rests with the person. Just as in the natural view, the proteins, nutrients, and amino acids all are absorbed and integrated into bodily systems, new bone, new blood, new skin etc. The spiritual life-force within food becomes a part of the person, it is transformed entirely into the nature of that person. When the person is a good person, always striving to perfect themselves, then the life-force makes the person better, more pure, more holy. When the opposite is the case, then the life-force can greatly strengthen one's physical/mundane nature. (heaven forebid)

I'd like to develop this idea a little further, thinking about eating and kashrut as well. The Baal HaTanya explains that when something is forebidden to us it is because we do not have the ability to rectify or raise that thing up to be used in holiness, instead that thing will bring us down and make us impure and more physical. There is a clear analog in the physical world: disease and infections. When we consume something that is infectious, rather than in the normal healthy model where what we consume becomes a part of us, the contagion consumes us and turns part of us into more contagion. (Whether it be bacterial, viral, cancerous, parasitic, symbiotic, etc)

If we look at non-kosher or forebidden food as spiritual contagions, we can at least draw a picture in our minds to understand what affect it has on us.

From all this we learn two things:

1. Don't eat things that can be harmful to you, spiritually, because our soul cannot digest and elevate them.
2. Even when eating the things permitted to us, we must remember that if we aren't careful to integrate and elevate them into our essence, they will bring us down to their level.

to be continued...

plight of the naked soul

What's the point of the Neshama coming into this world? When it leaves this world it can go no higher than the source from which it was originally carved. Up there it will remain pure but down here there is nothing but risk, and how many Neshamoth get to say they came out of this world unharmed, pure as when they came into it?

These aren't my questions, they are the questions of Rav Avraham Azulai as recorded in his sefer Hesed L'Avraham (4:4). (you can find the complete hebrew text online here) But, more importantly what are his answers?

He explains that before the Neshama comes down into this world, she is the daughter of the King who is locked away in a safe place, but she cannot come before the presence of the King because she has no clothing. It is only after she comes down into this world and is clothed in all the lower layers of soul, Ruah, Nefesh, and even a physical body, that she can perform mitzwoth. The mitzwoth are her only clothing, and after 120 years when she returns to her Father, her clothes allow her to gaze at His Countenance, and derive great unmeasurable pleasure from it.

So you see, without ever coming into this world it might seem like she remains more pure, but she remains unfulfilled, isolated, and distanced from her own Father.

[I shared this with the Taxi driver who brought me to work today, I saw a Likkutei Moharan in his door when I got in, though he wasn't wearing a kippah. He asked me what I was learning so I told him a little about Rav Azulai, and about his great-grandson, the Chida, about the Ohr HaHayyim, the Chida's teacher, and so on. So, he said, he lived around the time of Rebbe Nachman, I agreed more or less. I asked him if he had been to Uman, he said he went last Elul but he still needs to 'strengthen' his faith.. I said Amen, we all need to. I'm envious that he has been to Uman and I haven't, but I didn't tell him that. Though I was very happy that he had been.]

prayers cleaving to prayers

We recently mentioned Rebbe Natan's explanation and understanding of the verse תפילה לעני כי יעטוף - "a prayer for the pauper when he will wrap.." He explained that prayer from the place of utter lack encompasses in its earnest simplicity all the prayers of others and brings them before HaShem.

The Noam Elimelech (Parashath Balak, i believe) explains it a little differently: He says that there are those people who are not on the level to have proper intentions, proper Kavanoth, while praying. In this case their Tefillah is like a body with no soul. Similarly they perform their mitzwoth as well, without lofty intentions, and so they too are compared to a soulless body.

The Tzaddik then, through his prayer, invests the body of other people's mitzwoth with a soul -- even their tefilloth, through his deep kavanoth. In this way, the prayer of the kavanah-poor person clothes and garbs the kavanoth of the Tzaddik's prayer. This is what is meant that the poor person's prayer will wrap [the Tzaddik's prayer.]

knowing who you are

There's a peculiar angle to the story of the megillah which I'm not sure gets the focus it deserves: How were the Jews saved, what exactly did Esther HaMalkah do to save the Jews? She revealed the fact that she was a Jew. Simple question, simple answer.

If I stop to really think about that basic generally overlooked point, it blows me away. She said, I'm a Jew. True, there was a lot involved in exactly how and when she said it, but it really boils down to the fact that she said it.

When we look at the actors in the story slightly metaphorically, we end up with a situation where a Jew (Neshamah) is beset upon by a vile enemy, (the Yetzer Hara) who wants to completely obliterate that Jew. In the end, the Jew, with no other hope of salvation, turns to the King (HaShem) and reveals it's secret identity, I'm a Jew.

We go through our lives with so many identities, so many different layers of clothing, each suited to various needs and purposes. We become thoroughly confused between what we need, what we want, what we should need, what we should want. In short, every one of us, from the smallest to the greatest, is suffering from a series of serious identity crises.

Underneath it all, though we think we forgot, we know who we truly are. We can't possibly forget. It's the only kernel of absolute Truth of which we have ever been made aware. Yet it takes a crisis to really jar our memory. Our quintessence is the smallest bit of infinity at our core, a piece of God.

It is only at the very moment when the yetzer hara wants to consume us totally, to once and for all deny that there is any light at all there at our core, that we wake up and say, "Wait a minute, HaShem's infinite light is at my core, you can't hide that! What was I thinking why didn't it shine until now?"

And right then we turn to HaShem in utter exasperation, completely at a loss as to why or how something brighter than the entire universe could ever be concealed, and we say, "I'm a Jew." It is as much a plea, as it is a question as it is a statement.

And right then HaShem intervenes and saves us from the darkness.

This is the essence of Teshuvah, of Emunah, of Tefillah; revealing the Truth, to yourself and to the world, you are a Jew.

Everything else is just a question of how does a Jew act?

world of the heart

The Ketem Ofir 2:14 (Rebbe Yitzhak Isaac of Komarna) explains that the heart is a microcosm of the person: The heart itself is like the body, like the 22 hebrew letters through which HaShem created the world, and the blood that flows through it is like the neshama, like the crowns on the letters.

teaching our souls to enjoy life

The point of having a physical body that enjoys the world is to teach our souls to enjoy HaShem in the same way. This is the teaching of the Holy Pri Ha'aretz on Parashath Ki Tisa.

If we don't teach our neshama how to enjoy in HaShem, then when the body expires, the soul is left with no source of sustenance, and it expires as well (heaven forbid) this is what being cut off (כרת) is.

a foot in the door

This past Shabbath I reviewed Likkutei Moharan I:152, to me it is one of the more cryptic Torahs in Likkutei Moharan. I can't be sure I understood it correctly, but from my limited understanding Rebbe Nachman explains that at certain truly difficult times, a great Tzaddik may defend the generation through unbelievable mesirut nefesh. What is this mesirut nefesh, this unbelievable self-sacrifice?

Rebbe Nachman explains that when a soul comes into this world there is only one gate through which that soul can still ascend and unite with HaShem, the gate of emunah. Sometimes, that gate is temporarily closed (on a personal level because of some damage one has done, and a national level because of the culture of sinning that has been reinforced and strengthened) but that is only for a short while. In really extreme circumstances permission is given from on high to shut the gate permanently. In such times someone with true fear of heaven (to my understanding a Tzaddik) puts themselves in the mouth of the gate, and because of their purity, the gate cannot be closed. In this manner, the Tzaddik allows the gate of emunah to remain open, even when Bnei Yisrael doesn't deserve it. The catch, and here is the true mesirut nefesh, is that the Tzaddik can't leave the mouth of the gate or else it would be closed and so, his soul cannot ascend to unite with HaShem.

To me this echoed the words of Mosheh Rabbeinu in the end of sefer devarim, "I can no longer come in and go out." (לא אוכל עוד לבא ולצאת) (Devarim 31:2)

ps. please correct me if I've understood Rebbe Nachman's intent here. (this basically goes for any other Torah as well that I may have misunderstood)

shabbath garments

Last Shabbath I was thinking about the three garments of our Neshamah, thought, speech, and action and how these garments relate to our observance of Shabbath.

Basically, to my simple understanding it breaks down like this:

1. שמור את יום השבת - Guard the day of Shabbath. This represents thought, as it says about Yaakov avinu, ואביו שמר את הדבר - [Yosef]'s father guarded the incident.
   
2. זכור את יום השבת - Remember the day of Shabbath. This represents speech, as it says בכל מקום אשר אזכיר את שמי - everywhere that I invoke My Name.
   
3. ששת ימים תעשה כל מלכתך - Six days you will perform all your labor. This represents action.

What is nice to see from this is that while we guard and remember the Shabbath through our thought and speech on Shabbath itself, the major involvement of our action for the sake of Shabbath is felt during the other six days of the week. In other words, if we didn't take action and do everything we need to do during the week, our Shabbath will be without the third and most corporeal garment, the clothing of action.

In this way, to the best of my understanding, we see that our Shabbath depends on our week.s

the scent of elevation

The Notzer Hesed, in his perush on Megillat Esther, which he called Ketem Ofir, brings down that the name of the city Shushan (שושן) shares the gematria (656) of ריח ניחוח אשה לי-ה-ו-ה "a pleasent scent, a fire for HaShem" [I quoted this a while back in this post]

He explains that this is a reference to the secret innermost place within each Jewish soul which is uncorruptible. The Baal HaTanya spoke about the Jewish soul as being forever willing to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the proclamation of the unity of HaShem. The Notzer Hesed is, to my understanding, referring to this point in the soul, the uncorruptible place from which this willingness to self-sacrifice flows.

This is the place from which the pleasing scent of the offerings originate.

We may not understand this idea in its entirety, I certainly don't, but I think we can focus on this for a moment each day, before we begin to pray.

We can stop and remember that no matter where we are in the progress of our lives, somewhere in the deepest reservoirs of our soul is this place that is totally and utterly dedicated to the oneness of God.

Even if we can't find the means to express our desire for HaShem, our soul knows it intimately, at the very core of our being.

We can take comfort in this and take pleasure in it, we can rise from this knowledge to a place of joy and celebration in HaShem.

We can pray from a place of simcha, knowing that our existence is pleasing to HaShem.

there and back again - the story of Eden

Short version of the story of eden according to Reb Elimelech m'Lizhensk as learned out from the first passuk of parashath Lech Lecha (לך לך):

Etz HaHayyim (עץ חיים) is the name of the high spiritual level upon which Adam was created. After eating from the Etz HaDa'ath, (עץ הדעת) a name for the lower worlds, he was 'corporealised' (became more invested in the physical world) to a much lower level. Now he must serve God from his low level and work his way back up to his previous level--this is the goal of man in the world.

(To my limited understanding (as is everything else in this blog):) This was presumably the second of two breakings that happened around the time of the creation of the world. The first was the 'breaking of the vessels'. This caused sparks of holiness to descend into the world. Still, these sparks were in a very spiritual state. A state from which they could be redeemed through Adam simply eating of the fruit of the trees of Gan Eden. Once Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (ie. the lower, more physical, worlds) The sparks of holiness were driven further into the loam of physicality. This act also brought Adam down to a level of physicality from which he could once again raise these sparks.

To the best of my understanding of anything at all, these sparks are alternately referred to as letters or souls. This is because these pieces of light that have fallen from on high are called Yisrael (ישראל) because they are fundamentally the same. Just as Yisrael was sent into exile, so too these sparks were exiled. [Every time a Jew fails to use his blessings to serve God and instead serves some other cause, the sparks of those blessings are lost into the physicality of the world, they are litterally part of that Jew's soul. (Rebbe Nachman explained about these sparks in Likkutei Moharan 17)] Yisrael goes into exile specifically to redeem the sparks. This is the heart of כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה. (all of Yisrael is responsible one to another) Because we understand and value one another, and care for one another's wellbeing as our own, because we recognise the Godly soul within one another, so too, we are the caretakers of the fallen sparks/souls/letters as we recognise their common origin with our own. The one-ness within all of us is what drives us to cleave together, to cleave to the Godliness in the other.

In this final redemption, the one coming, it is an all deal. (Not all or nothing, because there's only one potential outcome.) We are all going up again, to our source. Raised up either through others who bear our responsibility (the Tzaddikim) or through our own efforts. Either way, we are all going home. The sooner we recognise this, the sooner we can thank HaShem for this certainty, with complete and total Emunah, perfect in its simplicity.

not perfect and not knowing it

Today's Tanya, as well as R'Moshe Hayyim Luzzato (in Messilat Yesharim:1, via Cosmic X) and others, mention the plight of the neshama in this world, in this body. Namely, that it suffers down here in this body, in this world, where it is far from the perfection of it's origins. These same sources talk about how the Godly soul itself has little to do with this world other than to be a shining example to the Animal soul within each of us. Our Animal soul being that which needs to be fixed and perfected. Ok, great, but still I never asked this question before today but: Why this particularly Godly soul with this particular Animal soul?

I read today that Rebbe Baruch, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (by his daughter Adel), said that an herbal remedy not only cures the patient, but that that particular patient actually cures the herb as well, fixing the 'brokenness' that this herb has been suffering from since the orginal sin.

This is a really radical and novel point of view. Visible elsewhere in the ideas of God's supreme justice. But still, looking at things in this way opens up new possibilities. Namely, that the Godly soul you have been given is not complete, not until it refines the Animal soul within you, through which it completes and refines itself as well--even though the Godly soul was initially blind to any fault or lack in itself.