a standing argument

The Mishna (Avot 5:17) says there are disagreements for the sake of heaven that will stand forever. When you hear that, it sounds like a stubborn argument on a matter so complex that neither can prove its correctness completely.

I suggest an alternative understanding, one which we can wrap our minds around. In the past I have suggested looking at a disagreement for the sake of heaven as the work of complimentary muscle groups like the biceps and triceps which work against each other but together achieve very fine motor coordination. Today I'd like to provide a very simple logical example of how this works based on a nice self contained piece of Gemara:

[Brachot 13a:] Can we read Shema Yisrael in a language other than Hebrew? There is a disagreement between Rabi and the Hachamim. Rabi says we learn from the word והיו they should be, they should be as they are, unaltered into another language. The Hachamim say we learn from the word שמע understand, we should say Shema Yisrael in any language we understand.

Simple enough, each one has their opinion, each supported from the text. However, the Gemara goes on to analyze some of the results of their opinions: If each were to be examined in a vacuum we would find some very interesting results: According to Rabi, we would be considered to fulfill the mitzwah of learning Torah by reading it in any language whatsoever. Otherwise, why would the Torah need a special case here to emphasize that Shema Yisrael must be read in hebrew? According to the Hachamim, we would only be fulfilling the mitzwah of Torah learning if we learned Torah in Hebrew, otherwise why would the Torah need a special case here to emphasize that Shema Yisrael can be read in any language?

But these opinions don't exist in a vacuum. We can't learn from here that Rabi says learning Torah can be done in any language, and conversely we can't learn that the Hachamim say learning Torah must be done in hebrew. Why not? Because Rabi can say the reason the Torah specifies here that Shema Yisrael must be read in hebrew is because one might have understood like the Hachamim understand and thought Shema Yisrael could be said in any language. And the Hachamim's answer? It isn't such a surprise. They could say that the reason the Torah specifically allows Shema Yisrael to be said in any language is because one might have thought like Rabi that the Torah seems to imply Shema Yisrael must be read in Hebrew.

You see? Neither of these opinions stands on its own. They require the existence of the counter-opinion for their own stance to be self-consistent and logical. The existence of the argument allows both points to have a degree of subtlety and specificity that would be entirely lacking if no argument existed.

Perhaps this is the depth and the strength of a machloket (a rational struggle) for the sake of heaven.

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.

hearing the love

וחרה אף ה' בכם

It's so important not only to pray, not only to learn Torah, but also to find the hidden blessings, the hidden points of light within even the darkest places. (As a matter of principle, we don't seek out the darkness, but when we find ourselves in it, we are required to reveal the light hidden therein.)

Every day, at least twice a day, we say the prayer Shema Yisrael. In the time of the Holocaust, the Partisans in the woods would identify a Jew based on his/her ability to recite the Shema Yisrael. The Shema is in many ways the essence of the Jew, and many a Jew has died with these holy words on their lips.

In the second chapter/paragraph of the Shema, we speak about the performance of the mitzwoth and the negative reppercussions of our transgressions. To me this part of the Shema is always difficult, we are proffessing our love and devotion to God and in the midst of this recounting His capacity to consume us in His holy wrath.

"And He will grow angry with you, and the heavens will cease, a stop to all precipitation, the land will hold back its bounty, and you will be lost from the land."

That's rough. How can we really and truly mean it when we say we love God, when this threat hangs over our heads?

So many times I've set out to try and understand the deeper blessing, the light within this darkness and it has taken me until now to understand the smallest part of it:

When something displeases or angers you, you have a number of potential responses, depending on the importance of the annoyance in question. If it's the weather, you do your best to ignore it. An insect? You swat it away. A piece of paper, toss it in the waste basket. Another driver in traffic? Perhaps a gesture or an expletive but then they're gone.

What about your wife? children? parents? what about your best friend? These are the people that really get you angry. They make you angry because you care about them, because they know you and you know them, because you are intimately connected to them. You don't threaten your college professor that you won't ever talk to them again. You don't threaten to never visit a television reporter.

We are so close to God that He knows we can even take His anger. In hebrew it's rendered and His anger will burn in you. Not only does God dwell amongst us, but even when He's angry his anger is within us. He reveals Himself in this world through us. The heavens 'cease' when He's angry, the land's bounty is withheld, but He is still in us. He threatens to remove us from the land, because it's something of real value, a place to be close, to be intimate with Him. It's what He wants, it's what we want, and so it is withheld.

For one thousand nine hundred and forty one years, we have bourn His anger, and if that's what He's willing to give us then that is what we'll take.

Because all we want is Him.

That's a real relationship.

Someone you care about so much that they make you angry sometimes.

Someone who cares so much about you that your anger won't scare them away.

more and then some: service for two

There's a subtle change in the Shema between the beginning of the first perek and the beginning of the second perek. In the first perek we are told to love HaShem with all of our heart, soul, and more. In the second perek we are told to love HaShem and to serve Him with all of our heart and soul.

What happened to the 'more,' and why do we have to love Him to serve Him?

I was given a glimpse into two important Jewish ideas today that I think help to answer this question:

The first is that when we get used to ignoring a particular halachah or mitzwah, we become blinded to the importance of that halachah or mitzwah.

The second is that we are instructed in the Talmud that everything is in the hands of Heaven, except the fear of Heaven.

Let's think about these two things, the first means that while we may be aware of many many mitzwoth or halachoth, if we don't actively practice them in our lives, they become dull and meaningless, one-dimensional. Just like an undeveloped character in a novel or a movie, we lose interest and they simply fade into the scenery. Knowing about the mitzwoth and halachoth isn't enough. The purpose of all the 613 mitzwoth, and near-infinite halachoth is to cleave to HaShem. Each one is another channel, another dimension, another medium in the expression of our unique relationship with HaShem. Ignoring a mitzwah is kind of like never touching your spouse because you are content merely with looking at them.

The second lesson teaches us that as long as we haven't internalized that everything is truly in HaShem's hands we will be wasting all of our time trying to control our circumstances. Which basically means we're throwing our lives away. HaShem can handle everything in our lives, we just have to handle the mitzwoth. If we don't make our relationship with HaShem, which is established through the performance of the mitzwoth, the central tenet of our existence, then our existence is going to get very tenuous. All day long we will be chasing after the shadows of oppurtunity and fleeing from fearful imaginations. When we look at the heart of each dilemma - How can I serve HaShem from this place? Then we approach every challenge with the certain knowledge that somewhere in the thick of it is where I will find HaShem.

Taken together we can see the answer, perhaps to our question:

When we're told to love HaShem and serve him with all our life and all our soul, we can see how that love needs to be transformed through the mitzwoth, through the fear of the challenge and through penetrating to the underlying truth. We may fear for our life or for our soul, but when we know the truth, that the only thing to fear is HaShem, then we are filled with so much love that we push forward in His service.

When we're relating to HaShem through pure love, there's always got to be 'more.' However close we are today, perhaps there's something we're overlooking that can bring us closer still. What about this mitzwah or that halachah that I learned but never bothered to get to know?

There's never an end to a good relationship. You can always grow closer, but it has to be through shared experiences. Mitzwoth are just that, sharing an experience with HaShem, as the root of the word mitzwah means to bind.

hear me o israel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

redemption twice daily

In Today's Tanya, (י אייר שנה מעוברת I:47) Rebbe Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the original Chabad Rebbe) explains why we read the chapter about Yetziath Mizrayim right after the two Parshioth of Shema Yisrael. (and V'Haya Im Shamo'ah)

A person is commanded to remember leaving mitzrayim as if it happened to him every single day. This leaving of Egypt isn't a physical redemption, but a spiritual one. Each day we wake up, a Godly soul in a physical body. Our bodies, in our current position hide HaShem's reality from our perception, but they cannot hide that reality from our souls. Whenever and wherever we desire to be united with HaShem, immediately the union takes place. Though, our senses aren't refined enough to experience it, our souls revel in it.

Our forefathers had to labor intensively to achieve this union, why is the situation so different for us? When HaShem gave us the Torah on Har Sinai, He gave us Himself within the Torah. Since Har Sinai, whenever we seek HaShem out, and desire His closeness, we are united with Him.

When we acknowledge HaShem's oneness and rulership over us, by reciting the Shemah Yisrael, we perform this union. In this way, every day we are brought out of the exile in Egypt and rejoined with HaShem. This is why, the Baal HaTanya says, we say the third chapter of Shemah along with the first two, even though it is a separate mitzwah, because it is [in terms of the union that takes place] one and the same with acknowledging the unity of HaShem.

losing yourself in sleep

Reflecting on the Baal HaTanya's words from yesterday (see: say a little do a lot) he explains that we accept upon us the yolk of heaven in kriath shema, and then in the amidah, specifically when we bow down, we receive upon us the yolk of heaven in actuality.

Thinking about the times of day we say the Shema, the Baal HaTanya points out that the bowing down in the Amidah is the essence of actually receiving the yolk of heaven. So what happens when we say the Shema, essentially voicing our desire to accept the yolk of heaven, but then we don't follow through with the Amidah? Namely, when we say Kriath Shema before going to sleep.

If we pay attention to what the Baal HaTanya explained the answer is apparent: The bowing is where the acceptance happens. Bowing is a form of bitul, of belittling and nullifying ourselves before HaShem. What could be more nullifying and belittling than sleep? It is as if we cease to exist altogether.

In fact, one of my favorite midrashim comes to our rescue here. Midrash Rabba on bereishith explains that when HaShem created Adam, the angels couldn't tell Adam appart from HaShem. (Presumably since he was made in the image of HaShem) In the end, HaShem put Adam to sleep which made it clear to the angels that Adam wasn't HaShem, since HaShem never sleeps. Adam was nullified before HaShem via the vehicle of sleep.

So now we can look at the act of going to sleep in an entirely different fashion. Rather than going to sleep because we are exhausted, we can see going to sleep as an act of nullifying ourselves before HaShem. It is a testament to the fact that HaShem runs the world and when we sleep the world continues to exist and function. This is why we say Shema before sleep, to prepare ourselves for the awesome revellation of HaShem that happens in sleep even more than when we are awake and bowing in the Amidah.

If we recall a long time ago, we mentioned Rebbe Nachman's teaching (see: sleep: the answer to every question) brought down in the beginning of Likkutei Halachoth that through sleep we are nullifying ourselves before HaShem and that is why we awaken with new life, refreshed. In that Torah we learn that sleep is one of the biggest tikkunim, a powerful way to fix what we have damaged in the past. [to delve into this a little deeper see: sleep as daat instead of a disconnect]

Perhaps we can even touch the level of dying for Kiddush HaShem (in the name of HaShem) when we go to sleep as an act of bitul before HaShem. After all, chazal teach us that sleep is one sixtieth of death.

say a little, do a lot

The Baal HaTanya explains today that in Shema Yisrael we take upon ourselves the yolk of heaven in word, but in Shemoneh Esrei, the silent amidah, the yolk of heaven actually rests upon us.

flames of union

It is said about the passuk of Shema Yisrael that it represents the upper union. This union is described as the union between the first two letters of HaShem's name I realized today that שמע ישראל ה אלקינו ה אחד has the gematria 1118 which seems to me it can be broken down like so:
Two candles (נר x 2), man(איש), woman(אישה), and their union(1)

Through the union of a man and woman, the י and ה come together, leaving two fires (אש), to light the two candles (נר) of Shabbath, the perfect completion of the world.

This is the upper union.

a taste of death

Here's a little pshat in Rashi that occurred to me this morning:
When Yosef is reunited with his (our) father Yaakov Avinu, he does all the action, and we don't see Yaakov Avinu respond until the next passuk, Rashi explains this: Yaakov Avinu was saying Shema at the time, so he couldn't stop in the middle to greet Yosef, his long lost son.

I asked myself this morning, why was Yaakov Avinu saying Shema Yisrael right then? The answer is actually in the very next passuk. Yaakov Avinu was fairly certain he was about to die, and so he was saying his final Keriath Shema before he passed away. Once he finished and realized he was still alive, he explained to Yosef why he hadn't stopped to greet him properly.

a burnt offering

The second passuk of Shema Yisrael says ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאדך - and love HaShem with all of your heart, all of your soul and all of your meodecha. The word Meodecha isn't a simple translation, we can translate it as your utmost but that isn't very helpful. Chazal explain that Meodecha means with both of your desires, your desire for good and your desire for evil. Loving HaShem with your desire for good we can kind of see where that is going, but how do you love HaShem with all of your evil desires?

The Noam Elimelech (Parashath Tazria) explains it like so: The desire for evil burns hot within us. It is that heat and passion with which we must love HaShem. With the very same fire that burns inside us to do evil, we must burn in desire of HaShem. As long as we don't accomplish this, our love of HaShem is incomplete, since we (chas v'shalom) lust for something else more strongly than we lust for HaShem.

I think there's a subtle distinction here, but perhaps I'm splitting hairs. There is a prohibition against bringing a foreign fire, aish zara, as an offering to HaShem. Wouldn't one normally think that the same fire that burns in the yetzer hara to do evil would be considered such a foreign fire? It seems strange that we would be permitted, even encouraged to serve HaShem with this foreign fire.

There are two points of explanation: The first is that here the Noam Elimelech seems to say that we are supposed to love HaShem with an equivalent heat, not necesarily with the very same heat of the yetzer hara, it seems like he focuses on the magnitude of our love and not the point of origin of that love. In fact he goes on to explain that as long as one's service of HaShem still involves the smallest bit of heat from the yetzer hara, ie. he is not doing the mitzwah entirely l'shmah, then he hasn't really begun his avodah. Case in point, it seems like we are meant to entirely extinguish the flame of the yetzer hara while simultaneously kindling an equivalent flame sourced in the yetzer tov.

This leads to the second related explanation: There is an idea in halachah that when a vessel moves from the reshut, the possession, of unholiness to the reshut of holiness, then it should be passed through water. In other situations where a vessel has been exposed to and infused with forebidden compounds the vessel must be purified through fire.

We see both things happening here. Love is normally associated with water, as rain that falls from heaven to earth demonstrates God's unconditional love for us. Our great love for HaShem is meant to extinguish the yetzer hara, and by suffusing it with love, water, we enable its transfer from a reshut of unholiness to a reshut of holiness. At the same time, the yetzer tov, which was exposed to the yetzer hara through all of our failings, is heated up with the same intensity of fire with which the yetzer hara formally burned. In this way the yetzer tov is returned to its state of purity.

The end result is that we have a yetzer hara which has been brought over to the reshut of holiness and a purified yetzer tov, we are now ready to serve HaShem with both of our yetzers exactly like Chazal originally instructed us.

being saved

(shemot 14:13) וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל-הָעָם, אַל-תִּירָאוּ--הִתְיַצְּבוּ וּרְאוּ אֶת-יְשׁוּעַת יְהוָה, אֲשֶׁר-יַעֲשֶׂה לָכֶם הַיּוֹם: כִּי, אֲשֶׁר רְאִיתֶם אֶת-מִצְרַיִם הַיּוֹם--לֹא תֹסִפוּ לִרְאֹתָם עוֹד, עַד-עוֹלָם.
(shemot 14:14) יְהוָה, יִלָּחֵם לָכֶם; וְאַתֶּם, תַּחֲרִשׁוּן.

Chazal tell us that we must keep geulah close to tefillah, (גאולה סמוך לתפילה) meaning that we should be careful to start the amidah (the Shemonah Esrei) directly after saying the berachah גאל ישראל - HaShem redeemed Israel. (the last of birchot shemah in shacharit)

We usually think that we are praying to HaShem that we should be redeemed. What I only noticed this morning is that we just said that HaShem already redeemed us before we started to pray, (the Amidah) what gives? Clearly, we aren't praying that HaShem should redeem us. As we mentioned in the past, we should take it on blind faith that HaShem has already taken the necesary steps to redeem us, and we should be thanking him profusely in our prayers, delighting in the closeness of HaShem's salvation.

The two passukim above should be at the forefront of your mind whenever you worry about any kind of trouble at all.

הִתְיַצְּבוּ וּרְאוּ אֶת-יְשׁוּעַת יְהוָה, אֲשֶׁר-יַעֲשֶׂה לָכֶם הַיּוֹם - bear witness to the salvation of HaShem, which he will perform for you today. יְהוָה, יִלָּחֵם לָכֶם; וְאַתֶּם, תַּחֲרִשׁוּן - HaShem will do battle on your behalf, and you will be silent.

If we can pray to HaShem truly knowing that He's already saved us, how great is the chelek of Am Yisrael!

sensitive dependence on initial conditions

We know that everything follows the seal. This principle is something Chazal quotes in reference to berachot, blessing. It is a much broader concept though, that the end defines the beginning. We see this in the phrase their beginning is embedded in their end and their end is embedded in their beginning. (from Sefer Yetzirah) We see that not only does the end influence the beginnings, but also the opposite is true, the beginning influences the outcome--something far more intuitive.

The depth of this is truly unbelievable. The hard-core mekubalim who pray with all of the kawanoth of the Rashash and the Ariz"l, take a long time to pray, but you see that all of their focus is on the beginnings. (They also take extra time on the endings, but it's not the same.) For the first passuk of Shema, the first beracha of the Amidah, they take inordinate time. Once they finish the kawanoth in the beginning, they pray the rest of the tefillah more or less at the speed that you or I would. In the rare instances that I've been able to pray with them, I find this investment at the beginning fuels the rest of your prayers. It's akin to the folk knowledge that if you "get out of the right side of the bed" so to speak then your whole day goes well.

Two days ago, on Eloki Netzur - the very beginning of the beginning of the daily prayers, I noticed that it fits perfectly to the Carlebach tune for Kabalath Shabbath. It was so uplifting that my whole tefillah went by so quickly my lips could barely keep up.

It pays to slow down and start on the right foot--then your prayers flow strong and straight.

uniting three paths

Most of my personal meditations are on the shema, there's always more to say and more to understand. Today I would like to share one of my more recent perspectives:

1. The first perek of the shema is about cleaving to God. (mesirat nefesh, here there is no mention of any evil, at this level who have only good intentions.)
2. The second perek, about Torah learning. (It starts off with hearing--Matan Torah. The evil mentioned here is for biur purposes via halachah. It mentions teaching your children)
3. The third perek, about mitzvah observance. (It specifically mentions observing all the mitzvot, but if it didn't reference the most central mitzvah, tzedakka, it wouldn't fit; but it does mention the word ונתנו which is the root of tzedakka, as well as a palindrome which the Pirkei d'Rabi Eliezer mentions hints at the reciprocal nature of tzedakka, the giver receives more even than he gives.)

Whenever we are taking any action, it is good to unite these three levels in your kavanah, your intentions. Eating, for example, we are taking something within which is Godliness and we are putting it inside of us, so here is our cleaving to God. Next, we can connect it to everything we have learned about eating and when it is and isn't permissible, not to mention it will give us energy to sit and study Torah. Lastly we can rejoice in saying the berachot and in the fact that the food we are eating is kosher, and in so doing we have connected a simple action to all of the three levels of the Shema, as described here.

For bonus points, if you want we can relate it to: thought speech and action(these three are terribly obvious so I won't even do my usual roshei perakim); and then to olam (the world is a relationship with God) shanah (this word for year, literally means to learn) and nefesh (the nefesh is the part we are doing the mitzvot for, it has 613 parts each of which relates to a particular mitzvah).

Now for the trifecta, hesed gevurah and tiferet:

1. Meditating on the kindness of God is the clearest and simplest (and strongest) way to cleave to God. קטונתי מכול החסדים the chassidic understanding of this verse with each kindness one is meant to grow more humble, making more room for God in his life. Is there another way to love God?
   
2. Torah, the gemara says, is a cure for the yetzer harah. Through the fire of Torah we pare down all the potential in the world into what is beneficial and productive, that our children and ourselves should live happily bringing the seas (literally ימים) of wisdom in heaven down to this earth.
3. Lastly, we have the little fringes that complete the edges of the total garment, the tzitzit emphasize an awareness of the whole, of being holy because God is holy. We are told to overcome our eye and our heart--not to fall whether through hesed or din, instead we must keep his commandments exactly, to be holy, to connect to God through the Torah, in manifest action, just as he took us out of egypt. Emet.

In utter knowledge of God, as a husband knows his wife, through thought, speech, and action, through wanting her, knowing/curbing her ways, and making her his, the three paths are united in something so much more complete than they were in their respective pieces.