D'var Torah

I'm very sorry about the delay in posting, explained below. I offer my class on Torah.org about Sukkos. Chag Sameach!




From Derech Hashem 4:8:2


When our ancestors left Egypt G-d provided them with a miraculous "pillar of cloud by day to guide them along the way, and a pillar of fire by night to give them light" (Exodus 13:21) which have come to be known as The Clouds of Glory. As Ramchal explains it, the sukkah we sit in on Sukkot alludes to them.

Now, there are certain undeniable metaphysical implications to The Clouds of Glory as well (as we'll soon see), but on a human-level they exemplify G-d's loving comfort and guidance. After all, G-d does indeed love us; and besides escorting us throughout the day and night, His presence likewise hovers over us lovingly and bounteously like a rain cloud on a dry summer day. And that's an important point to recall after concentrating so intently on the notion of G-d as Judge throughout Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

But what The Clouds of Glory managed to achieve on another, deeper level was to set our people apart from their surroundings. For aside from sparing them from the harsh desert winds and sands, they also separated them from the other nations they passed through -- both physically and spiritually, acting as a sort of otherworldly shield and sheath. And they also provided the venue for a unique illumination from Above that elevated our people and nourished their uniqueness.

Ramchal's point is that that same dynamic is in effect each year, on Sukkot. The sukkah we sit in all week long serves to bear us much the way The Clouds of Glory bore our ancestors. And it too allows for a certain inchoate illumination that sets the righteous among us apart from others (as well as our more righteous side from the rest of our own beings).

The lulav (palm frond) along with its myrtle- and willow-branches, and the etrog (citon) allows for that same illumination and distinction. But it also acts as a Divine emblem or weapon of sorts to daunt and disquiet our enemies. And while the geulah ("redemption") from oppression that's sure to come could come about right *now*, were it not for our failings, it will eventually come -- thanks to the illumination allowed by the mitzvah of lulav.

In fact, we act out that scenario the whole week long, when we shake the lulav and etrog, and march around the synagogue with them, as if encircling the world with a sort of "sukkah" of our own presence; and as if defeating the enemies of holiness. We also set the way for the great and ultimate illumination of G-d's presence throughout the world by doing that, and ready everything and everyone for the geulah and for the service of G-d only possible then.

(c) 2004 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

An Apology

I'm afraid we're in for yet more delay in our project. Some extra editorial issues have come up in the life of my Sh'mone Perakim ("Eight Chapter") book that have to be addressed in depth, and of course we're coming up to the Yom Tov season with its own claims. I beg your tolerance.

Best wishes for a good and sweet year full of just-so challenges and just-right resolutions (which is what it's all about after all, isn't it?).

R' Ashlag Ch. 10

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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Ch. 10

1.

"Now we can begin to understand (the dynamic behind) our fourth inquiry as to how it was possible for the chariot of defilement and husks, which is so utterly and completely apart from Him, to emerge from G-d’s Holiness; and how it could be that He supports and sustains it. But we'd first have to understand what defilement and the husks are all about."

-- See our opening remarks about all this in 3:1.

"Just know that our ratzon l’kabel -- which is the essence of our souls, the reason we indicated for their being created, and the means by which they're prepared to accept everything incorporated in the thought of creation -- won't remain in the soul in that form forever. Because if it did, our souls would be separated from G-d forevermore, inasmuch as such a discrepancy of tsurot (unavoidably) separates them from Him."

-- R' Ashlag's vital point here is that while our ratzon l’kabel is eminently purposeful and of *ultimate importance* for our functions in this universe, it's still-and-all "temporary" and will become unfixed when the universe is undone in The End of Days, as it must be.

-- This is a rather shocking idea to those of us who can't quite understand how anything as fundamental to the human situation as the ratzon l’kabel is said to be could *ever* be undone. For it's commonly held that while any and all worldly circumstances can change, human nature is immutable (as if it were G-d's own). After all, they reason, doesn't world literature prove that! Aren't we the same piteous fools and venerable sages the Phoneticians and early Chinese were? Won't we always be? But human nature will indeed change -- forever and radically so. And, ironically, while *at present* human deeds and moods vary all the time with changes of circumstance while basic human nature doesn't, when the greatest change of circumstance possible occurs, human deeds and moods will slowly become undone and human nature will be utterly refashioned.

-- What makes this point so consequential is that our ratzon l’kabel -- our G-d-given ability to take in all that G-d, the Ultimate Benefactor, has provided us with -- was granted us purposefully. For were we not willing to accept what G-d offers us, then His plans for the cosmos would be thwarted on some level. Nonetheless, since our taking-in does undo our relationship to G-d -- which is the *only* thing that will endure in the end, bar none -- our ratzon l’kabel will and must terminate in the end. But for a vital and G-dly reason, as we'll see.

2.

"So in order to repair this division implanted in our soul's vessel -- i.e., our ratzon l’kabel -- after G-d created the worlds He separated them into two systems, in keeping with the mystical import of the statement that “G-d made the one as well as the other” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)."

-- This verse implies that everything but G-d Himself has its equal and opposite counterpart in the universe; its "doubleganger".

"The two systems comprise the four worlds of holy-A.B.Y.A., and their counterpart, the four worlds of defiled-A.B.Y.A."

-- A.B.Y.A. is an acronym for A-tzilut, B-eria, Y-etzirah, and A-siyah, the four Kabbalistic supernal "worlds" or planes of existence, in descending order of significance and potency. Holy- and defiled-A.B.Y.A. are thus two utterly antithetical parallel universes, with one (holy-A.B.Y.A.) being rooted in the willingness to bestow and the other (defiled-A.B.Y.A.) in the willingness to accept. The two divisions are significant because ...

"G-d instilled the ratzon l’hashpia (the willingness to bestow) into the worlds of holy-A.B.Y.A. and withdrew the ratzon l’kabel from them, and placed it into the defiled-A.B.Y.A., which explains why we've become separated from G-d and all the holy realms."

-- The "willingness to bestow" is all-good and G-dly, since "G-d is all-good and benevolent" (1:5) and His sole "intention when He created the world was to bestow pleasure upon His creatures" (7:1). And it's thus the antithesis of the ratzon l’kabel. Our aim is to aspire to bestowance and to undo the ratzon l’kabel in the process, as we'll learn later on.

3.

"That's why the husks are referred to as 'the dead' and why wrongdoers are attracted to them. For our sages indicated that all wrongdoers are termed 'dead' even in their lifetimes (Berachot 18B)."

-- That means to say that the husks are as "dead" (i.e., severed from G-d's presence) as their offshoot, wrong, since they dwell in an unG-dly universe.

"Because the ratzon l’kabel that has been implanted in them is diametrically opposite in tsurah to G-d's Holiness, which thus separates them from the “the Life of all Lives” (G-d) and utterly severs them from Him. For He wants only to bestow rather than to accept while the husks want only to accept for their own sake rather than bestow, and there's no greater disparity than that. For as you already know, 'distance' in the spiritual sense starts with some sort of disparity of tsurah and culminates in an utter disparity, which is the ultimate degree of 'distance' (i.e., estrangement)."

(c) 2004 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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Get your own copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” by logging onto http://www.aronson.com/jbookstore/ and typing in "The Gates of Repentance".
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has translated and commented upon "The Gates of Repentance", "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). And his new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Judaica Press.
His works are available in bookstores and in various locations on the Web.
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