"The Great Redemption" (15)

"The Great Redemption" by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

-- A Discourse on The End of the Exile and the Beginning of the Great Redemption

Translated by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
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15.

When the Jewish Nation went into exile a huge vale and terrible barrier came between them and their Father in Heaven about which it’s written, “For your iniquities have separated you from your G-d” (Isaiah 59:2). The prophet Jeremiah expressed it is as, “You (G-d) have covered Yourself over with a cloud so our prayer cannot pass through” (Lamentations 3:44).

But G-d had mercy on the Jewish Nation. The light of holiness grew stronger and ripped at the barrier at many points, and the many rips acted like windows, like lattices upon the barrier. But the great entrance was no longer left open after that. It’s said of these rips, “Behold, He stands behind our wall gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice” (Song of Songs 2:9).

Still-and-all it’s said “My Beloved put His hand through the doorway” (Song of Songs 5:4), because the Exalted King wanted the Jewish Nation to be redeemed. For a door hadn’t been open until that day, and He only puts His hand through these lattices.

What in fact is “His hand”? His right hand, which He’d hidden away in His bosom since the day of the destruction (of the Holy Temple), about which it’s said, “He has drawn His right hand back from the enemy” (Lamentations 2:3), and “My beloved put His hand through the doorway” (Song of Songs 5:4).

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). 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.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".

R' Ashlag Ch. 29 (sect. 2)

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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29.

2.


"(That explains) for example, why a newborn only wants the smallest of things and no more, and why (to the contrary) our other side’s ratzon l’kabel grows stronger and stronger when it gets what it wants, and even wants twice as much. And why it intensifies to such an extent that it immediately wants *four times* as much when it’s given double."

-- That is, while we're very willing and eager to take-in when we're born, indeed; the urge is nonetheless comparatively weak then, because we're only drawing upon our native ratzon l’kabel at that point. But our willingness to take-in invariably will grow exponentially stronger from there on, because we begin to draw upon the sort of deeper, more impure levels of ratzon l’kabel cited before.

"(That comes to teach us that) if we don't manage to overcome that (urge to take in more and more) through Torah and mitzvot, and to purify the ratzon l’kabel and transform it into a willingness to bestow, that our ratzon l’kabel will grow stronger and stronger throughout our life, and we'll eventually die without fulfilling half our desires -- which is regarded as being left under the auspices of the other side and the husks, whose very function is to expand and increase our ratzon l’kabel, and to broaden it and take away all its restraints, so as to provide us with all the material we need to work with and rectify."

-- Hence, we're to know that the only way to change the cakey, bloated, wily entity that is our comprehensive ratzon l’kabel into a G-dly, selfless, blameless one is to transform it into a comprehensive willingness to bestow. Otherwise it will only grow fatter and fatter till it pops. And we do that by subsuming ourselves in the mitzvah-system which demands selfless acquiescence to G-d's will.
-- But we're never to forget that we're only put through all that in order to prove ourselves valiant in battle; and that the grist for the whole alternately delectable and terrible mill that is the ratzon l’kabel is only there to "provide us with all the material we need to work with and rectify".

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). 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.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".

R' Ashlag Ch. 29 (sect. 1)

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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29.

1.

"Now we can finally begin to resolve our second inquiry, about the role we play in the great course of events that we’re such minor players in, in the short span of our days (see 1:3)."

-- This inquiry is crucial for our purposes, for it sums up our raison d'être and offers us direct guidance in how we’re to draw close to G-d, which is the point of it all. We'll be occupied with it for the next few chapters.

"Know, that our lifelong Divine service is divided into four stages. The first centers on our acquiring the comprehensive ratzon l’kabel in full measure along with all the impurity (it garnered) from the four worlds of defiled-A.B.Y.A. (Why would we have to attain it, seeing how foul it is?) Because we couldn’t rectify this corrupt ratzon l’kabel if we didn’t have it, since 'no one can rectify something he doesn’t have'".

-- We're passive participants in the first of the four stages of our spiritual development, since all we do, ironically, is take in the ratzon l’kabel -- the willingness to only take in -- in detail.
-- And we'd have to accept it in order to ultimately reject it. After all, how could we reject it if we didn't first know it? The first point, then, is that our having and internalizing wrong and un-G-dliness is inevitable to our being, and to our growth.

"But (know,too, that) the degree of ratzon l’kabel that’s granted (us) at birth isn’t enough (for our purposes). (So) it has to serve as a vehicle for the impure husks for no less than thirteen years. That means to say that the husks must control our ratzon l’kabel and grant it the husks’ lights (for that length of time), since those lights augment it. For the satisfaction that the husks supply the ratzon l’kabel increase and broaden its demands."

-- Even though R' Ashlag had originally termed the native ratzon l’kabel "comprehensive" and "full measure(d)", and said that it had "all the impurity (it garnered) from the four worlds of defiled-A.B.Y.A.", that's not to say it's the consummate ratzon l’kabel. For this native ratzon l’kabel will prove to be an obscure hint of its full and ugly self. For it can only come to fruition after having come into this world; for it was only potentially full until then.
-- Indeed, we'd need to allow in a more lumbering heftier ratzon l’kabel with each and every ugly, self-indulgent, mean detail, if we're to rectify it. For we'd have to experience the ratzon l’kabel in its entirety, in all its hideousness, in order to know it to be detrimental and objectionable (or else we'd bear with it, or just be annoyed by it). For only after having had our fill of it can we utterly reject it. Since "no one can rectify something he doesn’t have" and want to spurn.
-- That's why the native ratzon l’kabel must serve as a "vehicle (i.e., an instrument) for the impure husks for no less than thirteen years", until we ourselves can become "vehicles" for mitzvot. And it's why the native ratzon l’kabel must be controlled and emboldened by the impure husks that engorge and fatten it so.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*! You can order it right now by logging onto www.tinyurl.com/49s8t (or by going to www.rowman.com and searching for it). 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.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled "Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal".