Parashat Tetsaveh

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The Command Implied in Man’s Part of the Covenant

(PART ONE)

 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

“And place upon the hoshen the urim vetumim.” (28:30)   Ramban: “And this is a certain level of ruah hakodesh.  It is below prophecy, and above bat kol which was used in the second Temple when prophecy had ceased and urim vetumim had ceased, as our Sages pointed out.”

I sense that this ranking of prophecy, ruah hakodesh, and bat kol, exists along the track of the merger between the allies.   In prophecy, the higher of the allies is mainly the active one, while the lower ally, the human side of the covenant serves only as a transmitting station; through ego-nullification, through helplessness, dreaming rather than awake, the prophet hears a voice speaking to him.  The navi is charged with the duty of transmitting this higher imperative to mortal men, just as it is, with no processing or interpretation.  It can even happen that the navi himself does not understand the words.

It is important to note that the status of the navi is not expressed only in the prophetic transmission.  His role is derived from spiritual leadership, and from his authority as the faithful shepherd bearing God’s Word to His flock.  Thus the authority of the prophet was raised over, and compelled the authority of the king, when the king feared God, as King David with the prophet Natan.

In ruah hakodesh, the side of the human being, as God’s ally, is expressed.  Ruah hakodesh is merited by one who has distill himself of all impurity, in his midot,  righteousness, and good deeds.  This teaches you how high human quality can climb on the ladder of sanctity, when it is purified of yetser hara, and when it is purified of coarse matter that does not serve sanctity.

“Be sacred.”  “Be separated.”  Sacred man, as in “sacred men shall you be to Me.”  It is only natural that ruah hakodesh should settle on a person distilled and refined.  We should note that that the immanence of the Shechina is not a permanent Godly Presence, as a given situation, but rather as a possible situation, after the necessary conditions of refinement and distillation have been fulfilled.

Bat kol is simply a phenomenon originating in the upper worlds, which comes to let the heavenly opinion be known, in order to balance or to contradict the opinion of sages occupied with halacha.  The preoccupation with halacha, like limud Torah, deals with clarifying the higher truth, as this truth is expressed within human reality.  This preoccupation with clarifying truth has no need of means or methods that come from a source outside of the preoccupation itself.  Therefore the Sages declared: “We pay no heed to bat kol,”  since lo bashamayim he, “[the Torah] is not in heaven.”

Hester, a state of “hiddenness.”

There is no doubt that these three expressions of truth originating in heaven are faithful testimonials to the spirit from above that rests upon a nation faithful to its covenant, and that they have something about them of the  giluy panim, “the revealing of the Face,” that was revealed for the first time during the period of Mordechai and Esther.  (“Where is Ester alluded to in the Torah?  As it says, I shall aster – hide My Face from them at that time.’”)

The “revealing of the Face” comes to clarify, for those of little faith who have come to a point of despair in a situation of existential distress, that in any distress, no matter how difficult, there is no fear or threat of “God has abandoned the earth”.  Hester panim in a sense is the revelation of the Godly Presence within the human reality, merged within the subtle textures of man and universe.

The discoveries of torrential happiness on Purim are caused by the move from the horrifying hiddenness that had threatened the very existence of the Jews, by the transformation “from anguish to joy and from mourning to holiday” by a dizzying leap from imminent death, anchored in the law, and signed with the king’s seal, from which there is no turning back, to the other extreme of obvious victory and proud dominion over their deadly foes.  Everything that lies between these two opposites, in existence’s yawning gap, is not the dwelling place of a devouring black hole, but rather a free open vastness, filled with the spirit of God, Who exists forever, “Who redeems and Who saves at every moment of trouble and distress.”

This is the discovery that death is not a part of life, that the Godly reality peers through the partition and is the cause and source of an experience of life that is stable.