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PESAH
Slavery – Lack of Self-Definition
“There Can Be Wealth
Reserved for its Owner –
For His Undoing...”
Embarras de choix
Translated from Hebrew by DR.
S. NAthan
l'ilui
nishmat Esther bat mordechai
L'ILUI NISHMAT
MAYER HIRSH BEN LAIBEL
crushing labor
The process of transition decreed upon the Children of
Israel was no random happening: From slavery to
freedom; from Egypt to…the desert?
On the surface, this
would not appear to be a balanced process. One
might expect that a response to slavery should carry
equal weight in the opposite direction: In order to
counteract the 49 gates of impurity to which they had
deteriorated, wouldn't they require an equally
weighted response in the opposite direction?
Shouldn’t they now be made to confront a wealth of
opportunity, in which many roads lead to
perfection? A vast and varied spectrum of
opportunity, in which every single individual could
succeed in finding his own path to his Creator; in
which he would find expression for the originality
that makes him unique, that separates him from his
fellows, from his environment.
This would be a proper
contrast to the enslavement of Egypt, which was called
perach, which Hazal defined as “women’s work
for men,” a principle of blurring, of creating
confusion: Work that does not suit one, that one would
have never chosen out of one’s own free will, being
that it requires talents one does not have, that it
forces one to deal with its requirements, despite
their being the very opposite of one’s affinities and
tastes.
It appears from
Egypt’s attitude that no sinister creativity is
necessary, nor inventive techniques for torturing the
body and the mind. One need not create a torture
chamber. What is needed is merely – and with
elegant simplicity – to push a human being into a
corner that is so tight that he has no room to
create his own creative space, thereby emptying him
entirely of all his talents, and bringing him to the
point of absolute loss of his own personality.
Gradually he will lose
his capacity for self-defense as well – a weapon the
enemy would do well to beware of, for after all - "as
they afflicted him, so he increased and
proliferated.” Indeed, the Egyptians made this
mistake at the early stage of the enslavement, and it
merely had the effect of arousing resistance, both
overt and covert. Obvious danger arouses
resistance, and awakens to their maximum the abilities
and powers that are hidden in a human being.
Abilities forgotten
and made dormant by routine awaken when they encounter
a threat, to an extent and of a quality astonishing in
their power and scope. The art of war prefers to
put the enemy to sleep, rather than to irritate his
rest and arouse him to fight back with full
mettle. Indeed, avodat parech was
the means that brought the nation to the brink of
destruction – a condition of dulling the senses, of
torpor and stupor, of losing one’s way. Of the
slack limpness that brings to gloom and despair.
A situation in which a man loses all hope, and then
surrenders. This situation is defined by Hazal
as mem-tet sha’arei tumah, “the forty-nine
gates of impurity”. Only the fiftieth gate
remained just around the corner – the gate beyond
which there is no return.
Here the Creator’s
great hesed makes its appearance: Z’chut
avot, the merit of our forefathers, is the great
miracle that constitutes the basis for
redemption. Intervention by itaruta dilitata
is a prime expression of the love of the Great
Shepherd for his flock.
The miracle of Egypt
is the miracle of the Promised Love – the
unconditional love that reaches out to a human being
tashev enosh ahd daka, “even when he has hit
bottom”, that seeks every lost soul, ki lo yidah
mimenu nidah, such that “even the most lost can
never be lost to Him”, as was the case with B’nei
Yisrael, trapped by a volcanic sea ahead, and by
the Egyptian hordes from behind.
Beloved to such an
extent that no effort whatsoever is even demanded of
him. Except to remember that he is beloved, as
far as he is able to. And if he finds himself in
a situation where even remembering is difficult for
him, He Who loves him will bestow His blessing and His
healing intervention upon him nevertheless.
What is love?
At the first stage,
love is a given, handed over to the beloved in
advance. Such is a mother’s love – at the most
basic stage, at the level of sense perception.
The child feels confidence in this love, beyond all
doubt. He experiences the certainty that this
love is guaranteed him; it is already in his
pocket. From here the concept of pat bisalo
“the bread lies already in his basket” is derived – a
condition in which ease and satisfaction are
guaranteed even before one has brought the bread to
one’s lips. This is an experience that sifts
down to the very infrastructure of the personality, to
the very foundation of one’s being, to become one’s
basic experience of existence.
Effectively, this love
serves as a defense weapon against the survival
anxiety that accompanies every living being, that
confuses one as to the goal of one’s existence – that
becomes the enemy leading one astray, in a direction
that will destroy everything good that would have
bloomed in the garden of originality and talent.
Survival anxiety is a
terrifying fear. It provokes the
self-preservation mechanism, which is an animal-like
system that is all entirely negation and destruction
and a blurring of ability and destiny. It trades
destiny for existence, and goals for means.
All that is required
of B’nei Yisrael, the Creator’s loved ones, is one
strategy: “Remember and do not forget”. It is
the weapon of memory, versus forgetfulness born of
anxiety and despair: The more you remember the
Creator’s love to you, the more quickly redemption
will come.
This is true even
before your love for Him comes into being. A Jew
is not required, at the first stage, to love and to
long to cleave in love to his Father in heaven.
Dayenu, “it is enough for us” that we remember
His love to us. This is the secret of the Dayenu.
It is the secret of the histapkut bimu’at of
the One Who loves. The One Who loves suffices
with little. He suffices, He is satisfied with
the mere fact that the beloved recognizes Him,
recognizes His love.
And if the second part
of love can be realized too, in which the beloved
loves the One Who loves, well then, this attains the
goal of creation: the longed-for union between Creator
and created.
The idyllic state of
the Garden of Eden is born of this, and at a later,
creative stage, the idyllic state of building the Bet
HaMikdash, of heaven and earth paralleling one
another, of the sanctuary below facing the sanctuary
above, of mutual awareness – the goal of
creation. This is the really and truly idyllic
state, the most perfect poetic expression of which is
Shir HaShirim, The Song of Songs, of which
Hazal say: “All the scriptures are holy but Shir
HaShirim is the Holy of Holies.”
bread of poverty: reducing the scope of
free choice.
Dough,
any dough, any contact of water with flour activates a
process of fermentation – of leavening. The
prohibition against fermentation, “no leavening shall
you eat”, resembles the prohibition against creative
labor on Shabat. It is a prohibition against
intervention by human initiative. It is a return
to the natural raw state, to the primordial unformed
mass. It is restriction in the sense of ceasing,
of shunning the first imperative: “By the sweat of
your brow shall you eat bread.”
Prohibiting the first imperative: Blessing
or curse?
Is there not in the
prohibition against fermentation a hint of repair for
the punishment of Adam HaRishon? A hint of
pushing aside the measure of judgment for the loving
Creator’s measure of compassion, which grants man the
gift of the lost Paradise?
There is something to
this, no doubt. Yet this fruit holds a
thorn. After all, Paradise denied man the joy of
creating yesh mai’ayin, being out of
non-being. “To tend it and to preserve it” meant
merely to preserve the existing situation as it
was. Even when Adam was commanded at first to
observe one single mitsva, he had difficulty
sustaining it; he stumbled and transgressed it the
very same day! How much more so after he had
tasted of creativity, “including its innards and legs
and thighs,” the taste of sin, the taste of the
capacity for creativity.
The prohibition
against hamets caused Hillel to bind together
matsot and bitter herbs, and to command that they be
eaten together. This is for the element of
positively limiting and reducing that is connected to
the prohibition against hamets. It is a
negative commandment bound to a positive
commandment. In this positive commandment of
Hillel’s, there is indeed some suggestion of tikun,
of repairing the damage done by eating of the Tree of
Knowledge, by a willing acceptance of limitation
through renouncing human/creative intervention in the
creation.
Or perhaps it is a
return to the creation as it is. Renunciation as
a sign of the gratitude of the beloved, toward the One
Who loves. Gratitude and recognition as a first
step, in the process of love awakening in the beloved
– as a response to the love of the One who
loves. It is a step leading eventually to the
state of mutual love – queen of all creation.
This is a state in which Quality as such and
relative quality come together in a completing
encounter.
A prohibition, a
negative commandment attached to a positive
commandment is a condition that aspires to achieve the
repair of the schism that is the curse of
creation. A completing encounter between Quality
as such and quality in relation to…such an encounter
grants means the taste of ends. It is a state of
leil shimurim, “a night of watching” of
distancing all things that can cause harm. It is
a state of Godly Presence in all Its glory. “Not
by a messenger.” “And I came down to save
them.” It is a state of “God will wage war for
you, and you will keep silent”, of removing the
necessity of even making an effort, for effort is the
decree that comes as punishment for a deficiency in
the beloved’s trust in and recognition of the love of
the Creator.
It is a love that
cancels all doing. “Why cry out to Me?
Speak to B’nai Yisrael and have them travel.”
Renunciation by the One Who loves, of any payment on
the part of the beloved. The One Who loves does
not even require that the beloved turn to Him with his
request. This love does not depend upon
anything; an absolute Lover Who loves to bestow His
love and receive nothing at all in return, even no
expectation of prayer, of supplication by the beloved
to be granted what he needs.
Here perhaps the
kernel of doom is buried. It is absolute love on
the one hand, but it is conditional upon an almost
absolute renunciation of creative initiative.
Absolute love in exchange for absolute renunciation of
any sense of power. To grant patronage in
exchange for a flawed, crippled condition? A
poor man’s party!
It would seem that
there is a change of direction here, rather than a
cutting of the branch Bnei Yisrael is sitting
on. It is not a departure from a merely
physical/emotional slavery, for the adoption – though
willing – of a different state of slavery.
Rather, we have here a move from slavery to freedom.
As mentioned, the
beginning stage is a mother’s love for her son.
The son is not permitted to hold on to this
stage. He must leave this stage, and move toward
the independence of “therefore shall a man leave his
father and mother and cleave to his wife.” He
must move from the stage of love that receives to the
stage of love that bestows. He must move from
being a taker to being a giver.
The temptation of wealth versus the temptation
of poverty.
The
release from confusing wealth
(in
truth restrictive enslavement)
toward a freedom that opens a new channel:
creativity within quality
Here we find a
response to the question that must be asked, as
mentioned above: Where is the balance between the
enslavement within wealth, which prevailed in Egypt,
and the desert wilderness, where their thoughts turned
longingly to Egypt? Is a desert wilderness a
counterweight to the wealth of the mistress of
nations? The competition is unfair.
It would seem that we
have here a process of liberation from
temptations. A wealth of opportunities, when
they are all unsuitable, falls into the category of
“there is such a thing as wealth saved for its owner –
for his undoing”, because it holds the fulfillment of
imaginary needs. It contains stimulations that
create needs that a person does not need in order to
express his uniquely original ability.
“Who is wealthy?
He who is happy with his portion.” This refers
to a recognition of the needs that derive from one’s
own uniquely original ability, which sets one apart
from one’s fellow. It is a recognition of one’s
own uniqueness, a definition of one’s own needs as
they derive from a root that is the father of all
needs: The need for expression and actualization of
creativity.
Only needs that derive
from the element of creativity contain what one needs
to enrich and develop one’s personality in the
direction of perfection. Any other need falls
into the category of “do not add”, and “whoever adds,
detracts.” Just as a company is careful to
prevent a worker who is “overqualified” from joining
their staff, out of concern that he will not adjust to
the existing worker population, that he will have
difficulty cooperating with them, and that he will
arouse the envy of the other workers, so does a
superfluous need run the risk of confusing one as to
one’s other needs, and of blurring one’s awareness of
one’s own specific quality – which needs to be defined
as sharply as possible.
Here lies the answer
to the eternal question: Which is more
difficult? The temptation of wealth or the
temptation of poverty?
Confusion results from
an excess of choice. According to this
principle, it is easy to understand the trap that lies
hidden in the temptation of wealth, and it is
difficult to understand what is so bad about the
temptation of poverty. What trial is there in
it? After all a poor person is not surrounded by
temptations as is his wealthy fellow.
Why do Hazal not view
poverty as an ideal condition, and why do they persist
in being so attached to a condition of corrected
wealth, meaning: “Who is wealthy? He who is
happy with his portion.” Why cannot they simply
state: “Beware of wealth – cling to poverty,” as does
Christianity’s simplistic perception.
We see here that
poverty conceals a different trap: It stimulates a
sensation of lack. A sensation of
distress. A sensation of existential
threat. Danger!
Nevertheless, it seems
that the bait set by wealth is more serious and its
danger is greater. In wealth there is no
sensation of danger, fear, or despair. There is
the danger that one will be put one to sleep, that
one’s senses will be dulled. As opposed to the
trial of wealth, there is something about the trial of
poverty that rouses one to seek a solution.
Hazal’s wealthy person
who is happy with his portion is not the wealthy
person who suffers from an abundance that does not fit
him. Rather he suffices with what he has, and he
has no need of more, due to his awareness of his own
uniquely original personality and its needs.
Therefore he does not fall into the somnolence of
routine and of sleep-inducing atrophy.
What is love?
Love in Stages
Our masters dispute
the issue in the Gemara (Pesahim 116:A) regarding the
phrasing of the Hagada: “It begins with condemnation
and concludes with praise. ‘What is
condemnation? Rav said: ‘From the beginning our
fathers were idol worshippers.’ Shmuel said: ‘We
were slaves.’”
How are we to
understand the words of Shmuel? What
condemnation or guilt is there in a condition of
slavery? Further, we must understand the reason
for beginning with condemnation? Why speak
derogatorily of our forefathers at all?
It seems that Hazal’s
reference is not to the simply derogatory, but rather
to a fundamental distinction that must be made in
regard to the worthy topic of love.
“We were slaves”: A
condition that prevents the development and growth of
love in the garden of the self. Slavery is
compared to earth that is scorched and desiccated,
that produces thorns and thistles, that cannot absorb
the seed that is sown, and lacks the basic conditions
that would allow its proper nutrition and
growth.
Within human behavior,
slavery resembles a blockage preventing the absorption
of the seed of love, blocking it from penetrating the
human heart, due to habits of enslavement to the
tendency of belonging, which prevent freedom and
prevent free choice, even before free choice is born.
Choice cannot appear in
the arena of behavior without a prior stage, and this
is self-awareness, and a recognizing of the conditions
and needs that this self-awareness creates.
Recognition of the uniqueness, of the uniquely
original quality that defines one particular
individual, that sets him apart from any other.
Belonging supplies an
individual with protection and identification.
Protection of, and identification with another are not
possible without a recognition of one’s own individual
quality, because identification is created in the
encounter between what is recognized as unique on
either side. This is necessary in order to
define differentness and to receive the balance and
feedback that create the fertile ground of reciprocity
– giving and taking at the same time – which grants
the relationship stability on both sides.
From here we derive the
formula that determines the relationship between
belonging and freedom: Belonging is the container and
framework, its goal being to protect and to provide
tools and opportunities for one’s unique quality, in
order to encourage it and to provide it with the
capacity to express itself and to create.
Here we see that belonging
without freedom creates slavery, which means
dependency on and enslavement to frameworks – to
environment, to habits devoid of purpose – a limiting
and strangling dependency. Such belonging is
created by the survival system, which is aroused in
the existential void created by lack of expression of
the creative self. A vacuum of expressions of
individual quality arouses existential fear, which
stimulates the survival instinct, which arouses the
desire to escape to the dubious shelter of
belonging. A vicious cycle of self-destruction
is thus created.
The editors of the Hagada
point to the danger of this process, and also point to
a way out, to a solution – in the form of the chorus
of “Had Gadia”. At the beginning and at the end
of the “Had Gadia” they place the supreme value, the
Holy One – as the goal toward which all the stages of
existence are directed, and on which it bestows
constructive positive meaning.
Thus a vicious closed
cycle, ultimately strangling itself, turns into an
open cycle creating a bridge over which creative
meaning flows from beginning to end, controlled by the
free choice of the conductor of the orchestra – that
is, the individual who controls his own
existence.
You might say, was it for
naught that the Creator endowed man with the survival
mechanism? After all, man must exist within a
cruel universe, having been chased out of the Garden
of Eden.
Yet this is not so.
Being chased out of Gan Eden did not have the
effect of transforming what was a wonderful Godly
creation into a hell. The aspect of destruction,
man himself created, with his own hands. Being
chased out of Gan Eden only caused the split,
the separation of creation into distinct factors, into
separate parts, in order that man might put them
together anew – as demonstrated by the example of
Moshe putting together the Mishkan, given as a repair
for man’s sin – that he might feel like an active
partner in the creation, and not have to eat the bread
of shame, as per his request.
A world in which belonging
exists separate from freedom is a cruel universe,
because the separation resulting from the expulsion
from Gan Eden turned these two elements into mutually
antagonistic mechanisms Yet through man’s
initiative, they are designed to be made to complement
one another. If man is lazy, and tries to lean
on the status quo, on the existing situation – “if he
does not toil on the eve of Shabat, what shall he eat
on Shabat?” – then the “natural” survival mechanism of
raw unformed matter turns against him. It
becomes something enslaving and limiting, making of
man a dependent miserable creature, lost to free
choice.
Conversely, a mechanism of
freedom that has no hold on the reality of belonging,
transforms freedom into wanton abandon. Creative
man, however, unites the two of them into a form of
belonging that serves as a framework and a container
for freedom. Every individual has a certain
framework and a certain content that fits his unique
needs.
The concept “natural” has
no existential justification without man’s active
intervention. Without man, the ecology will
destroy itself no less than it will be destroyed by
his self-preservation mechanism, when this mechanism
is not controlled and does not receive its work plan
and its value-based goal from the crown of creation –
man.
Without the interference
of the destructive survival mechanism, man completes
the creation that has been separated, making it whole,
and turning it into a cybernetic cycle boasting the
perfect features of repair and balance that deter all
harm.
So too among the
components of the body; a perfect balance exists
between the systems of nerves, muscles, and skeleton,
and hormonal system – and all without survival’s
intervention. When survival interferes, it
causes chaos among all the systems, which fight each
another because there is no creative self, no
controller who perseveres in the incessant effort of
merging the separate components.
Thus an immune system that
was ideally designed to guard the body from foreign
invaders, begins to fight and to destroy vital inner
parts. Thus every component fights every
other component, and fights itself as well.
Thus too in relation to
social and cultural influences, and thus too in
relation to the queen of all components, intelligence,
which becomes man’s chief enemy against himself: Its
fishing rod pulls in “ideals” that have the power to
destroy the world and the human race, and all
camouflaged as an ideal, come to repair.
Even the very fact of a
supreme value, the very awareness of the Creator of
the universe, intelligence has turned upside down, and
put in its place a Golden Calf. The yetser
hatov, the good-creating urge, it views as the yetser
hara, the evil-creating urge, and vice
versa. Whereas when they are cooperating, the yetser
hara serves the yetser hatov and grants
tangible realness to its meaning.
Let man leave the evil
inclination and the survival mechanism alone, and let
him invest in the quality of choice, and choose the
Godly goal for which sake he came into this world, and
then a peace of perfection will come into all his
components and into the components of creation,
without his needing to labor to put them together as
long as he labors to direct them toward their Godly
destiny.
“Slaves were we to Paro in
Egypt”: It began with a condemnation of slavery, which
is a condemnation of the separation that allows the
component parts to enslave the whole, to enslave a
human being, who labors vainly to expend localized
efforts on each component, while ignoring the need to
build the whole, to merge all the components together
into a perfect union, to create a hie nosai et
atsmo – a living entity that is self-sustaining,
that carries its own weight.
“Every disease I have
placed upon Egypt, I shall not place upon you.”
In vain shall you weary yourself with the
pragmatic science of medicine “because I am God your
Healer.” When God wills it “He heals all flesh
and does wondrously” and then the efforts of the
pragmatic approach are expended in vain.
Indeed, when medical
theory takes a spiritual approach, embracing man as an
entirety of body – spirit – life force, there lies a
constant, healthy cure. We find that the process
of natural healing cannot be found in nature outside
of man. Rather, nature awaits and requires man
to activate it, by investing it with his intelligence,
wisdom and judgment, and mainly with what determines
and defines all his needs, whether physical, mental,
emotional, or spiritual: His own personal goals and
ideals as an individual.
Recognition of one’s own
uniqueness and of its destiny is what causes all the
components to unite into a whole that is healthy and
that moves toward a theocentric destiny. The
chorus of Dayenu is designed to express this
need for definition of uniqueness, by distinguishing
between essential needs and secondary needs.
“Whoever adds [needs that do not define uniqueness]
detracts” and blurs the entire unique entity.
At each specific stage,
there was that stage’s specific vital need, and in
God’s giving us that, it was enough for us, to fulfill
that need in order to create a whole and perfect
union. Meaning, Dayenu, it was enough
for us at that stage of development, and it fulfilled
the need that characterized that stage.
it is AT THIS STAGE
LOVE THAT DOES NOT DEPEND ON ANYTHING APPEARs
The Creator’s love of
his people Israel is comparable at this stage to a
mother’s love. A love of giving. In one
direction only, without calculations, without
expectation of thanks. A love that bursts forth,
without needing to be aroused by the beloved’s
appealing for what he needs. “And I saw their
affliction, and the oppression that Egypt oppresses
them – and I remembered my covenant.”
Covenant. Promise to their forefathers.
Love without any conditions imposed upon the beloved.
You might say, this is
love at its supreme peak – perfect love dependent on
nothing at all: A beautiful scene unfolds before us, a
promise that is absolute. However, this stage of
love is one-directional. It has no
continuity. It is effective as a provider of
first-aid, as a life raft in an emergency, when facing
an existential threat.
One cannot be built
from this. “Even when they were in the land of
their enemies, I did not reject them.” Such love
does not hold the sustainability or continuity that
brings redemption, for that comes only as a slow
process of bi-lateral growth. Perfect love
requires a basis of reciprocity. Of dialogue
between the ones who love each other, who take their
stand from a position of comparable quality, sharing
love’s fruit between them.
It appears that this
is the love Rav is referring to: A perfect love based
on reciprocity. Not that of a slave, limited in
his expression of quality. Rather, the love of
capability, which contains choice. One is free
to love and also to hate, and even to betray.
Thus with the sin of
the Calf, and thus with the idolatry of Egyptian
bondage. It was not slaves whom the Creator came
to redeem, but idol worshippers who had strayed from
the path in terms of their own quality.
Idol lovers versus
lovers of God. The tribe of Levi versus the asafsuf
and the erev rav, the rabble and the mob of
mixed multitudes. It was these whom God came to
redeem, by negotiating redemption in stages, through –
the ten plagues brought upon the Egyptians.
“One opposite the
other.” Love and hate. The devotion and
self-sacrifice of the tribe of Levi and of Nahshon ben
Aminadav, versus traitors fallen in love with Egypt’s
forty nine gates of impurity, including all the
bewilderingly deceptive wealth that it contained.
“For one who does not
know how to ask, you open for him.”
One-directional love is only an opening stage.
To the wise one and to the wicked one, whose questions
are similar, one has the obligation to reply, and to
confront each one according to his particular
nature. Both deserve to be related to.
This is love that aspires to reciprocity.
Love is quality:
Both one-directional love and mutual love express the
quality of the one who loves. An existential
attitude, on other hand, is born of the encounter with
survival needs: You protect me and I’ll protect
you. Honor among thieves. Love appears
where survival has been halted. The one who
loves expresses his quality in his love. This is
a value-based quality originating in the Godly image
imprinted in man. The greater one’s quality, the
more qualitative, pure, and non-dependent upon
accompanying conditions one’s love will be.
As mentioned, love has
a beginning stage – one-directional love. This
has no continuity and no creativity. Quickly
enough, the baby who has become an adolescent will
free himself from this strangling dependency of the
one-directional love of the mother: “Therefore shall a
man leave his father and his mother and cleave to his
wife, and they will become one flesh.
Is it indeed so?
“An embryo is its mother’s loin,” is it not?
One’s mother, one cannot divorce, but one’s wife one
certainly can indeed. Nevertheless, it is in the
love of a wife that the kernel of creative quality
lies buried, while in the love of a mother lies buried
a kernel of doom, of dependency, of the fanning of the
flames of egoism, which is the heritage of the
survival mechanism.
This is because the
first stage of love prevents and blocks the
continuation of the development of love as a process
that brings love to fertile perfection between two who
love.
There is hope for the
deliberate heretic, one who sins consciously, more
that for the one who sins out of appetite. That
is what is meant by the saying: “In the place where
the possessors of teshuva stand, even the
totally righteous cannot stand.”
The first one is aware
and intelligent and there is someone to talk to.
If only he would want it. The second is the one
who does not know how to ask, who lacks awareness of
the basic meaning and purpose of creation.
He is just like someone unconscious, in terms of
unique quality. Both are equally unable to deal
with good or evil.
The one-directional
love of the first stage comes to awaken awareness and
self-recognition in the beloved. Hacarat
hatov, recognition of good – the gratitude that
is awakened within them when they are faced with the
great saving, that God has rescued them from their
distress, will encourage and will awaken within them
that awareness that they are missing, and this is the
power of such love.
At this point, this
love must move aside, in favor of love based on
reciprocity, for the latter’s chances for reaching
perfection are much better. Al zeh yitpalel
col hasid. “For this, every devout person
might pray:” Sheyibaneh hamikdash bimhaira
viyamainu. “That the Bet HaMikdash will be
built quickly, in our days,” meaning that mutual love
creates Godly Presence within the human being who
loves, which parallels the Bet HaMikdash on high, an
expression for the Creator’s love.
Deviations (Yisurim,
Torments) of Love
If love is quality,
and if this quality requires a partner in order to
develop into love, it seems that these definitions may
be useful in revealing a small fraction of the
infinite experience of existence called love, which in
its mighty wave washes away all the boundaries of
permitted and forbidden. This is the love that
leads all of the qualities, even the Godly ones: As
has already been investigated and concluded, finally
and decisively, the mida of love has even a
higher status than the mida of awe. And
Rabi Akiva has already determined that even in terms
of the love of one’s fellow, it stands above all: Vi’ahavta
lirayacha camocha – zeh clal gadol baTorah..
“And you shall love your fellow as yourself – that is
the great rule of the Torah.” That is what
opens, and that is what completes the cycle of Godly
existence in this world.
Love’s quality, if so,
would be a function of the Godly quality with which
man is blessed. Despite its being possessor of a
status that is higher than morality itself, for after
all, “love covers all crimes,” it nevertheless does
not tolerate any severing from its Godly source.
And those children of fortune, who have been blessed
with a higher-grade Godly spark – their love too
expresses this.
Such love never leaves
the category of avodat Hashem, God’s service,
and in this service, if its quality is in keeping with
their uniqueness, they will find they will find their
own personal, perfect, fruitful ge’ula,
redemption – with the mitsva of “be fruitful and
multiply” included as well. In this way, the
quality of their love will find expression in the love
of a wife. “And whoever is greater than his fellow,
his urge is greater than his”, and therefore this need
will find expression in the choice of a wife.
It is thus possible to
create a scale of categories of love, according to the
quality of the ones who love:
Among the simple, of
little faith and paltry quality, their love finds its
way along the flat mechanical plains of bodily needs
and hormonal activity. Even their desire is
correspondingly small, and devoid of rich imagination,
and paltry in romantic feeling. The danger for
these people lies in a loss of their love after the
first satisfaction. This is a partnership
supported by mutual needs of existence – whether
material or social.
Belonging is important
to them more than their freedom, which lacks
originality and uniqueness. Marriages that are
supported by social pressure, by going according to
what is accepted, with no need for personal taste –
these are the most common and prevalent
marriages. The matchmaking stock exchange is
blooming for this huge social stratum, which
determines things according to external givens, and
which is executed according to conventionally accepted
rules of a technical nature that have been fixed in
advance. This is not love in the sense of quality, but
rather on the flat material/social plain.
On the other hand,
there are those who merit belonging to the camp of Ben
Azai. This level of love is so high that it has
difficulty finding a fitting partner, and they find
expression for their infinite love in the Torah.
Woe to those who are rich in quality yet far from
Torah. The turbulent throes of their love
overflow the “small vessels” that – in the fever of
their imaginary love – become fantasies hanging on a
turbulent thread: Thus lives are sacrificed for
illusory ideals, for a blind fanaticism that lacks all
hold on reality; for a love of women that is both
symbolic and unrestrained, that consumes in its fire
the one who loves with no beloved.
Such was the case with
many great writers and artists who were blessed with a
gift of God but without service of God, who served
Molech, and sacrificed the fruit of their love to
him. Their burning love could not find a hold on
reality in the person of a specific woman. Their
distancing from women was misunderstood by the public,
and they were suspected of deviant behavior.
In the first category,
where the quality is paltry, love is found in doing
rather than in being, and at the other extreme, love
is in being rather than in doing, such that their love
revolves round and round them, becoming a raging fire
that consumes their entire existence, until ultimately
they are incinerated – destroyed by the fire of the
power of their love.
One is tangible
realness devoid of inspiration, and therefore requires
incessant artificial stimulation, and the other is
inspiration devoid of tangible realness, destroying
everything that is good in existence itself.
Happy are those who
“find what they have lost” and that she fits the level
of their quality. “On these, the world stands”,
as long as they have the intelligence to create,
through the fire of their love, an existential
condition on the plain of Godly reciprocity: The
condition of “love your fellow as yourself.” The
condition of Godly quality tangibly actualized in the
natural way of those who love. Here is the basis
for the Kabalistic claim regarding union between
heavenly male and female when there is union between
earthly male and female, as in Hazal’s statement: “If
a man and woman merit it – the shechina rests
between them.”
The human element is
what unites and what grants an expression of tangible
realness to mutual love. This dimension is
missing from those who love a symbolic love,
just as it is absent from those who love a
materialistic love that suffices with satisfaction of
the needs of heftsa without gavra, the
need of object without subject – without the human
factor.
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