|
Parashat Vaera
Essays and Articles:
|
Moshe Asks the Creator for a Partners’ Deal in Godly Presence
Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
“You see that B’nei Yisrael did not listen to me, so how will Paro listen to me?”
Man as an active participant – at God’s side – in the Creation of the Godly Presence.
The covenant between man and the Creator – in which they together create Godly Presence, is imperative, despite the confusion such partnership may cause to a man who seeks clear-cut definitions, who wishes to define the boundaries of his own capacities, versus his own limitations, versus the infinite capacities of the Creator.
Man is capable of putting the entire burden upon God, of casting everything on the Creator of the universe, during times of distress. However, he is unwiling to do so during times of routine, which include problems that are within his ability to solve. He is unwilling to separate himself from the experience of personal competence. He needs this confrontation with the problems of existence, for proof of his own ability and for his own creative satisfaction.
The avot – heroes of spiritual might that they were – knew how to create Godly Presence. Through their own presence.
This great feat was not required of B’nei Yisrael. All they had to do in dealing with a situation that was beyond their abilities – the afflictions of Egypt – was to cast their burden upon God, yet even this they found difficult.
If it is even difficult for them, Moshe asks, how can I persuade Paro that the only omnipotent presence is the Godly Presence?
Moshe requests of God that He heal him of his stuttering. “I am of uncircumcised lips.” For after all, Paro will ask, how it is that the Creator is incapable of curing such a simple thing?
The Creator teaches Moshe the lesson of man’s role in creating the Godly Presence, the human role in the partnership: If God were to cure Moshe’s stuttering, people would believe that man’s role is the most important one. From here, to the mistake of falling into arrogance’s arms, and of man viewing himself as all-powerful, the road is short.
The God/man partnership requires a division of labor between the two partners, with this division being non-determinable in advance, because every man is different in relation to the partnership:
One possesses a high level of spirituality, and is thus capable of increasing his own role in the partnership, without falling into arrogance’s arms. In his case, a greater role is indeed required.
Then there are those of little faith, who – if the yoke of existential battle were laid too heavily upon their shoulders, and if they were to succeed in bearing it – would fall into the trap of arrogance. Thus stumbling, they would reject and cut themselves off from their Godly source.
This sort of partnership is too complex and unpredictable, Moshe claims. It is even difficult for ma’aminim b’nei ma’aminim, believers descended from believers, so how much more so for Paro to accept.
God reveals to Moshe that His treatment of Paro is not about to depend on Paro’s sensitivity to faith, that Paro has no future prospects for tuning into this capacity of his, because “God has hardened Paro’s heart”.
God has no intention of addressing Paro’s qualitative innermost being. He intends only to demonstrate to him the autonomous Godly Presence, when it is created unilaterally, when it is not achieved in cooperation with a believing human being, for that reciprocal method is reserved exclusively for the mekadshei shvi’i and the mekablei haTorah, the sanctifiers of Shabat, the receivers of Torah.
The mitsva of Shabat, and the study of Torah, were not postponed until Matan Torah. These were given already at Mara, immediately after the Jews left Egypt: “There He gave him a law and a judgment, and there He tested him.”
Rashi: “In Mara, He gave them a few chapters of Torah to occupy themselves with: Shabat, and red heifer, and legal statutes,” and in the expanded version of Rashi also honor of father and mother are included. The Ramban adds: “And judgments – that they should live by: That each man should love his fellow, and that they should behave according to the counsel of the elders, and go modestly within their tents, as far as the women and children were concerned, and have peaceful custom with those who came into the camp to sell them things, and further moral rebukes: That they should not be like those vandal camps who do every abomination and feel no shame, as the Torah commands, in this context: “When you go out and encamp against your enemy, guard yourselves against every bad thing.”
We see a Godly Presence that is absolutely direct. However, the story does not end with the splitting of the Red Sea. It is no simple matter for man to relate to and to live with direct intervention, for it interferes with and even opposes free will. (Hachbed lev Paro, “Paro’s heart has been hardened.”) Therefore in general man is given a Godly Presence that is concealed in the best possible hiding place, in nature. It is his duty to sanctify this natural environment, to keep his camp sacred. Once in a while there is hitaruta dili’eila, in which Heaven takes the initiative.
On the path of the righteous, Godly Presence always appears as a response to itaruta dilitata, to human initiative. Thus, the large part of the Presence always comes by way of man, or even within man himself, as with our sacred forefathers, who themselves became Godly Presence through their own powers.
However, this is an issue reserved for the tsadikim; it is not for the average human being. With simple Jews, Godly presence is reserved, is channeled, only through sources of inspiration from above – “and Torah study outweighs them all”.
This outweighing occurs chiefly with the Torah shebe’al peh, the oral Torah, for one studying the Torah shebe’al peh creates within it and innovates within it, by giving the learning his own personal, spiritual, and practical meaning, as the Rambam states: The application of Torah to human relations, to moral values. By actualizing the values of morality, man is actualizing Godly Presence.
This is a difficult effort, requiring incessant toil, needing all sorts of reminders, at the ideal/theoretical level: Cazeh re’eh vekadesh, “thus, as you see it, sanctify it”, and one must weave this sanctity into one’s ongoing, day-to-day activity – that is, into human relations.
At the spiritual/ideational level, Shabat is Godly Presence in its purest form, in its most directly tangible embodiment. It is not man who has determined Shabat. Shabat is not given to man’s decision, as are the festivals, for example.
It is the Creator Who has determined and Who has santified the Shabat. The mitsva of kidush (“Remember the Shabat”) which man is commanded, is in a sense man’s part in the partnership of actualizing the Presence.
The Presence on Shabat rests upon man specifically when he is in a passive state, rather than in an active state as during the days of the week, in his relationship with his fellows, with whom he is commanded to be active and to take the initiative.
It is different on Shabat. Shabat rest is “reminiscent of the next world”, “reminiscent of the blessings”, (see the Ramban) “source of all blessings”, being that it is the direct Presence in its most pristine incarnation.
In contrast, the Presence created through Torah study is chiefly an expression of man’s part.
Godly Presence as Tikun, as Repair for the Sin of Adam HaRishon: Creating Godly Presence is man’s tikun for his arrogantly absolute certainty before the Sin. At that time, his ability to distinguish truth from falsehoold had been absolute, and it had brought him to reject, or to forget the Presence, and to instead put himself in Its place, to attempt to take over Its place.
This arrogance was his undoing, and it threw him headlong into a state of bewildering relativity, in which good substitutes for evil place and evil for good – the source of all sin.
Love, which brings with it Godly Presence, eliminates ego from the one who loves, and clears a space for the Presence, which then substitutes for the nostalgic need for certainty.
Presence in place of certainty. Presence is superior to certainty in that certainty necessarily turns into dogma, into rigidity, into closing the gates of knowledge against further development, against further knowing.
This is because certainty is nothing more than an expression of arrogance, born of self-preservation, whereas Presence does not come to substitute for man, but rather together with him. At his side, it becomes an objective yardstick, without closing the human mind and without taking the place of clear thinking. It galvanizes man, and constitutes a challenge – the challenge of the dimension of height.
What would remain of man without Presence? Paralyzing certainty. Leaving Egypt frees man, even from himself, and there is the risk that he will be emptied out completely: Avda behefkera, niha lai, “a slave is comfortable with moral abandon.” Therefore “they believed in God and in Moshe, His slave”. God’s slave, as the actualization of the Presence, is the antithesis of “the slave who is comfortable with moral abandon.”
For this reason, immediately upon leaving Egypt, the Jews were given the commandment of emancipating Jewish slaves. Even though fulfillment of this mitsva would not be possible immediately, would indeed only be relevant many years later, at the Jubilee, nevertheless this mitsva was given now.
This was to imbue them with a connection, a bonding with human suffering, an attachment to identifying with the other. Bonding saves from the danger of detachment, saves from the moral abandon of one too liberated, one who has been freed from slavery without having an immediate point of alternative attachment to the Godly Presence.
Thus the Torah promises protection against the danger of falling into the trap of certainty.
A Connection Between Torah Study and Shabat: Presence, which constitutes an alternative yardstick to certainty, assists the Torah learner, and saves him from the arrogance of certainty – something that is missing in science, which aspires to certainty (and even to the point of Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” and the quantas.)
|
|