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Titen
Emet LeYaakov
“Give
Truth to Yaakov”
Attachment to Truth Versus Brute Force
Dreams,
kfitsat haderech – the road’s jumping: Place as the realization of the
dream.
Translated from Hebrew by S.
NAthan
l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
A dream wrinkles the dimension of events
into a pod-like experience, in which the innermost self feels at home and
does as it pleases, being liberated from reality.
Truth in love – connecting between inner
and outer – the authentically original…
“A tsadik’s leaving a city makes an
impression.” Impression – an imprint embedded in physical matter, after the
stamp has been removed. Thus the tsadik: His presence makes no
impression, due to his humility, and “no one is a prophet in his own town”,
etc., etc., etc. – all the miscellaneous futilities of the existential
environment. It is only after his departure that the void is discovered,
the impression that he has left behind him, in that this emptiness is not
merely meaningless, but rather it is empty in his image and in his likeness,
of value and of good works, and of his wisdom that is lacking. Thus the
want is revealed to be not merely the lack of his personality. Rather, it
is the difference between the essential and the non-essential elements of
existence that has been exposed.
Prior to the tsadik’s departure,
everything had appeared on the surface to be entirely related to pragmatic
survival, without scales of values and priorities. Yet suddenly we find,
after the departure of the tsadik, that as it turns out nothing is
left in the city. It is all an empty rattletrap of nothingness. What is
essential has been left empty and bare.
Thus it is with every conflict or quarrel
connected with a tsadik; when the tsadik departs, everything
is discovered retroactively to have been so much ado about nothing, and a
distortion of that vision that can discern what is truly important from what
is irrelevant.
Here we find an explanation for the saying,
aharei mot kedoshim emor, “after [his]death speak [of his]
sanctities.” This is not a negative indicator, or an indicator of
compassion. Rather, it is an indicator of the revelation and exposure of
truth.
“If the Lord will be with me” is not a
request for help through a miracle, but rather “with me” literally, through
the new free choice by which Yaakov confronts brute force (Esav).
Up to this point, it had been God Himself
in all His glory, Who had dealt with reality’s brute-force aspect. It is
only from Yaakov, onward, that man must deal with brute-force through free
choice. Through the quality that man has created for himself, he will
emerge victorious over quantity, over brute force.
Yaakov does not pray for a miracle. The
meaning of miracle is that God reduces the sphere of operations of man’s
creative choice, and instead He Himself, in His magnificence, deals with the
brute forces of existence. Yaakov is requesting siyata dishmaya,
Heaven’s assistance, to be able to deal with brute force on his own
qualitative abilities.
Here for the first time, the Creator
bestows upon man-who-has-attained-quality, the ability to control and to
sanctify physical matter. This is the rebuttal to the various “greens”, who
accept axiomatically, as obvious and self-evident, that whatever is natural
is good. In the Torah approach, the natural is bound to brute force, as the
flame is bound to the coal.
One who chooses quality requires
qualitative and sophisticated solutions to the problem of existence, rather
than to subjugate himself to the naturalness of brute force.
The trouble is that the sophistication that
created clever systems, mechanisms, and devices has, like Frankenstein,
turned on its creator. Man has gone from bad to worse, from one extreme –
enslavement to “natural” physical matter – to the other extreme –
enslavement to mechanization.
Judaism finds a solution only through
attachment to and dependency upon the Creator of the universe. One’s
relationship to nature is no different than one’s relationship to wisdom:
They are necessary only relative to the extent of the existential need, in
order to worship God thereby.
Yitzchak understood that it would suffice
to attach brute force to the Godly ideal in order to sanctify physical
matter. Rivka knew that in order to sanctify physical matter, there must
first come a prior stage, in which the ground is laid by using brute force
matter’s rules, such as shrewdness and cunning – rules that are compatible
with the rules of the game of physical matter.
This is the purpose of the confrontation
with Esav. It is only at a later stage that Yaakov becomes capable of
confronting Lavan the Liar – “I am his brother in deceit” – in order to
learn a further lesson. With Lavan, Yaakov learns to penetrate to the inner
core of the “natural” material system, down to its minutest and most
exacting details.
Actualization
– place
“Place” is mentioned three times: Yaakov
instituted arvit, the evening prayer. Avraham is ‘mountain’: Avraham
instituted shaharit, the dawn prayer. Yitzchak is ‘field’: Yitzchak
instituted minha, the afternoon prayer. Yaakov is ‘house.’
‘Mountain’ refers to the reality that is
found in the object. Man stands opposite the mountain: Reality appears in
his eyes to be a problem of brute force, as difficult to conquer as a
mountain; the climb to the top is hard.
Avraham is a man of hesed, yet he
knows well the meaning of war, the meaning of conquest. This is the prayer
of shaharit, of the dawn, at the first moment that man faces the war
of existence.
Yitzchak is a ‘field.’ Minha comes
when man is sunk deep down in existence, involved with his own existential
affairs. He is immersed in himself and in existence, both of which are
merged and immersed within one another.
At the minha prayer, a man finds
himself, as he deals with self-expression. The problem of existence then
becomes a problem of the expression of the self, and ceases to be a mountain
that one must face.
Rather, it becomes one’s own existence.
One’s own confrontation with oneself. The mountain disappears into the
human being, who finds himself standing in an open field. A field is a
place of hidden potential. The potential seems to lie dormant beneath the
earth, but it is actually within man himself rather than within the earth.
It is man who determines how dormant potential shall germinate and grow, and
become actualized in the field.
At arvit, the evening prayer, man is
finding the potential hidden within him, while he himself is being
transformed into Godly potential, and facing his own self’s Godly
expression. Thus when Yaakov lay down in that specific place, he had to
transform it into an expression of the kedusha within him.
Place as actualization: To actualize values
is to practice alchemy. It is to transform the crude substance of brute
force into a superior substance, into the value itself, made real and
tangible.
“It is not the place that makes the man,
but rather the man who makes the place.” Were it not for man, the place –
Mount Moria – would have remained orphaned, despite its illustrious lineage
in the founding of the universe, and as the place of the akeida.
Here is the continuation of the free choice
that is in man: Man must move the kedusha that is within him from its
state of dormant potential to a state of actualized, tangible reality. From
inside of him, it comes out, to be applied to the environment.
Vayifga bamakom
at the first stage: “And he encountered the place.”
And he used it:
“And he took from the stones of the place”
that had turned into something used by man, at the second stage.
“And he lay down in the place” that had
accepted him. At this third stage, kedusha is applied to the place,
in merit of the tsadik who has laid his head there, and then Godly
realness is tangibly realized, and then applied back to Yaakov, in
reciprocal relationship, as two allies who toil together until they have
attained their goal.
Place as the key to spirituality, as
sha’ar hashamayim – “Heaven’s gate”.
It is man who creates the tangible
realization of kedusha, not only for himself, but for all the kingdom
of heaven, and he becomes transformed, to become the partner kivyachol,
if such were possible, of the All-Powerful, ruling the angels, and
controlling them, rather than merely receiving missives and messages from
them.
“The God of Avraham your father” for you
are his most direct actualization, even more than Yitzchak, whose eyes have
dimmed.
“And the God of Yitzchak”, for it is you
who connects and completes them both, as the third side of the triangle, as
indicated above in our discussion of “place”.
Here the child asks: If God promised that
He would guard him wherever he went, and He promised to bring him back home
in peace – “for I will not leave you until…” – how could Yaakov doubt it –
that is how it looks – and vow a vow that looks like he’s making a condition
with God?
It might be a continuation of the idea of
independent free choice through personal responsibility: Man must create the
Godly reality anew, and not rely in a passive manner on promises and gifts
that he has not toiled to acquire. The condition was not towards the
Creator Who makes the promise, but towards himself:
If I succeed in guarding the Godly Presence
within myself along my difficult and temptation-filled path, then and only
then will I know that I have fulfilled my mission as bearer – within myself
and within my own existence – of the Godly Presence.
Here we see that man is the source of the
mitsva, rather than the mitsva itself. Just as man is the source of the
sin: Azivat hahet, “abandoning the sin” means that right now a man
has detached himself from his personal inner attachment to the sin, and has
removed it from the position occupied by his own existence.
Kefitsat Haderech,
“The Jumping of the Road” – in the sense of a shrinking of the road. A
second meaning – a shrinking of time. Neither are correct.
“It teaches that the earth folded
underneath him” meaning that only in human reality can time and place meet.
Without man, there is place but no time. Time is the human expression of
place. Kefitsat haderech is man relating to time according to his
value. Kefitsat haderech is the reduction and shrinking of place
that happens for a man whose kedusha raises him above place and above
time.
The universe’s heart’s love must reach the
fountain that flows at the top of the mountain. (Consider the fox and the
little prince.) Yaakov’s love does not resemble Yitzchak’s love of Rivka, a
love born after all conditions have been fulfilled. Yaakov is required to
toil and struggle in order to create love, yesh mayayin: Love through
identifying with his own self-expression, for a woman for whom he must toil
and labor and suffer, until she has been internalized in his heart.
The closing and completing of a similar
cycle of hishtadlut is required of Yaakov with regard to his wages.
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