Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

Like the flame within the coal, the reduction of human free choice is inseparably attached to hashgaha pratit. Every change in free choice drags in its wake a parallel re-evaluation of the territory of influence from on high, as reflected in that complementary pair: Itaruta dili’aila and itaruta dilitata, “the awakening of the Higher,” and “the awakening of the lower.” Itaruta dili’aila means direct intervention by Divine Providence, activating the creation. The Flood, for example, was a tangible demonstration of the harsh and sweeping hand of a generalized Divine Providence. Even the words are harsh:

      “And God regretted that he had made man in the land…and God said, ‘I will wipe out the human beings that I created, from upon the face of the earth, from human beings to beasts’…but Noah found grace in the eyes of God.” “And God said to Noah: ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, because the land has been filled with extortion…Now, behold, I will destroy them, the land,’” yet simultaneously, “but I will uphold my covenant with you.”

      Let us leave aside the fundamental problem of God’s omniscience versus His disappointment at the creation He Himself has created. We find a difficulty lurking from a completely different direction: The problem here is not ‘to be or not to be’. Rather, something is being changed in the method of Divine management.

      A phrase appears: “For He had made human beings in the land.” Contrast with “I will wipe out the human beings I created from upon the face of the earth.” We see that the supreme Providence is relating to creation as a whole, and It is faulting the earth for being a partner to human acts.

      (In this context, the Holy Land merits a special relationship, set in place already now, in the Flood era, for the future. The Prophet Yehezkel: “Child of man, tell her, she is a land not purified, for she was not rained upon on the day of wrath.” (Yehezkel 22:24)

     Ohr HaHaim HaKadosh writes: (Bereisheet 6) “For He recognized that most of the sordidness was due to his basic element, for he is built from the land…for it [the land] is the coarse element, and ultimately opposed to the spiritual.” Ohr HaHaim is saying that the Creator regretted having made man from the four elements, one of which is the element of earth, for He could have made him from the three others elements. The land was punished: “Three handsbreadths [of earth] which is the depth the plow reaches were also wiped out and erased.” (Rashi)

     The term bria, “creation” refers to the first stage of the creation, the stage that was utterly perfect, but lacking in human free choice and therefore also lacking in hashgaha, pratit, a personalized Divine Providence. (See our remarks in the essay on Bereisheet.)

     The term asiya, “Doing” relates to the second, mechanical stage of the creation, which operated at the level of Doing without Being. At this stage, Divine Providence operated only at the external, mechanical level. Now God is transferring His Providence to a higher stage, to the level of quality, which actually relates to the first stage, to bria: God from here on will be relating to the tsadik, rather than to the generality of the human race as peons on a chessboard. From this point onward, the Torah will focus on describing the tsadikim as being the ones who guide the track of the bria. No longer is it an all-encompassing track of Creator-universe relations, but rather Creator-man, with the focus on the “tsadik who is the foundation of the universe.” It is the tsadik who determines, who is partner and responsible for the universe opposite the Creator.

     This is a process that proceeds from Noah until Avraham, for ten generations. Noah still belongs to the era of generalized Divine Providence, which encompasses the land and all that is therein, and thereon, the inhabited planet as a whole. Divine Providence increasingly narrows its focus until Avraham, with whom a new track begins, of direct personalized Providence that does not pass through the universe. It is rather Creator-man, with man as the center of, and as the key to every event henceforth to unfold in the creation.

     In the meantime, the Creator was overturning the original plan. Continuing with the view of the Ohr HaHaim, the human being was like the adnei hasadeh, a sort of field nymph: From his umbilical cord upward, he was of the upper spheres, and from his umbilical cord downward, he was bound to the earth, and drew his strength from it – for better and for worse. He was influenced by the materialistic coarseness of this earthliness, which included everything entailed therein: He was dependent on physical needs, and influenced by the stimulations of the environment. His free choice was limited by the conditions of physical matter.

     On the positive side, man was able to rule physical matter, and to express his service of his Creator through physical matter, but this was true only in the best case. At any moment of weakness, he was ruled by temptation. Even the eating from the forbidden fruit was an extreme expression of his dependency on the earth. The situation required changing. It would be necessary to loose the direct and too-deep bond with the earth and its influences.

      “For man is a tree of the field.” This marvelous definition had been fulfilling a rather too central role in human behavior. “Whoever ceases his study and says, ‘how beautiful this tree is,’ why he forfeits his life.” This surprisingly severe warning may be related to our present discussion: “How beautiful this tree is,” meaning dependency. He is strengthening the need to draw sustenance from the ground, like this tree. Whereas it is from the dimension of height that man is meant to draw his sustenance – to be suckled more from the Torah than from the earth.

     One who says “how beautiful this tree is” in the sense of ceasing his study, and substituting a condition of being suckled by the heights for a condition of being suckled by the ground: “Why he forfeits his life,” by enclosing himself in the restrictions of physical matter while renouncing the condition of being suckled by the heights, which was meant to endow him with spiritual powers that would assist him in making spiritual use of the realities of physical matter.

      “Cursed is the earth for you,” for your sake. A ruining of the harmony, a weakening of your dependency on the earth, so that you will not be able to lean on it, in order for you to reach the conclusion that we can lean only on our Father in heaven.

     You might say, the bond with the lower should have been replaced by a bond with the higher, and man’s dependency upon the earth should have been severed entirely. Had this been the case, man would have ceased to be man, and would have become an angel. This had not been the Creator’s intention when He had formed man. Man’s role is specifically to prove Godly Presence within physical matter.

     With the sinning of Kayin, the connection to the earth grows increasingly worse, from friend to became foe. “And now, you are cursed from the earth…When you work the earth, it will no longer give you its strength.” Not for naught did man transfer his occupation from the earth to the animals – and our forefathers were shepherds rather than farmers. Dependency on the earth is limiting, and its influence is evil. The bond with the earth requires an alternative, in order to prevent dependency.

     The encounter between man and his Creator must pass through the other, as mentioned in Parashat Bereisheet: Awareness of the quality of the self – and consciousness of Godly quality must pass through a consciousness of the uniquely original quality of another.

     Here we find a transition from the earth as source of sustenance, to relatedness to the other; hesed, generous kindness, responsibility, mutual accountability. Most importantly, the family unit now takes center place as the source of human-spiritual sustenance. From here on, the Torah brings man into encounter with the family track at an increasing rate, to the point that the family prism will become the angle through which the Divine is viewed. The radiance of the microcosm will become stronger, and more influential upon the cosmic unfolding, than the radiance of the macrocosm.

      It should be pointed out that the concept of the home as the private domain, as the family nest – with the family as a closed and perfect circle, as a microcosm, had not yet descended to the world. However, the concept of mating was already very much in existence. From the era of “it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a help opposite him,” man had begun to find his place within the framework of mating. From this framework, he set forth to conquer the world, and to this framework he returned, wounded: Lemech and his wives, the ten generations until Noah who built the world, yet nevertheless, the Torah specifically focuses on lengthy and detailed descriptions of their family achievements. “And he begat…” “And he begat sons and daughters.” The home as a recognized and ordered institution would have to wait until the Egyptian exile: “And God made houses for them,” for the midwives. However, a narrow and focused family circle had already begun with Noah. “And God closed for his sake.” “And those who came were male and female.”

      “And the reason for ‘and God closed for his sake’ is in praise of [Noah]” the Ibn Ezra points out. “This time, [the closing] is better than the opening. But another time, it was in condemnation.”

     The teva, Noah’s Ark isolated man and distanced him from the world, yet it closed in the institution of mating in order to protect it, as Ibn Ezra says. “And only Noah and those with him in the teva remained,” each man and his wife. And immediately thereafter, “and the Lord remembered Noah. “And ‘Noah’ would include his children who were with him there,” the Ramban adds. Noah, as the concept of family, represented the microcosm, and in this merit, he was saved.

     The value of the family is not comprised of mating, but rather of the perfect circle of a couple plus descendants. We expanded on the topic of mating itself in the previous Parasha. The relationship between the couple and their descendants is discussed to some extent in our parasha, in the form of the unpleasant entanglement between Noah the father and his youngest son, Ham, and Noah’s blessing to his sons, and all that befalls them – from whom the human race developed until our own day, and from whom the human race spread out upon the face of the earth.

     From this extended family, human society was created. The attempt to use the extended society as a substitute for the narrow family circle is doomed to failure, because of the destructive results hidden within the broader circle: “When the wicked assemble, it is bad for them and bad for the world.”

     Does this not refer to the infamous dor haplaga, the Generation of the Division? Nowhere are negative results ever mentioned as being a product of the family circle. On the contrary, the negative result spreads across the vast spaces of history, specifically out of the tribal circle, the hamula, which arouses tensions between one tribe and another, but never between one narrow family circle and another.

     Father’s Role: Mother’s Role
     The Father has already appeared at this stage. The Mother is still missing; her appearance awaits our forefathers. With them, the complete and perfect family is celebrated. It is no coincidence that our foremothers were barren. Our foremothers’ role was destined to skip over the rough bumps and to break through the “natural” roadblocks: Their stumbling blocks required God’s intervention in nature, rather than merely a blessing. The Jewish mother is born out of a miracle; her very manifestation is a miracle.

     The personality of Noah’s wife, as the mother of the three famous sons, fulfills no particular role in their education, and she is not discussed in the scripture other than the mere mention of her name. Indeed, perhaps the ruin of the dor haplaga came about through the absence of a mother playing an active role.

     The Components of the Family: The component that constitutes the cause of all causes for the family unit is – intimacy. Intimacy in its raw state, meaning intimacy for a solitary individual, is not visible to the eye. Such intimacy sinks into the depths of the personality, and draws all the other components of the personality down with it. Such intimacy is like a black hole devouring the personality entirely, because it lacks the capacity for differentiation, for distinguishing between those components that are ready to emerge into the world, and those that yet require gestation and ripening. In short, solitude deprives an individual of the ability to distinguish object from subject.

     The family is the quiet corner, the hidden place that protects the uniquely original kernel of the personality, the place that allows for the gestation and ripening of the components of the uniquely original personality. Here, the personality components acquire their vital equipment, before being exposed to the world.

     The Womb. “Mother of all life.” Hava is the mother of intimacy, and it is no coincidence that it was she who caused the exposure of the private domain, and its humiliating display in full view. “And they knew that they were naked.” It is Hava who creates intimacy: “Revered, the king’s daughter is within.” It is she who persuades her husband that they must seek a hiding place. A house of concealment, a private domain, appears for the first time as a need that is as yet lacking fulfillment in the splendor of Gan Eden, and necessarily so, because Gan Eden was not planned as a hiding place at all, since the original plan saw to perfect harmony between inner and outer, for the solitary human being, who had not yet been split apart.

     When split made its appearance, it compelled still-passive man to confront another, to confront his female partner. This confrontation could distract him from his role as representative of the Godly Presence. As a result of confrontation, man would be compelled to be involved in self-defense, the forebear of the survival mechanism, so fraught with destructive danger. Therefore the Creator yitbarach in His wisdom added and adopted the need for creativity, in order to balance the temptation inherent in the distraction hidden in the survival mechanism.

     As mentioned, the conditions prevailing in Gan Eden were not suitable for active involvement with creativity, which is nourished by the fuel of free choice, which found no expression within Gan Eden’s harmonious framework. Thus is man – who chooses the track of confrontation, creativity-style – compelled to leave Gan Eden and confront virgin ground, and to build himself in an entirely new style, indicated primarily by a distinction between private domain and public domain.

     The difference that characterizes distinctions between one domain and the other is not a difference between private and public but rather the difference between one private individual and another. Thus pairing is born, within a private domain that is coping with the public domain. Intimacy is characterized by what takes place between two members of a couple. Strange as it may seem, we are not dealing here with a difference in quantity, the difference between two and three and four, but rather with differences of quality – the quality that actualizes the dormant potential of that which is unique and original within the innermost being of each one of the members of the couple, who assist one another, and create the challenge for feedback, and for self awareness of the uniquely original, and for consciousness of the other, a consciousness that bestows objective value, that is discriminating and appreciative of the uniquely original quality of the other.

     From what has been said, it becomes clear that we have before us a process requiring significant investments of effort, in a value-oriented direction, toward appreciation, love and caring for the other, and for a sense of responsibility and mutual accountability.

     The process unfolding in our parasha is expressed as the death throes of the ego, for the private individual who has not yet learned the lesson of mutual responsibility, a lesson learned the hard way by Noah, in the teva. He discovered that the biological bond between progeny and their father, or between two members of a couple, cannot guarantee that couple-ness, and afterwards family, and parent-child relationships will necessarily make their appearance or take a central role. This is to teach you that the bonds that characterize the intimate family circle need to be learned, and require the labor of midot, of character refinement and efforts at self-betterment.

     We are told of the story of Noah’s intimate honor, violated by Ham his youngest son, and of Noah’s severe response. This story teaches us that a vacuum endangers the family unit. This subject is expanded further and developed, and its components are defined, throughout the entire Book of Bereisheet.

     Here we should devote a few moments to thoughts on the family circle’s decisive contribution to the completeness of society, and to the damages that threaten to destroy society when the family is pushed aside and its value is lost.

     Liberal society, which seeks technical solutions to its problems, while despising the importance of values, has viewed the family as a stumbling block, quite simply, in its effort to establish the structure of an expanded society, meaning an actively producing society, meaning “Doing” that is severed from “Being”, a mechanical outside that has no humanness, no unique inner being. Such a structure is lifeless, lacking feeling and values, it is a structure in which feelings and their values have turned into switches, produced in the kingdom of Hollywood illusion, like soldiers on a chessboard. This system views bringing descendants into the world as a problem of functional production, as a scientific/technical approach to medicine rather than a human approach, as one acquaintance – a doctor who can boast of significant scientific achievements, and who carries the title of Professor – put it: “How nice it would be to work in a medical center that had no patients.” Meaning, if only hospitals would be medical research laboratories and not medical centers that give relief to the diseases and sufferings of human creatures.

     Balanced judgment happens along an axis of object/subject: From the ability to sense and to imagine the solution to a problem, to the objective analysis of the situation, which requires investigation and critical evaluation on its way to the approval and the crystallization of the recommendation for the solution of the problem. This track is not feasible without intuition, which takes place within the private domain, in which the private individual receives recognition and stimulation from conditions of conflict for two, through couple-ness, specifically. From this we learn that without the conditions of couple-ness, the private individual would never have been able to develop or solidify objective solutions to the complex and sensitive existential problems of human behavior, not only in relation to the inter-personal sphere but even in spheres of behavior that are production-oriented, security-oriented, economy-oriented, and intellectually and artistically oriented.

     The gigantic laboratory for the investigation of these fundamental premises has been the Soviet Union with its Bolshevik methods, including its materialistic-quantitative philosophy and its erasure of the private domain, through necessarily ignoring everything unique, and repressing every incipient sprouting of originality. A gigantic state that in its heyday was the wheat silo of the world, whose huge total crop was produced by serfs who, though suppressed, were bound by their umbilical cords and by their hearts to their land from generations, who used agricultural methods from the days of Methuselah. Their prodigious output was halted suddenly, and utterly ceased production, after a Bolshevik revolution that prided itself on its modern and sophisticated production methods, which included global economic world perspectives wrapped in the values of justice. Its opponents are happy to point to the failure of this presumptuous approach that brought with it a level starvation and destruction and bloodshed that had no equal in history. In their view, the flaw lies in an approach to globalization that denies the individual free market propounded by American economist Milton Friedman, and the thriving economy of the free market proves the justice of this claim.

     To anyone analyzing Bolshevik society at a slightly deeper level – and this includes the Bolshevik society running amok now for two generations in Israel, it appears that the failure does not derive from the economic sphere. The failure squats at the feet of the destruction of the Jewish home, of the uprooting by force of the private domain, of the destruction of the family unit, in which children are forced to sleep in a children’s home, and torn from their mother’s arms. In which the mother, the woman, is established as a domain in her own right. It was with the ideal of equal rights for women that the Soviet Union began, not for the sake of protecting the woman’s honor, but for the principle of canceling any loyalty to the family unit, and viewing it as an adversary that would come at the expense of the ruling regime, which demanded blind loyalty. Three generations of brainwashing has done its work. The result: A one-parent family. A grandmother, a mother, and a boy. There is no father. There is no grandfather. The boy grows up in a feminine environment that holds on tightly and obsessively to its victim – a darling pet, prey to the motherly illusion.

      A boy who is subject to the tyranny of women loses his masculinity, and when mature, is hunted by women who are not interested in his personality but in his seed. Once the woman has attained her desire, she eliminates the husband/father with one kick, and remains with her prey, and so again, and again. Thus a society develops that contains no balance of reciprocity between man and woman. It is an unbalanced society, devoid of balanced human judgment in every sphere of life. A science that is inhuman, an economy that is inhuman, and that denies the decisive factor of the psychological angle, as if economy were not first and foremost a human behavior, which deals with property. An economy that lacks the human element succeeds as a short-range method. So too with a military that fights against its own soldiers’ human needs, and relates to them as to peons on a chessboard. Stuffing the military system with methods built on strategics and logistics exclusively, can never expect its soldiers to exhibit human values, such as self-sacrifice and brotherhood among fighters. An army free of humanness does not stand the test during a time of extended war. It is not a winning army. It is a clumsy and inefficient mechanism that borders on the senseless and on the idiotic. So too with politics and so too with intellectual achievements that flow through technical channels only, and lack intuition and creative imagination. The gravest result of all: A society free of leadership.

      A leader cannot grow in a one-parent family, without a father figure, surrounded by castrating women. Dependency upon an obsessive mother creates a weak person, exhausted by external neuroses (of his mother) that penetrate inward in the course of time, to become full citizens in the victim’s character. He becomes a man without independent balanced judgment, without creative thinking, dependent on stimulants, and awaiting instructions.

     The Rainbow in the Cloud

     The Gemara (Tractate Hagiga 16) blames the one who looks at the rainbow: “Whoever does not care about the honor of his Possessor, deserves to have never come into the world.” Indeed, in the generation of Rabi Shimon Bar Yohai, and Rabi Yehoshua ben Levi, a rainbow was never seen, they had no need of it, in the merit of the tsadikim who protected their generation.

     On the surface of things, what is wrong with using the covenant between the universe and the Lord? This covenant was given to man as a security net during borderline moments, when human merit has emptied out, when man has not made proper use of the initiative of free choice, given him so that he would stand before his Creator as an independent being, rich in rights and privileges, as with Avraham, of whom it was said: “Walk before Me, and be whole,” for he walked in his own merit, and not as Noah, who required support, and did not walk on his own powers, but rather lived by obedience to instructions and not in his own merit, as it says: “With God, Noah walked.” Meaning that the Torah propounds an educational method that educates for originality of personality, for a personality possessing balance between outer and inner, in which the value-based dimension of height grants expression to one’s uniquely original quality. The father, who represents midat hadin, the measure of judgment, and the mother, who represents midat harahamim, the measure of compassion, both complement one another within the family circle: Such is the Torah’s ideal of a human being. The measure of judgment from on high is harsh, while the measure of compassion from below is tender, the Ramban reveals in his interpretation of the rainbow. This is to teach you that the preferred condition is hitaruta dilitata, “the awakening of the lower one,” human beings awakening to their need for God, through the initiative of free choice taken by a whole and balanced human being, who stands before his Creator on his own right. He is preferable to the compulsive type with the weak personality who needs and anticipates assistance from his mother, or from the mercies of heaven, which are forced to maintain him in merit of the covenant of the rainbow, rather than on his own merit. This type does not care about his Possessor’s honor, because he was educated to dependency upon human beings, upon his mother, instead of trust in God. Only in a time of trouble, which exposes his shame in public, does this hopeless case lift his eyes to heaven to remind his creator of His promise in the covenant of the rainbow – as though the rainbow were some sort of instrument of faith. Where were you until now, my little traitor?