Translated from Hebrew by DR. S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
L'ILUI NISHMAT MAYER HIRSH BEN LAIBEL

·        Understanding that God is personal for every individual; attaining a level of identifying that does not attribute the power to oneself – rather, it is all Godly Presence.

·        Justifying the idea of praying for one’s own personal needs – in that for God’s servant, the service of God encompasses the entire existential cycle.

·        The difference between dreams as Divine revelation and ordinary dreams: Yaakov’s dream was not an ordinary dream but rather a personal experience of inner identifying that reached to the most infrastructural foundations of existence.

    “Everything You will give me, I will tithe.  I will surely give You tithe.” Shouldn't this commitment have been reversed? The majority of what he is given, he should dedicate for God.  The tithe he can leave for himself.
    This is in fact the case: Everything that man is given is in order to enable him to fulfill his role in the universe. He need not leave anything for himself. The tithe is the part of his existential conditions that is incompatible with his role. For example, if someone is strict about a particular diet, he should nevertheless be flexible with ten percent of his eating, which he can leave for himself, aside from what he is permitted to eat. This means that if the conditions a man has to work with in order to carry out his role, include ten percent of conditions that are incompatible, this fact should not deter him. Rather he should exert effort to the point of self-sacrifice, because this is the tithe of difficulties that he must offer, and these belong to the ten percent. However, regarding difficulties that exceed ten percent, he may request that God grant him assistance in distancing these difficulties.

    Yaakov’s Dream: On the surface it seems difficult to understand why Yaakov would attribute such great importance to his dream. After all, this was not a dream of Divine revelation, the likes of: “And the Lord came to Avimelech in a dream of the night…” (20:3) Even when Yosef dreamed his dreams, Yaakov rebutted them: “Are we to both come, I and your mother, to bow down to the earth before you?” Nevertheless “but his father kept the matter in mind.” Yaakov leaves Yosef’s dream suspended in doubt. Yet here he has not the shadow of a doubt that his own dream has been a dream of revelation. His reaction is intense excitement, exhilaration – he vows a vow which is more of a condition than a vow: “If God will be with me…” How can he say “if”? And if not? “Then God will be my Lord!” And if God will not protect him and will not give him bread to eat and a garment to wear? Isn’t God’s servant commanded to view the negative as a test that he must pass as well?

    This dream was a transition toward a personal internalizing of the Godly Presence. Yaakov “slept in that place.” After fourteen years of not sleeping! …while studying Torah in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever. Here is no ordinary sleep: “The sun suddenly set for him, not in its proper time, in order that he should lodge there.” (Rashi, from the Gemara, Hulin 81.) Did he really not sleep for fourteen years? Yaakov here rises to a higher level, to a new, important stage for a servant of God: Internalization of the Godly Presence. From a connection of “I and Thou” to a connection of “I am what He is.”

   This new level is in fact Yaakov’s creation: It is Yaakov who is privileged to bring this new level down to the world. It is Yaakov who is privileged to become “a chario for the Shechina,” to the point that “God called him God.”

   Yaakov became a Godly entity, a Godly Presence while still a flesh and blood human being, fully living life, through an identifying with God that had been perfected to the point of the absolute. In this way, Godly Presence became a private and personal Presence that would be different and specifically suited to the private dimensions of every individual who served his Creator. This new higher rank contained new views of the relationship between Creator and human being.

   Whereas an individual who has not yet attained this rank would stand before God in a position resembling two separate realities – I am here and He is there – Yaakov, who has internalized the miracle of the Godly Presence, prays out of a sense that his prayer is not a turning to the outside, but rather is all entirely an expression of the sensation of Godly Presence keening within himself, out of an utter and absolute identifying with this Godly Presence, such that when he requests his own needs there is no sensation of a need created out of the distress of lack, but rather a positive virtuous cycle which becomes a cybernetic cycle of God:

   This creates a sensation of lack in a human being who senses the need to attach to his Creator, a sensation of the need to intensify the attachment out of an awareness of the lack. This lack creates a need, which does not originate in an attraction toward something one does not have, which is caused by stimulants from the outside, but rather originates in a recognition of how one’s deficiency can be remedied: Turning toward one’s Creator is no longer a request that expresses a deficiency. Rather it is the solution itself:

   By the very fact of turning toward one’s Creator and expressing a request, the deficiency and the need have already arrived upon their own resolution. This is a virtuous cycle of God – man/perfection – deficiency – need to turn toward God – perfection. God has founded man, man has founded deficiency (being that he is imperfect) deficiency is the foundation of need, need is the foundation of the turning toward God, the turning toward God is the foundation of the resolution, Godly perfection – again and again this cycle revolves: God – man – deficiency – need – turning to God – God, etc. This is what the sacred books mean when they emphasize the high level of the person who truly trusts – that his request is the resolution of his need. By the very fact of expressing the request, he has already been granted what he sought.

   When we request “give us our part in Your Torah, and unify our hearts to fear and love Your Name,” how can we ask that of the Holy One, when after all this is something we must demand of ourselves? However, this request expresses our identifying with the aspiration to be privileged to become a part of the Torah, and therefore: “Because we have trusted in Your Name of sanctity, we will delight and rejoice in your saving.” By the very fact of expressing this request, we have attained a state of absolutely identifying, we have attained the attachment to God at the required level, and therefore, as requesters, we have already been privileged to be granted God’s saving, and we request/express our delight at having already been privileged to receive what we requested – and we even continue requesting the continuation of this privilege – we ask – we receive – again and again as the cycle revolves.

   This is how God’s servant views everything that happens to him, and everything he has: Talents and all the other fulfillments of his needs are not seen as qualities that belong to him, in his own right, but rather as Godly qualities that belong always to God. Even in the present moment when they are serving in his own domain – they do not belong to him, they have never actually left the domain of the Godly Place, for after all, no man has his own place, everything is all “the Holy One Who is the Place of the universe,” and this is what is meant by “he encountered the place.”

   Yaakov merits this level: Recognition of the fact that he is an expression of the Presence – of the Place – of his Creator. Everything he might have, all of the details of his day-to-day existence – bread to eat, a garment to wear, protection from the sun, rain, elements, dangers – all of these are an expression of the Presence of the Lord within him. This is when Yaakov realizes that he is becoming a private Godly Presence. Meaning – “God will be God for me, and everything that You will give me…” Everything belongs to the Holy One, including the part that seems abnormal and superfluous, that apparently seem to be besides the point in terms of the conditions one needs purely for one’s service of God.

   This is also the way to understand the Divine revelation that comes later, and that is barely emphasized in the text, when Yaakov decides to return to the Land of Israel.

   In the description of Yaakov’s method of placing striped sticks along the flocks’ drinking troughs, nowhere is it said that Yaakov did as he did under the guidance of the Lord. The impression is given that this is Yaakov’s own biological discovery. Yet when he informs Rachel and Leah of the events, he mentions that a messenger of God assisted him in the matter. Further, when Yaakov sees that Lavan’s attitude toward him has changed, the text continues to tell of this and within the flow of the story it says: “And God said to Yaakov, ‘return to the land of your fathers.’” It is almost as though the Holy One is seeing it together with Yaakov, and immediately responding with an instruction to return to the Land of Israel. It is not written the way a Godly directive is usually described: And the Lord spoke, etc. Similarly further on (31:11) “And God’s messenger said to me…” is how Yaakov describes the events to his wives, whereas in the event itself, it was actually God Himself in all His Glory: “And God said to Yaakov: ‘Return to the Land, etc.’” Why does Yaakov change the story instead of telling what actually happened?

   This stage of internalizing the Godly Presence apparently has the effect of blurring the difference between the Presence that is above and the Presence that is within the innermost human self. We must point out that Yaakov does not attribute this Presence to himself, but rather views the internal Presence as an external Presence that does not belong to him, and for which he can claim no credit – the appearance of a messenger. Hence Yaakov’s merit, that God called him God.

   In other words, someone who attaches to God by absolutely identifying, becomes what he identifies with – body, life-force, and spirit – including everything that this implies, and all the infinite bounty it entails. Similarly, veheyay bracha: “Become a blessing”.