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Rav
Chaim Lifshitz
Essays and Articles:
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Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
INTERNAL
/ EXTERNAL: INTERNAL INITIATIVE
VERSUS EXTERNAL DEPENDENCY Inner Resistance and Power Versus Brute Force “‘But in this thing, you do not believe in God,’ that he promises to bring you to the Land. In this you do not believe in Him.” (Rashi) “Setbacks come only from a deficiency in faith. This whole section means what it says, its plain meaning as it sounds.” (Ramban) “But Rashi of blessed memory interpreted it as speaking of the promise of coming to the Land, but it does not seem to be so, but rather according to the plain meaning of the scripture, that it was about the miracles of the desert, in which God carried them as a man would carry his own son, yet even in this thing, you do not believe.” (Ohr HaChaim) “God also found fault with me, because of you.” Wasn’t it for mei meriva that Moshe was punished, and not for the sin of the spies’ slandering the Land? See Ohr HaChaim, who views the prohibition against Moshe’s entering the Land as God’s kindness to the Jewish people, for in a later period, He spent His wrath against the Jewish people "on sticks and stones" (on the Holy Temple) rather than on the people, and if the Bait HaMikdash would been a structure built by Moshe, it could never have been destroyed, and God’s wrath would have been spent upon the people. It seems necessary to distinguish here between brute force and power. Brute force belongs to the mechanical system, to the law of physical matter. It activates stimuli from the outside, compelling people to confront them on the plane of survival. A brute force system is devoid of qualities and values. It operates only by a process of mechanically training its subjects. Moshe Rabeinu was a source of power, for he had internalized his power from the Godly source. Power operates according to one's awareness of the value of a particular issue, according to the justice of one’s path. It draws from the supreme, unlimited source of values. Any action one performs out of inner conviction, drawing upon the source of value, is an expression of one's self, which constitutes an expression of the Godly image. Contrast this with the mechanical, survival-oriented ego, which constitutes an expression of physical matter. Had Moshe built the Holy Temple, it could never have been destroyed because Moshe would have built the Bait HaMikdash by virtue of his qualitative power, and such power exists above the limitations of time. We might add another perspective to the meaning of the text: Perhaps Moshe was punished for not having succeeded in conveying this secret of power to the nation, for not having succeeded in freeing them from their enslavement to brute force. This is why they recoiled from entering the Land, because they were relating to the Land through the perspective of brute force, and ignoring the power inherent in the Godly promise. This shows that there is no substantive difference between Rashi and Ramban in the interpretation of the verse “because in this thing, you do not believe in Me.” The lack of belief in the promise of the Land was the test that separated the people of the brute force approach from the people of the power approach, power born of inner conviction. The Land of Israel is the test because it is a land distinct from all other lands in that it is ruled by the law of Godly power, rather than subject to the brute force laws of physical matter. Israel is not subject to these laws, neither in political terms nor in economic terms, nor in any brute force terms whatsoever. Israel’s enemies will never be able to overcome her when her people are dwelling within her and believing confidently in God, as opposed to believing confidently in their own might. This is why they were utterly unharmed in the “war of mitzvah,” when they were commanded to carry out the first conquest. One who has faith in his own might is just like one who has no confidence in his might and is terrified of his enemies. Both of these people are relating to the Land through a brute force angle, and to such people, the Land is not given forever. According to what has been said, lack of belief in the Godly promise reflects a lack of conviction and a lack of belief in any qualitative cause or purpose, because the Holy Land is the test that separates qualitative power from brute force. The Holy Land serves as the crossroads for this test, the point of encounter for making this distinction from every possible point of view, be it existential or qualitative. *** Power creates the relationship of “love that is not dependent on any thing.” It bypasses fear. This love, in the final analysis, is what determines a person’s ability to survive against obstacles. Thus you will find that even the most gloom-and-doom medical diagnosis is incapable of plunging the perfect believer into a state of gloom, because qualitative power does not need to activate force against an external enemy. Qualitative power came into this world through Yaakov, our forefather. “When the voice is Yaakov’s voice, then the hands that are Esav’s hands have no control.” “Do you imagine that Moshe’s hands were waging war? Rather, when the people of Israel would look upwards, and bind their hearts to their Father in heaven, they would become victorious.” As it turns out, this fundamental distinction, qualitative power – which includes the moral, human element, and the element of love, which draws its strength from the inner quality of the Godly self – versus brute force – which has no root in human quality but only in the mechanical system – is the decisive turning point in every interpersonal encounter and in every encounter between oneself and any existential difficulty. Yet also and mainly, beyond these levels, it is the decisive factor in one’s relationship with one’s Possessor. Bitachon, confident faith in God does not merely mean hoping for Heavenly assistance in an existential confrontation. Rather, it means a confident faith, deiving from the power of clear recognition beyond any doubt – not that God will help, but that there is nothing real about the confrontation, that it is all an optical illusion on the brute-force plane. It does not really exist in any true reality as far as God’s servant is concerned, and the truth of the matter is that in fact there is no confrontation here at all and no need to rally against it. Rather, there is a signal here that one needs to strengthen one’s value-driven connection between the Godly source in oneself and the supreme source. Therefore one’s hishtadlut, one’s efforts must be directed towards that goal, towards strengthening one’s recognition of the Godly factor, as being decisive in the progression of reality: Reality progresses according to man’s relationship with his God, and not according to man’s relationship with outer brute force reality. Inner power draws its force from one's goal for the sake of Heaven. It comes from being conscious of one’s personal, private Godly role, and from the scale of priorities that is a corollary of that role. Inner power is generated by the process of clarifying the goal of sanctifying God’s Name, and it draws its force from behavior that expresses Godly presence. Aside from these, “all is futility and the ruin of the spirit.” All other efforts reflect “someone possessed by a spirit of idiocy” that has muddled his true awareness. Only that idiot would forfeit his entire universe for the sake of some flashy fireworks that are without substance. The inner consciousness that generates power also determines and is expressed in the way a person acts. Since a believer is an initiator – idle passivity is unknown to him – and since a believer lacks all shock, rage, or tension, when faced with the phenomena of external stimuli, and since he is stubbornly persevering and undeterred by obstacles, be they what they may – it follows that the moment he has clarified his path in his mind, according to the specific points that run the length of the track of worship, he will get up and begin to act. He will never fall into the trap of “just sit and do nothing.” He does not depend on others. They do not influence him. He does not follow the masses. He would never put even one toe into a quarrel, even if it appears to be “a quarrel for the sake of Heaven.” He does not work on refraining from lashon hara, slander. Rather he works on “love your fellow as yourself.” He belongs to that category described by the Chazon Ish, in an amazing passage in Emunah U’Bitachon, Belief and Confident Faith. (Ch. 1, verse 11) “There is such a thing as a person who craves to do good for others.” This is an amazing statement, but it would be an utterly baffling one, were it not for the conceptual foundation provided above. Moshe’s claim in his rebuke to them revolves entirely around this point: After all the good, and the favors, and the kindnesses, which the Creator, Who is the source of power, has lavished on you… “The Three Weeks” Between the Two Fasts The days of bein hametsarim, “between dire straits” and the mourning on Tisha B’Av are not meant to make us feel sorrow over the destruction of sticks and stones. Nor were they designed to refer to the situation outside, nor do they contain any trace of a historical element. Rather, they were meant to liberate us from dependency upon the outside, so that we might make a sharp turn inward, from outer to inner, to re-strengthen our inner power, for which the destruction of the Holy Temple is a reminder of sin. It is a reminder of the destruction that came about through our neglect of our inner power, through our exchange of it for dependency on outer, brute-force factors. This turning inward, and the introspection that flows from such awareness, from realizing how problematic, how fraught with disaster this destruction has been – this is the true mourning. The actual fasting comes to remind us that “man does not live on bread alone,” for bread does not contain any of the power for which every follower of truth must pray. The mourning is meant also to add force to our consciousness of reward and punishment. You might ask: Which is more compatible with human nature? Action taken out of inner personal motivation or action taken in response to an external stimulus? After all, one might surmise with a fairly high degree of certainty that different needs may be derived from either one of these opposite sources. The commonly accepted notion is that the “natural” needs are the spontaneous ones, meaning those that appear when they are aroused without mediation by thought, balanced judgment or values. Yet it would seem that these do not constitute a natural expression of the deeper human needs that characterize the qualitative human personality. Rather, they provide the conditions of the environment, of society and of physical matter, and they are identical in everyone; every person without distinction shares them in common. Whereas those needs that derive from within, from the innermost personal space, those are the real needs that express the human self – and human power. This is why there is nothing compulsive about these needs. The phenomenon of compulsive behavior is created by the conflict between inner and outer needs. The way to healing the compulsive disease comes through deepening the compulsive person’s awareness of his inner needs. When this moment of awareness comes, his outer needs become totally irrelevant; they are completely canceled. This is the meaning of “compel him until he says, ‘I do wish to obey.’” [As in the case of a man who refuses to grant his wife a divorce.] Not necessarily through lashes, but through persuasion, and through his becoming conscious of his inner needs. It is his compulsiveness that compels us to compel him…but it is preferable to use positive persuasion, not necessarily lashes. “‘They shall make me a sanctuary, and I shall dwell in them:’ It says ‘in them,’ rather than ‘in it.’” “Because certainly the most important aspect of sanctity and of the sanctuary, and of His Shechina resting upon us...is the human being. For if he will sanctify himself as he should, by fulfilling all of the commandments, then he himself is a sanctuary. This is why when they ruined the internal sanctuary within themselves, then the external sanctuary was to no avail, and its foundations were destroyed, Rahmana litslan.” (Nefesh HaChaim) |