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Rabbi Haim Lifshitz
Essays and Articles:
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Zachalti Va'ira
Introduction
Translated
from Hebrew by S. NAthan
l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
You
are invited to visit
the web site featuring the translation of the book
I CRAWLED, IN FEARFUL AWE
Zachalti Va’ira – “I
crawled, in fearful awe” (from the Selichot
prayers) is the name I have given to this collection of interpretations
on the parashot of the
Torah. In fear and in trembling I have
dared to express my meagerness and poverty of opinion, opposite the
endless wisdom of our holy Torah.
This, knowing that it is nachat ruach
to my Creator – the attempt to
understand, and to think intelligently, and to find the guiding
principle, the abstract concept, and the worldview that stand behind
the apparently naive story.
The student’s obligation is
to dive in deep, and to fish for the pearls
of life’s wisdom that are buried deep in the fathomless depths of the
scriptural text.
How much twaddle has been
hung on the scriptural story, by the
superficial and light-minded? The purpose of this work is to
prove that a conceptual, systematic philosophy peers through the cracks
of the Bible story.
There is no doubt that the
appropriate thing is to address the Bible
with the utmost seriousness and reverence, as befits the source, the
magnet for the Word of the living God, which Word is eternal, and
effective for every existential problem, penetrating through and beyond
the mist barrier of time and space.
In this work, the reader
will find a progression of conceptual
development that testifies to an experience of the sacred, by one who
lives his faith day by day, hour by hour. As is the way of
existential experience, it is changing. Its changes develop as
the experience itself develops.
Therefore no attempt is
made here to extract or to distill the reader’s
thoughts – who in any case tends to perceive things according to the
murmurings of his own heart – but rather only the thoughts of one who
seeks the truth, as he stands, sweating and tremulous before his
Creator. It is a personal stand, which partakes of the intimacy
of the son searching for the path to his Father in heaven, the path of
fearful awe and love, both – the path indicated by perpetual
self-renewal.
One cannot deny the
subjective angle, the personal side of
things. Perhaps we can find some opening here for the
investigation of religious experience – as experienced by a believer
who attempts to live his belief. The search for one’s own
innermost truth – and there is nothing more objective than this inner
truth – is what characterizes Jewish belief. “The rest: Go and
learn.”
I feel gratitude and a
never-ending debt toward “my students more than
all the rest,” for without their curiosity, and their hunger for
knowledge with which they inundated me, this book would never have been
born.
It was they who confronted
me with problems of existence that urgently
demanded solutions. It was they who pressed me to produce the
remedy, the cure, through my attempt to comprehend their experiences.
The Torah acquired by
suffering – this is Torah shekanisi be’ahf, “the
Torah I acquired by anguish.” Thus, a Torah born of the
existential sufferings of the truth seeker has become a Torah of life –
in the sense of “rising in order to raise others,” so that “the humble
shall eat and be satisfied.”
“The Torah I have learned
by anguish – that is what has stood by
me.” Yisurei ahava, sufferings of love: Every catch I ever
netted, I quarried from my own heart’s blood.
The Creator has endowed me
with a particular nature, of which it is
said: “Three [types of people,] their life is no life.” “And yet
all of these have gathered and come upon me,” so that “were it not for
Your Torah, my amusement and pleasure, I would have been lost in my
affliction.”
Every intellectual
discovery, every novel idea I ever developed, I
unearthed from the depths of existence’s torments.
All my days, I have been
waging war against ego’s tendency toward
self-pity, and toward blaming heaven and earth. Instead of the
ego, I activate the self, and then I see the problem of existence as a
challenge, to find a solution, both for myself and for others.
From here, the development
of these concepts has been drawn – the
result of a tireless effort to understand what the Creator intended by
what He has brought upon me, so as to “bring sweet out of fierce.”
OF THE MEANINGS THAT ARE
BORN ANEW EACH DAY
“And also, Rabeinu Shlomo,
my mother’s father, who lights the eyes of
the exile, (Rashi) put his mind to interpreting the plain meaning of
the text, and I (Rashbam) would debate with him, and in his presence,
and he admitted to me that if he only had the free time, he would have
to make other commentaries, according to the meanings that are born
anew each day.” (Rashbam, Bereishis 37:2)
Ever-changing reality
presents ever-changing problems of existence,
which urgently require solutions – like the meanings born anew each
day. Thus it is with the human nefesh, the physical/emotional
life force, which turns and tosses and twists through life’s snares,
which seek to sever it from its supreme source of living energy.
In its torment, the nefesh
is pressed to grab the ray of light, the
corner of the golden altar, but it only grabs to eat from hand to mouth
– to survive the moment. Yet behold, wonder of wonders! In
merit of that brief involvement with Torah, it has drawn sustenance
from the Divine wisdom, and has found more than enough fare for a feast
or even two. It is revived by words that settle smoothly into the
heart, obviously making sense, as they were given at Sinai.
Words that erupt from the
inner truth that is in one’s heart, merit
heaven’s seal of approval, which becomes imprinted upon them.
Subject thus acquires the value of object. Subjectivity is
endorsed by objectivity.
For this reason, one who
toils in Torah is not required to disassociate
himself from his own uniqueness of originality, in order to merit the
heavenly seal of approval. On the contrary, he is required to
penetrate to the innermost space of his own soul, to not deny his own
soul, until he can merit the illuminating of his own darkness –
according to the way that heaven shows him light.
In this way man extracts
what he needs from the heavenly source, those
basics of life’s wisdom and the moral values that he requires for his
own universe. He has no dealings with the hidden mysteries, and his
mind is not disturbed by how things look from above. This is
enough for him – what has been revealed to him for his own need, to
guide his path thereby.
Such is the path of
Torah. I have, with Heaven’s help, merited
the privilege of teaching Torah to students who are as my own children,
and in their merit, my path has been broadened, by my students’ needs –
for their needs are my needs, and my needs are theirs. Hence it
is my privilege, and my obligation, to set these matters down in
writing, for the public benefit.
Attaching the week to a
portion of the Torah – which is one of the
rulings of Ezra HaSofer – imbues the unit of fleeting time with a
dimension of eternity, which endows the entire year with a harmony
paved with meaning.
In this way, by attaching
the week to the Torah, events of here and now
are given the honor of serving as a tangible expression of truth,
including truth’s principles and supreme values, which are then
transformed into an existence that is permanent in nature.
Even change itself is
granted a permanent dwelling. The ephemeral
is granted its own particular weight, above and beyond its own
time. Thus anyone who studies the weekly parasha becomes capable
of seeing events from the high view that embraces the vast horizon.
The yearly, self-renewing
study does not repeat itself as an event, but
rather grabs hold of fleeting time in an embrace of inner,
self-renewing experience, which pours new content into an old vessel.
This explains the learner’s
excitement, as he follows the journey of
adventure into an unknown that conceals a secret about to be revealed,
aside from the new encounter with the familiar and beloved of
yesteryear.
This encounter puts the
learner’s self-renewal to the test, and merges
the Torah and the learner. Self-renewal on the part of both
the learner and the learned is what sets Torah study apart and distinct
from any other study or investigative involvement.
The Torah is born anew for
the one occupied with it, and it opens in
him new gateways of insight and knowledge. As in “turn it over
and over, for all is in it” – all is in the Torah and all is in the one
occupied with the Torah, who discovers in his own personality depths of
quality that were unbeknownst to him prior to the encounter with the
renewed learning.
Our study deals with this
dynamic encounter, with the meanings that are
born anew every day in both directions – both in the parasha and in the
learner, who merits a new, luminous insight into himself, and a new
understanding of his own time and its distresses.
Hence the new directions
and the different treatments that the reader
will find between one year’s parasha comments and another – and may it
afford pleasure.
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