Our Essence Revealed

The Two Reasons Intertwined

We have discussed how the Jews’ state of spiritual unconsciousness necessitated the introduction and popularization of the secrets of the Torah. We have also discussed how the accessibility of these supra-rational secrets to every human mind was enabled by the revelation of G-d’s essence which transcends the parameters of both the natural and the supernatural.

As we shall see, the two points are related. The dire straits in which the Jews found themselves was actually the catalyst for the revelation of G- d’s essential nature which allowed for the dissemination of mysticism.

Hidden Powers

This can be compared to a phenomenon that is mentioned in Kabbalistic sources as well as in medical writings. In times of grave danger - to a loved one, for example - hidden powers are released that enable people to do things they could not possibly do in normal times. People have been known to lift thousands of pounds of debris from a collapsed building that threaten to crush a child or squeeze through the narrowest of spaces to save a spouse from a deadly fire.

This unseen capacity is known in the terminology of Kabbalah as “Cochot HaNe’elaminm” - “The Hidden Powers.”

Abraham’s Test

When Abraham is tested to see whether he was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac, the Torah employs the term “nisah” for the word “test.” The root of this word is actually associated with the word for banner, ensign or flag. Nisah is also related to the word “nes” - “miracle.”

Jewish thought, and particularly, Chassidic literature, emphasizes that G-d did not have to test Abraham to know that he was capable of doing whatever G-d wanted him to do. The purpose of the test was to uplift him, just as a banner is raised high. He was uplifted because the test enabled Abraham to tap into the hidden forces he possessed and that were necessary for him to do G-d’s will.

Imagine this! G-d asks Abraham to do the most unconventional thing imaginable - slaughter his own son! Particularly for Abraham, whose raison d’être was love and kindness for all, this test demanded that he reveal his essence so that he could do the very opposite of his first nature. Human sacrifice, moreover, went contrary to his theological beliefs. It was the most abhorrent and unconscionable thing for him to do.

Because Abraham elicited that aspect of his personality and soul that transcended all bounds and parameters, G-d responded in kind. G-d reciprocated, promising him that His covenant with Abraham and his descendants would never be severed. Even when his children would no longer be deserving of G-d’s closeness, He told Abraham, G-d would always show them unconventional love that knows no bounds.

The same concept of revealing the deepest powers in a time of crisis applies to our era, as well. To describe our situation, Chassidic thought, as discussed earlier, employs the analogy of the king who realizes that the only way to save his son’s life is to pulverized the crown jewel. G-d has allowed the most treasured and secret aspect of His being to be revealed to save his children.

Pulling out all the Stops to Silence the Cyncics

There is a Biblical and Midrashic model for this. The sixth weekly Torah portion, entitled Toldot, which discusses the children of Isaac, introduces its subject in a rather odd way:

“These are the children of Isaac, the son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac.”

Why the repetition?

Rashi, the principal Bible commentator, cites a Midrashic interpretation:

“Since the Torah wrote, ‘Isaac son of Abraham,’ it was compelled to write, ‘Abraham begot Isaac.’ [This was] because the cynics of the generation were saying, ‘Sarah became pregnant from Avimelech, for she spent many years with Abraham and she did not become pregnant from him.’ What did the Holy One, blessed is He, do? He fashioned Isaac’s face to resemble Abraham’s, so that everyone attested, ‘Abraham begot Isaac.’ And this is what is written here - ‘Isaac was the son of Abraham’ - for there is evidence that Abraham begot Isaac.”

In introducing G-d’s response to the cynics, Rashi asks, “What did the Holy One, Blessed is He, do?” as if this were a dilemma for G-d. What is so unusual about this challenge that there is any question about what G-d could do? Furthermore, what is so miraculous about Isaac’s features resembling Abraham’s? Isn’t it normal for a son to resemble his father?

Chassidic sources explain that Isaac did indeed need a “face lift” to resemble his father Abraham. Abraham was the epitome of chesed (kindness) and love. In an ancient Kabbalistic source we read of how “G-d’s attribute of kindness ‘complained’ to the A-mighty that its job of exuding ‘kindness’ energies to the world was taken over by Abraham.” Abraham was not just a person who acted kindly, he was the personification and essence of kindness; it was an inseparable part of his being. Isaac, by contrast, personified the G-dly attribute of gevurah (severity). His entire life was devoted to rigorous self-appraisal and scrutiny. And he was demanding of others, as well.

The Torah tells us that the “wisdom of a person illuminates his face.” Kabbalah reinterprets this adage to mean that a person’s personality whether kind or severe - is reflected in his facial appearance. The more powerful a certain personality trait the more it will be expressed in one’s appearance.

Accordingly, by looking at Abraham one would see the kindness and love written all over his face. The face of Isaac, the epitome of severity, should have been so starkly different from Abraham’s that there would have been absolutely no resemblance between them.

Thus the question of the Midrash: “What did the Holy One, Blessed is He, do?” This was no ordinary miracle where G-d performs plastic surgery without the needles, the scars and the pain. This situation was entirely different. Here, G-d had to combine opposites. Isaac, the personification of severity, would have to radiate a look of absolute kindness. To make two extremes reside in one person called for a higher level miracle, one that transcended the very parameters of logic.

So we see why Rashi considered Isaac’s resemblance to his father Abraham a tremendous miracle. What is curious is that G-d would make a miracle big enough to entail overriding His own parameters just so the scoffers would see that Isaac descended from Abraham.

If we look at the situation as a matter of a parent shedding his regular behavior to save a child in danger, the reason why the highest kind of miracle was required is no longer a mystery.

In the book, “Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust” by Yaffa Eliach, the author recounts the story told of a young man attempting to save his sister from the Gestapo. The Nazi officer tells him mockingly, “If you will grow hair on the palm of your hand I will let her free.”

The young man opens his hand, and to the horror of the Nazi, his palm is covered with hair. The Nazi starts to scream, releases the sister and shouts at both of them to leave. The narrator lets us in on the young man’s secret: the hair on his palm was from a skin graft. Nevertheless, the man who saved his sister remarked, “If I hadn’t had this hair, the love for my sister would have made me grow hair then and there.”

Similarly, when G-d realizes that Isaac’s - and, by extension the Jewish people’s - very integrity and legitimacy is in question when Isaac’s heredity is disputed, G-d, as it were, sheds all His “inhibitions” and “breaks out of His mold” to do the logically impossible in combining extremes to shape Isaac’s face to resemble Abraham’s.

We now understand why and how the teachings of Kabbalah were made accessible to the human mind in recent times. Because G-d saw how the Jewish people were in danger of losing their spiritual vitality and, indeed, their identity, hidden forces of Divinity had to be unleashed, enabling the most sublime supra-rational concepts to be introduced into the realm of rational thought and nature.

Hence the popularization of Kabbalah in modern times.

Eliciting Three Responses from G-d

We have noted, however, that there is another reason why Kabbalah has been popularized in recent times: our proximity to the Messianic Age. This calls for more explanation.

In Kabbalistic thought, we are taught that how and when the three modes of Divine expression - the natural, supernatural and the essence - are expressed very often depends on our behavior.

When the Mitzvot are performed in a perfunctory fashion - when their performance becomes routine - G-d responds by exhibiting His presence cloaked in nature. When this occurs, the natural order of the world is not upset, and, thank G-d, no tragedies occur. But by the same token, nothing out of the ordinary occurs, either.

When we start acting “miraculously,” though, going beyond our own constraints in doing Mitzvot, G-d responds in kind and manifests Himself in a more open, supernatural way. It is in times like these that we see miracles in our own lives and throughout the world.

When we go all out and express the very essence of our souls, G-d likewise removes all the “outer layers” of His personality and expresses His essence.

Generally this occurs in times of crisis, when we are prepared to give our lives for G-d and Judaism, shedding all the outer layers of our personality which seek self-preservation above all other concerns. Such self-sacrifice does not come from logic, emotion or even will power. It can only come when the very essence of our soul is revealed, that part of the soul that cannot ever be detached from G-d, even in the most insignificant way.

Beginning of this Process

What we have witnessed in recent times is the beginning of this process, in which the very essence of G-d comes to the fore and G-d’s essential, paradoxical nature is evident. One of the manifestations of this process is the popularization of the deepest secrets of the Torah through the teachings of Kabbalah, particularly through the Chassidic movement. Never before has a generation given of itself despite the darkness and concealment all around. The very essence of the Jew has come to the fore in an unprecedented manner. But to appreciate the greatness of our generation, we should first consider what has happened to Judaism in the past 300 years.

A Lesson in History

With the upheavals of the 17th century, the Jewish community was divided into two groups: those who had the luxury of being educated; and the majority, who were denied a Jewish education. The masses of “simple” Jews, although unlearned, were sincere and devout. What they lacked in intellectual sophistication they made up in their sincerity. Nevertheless, the intellectual elite looked at them condescendingly.

This was the general attitude until the Ba’al Shem Tov established, as part of his overall mystical philosophy, that these “simple” Jews were in fact spiritually superior in their service to G-d to the learned but haughty scholars. “G- d’s simplicity” (i.e., His undefined, transcendent state of being), the Ba’al Shem Tov declared, “was expressed in the simplicity of these Jews” precisely because they were ignorant (due to circumstances beyond their control and not because they chose ignorance, for that would have been an egregious violation of Jewish law).

The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that scholars, even sincere scholars, can at best capture the “intellectual” mode of G-d. By studying Torah, one’s mind becomes attached to G-d’s mind, which is inseparable from G-d’s essence; nevertheless, what the scholar unites with is G- d as He is cloaked in intellect, not His essence. The simple Jew, however, expresses the very essence of his soul and is therefore able to relate to G-d’s essence directly.

The Assault of the Enlightenment and Modernity

The next major attack on the Jewish people was the Jewish “Enlightenment” movement known as the Haskalah, and the Chassidic movement was a major response within Judaism to the Haskalah. With the advent of new freedoms granted Jews in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the modern secularization of the Jew was put into motion. Scientific advances were employed in the assault against the Torah. The new theory of evolution and the different pseudo-scientific schools of Bible criticism, among other new disciplines, challenged all the basic tenets of Jewish belief That Judaism survived the onslaught of the “Enlightenment-Haskalah” movement is testimony not only to the strength of Judaism, but also to the incredible spiritual depth of faith possessed by the Jewish people.

Their resistance to the new winds of secularism that were blowing did not cause the majority of Jews to waiver. This stubbornness was an expression of the quintessential stiff-necked nature of the Jewish people, in the positive sense of the term.

From the Enlightenment through Czarist persecutions and attempts to convert young Jews to the forced conscription of Jewish children (known as the cantonists) in the 19th century, most Jews remained steadfastly loyal to their faith.

The winds of the 20th century were far more powerful and claimed far more victims. The 20th century, in which the most spectacular medical and technological advances in history were made, is also the century in which more Jews were killed than in any other century.

Even before the Nazi monster reared its ugly head, the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union sought to mercilessly eradicate any and every trace of Judaism.

Parallel to these attempts, unprecedented in their wickedness, to destroy the Jewish people and their religion was the American tide of assimilation. In just two or three generations after Jews began flocking to these shores, the majority of Jews in this country have assimilated to an unprecedented degree. More than half of the estimated 6 million Jews in the United States are not affiliated with any Jewish religious institution.

The Revival

And yet we are experiencing a revival of Judaism. Thousands of young Jews have discovered that Judaism is for them. Having abandoned their hedonistic lifestyles, they are prepared to accept the rigors of a Torah way of life with all its demands and restrictions. Judaism has never before seen a time such as today in which tens of thousands of primarily young people have emerged from a thick spiritual darkness to discover their Jewish souls and return to their ancestral ways without the aid of their parents and teachers, and often despite their elders’ strong opposition.

Moreover, many of the young who have returned to a life of Torah observance have been responsible for bringing their parents with them.

Indeed, the very last prophecy recorded in the Bible, at the end of the Book of Malachi, speaks of how G-d will send Elijah the prophet in the before the Messianic period - to “restore the hearts of the parents to the children,” which Rashi translates as “restore the hearts of the parents through the children.” This prophecy has finally been realized, at least to a certain extent, in contemporary times.

This movement of return represents a qualitatively different process of Jewish awareness than what had been experienced before. There is certainly a much greater expenditure of spiritual energy that is necessary to transform one’s life than is required to merely carry on a tradition from one generation to the next. How has this occurred?

“The end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning [is wedged] in the end.”

Kabbalistic and Chassidic thought explain, based on a statement in Sefer Yetzirah, one of the earliest books of Kabbalah: “The end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning [is wedged] in the end.” The spiritual energies of the “End of Days” [a term used in the end of the Book of Daniel to describe the Messianic Era], are wedged in the spiritual energies of the beginning.

“Beginning” can be defined as either the opening G-d made at Sinai when he revealed the innermost essence of His being, thereby enabling the spiritual and physical worlds to meet and be synthesized, or the incredible flow of Divine energy introduced at the time of creation.

As we stand in the “End Days” we receive more powerful forces than we have received throughout the rest of our history, precisely because we are at the end, which is wedged in and benefits from the dynamic energy of the beginning.

Moreover, there is an enhanced measure of light that we can experience today that even surpasses that of Sinai.

Kabbalah makes reference to two types of spiritual light or energy: “or yoshor” - “straight light” and “or chozeir” - “reflected light.” The force of a thrown object when it bounces off a wall (or chozeir) is greater than the force of the thrown object when there are no obstacles (or yoshor).

As we reach the End of Days, “walls” have appeared (due either to our own behavior or Divine design) that do more than just obstruct the spiritual energy. These obstacles, by presenting a wall of resistance, provide a power to the Sinaitic spiritual energy used today that is greater than the power of the spiritual energy that came directly from Sinai unobstructed. It is as if G-d shined a light at Sinai.

The farther the light travels, the fainter it becomes. As we get closer to the Messianic “End of Days,” the light meets tough resistance because of the walls G-d has erected which obstruct the light.

This obstruction translated into the Generation Gap, wherein parents could not transmit their Jewish feelings to the next generation. There was a barrier preventing the light from continuing. But, by obstructing the light and not allowing it to go further, the energy actually bounced back with greater force than even existed at Sinai when the light was first generated and was at its strongest point.

In simple terms, the barriers that have been erected in our day and age actually help to elicit the most essential powers of our souls, which let us see through the darkness.

The Holocaust can be described as one of the darkest periods in history. The word dark is used here in the sense that the entire world simply allowed the German people to annihilate an entire people without anyone caring. The Jews that lived through this nightmare, and especially those who perished in it, could not possibly see the presence of G-d in their suffering.

Unlike persecutions of the past, when Jews were forced to give their lives rather than convert to another religion, the Jews of the Holocaust could not even feel they were dying for a cause. Even that faint glimmer of light, which accompanied earlier persecutions of Jews, was denied the Jews of the Holocaust And yet, despite the darkness, there were thousands of Jews who observed bits and pieces of Judaism, even in the death camps. Building Sukkahs, baking Matzah, lighting Shabbat and Chanukah lights, not to mention Torah study and prayer with Talit and Tefillin, were actions that actually occurred within the death camps themselves. Instances of Jews giving their last rations to be able to do a mitzvah or save a life are examples of unprecedented spiritual energy and light.

To see through total darkness and reveal light is a phenomenon that had never before been seen. That Holocaust survivors kept their faith, rebuilt their families and homes, started life anew and succeeded is testimony to a force of G-dly energy possessed by these people which is unprecedented.

Oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union is one more saga that attests to the incredible G-dly energy that Jews possess and have revealed in this pre-Messianic Age.

For over seventy years the Soviet regime attempted to stamp out all vestiges of Judaism. Yet seventy years later, there are thousands of Jews whose souls are on fire. Young and old are undergoing circumcision, and in record numbers parents and children are flocking to Jewish institutions of learning to thirstily indulge in the pursuit of Torah knowledge.

Moreover, the heroism of thousands of Jews who did not give in to the Communist terror and continued to spread Judaism in Russia is further testimony to the unique response of Jews to G-d in the darkest period of their history.

From all of these examples of Jewish resistance and growth despite the barriers emerges a picture of a people who are in many ways far greater than their forebears. Our ancestors never experienced the darkness of our time. If we have come this far it attests to our having revealed the very core of our divine souls. When we reveal our essence, G-d reciprocates and reveals His essence, and that is why we are now worthy of the revelation and popularization of the deepest secrets of Judaism. That is why it is our generation that is deemed worthy of the coming of Moshiach, because in spite of our glaring shortcomings, we are a unique generation.

The Connection Made

Now we can appreciate the connection between the two reasons why mysticism has been popularized in recent times: as an antidote to our lowliness; and because of our exalted state living on the threshold of the Messianic Era.

These two apparently contradictory explanations actually complement each other. Our unique status as people, who have earned the revelation of G-d’s innermost secrets, because we have revealed our inner souls, is directly related to our lowliness. What makes our spiritual efforts stand out is the fact that we have accomplished them in spite of our lowliness and lack of spiritual sophistication. The light that comes out of the deepest darkness is the light that shines the brightest.

From the book Safe Kabbalah, Part One: Opening the Gates by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.