Unveil Your Eyes!
Vanquishing evil takes four forms: First, doing Teshuvah with passion and love. Second, resisting evil. Third, study the teachings of Torah that deal with evil. The fourth level is to study the inner dimension of Torah which transcends evil. BECHUKOSAI BECHUKOSAI
Zohar and Ultimate Peace
This week’s parsha describes in vivid detail all of the great blessings G-d offers us for our devotion to the study of Torah and the observance of its commandments. One of the blessings that stand out is:
I will grant peace in the land, and you will go to sleep with nothing frightening you. I will eliminate wild animals from the Land and swords will not pass through your Land.
Rashi explains that the last blessing implies that an army will not even pass through our land to wage war elsewhere. So pervasive will the peace be that even the mere image of war will be removed from our sight. This is, of course, reminiscent of the famous Biblical prophecy of “turning swords into plowshares.”
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This Torah reading always coincides with the Festival of Lag B’Omer—which we will be observing this Sunday—which marks the passing of the great Sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar, the principal work of Kabbalah.
War and Peace Within Torah
The connection between the Zohar and the emphasis on absolute peace that we read about in this week’s parsha is that in Torah there are also two dimensions. There is a dimension of Torah that is engaged in war and a dimension of Torah that is entirely peaceful.
There are the legal aspects of Torah that deal with the realities and exigencies of life in an imperfect, discordant and even violent world. Torah addresses the world, the way it is now and not the way it will be in the future Messianic Age. Torah speaks to human frailty and decadence. In doing so, it serves a dual purpose.
First, it teaches us how to avoid getting ensnared into the impurities and vagaries of BECHUKOSAI the material world and its vices. The laws of the Torah are meant first and foremost, to guide us through the labyrinth of undesirable paths that lead to self-destruction.
Secondly, as explained in Kabbalah and Chassidic teachings, engaging our minds in these Divine teachings that discuss worldly affairs and even evil, has the capacity to refine the world.
The Torah, by design, is commissioned by its Divine Author to “enter into” the lowliest precincts of life to help release the sparks of holiness that are held captive by the physical world. These sparks, we are told, emanate from a higher reality, but have “fallen” into and become trapped by, the constraints of the physical world. Indeed, the most potent of these sparks are deeply embedded in those things that are associated with evil and cannot ordinarily be liberated.
When dealing with neutral objects and experiences we can liberate the sparks by simply utilizing them for a higher purpose. We liberate the sparks of holiness in food by eating kosher food, with a blessing recited before and after, utilizing the energy to do BECHUKOSAI good. The question, however, can be raised, how can we access and liberate the sparks in those objects and behaviors that are proscribed by the Torah?
Three Methods of Mining
There are actually three ways that enable us to “mine” and harness the incredible and explosive power that is embedded within evil.
The first approach to releasing the sparks contained in evil is limited to the person who has already transgressed by acting upon his or her impulse or spirit of rebelliousness. When this sinner begins to experience intense remorse for having distanced himself or herself from G-d, he or she arouses unprecedented feelings of love and passion for G-d.
Our Sages tell us (Talmud, Yoma 86b) that Teshuvah (usually translated as repentance, but more precisely as return) that is motivated by love has the capacity to actually transform one’s sins into virtues.
The rationale for this given in Chassidic texts (Tanya, chapter 7) is that the very energy that BECHUKOSAI they invested in and derived from their undesirable behavior has now become the engine and fuel that transforms sinners into righteous people who now possess even greater passion for G-d than those who never sinned.
In the terminology of Kabbalah, the erstwhile sinner can actually access the heretofore inaccessible sparks of holiness. To be sure, one may never deliberately sin so he or she can later return and acquire the benefits only available to the Ba’al Teshuvah (the returnee to Judaism), as the Talmud (Yoma 85b) states: “One who says, ‘I will sin and then repent’ is not given the opportunity to repent.”
The Power of Resistance
The second approach to liberating the sparks of holiness embedded in evil for those who tow a straight line and do not sin is the very act of resisting the temptations of evil. The energy required of us to conquer our own impulses and passions enables us to excavate even these ensconced sparks of Divine energy that are otherwise off limits. Each of these BECHUKOSAI modes of shunning and breaking evil is the straightforward and conventional way of accessing some of the positive energy that lies latent in the objects and actions that are associated with evil.
Excavation by way of Torah Study
The third approach to liberating the hidden sparks of holiness embedded in evil which is available to all is to study the teachings of the Torah that deal with these forms of evil. For example, when we learn what the Torah has to say about theft we are given the power to unleash the hidden sparks of good held hostage to evil. And when we release the sparks, the evil actions they lose their potency. Little by little, evil loses its ability to hold sway over us.
This third method highlights the power of the revealed parts of the Torah that deal with the lowliest aspects of life.
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Transcending Evil and War
There is, however, a higher dimension of Torah; its spiritual and mystical dimension which deals with G-dly matters. In this Torah genre there is virtually no getting into the mind of evil. Even the innocuous style of questions and answers, debates and arguments that punctuate the revealed parts of the Torah hardly occur in the teachings of Kabbalah and Chassidus. This phenomenon points to the utterly peaceful and serene facet of Torah.
These two dimensions parallel the two states of war and peace. As stated, when we study the legal aspects of Torah it gives us the strength to deal with the hardships and struggles of life. It takes us into the “war zone” and provides us with the “ammunition” and wherewithal to cope with it and even help to vanquish evil.
When we study the spiritual dimension of Torah, by contrast, it helps us cultivate and nurture the part of our soul that is above and beyond the harsh realities of life—the peaceful and tranquil G-dly dimension of our identities. When we delve into this aspect of BECHUKOSAI Torah we get a taste of the future Messianic state of peace and tranquility, in the face of which evil just evaporates. There is no need to deal with evil. There is no war. Moreover, even the image of war—represented by an armed force traveling through our land to fight elsewhere—is conspicuously absent.
This explains why the spiritual teachings of the Zohar and Chassidus are considered the means to bring about the Messianic Age, at which time we will see the fruition of the blessings of unmitigated peace. By studying these mystical teachings that help us cultivate the inner workings of our soul we help bring about the time when G-d’s Essence will be fully revealed, in its wake there is only peace.
This day of Lag B’Omer, the anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, is the day that these spiritual teachings of Torah are more readily accessible to us. It was on that day over 1,800 ago that he revealed some of the most profound teachings of the Zohar and bequeathed those teachings to us.
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Gal B’Omer
The word “Lag” (in Lag B’Omer) stands for the number 33 because this day is the 33rd day in our count of 49 days from the second day of Passover to the Festival of Shavuos.
However, the same number can be represented by the word Gal, which means “unveil,” and alludes to the verse (Psalm 119:18) in which King David, the ancestor of Moshiach, declares:
Unveil my eyes, that I may behold wonders from Your Torah.
King David’s prayer was for G-d to remove the obstacles that would not allow him to access the spiritual dimension of Torah—its wonders. And while King David was well versed in the laws of the Torah, he wanted to experience the spiritual dimension of Torah as well.
Over twenty years ago the Rebbe spoke to us about the need to prepare for the coming of Moshiach at which time the wonders of Torah will be fully revealed. In one of his talks, the Rebbe exhorted us to, “open our eyes” as our way of bringing Moshiach.
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The Rebbe seemed to be alluding—among other interpretations—to King David’s prayer and the theme of Lag/Gal B’Omer—that we do our part to open our eyes to the spiritual teachings of Torah. This will enable us to rise above the evil associated with and dominant in Galus/exile. Thereby we will usher in the Messianic Age and the true and complete Redemption, at which time we will experience eternal peace and the transformation of evil into good and darkness into light.
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From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Behar-Bechukosai by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
