Speaking Torah Vol 2: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid's Table

NO‘AM ELIMELEKH

Y-H-W-H spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month [hodesh] of the second year since they had left Egypt.

(NUM. 1:1)

With this sentence the Torah is teaching correct conduct. The words the desert of Sinai are a reminder that the Torah was given on Mount Sinai in order to teach you to be extremely humble and self-effacing. Remember that God rejected all the high mountains and chose Mount Sinai, which was the lowest of them all.

But take care that this submissiveness not lead you into depression, for that is a great obstacle to God’s service. The Torah teaches that you should always be joyful. The shekhinah is not present amid sadness. The words in the Tent of Meeting (be-ohel mo‘ed) imply that you should enter the tent of joy, for the word for meeting (mo‘ed) is also the word for festival.

On the first day of the second month [hodesh] (renewal). But should you say, how can I rejoice when I have sinned so extensively? The Torah teaches that you should nevertheless engage in repentance with joy. Encourage yourself by saying, I am reborn this very day and I will never return to my foolishness. Renewal (hiddush) is about becoming a new person, and this is alluded to in the words the first day of the second month [hodesh]. Indeed this is the second new start—the first was when you were born, and the second is when you repent and are forgiven.

The second year since they had left Egypt refers to the same thing. For the blessed Holy One took us out of Egypt, meaning the terrible shells, the forty-nine gates of impurity. The Exodus from Egypt happens again whenever a person breaks the shells on the way toward holiness. Our reality is referred to as year (Sefer Yetsirah 6:1), so the second year comes to teach that there is a second Exodus from Egypt that happens in our own times, whenever a person repents.

This is a powerful example of the upbeat message that the Hasidic masters sought in even what seem to be the most bland and ordinary words of Torah. They see nothing in Torah as ordinary, of course. Think how this verse might be translated in accord with R. Elimelekh’s reading. It would go something like: Y-H-W-H tells us that even while we are to be lowly and humble, we should fill ourselves with joy. There is always a chance to begin again and change, since we are ever being liberated anew from whatever enslaves us. Wow, what a message!

RAV YEEVI

Y-H-W-H spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month of the second year since they had left Egypt.

(NUM. 1:1)

We have not found reference anywhere else in the Torah to a desert of Sinai, only to the mountain. But we have to interpret the word Sinai, as did the Zohar, by noting that its numerical value is 130, identical to that of sulam, or ladder (Zohar 1:149a). The mountain was given that name when God descended upon it to give Torah to Israel. Y-H-W-H, who is supremely transcendent and elevated, spread down to earth, metaphorically speaking, like a person descending from heaven to earth would come down on a ladder stuck into the ground whose head reached heaven (Gen. 28:12). It is called Sinai because it is a ladder-mountain, its head reaching into heaven. Thus God came down ... upon Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:11).

But sometimes it is called the desert (midbar) of Sinai, for a person can cleave to God and attain the holy spirit by means of speech (midbar/dibbur). Every letter of the alphabet is attached to God above. When you speak here below employing those letters, their source rises upward; your speech itself becomes a ladder ... whose head reaches heaven. Your words ascend and come before God. This is called the midbar or speech-act of Sinai.

The play of midbar and dibbur is irresistible and is widely found in Hasidic teaching. The sacred power of speech is extended already by the Ba‘al Shem Tov from the holy words of Torah and prayer to include all of human speech, including the vernacular. Leshon ha-kodesh, the holy tongue, no longer means only Hebrew as distinct from other languages, but pure human speech in any language, kept free from sin.

GINZEY YOSEF

Y-H-W-H spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai ... saying: "Lift up the head [i.e., count] of the community of the Children of Israel according to their families, their fathers’ households, counting [be-mispar] the names of all the men, counting their heads."

(NUM. 1:1–2)

RaSHI says that because He loves them, He repeatedly counts them.

But the real counting of Israel points upward, toward their Root above. The six hundred thousand Israelite souls have their source in the six sefirot [from hesed to yesod], the six directions. That is why the text says Lift up the head and not simply count. This act of Moses’s counting awakened the light of that Source, shining down brightly upon Israel. It raised them up to the highest rungs of awe and love, directing their hearts to the ever-present God. Lift (se’u) is to be taken as in Israel lifted up their eyes (Ex. 14:10).

This is Lift up the head: Raise Israel to its highest Root. According to ... their Father’s household, the Source of their souls. [Be-mispar] means shining. The names, for a person’s name represents the life-force within. Thus the light of their upper Source comes to shine within them, each according to their name or essential flow of life.

Each of us has a unique light, shining in upon us from the Source of all life. Moses—or the inner sage—is called upon to lift us upward toward that Source. Here the act of counting, sometimes superstitiously suspect as bringing curse, is itself raised up to the highest blessing.

KEDUSHAT LEVI

As Y-H-W-H commanded Moses, he counted them in the wilderness of Sinai.

(NUM. 1:19)

The verse would have made more sense in reverse order: Moses counted them, as God had commanded him. But this appears to be the meaning: God gave the Torah to Israel, and the souls of Israel form the body of the Torah. There are six hundred thousand Jewish souls, parallel to the number of letters in the Torah. Israel, in other words, are the Torah. Each one of us constitutes one of Torah’s letters.

By counting Israel, therefore, Moses was learning the Torah. This is the meaning of the verse’s order. As Y-H-W-H commanded Moses means that the Torah’s commandment to Moses was the very act of counting Israel. That is also why it says but do not count the tribe of Levi or lift up their heads among the Children of Israel (Num. 1:49). Israel represents the Written Torah, while the Levites stand for the Oral Torah. Therefore, of the Levites it says: "He counted them by the mouth of God, as he was commanded" (Num. 4:49).

Counting Jews is a way of learning Torah! The translation of this teaching is offered as a gift to our Jewish demographers and social scientists. But they have to remember, of course, that such learning is a mitsvah, a sacred act, to be undertaken only for the sake of heaven.

AG: You might take these comments as a Hasidic object lesson in how to make Torah interesting. Parashat Be-Midbar is a preacher’s nightmare, almost entirely taken up with census figures. And here it is enlivened with lessons about humility, penitence, rebirth, the ascent to God, and lots more.

EL: The second and third texts are both about ascent and uplifting, Sinai as a ladder and mispar [number] as the shining light. But the homilies are themselves upliftings of this prosaic text. Here the method and the message seem to reflect one another!

AG: Is the Kedushat Levi also an uplifting text? The Children of Israel are being raised up to the level of Torah.

OR: The Hasidic master, as always, is telling us to look beneath the surface and to raise everything up. The exegetical project and communal project are in that sense the same. Raise both text and people to a higher level!

EL: Yes, you are to love the people and reach out to them. But the purpose is not just accepting them as they are. You are always there to raise them higher. The tsaddik sets a high bar as the standard for himself, then draws others upward. But that role sets him apart in a certain way; he stands midway between the people and the heights toward which he is raising them.

OR: But I think Levi Yitshak is different here. He’s not telling you to raise them up. They already are Torah. To engage with Jews—even just counting them—is to be engaged with Torah. If you can’t see this, you have to raise yourself up, transform your vision, so that you can see this truth.

AG: Yes, that’s the Kedushat Levi; it fits with lots of the stories about him. But other members of the group were not so sure. Does the tsaddik then give up any role as reprover? How far would you go with this? Discovering holiness in ordinary people is wonderful. But is anything they do to be seen as holy?

OR HA-ME’IR

As these curse-bearing waters come into your loins ... the woman shall say: Amen, Amen.

(NUM. 5:22)

RaSHI says that she is thereby placing herself under oath, saying Amen if I am pregnant by this man [her husband], and Amen if I am pregnant by another.

This verse reminds us of a teaching by our sages: Rabbi Yose ben Yehudah says that two angels accompany a person on the way home from synagogue on the Sabbath eve. One is for good and one is for ill. If they arrive and find the candles lit, the table set, and the bed prepared, the good angel says, May it be God’s will that you have another Sabbath like this one, and the bad angel is forced to say, Amen. But if not, the situation is reversed, and the good angel is forced to say, Amen" (b. Shabbat 119b). All the mitsvot of the Torah have angels appointed over them, as is known, one from the right and one from the left. When a person fulfills a mitsvah in love and awe, the left is incorporated into the right and joins with it....

Now it is known that the reciting of Amen effects the union of the two names Y-H-W-H and Adonay, standing for love and judgment (Tikkuney Zohar t. 10, 25b).... Even though the sages said that whoever responds Amen! with all his strength has his ill-fated decrees torn up (b. Shabbat 119b), this is not a matter of simply crying out in a loud voice. The mouth has to follow one’s innermost thoughts. We have to remain aware of God’s oneness and unity even when engaged in the worldly deeds that we need to sustain ourselves. There too we should be seeking out God’s oneness, our thoughts not being separated from the One even for a moment. Wherever we go, whatever we see, we should perceive it as a garbing of divinity, a limb of the shekhinah, who is called Adonay. From there we should raise that up to the name Y-H-W-H. This is the way an enlightened person says Amen, uniting the two holy names.

You should do so even when engaged in those twenty-eight varied times [described in Ecclesiastes 3 as a time for ...], fourteen for the good and fourteen for ill. You serve God through all of them, raising up shekhinah’s limbs. A person like this, when coming to pray, is truly able to say Amen with all his strength (koah = 28), bringing along all those twenty-eight times that seem so opposite to one another. Even from there [the harder times], one calls out Amen, joining judgment to compassion, linking the two names. That is the main thing we pray for, as in May the Master of heaven aid you in all times, and let us say, ‘Amen.’ May God give us the strength of heart to be able to say Amen in all those twenty-eight times....

The final lesson is this. Your human task is not fulfilled unless you serve your Creator with such effort that you force the bad angel to say Amen. Now you can see how deeply the sages were thinking when they said that the woman’s saying "Amen, Amen was placing herself under oath. This is the full acceptance of God’s kingdom, the uniting of those two names Y-H-W-H and Adonay. This is possible only if we work so hard at it that the bad angel is forced to go along. That is the meaning of Amen if by this man, referring to Y-H-W-H, who is called Man, or Amen if by the other man, the other side, for he too will be forced to say Amen."

We include this text to show how even a very harsh and problematic biblical passage like the ordeal of the suspected wife may be transformed in the Hasidic reading into a paradigm for God’s service. All of us, as understood here, are the suspected wife, standing between the pulls of good and evil. The two angels are our own good and evil urges. But our ultimate embrace of the good needs to be so strong that we join it as whole selves, our inner evil angel forced to come along.

ORAH LE-HAYYIM

Y-H-W-H spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying: ‘Thus shall you bless the Children of Israel. Say to them....’

(NUM. 6:22–23)

Why is the word saying repeated? And since the words Thus shall you bless [referring to Aaron and his sons] are in the plural, why does the text then switch to the singular form in Say to them? RaSHI notes that the verb say is in a grammatical form called the source (infinitive absolute), vocalized with a kamats and a holam, as in such words as zakhor and shamor.

Holy books teach us that God created the world so that His kingdom [would] be revealed over Israel. For their sake were all the worlds created and linked to one another, reaching down to this world where God’s kingship would be revealed through them. The last link in this chain is the aspect of malkhut (kingship). All the upper worlds and their lights are manifest in it, and all beings above and below are included within it. Malkhut is the image or mirror in which all are reflected, as the Zohar teaches (Tikkuney Zohar t. 18, 31b).

Y-H-W-H gave blessing to Abraham our Father, who passed it on to Isaac, and he to Jacob, and then his sons. But God then gave the act of blessing to the kohanim (priests), since they represent divine compassion (hesed) and love. When the kohanim arouse themselves in love to bless Israel, they awaken love far, far above in the uppermost Source, showering goodness and blessing upon Israel. That is why the form of their blessing is uniquely coined as who has commanded us to bless His people Israel with love. In arousing their own quality of love to pour blessings upon Israel, they cause love and blessing to flow from that highest Source into malkhut. Malkhut is indeed called kenesset yisra’el, the assembly of Israel. Thus all Israel, but also all the worlds and all creatures that are rooted in malkhut, receive that blessing [of love] from the uppermost Source....

But how were the kohanim able to attain a state of such pure love? Surely they had to repent completely, seeing themselves in an absolutely humble way. This was like Sinai, when all of Israel stood at the level of total love and unity, because they had returned to Y-H-W-H.

Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying. This act of saying takes place within the heart, as in: Should you say in your heart (Deut. 7:17). The heart is the seat of binah, the place to which we turn in repentance. They should repent in order to come to love all Israel....

Say to them, in the realm of thought. This form, vocalized with a kamats and holam, is indeed a source. By reaching there they were able to draw blessing upon Israel and upon malkhut, from the highest Source. All worlds and all creatures partook of that blessing.

Note the repeated insistence that blessing was to flow both to Israel and to all creatures, since malkhut contains all the worlds and all creatures within it. This dual sense of Israel-centered piety and a desire to bring about universal blessing is typical of the best of Hasidic teachings.

DIVREY EMET

Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying: Thus shall you bless the Children of Israel. Say to them....

(NUM. 6:23)

In the following Torah portion, Moses is first told, Take the Levites ... to purify them (Num. 8:6–7), and only afterwards, Thus shall you do to them. But here Moses says, Thus shall you bless, without previously having commanded Aaron to bless them.

We know that Aaron’s actions brought him to his rung. Because he loved peace and was always trying to make peace between people, he merited to bring about peace between Israel and their Father in heaven, as the Zohar teaches (3:88a). All this came about because he loved God and therefore loved His creatures. He always wanted them to be at peace and to love one another. This all derived from the root of love.

That was how he came to bless Israel, because of his great love. This is to Aaron and his sons, saying: Thus.... Aaron and his children, meaning his followers, have it in their very nature to bless. [They do not have to be commanded to do so.] To them it is fitting just to say: Thus shall you bless....

We have all met such people in our lives, those whose very nature brings them to bless others. All they need to be taught is how to do it in such a way that the blessings will be heard and uplift those who receive them. This in itself is no small trick.

HAYYIM VA-HESED

May Y-H-W-H lift His face to you.

(NUM. 6:26)

This is difficult. Does the blessed Holy One, God forbid, have any likeness or face? The face here comes from the side of the receivers [of God’s blessing]. They picture the divine light in accord with their own degree of clarity. The verse means May Y-H-W-H lift up your perception of His face.

This is the meaning of At the Sea He appeared to them as a youth, but as they stood before Sinai, He appeared as a compassionate white-haired elder (Pesikta Rabbati 21). When they came out of Egypt, [the people] Israel were in a childlike state of mind, like a youth. That was the level on which they could access God’s light. But by the time of Sinai, their minds were expanded; they could see the whiteness and clarity of the light. They were in the category of white-haired elder. That is how it can say that there God’s face appeared to them as that of a compassionate old man.

This explanation of a well-known midrash answers explicitly a question the midrash itself leaves open. Was it God who changed appearances, or was it the mind-set of Israel that received the divine presence through different projected images of its own? Here it is clear that the face of God is none other than our own. Maimonides would be proud of this Hasidic follower!

NO‘AM ELIMELEKH

To the children of Kehat he did not give (wagons); theirs is a holy burden, they carry it on their shoulders.

(NUM. 7:9)

Regarding Saul it says: From his shoulders up, he was taller than any of the people (1 Sam. 9:2).... The Talmud teaches: Why did Saul’s kingdom not continue? Because there was no blemish in him (b. Yoma 22b). This is very strange. If there was no blemish in him, his kingdom should have continued forever! This can be understood based on the Talmudic teaching A sin done for [God’s] sake is greater than a commandment fulfilled for ulterior motives (b. Nazir 23b). This too is difficult to understand. How could God’s sake apply to a sin? Who ever commanded one to sin so that it could be called for God’s sake?

The truth seems to be as follows: Everything that the Holy Blessed One created in the world was created to benefit the creatures by way of a flow of blessing coming from above. This flow must be awakened from below; [this awakening] is known as female waters....

The tsaddik facilitates the flow of blessing. A tsaddik who wants to benefit people must cleave to them in order to bring about the good that they need. Any person who wants to benefit another cannot do so fully unless they are connected in total unity. A tsaddik must therefore connect to all the people of Israel in order to benefit them. Yet how can the tsaddik do this with a sinner (heaven forbid)? Even a sinner needs the divine flow and vitality, but how can the tsaddik connect completely to the sinner?

This is why the Talmud speaks in praise of a sin for (God’s) sake. For the tsaddik also sins, albeit in God’s service, and through this creates the possibility of a connection with the sinner and can help him as well.

This matter of sinning for God’s sake can be demonstrated in Saul’s case as follows.... It seemed to Saul that killing the livestock of the Amalekites [as Samuel had commanded him to do; 1 Sam. 15] would be a great sin. If he had been capable of sinning for God’s sake, he would have killed the animals. He would have reasoned that even if it seems like a sin, if God commanded it, let it be a sin for God’s sake. But he was so righteous and without blemish that he was incapable of sinning even for God’s sake. And since he could not sin for God’s sake, he would not be able connect to sinners to bring the divine flow to them, as they had no point of connection.

Yet a king has to benefit all of Israel equally, including the sinners. And this is why his kingdom did not continue: because there was no blemish in him. He did not have the capacity to benefit everyone.

That is why Saul is referred to as from his shoulders up—higher than all the people. The shoulders refer [in Lurianic Kabbalah] to extending one’s arms in giving ... but what Saul had to give was higher than all the people. There was no blemish in him, and he could not unite with the people because he was above them. The only way they could receive from him was by becoming righteous people and connecting with him at his level. But he could not come down to them....

This is the meaning of the verse To the children of Kehat he did not give (wagons); theirs is a holy burden, they carry it on their shoulders. The children of Kehat are the tsaddikim, and they must do their holy work. They must bring down the flow of blessing, bearing it on their shoulders.

Saul held his shoulders too high; broad shoulders are intended for bearing the people’s sin and thus connecting with them. The No‘am Elimelekh’s choice of example to demonstrate sinning for God’s sake may be somewhat disappointing (the seemingly senseless slaughter of all those animals), but the message of this teaching is still clear: a person who holds by absolute principles cannot be a leader, no matter how just and right those principles may be. One wonders toward whom, across the Maggid’s table, these words might have been directed.