Day Eight: Mesirat Nefesh, Finding the Real Center
As we mentioned yesterday, the nature of the world changed at the time of the Second Beit Hamikdash. The world was a different place when we could get direct answers from Hashem about what to do, and when we could walk into the Beit Hamikdash and experience open miracles. We had unbelievable access to spirituality. To counterbalance that, we also had a tremendous drive for avodah zarah.
Mostly, we don’t really understand what avodah zarah was all about. It’s too removed from our reality. However, there’s one aspect we can understand all too well. Chazal tell us that the core of avodah zarah was the desire to be the center of the world. Someone who makes their god an idol, and speaks for their god, gets to determine the parameters of the relationship. So we see that Pharaoh (Bereisheit 40:1) stood on his god, on the river, while Yaacov (Bereisheit 28:13) awoke to find Hashem standing over him.
As the world changed from a world of prophecy to a world defined by human intellect, many things changed with it, but our desire to be the center of the world remained the same. It simply took a different form. Chazal called it the heresy of Greek wisdom. The Greeks claimed that everything in the world could be understood and determined through our intellect. If we cannot understand it, if it doesn’t fit into our rational world view, then it doesn’t exist. For this reason, miracles can’t exist. Reality is only what we allow it to be. Existence is limited to the self.
This heretic may believe himself to be quite sophisticated. In reality he is simply expanding on an infant’s take on the world. A baby has no concept of reality outside of himself. We are born to believe that we are all of existence. The purpose of our lives is to expand ourselves and break out of that trap of living completely within ourselves.
The secret weapon of the Chasmonaim, in their battle against the Greeks was mesirat nefesh. Mesirat nefesh is our most powerful weapon for blasting away at the walls that confine us within ourselves, and opening ourselves up to a higher reality. A person who is willing to self-sacrifice is a person who recognizes that he exists as a part of a higher and greater existence. Through mesirat nefesh we declare, “My existence is not reality itself. My existence is the way I reveal a deeper reality. Therefore, if my existence contradicts that reality, I cannot continue to exist.” The opposite is true for a person who is trapped in themselves, who defines existence as himself. He cannot sacrifice himself. If he would, existence would perish.
Mesirat nefesh means that we move the center of our world outside of ourselves. In this way we expand ourselves and our world. Any act we choose to do over Chanukah with mesirat nefesh, any tefillah we daven with more kavanah, any act of kindness we would rather not do, is a statement that we are connected to something higher than ourselves. Even with small acts of mesirat nefesh we open up our homes and our lives to the expansive, unlimited, joyous spiritual reality that is the world Hashem has given us.
To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 164-168 and 174-187