Parshat Beshalach

Posted on by Rebecca

Parshat Beshalach

Borrowed Love

There we were, at the edge of the sea. The Egyptians had drowned, and the spoils were being washed onto the shore. There was so much bounty we didn’t have time to collect it all. Rashi (Shemot 15:22) tells us Moshe had to force us to leave. You might think we were a nation enthralled with spoils. But Brachot (9b) gives an entirely different picture. There, the Gemara explains that just one week earlier in Mitzrayim we had to be forced to ask for and take wealth from the Egyptians. We were worried it would be too heavy to carry on the journey ahead. The Midrash (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:11), picking up on this discrepancy, describes the wealth we got in Mitzrayim as silver, and the wealth we got at the sea as gold.

What was really going on? Rav Schorr explains that the wealth we are talking about here is not only monetary. Everything that happens, happens on many levels simultaneously. The Ari z”l teaches that the spoils of Egypt refer to the sparks of kedusha that were in Mitzrayim. We took those sparks out with us when we went. By comparing these spoils to silver, the Midrash is teaching us about something important about our path from galut to geulah. This path took a very specific form, a form which is valuable to recognize, because it repeats often in our lives.

Our path from galut to geulah began with Pesach. Rashi (Shemot 12:11) tells us the name Pesach indicates jumping over or skipping. Shir HaShirim 2:8 describes the way Hashem came to rescue us in Mitzrayim as “skipping over the mountains, jumping over the hills.” We had to jump hastily out of Mitzrayim because we weren’t ready. Hashem picked us up from the 49th level of tumah, and “jumped” us up to the 49th level of kedusha. What this meant was that we were living in a borrowed kedusha. We experienced a tremendous revelation of Hashem as we were leaving Mitzrayim, but it wasn’t a revelation that we had fully earned. Even so, it served an extremely valuable purpose.

Rav Dov Ber of Mezeritch explains the phenomenon as follows. Imagine traveling in the darkness, with only a vague idea of the right way to go. You’re hungry, and also tired. You know there’s an oasis ahead, with everything you need, but you don’t know exactly how to get there. Suddenly, a bright flash of lightning pierces the sky and you see, for a moment, exactly where you need to go.  With that flash of light, your entire state of mind changes. Where before you were trudging along, you are now invigorated. True, it is dark again, but you saw what you needed with your own eyes, just ahead. You are instilled with the desire to continue moving forward.

This is one of the ways Hashem guides us along the path of spirituality. When we decide to reach for new heights, Hashem helps us get there. He gives us a boost at the beginning, like that flash of light, which raises us up, out of our current perspective, and allows us to experience and see more than we could before. That added boost is an expression of love from Hashem. It creates within us a corresponding feeling of love. Rav Schorr explains that this love is borrowed love. It’s love that reflects a level of closeness to Hashem that we didn’t quite earn yet. But its function is to instill in us the will and the desire to continue to push forward, and to turn that borrowed love into something permanent, by raising ourselves up to a real level of greater closeness to Hashem.

This was our path as a nation as we left Mitzrayim. Hashem Himself was revealed on our last night there and we were raised up to the highest level of kedusha. This was not a sustainable level for us, because we hadn’t earned it. But it left in us a strong desire to own that level, and make it truly ours, which is something that did indeed happen after seven days of spiritual work in the desert when we crossed the Yam Suf, and then after 49 days of personal spiritual growth, at Har Sinai, when we received the Torah.

The spoils we got in Mitzrayim reflected our spiritual level at the time. They were “borrowed” from the Egyptians. And they felt like a burden, something we couldn’t carry for long, because they didn’t really reflect our true spiritual level and weren’t really a part of us. The midrash compares them to kesef, silver. The word kesef in Hebrew means not just silver, but also desire (see Bereisheit 31:30, and the same phrase in Yedid Nefesh). These spiritual spoils were not really ours, but they left an imprint on us, a desire to keep working on ourselves. When we reached the sea we experienced another revelation of Hashem, one we had earned. The spoils from that revelation were like gold.

Rav Bunim of Peshischa points out that often, in the midst of a process of spiritual growth, we can feel this same pattern but not recognize it. What we do recognize is that in the beginning everything was so easy. We were on such a high. And then, things got harder and it wasn’t as easy to soar. We think, why can’t it be like it was in the beginning? As an answer, Rav Bunim quotes us the pasuk in Kohelet (7:10), “Do not say, ‘How was it that the former days were better than these?’ For not out of wisdom have you asked concerning this.” If it was easier in the beginning, that’s because it wasn’t coming from our own wisdom, or our own strength. It’s supposed to be harder now. That’s part of the process of making it our own.

Our experience of Shabbat can also be another expression of this same pattern. The Tur (Orach Chaim, Shabbat 292) tells us that the three tefillot of Shabbat reflect the three most important Shabbatot in history. On Erev Shabbat we experience some of the kedusha of the first Shabbat of Bereisheit, on Shabbat morning we experience a reflection of the Shabbat of Matan Torah, and on Shabbat afternoon we experience a bit of the kedusha of the Shabbat of Olam Habah.  At the same time, the Mechilta (Beshalach, Parsha 4) tells us that these three time periods of Shabbat reflect the Shalosh Regalim: erev Shabbat has an aspect of Pesach, Shabbat day has an aspect of Shavout, and seudah shlishit has an aspect of Sukkot.

What does this tell us about our entrance into Shabbat each week? There are two aspects to Shabbat. It is both the culmination of all our work from the week before, and also the kedusha that accompanies us at the start of our new week. But on the Shabbat of creation, man had only just been created. There was no work the week before. The Shabbat of Creation was a gift, and it imprinted each erev Shabbat with its kedusha. Rashi tells us (Shemot 20:9) that we enter Shabbat “as if our work is done.”

The nature of Shabbat is that even if we haven’t prepared, Shabbat comes full force. If you are awake to it, there is a moment of instant spiritual uplift. Erev Shabbat is like Pesach. Hashem jumps us up to His world. The Gemara tells us that Shabbat is a gift Hashem gives us that is in His storehouse (see Shabbat 10b). Rav Schorr tells us that Hashem never took it from there. Instead, every Shabbat He lifts us up to enjoy the gift there. That’s how we start Shabbat, with the gift of the kedusha of the Shabbat of Creation and the jumping kedusha of Pesach. We can choose to continue to grasp hold of the kedusha of Shabbat and experience the special quality of Torah learning of Shabbat day that echoes the kedusha of Matan Torah and of Shavout.  And we can open ourselves up to the closeness to Hashem that echoes the Shabbat of Olam Habah and Sukkot that is expressed through the songs of seudah shlishit. If we recognize the pattern, we can appreciate and use the extra love from Hashem that comes at the beginning and helps us through process.

Parshat Va’eira

Posted on by Rebecca
crossroads-1580168_1280

The Path We Choose To Walk

Our Parsha begins in the middle of a conversation with the words, “And Elokim spoke to Moshe, and He said to him, ‘I am Hashem.’” This is Hashem’s response to Moshe’s cry at the end of last week’s parsha, “Why have you done evil to this people, why have you sent me? (Shemot 5:22)” The structure of this pasuk is both interesting and familiar. It begins with the name Elokim, and then shifts to the four-letter name of Hashem, the Shem Havayah. We can recognize this same pattern from the story of creation. The Torah begins, “In the beginning Elokim created heaven and earth.” Only in the second perek is it written “on the day that Hashem Elokim made the earth and the heaven (2:4).” Rashi tells us that, “In the beginning, it arose before Him in thought to create the world with Middat HaDin, He saw that the world would not endure, and so He added Middat HaRachamim.”

This does not mean, chas v’shalom, that there was a change in Hashem’s Will. The Midrash is describing the reality that creation is made up of many worlds. An olam, a world, is a place of he’elem, a place of concealment, where Hashem’s presence is concealed. Or, if we flip that idea, it is a place where we have a certain amount of clarity through the concealment. Each world is a revelation of the middot of Hashem on a different level. All the worlds exist simultaneously. What we perceive, which world we live in, is determined by our spiritual level, and by our personal and national avodah. The same way that we have a choice of where we walk in space, we have a choice of how we travel through time and what world we experience as we do so. We can live in the natural order of the world. We can also live on a higher level, in the Toratit level of the world. This is how two people can be standing in the same place, and yet be in completely different worlds. We saw this phenomenon in Parshat Vayechi, where Yaacov was living in Olam Habah within the confines of Mitzrayim while his children were living in galut.

The world of thought, the world of din, continues to exist, even as we exist in the world of rachamim.  The Avot, and certain tzaddikim like Moshe and Rebbe Akiva, lived with a connection to it.  We saw that at the akeidah Avraham acted in both worlds simultaneously. In the world of thought, the akeidah was actually carried out, and the ashes of Yitzchak are considered as if they still rest on the mizbeach. However, in the world of action, the malach told Avraham not to touch Yitzchak, and the command from Elokim was tempered with rachamim.  

In our Parsha, Hashem tells Moshe that there was a plan for the slavery in Egypt which was in accordance with Middat HaDin. That plan was that we would be in slavery for 400 years. Moshe, like Avraham, lived with an attachment to the world of Din. But what he sees on the ground is that as a nation, Klal Yisrael is not there. They can not withstand this level. They need rachamim. Moshe takes this plea to Hashem, and Hashem responds by revealing to Moshe that His relationship with us as a people is going to take a new form, different from the Avot.

The Avot related to Hashem through the name Shakkai. This name, as we spoke about in Parshat Miketz, refers to the way Hashem acts upon nature to place boundaries on it so that it is both able to conceal and reveal Hashem’s presence in the world. This was the path of the Avot. They used the natural world as the path for experiencing Hashem. Avraham looked at the world around him and came to recognize Hashem through his contemplation of it. The Torah goes to great lengths to describe the physical actions of the Avot, because each one was imbued with connection and attachment to Hashem. They constricted their physical actions in such a way that malchut shamayim could be seen in the midst of the physical creation. Hashem’s response to the Avot was a reflection of their own avodah. The miracles that Hashem performed for the Avot fit into this pattern. The fire did not burn Avraham when he was thrown into the furnace in Or Kasdim because when Hashem set limits to the world, one of those limits is that the natural world can only operate in its own sphere. Avraham raised himself to a spiritual level beyond the system of nature, and fire, by right, had no ability to burn him. This is a miracle from within the system of nature, part of the boundaries that were set up for the natural world from the time of creation.

However, with the words, “I am Hashem,” Hashem reveals to Moshe that in Mitzrayim, everything was going to change. We were not on the level to effect miracles though the natural world. We would now have a new relationship with Hashem, based on the Shem HaHavayah. This name of Hashem reflects the truth that every single aspect of creation is continuously brought into existence by Hashem. The natural world exists, but only because Hashem wills it into existence at every moment. There is nothing forcing it to continue along its current path except for Hashem’s will. There is also nothing confining it, and on this level, Hashem can bring about the geulah even if we don’t deserve it. We don’t really understand this fully in this world, and that is why we can’t say this name aloud.

Hashem reveals to Moshe that Klal Yisrael is about to embark on a process that will allow them to stand at Har Sinai and experience the full understanding of this name, even though they were not on the level to earn it.  This is the message that Hashem gave Moshe through the nevuah of the burning bush. The bush did not raise itself up spiritually. It was a scrub before, it remained a scrub after, but it still didn’t burn. Hashem changed the laws of nature, and the bush was not consumed. Even more, it was able to experience the tremendous revelation of Hashem that was expressed through that fire.

This is what we gained in Mitzrayim. We gained the ability to have a relationship with Hashem at every level, at all times. The process that gave us this ability was the process of the ten plagues, which were a revelation of the ten ma’amarot that keep our world in existence. The plagues revealed that it was only the Will of Hashem that keeps the world in existence at any given moment. We can’t understand this on its deepest level, of course, but for me, the experience with Covid has given a bit of an insight into it. What I’ve noticed is that all of us, even those of us less affected, have a new relationship with our world. Maybe we learned not to make plans too far ahead, not to rely on school happening, or stores being open, or being able to get a hug from a friend when we need it. Most of us have a different relationship with time than we did before. And our world has only been partially disrupted. Imagine living in a world where water turns to blood and burning hail falls from the sky. How could you not have a new appreciation for how the system of nature is only the hand of Hashem? The process of the ten plagues was a revelation of Hashem that taught an entire nation to have a different relationship with the physical world.

We did not retain that level of awareness of Hashem. But we did retain an imprint of it. As a nation, and as individuals in that nation, we retain the knowledge that the natural order is not the only order in this world. There exists a higher order, which we can reach according to how we choose to serve Hashem in this world. The Maggid of Kozhnitz says that this is the deeper meaning of the question each person is asked at the end of their life, “Were you koveah itim in Torah?” He reads this not as, ‘Did you establish times to learn Torah?’ but as, ‘Did you establish your time as Torah, did you establish the time you walk through as being in the seder Toratit, in a place above nature?’ This is the choice we all have. We can walk through our time in the natural world, or we can choose a path through it on a higher plane.

Parshat Shemot

Posted on by Rebecca

The Names of the Stars

Sefer Bereisheit is the story of how the Avot imprinted in us as a people the spiritual strength we needed to succeed. Sefer Shemot is the story of geulah, of how those strengths come to expression. And although Sefer Shemot is definitely the story of national geulah, Rav Schorr shows us how it is the story of personal geulah as well.

It all begins with names. Specifically, Shemot begins with what appears to be an unnecessary repetition of the names of Yaacov’s children. Rashi famously gives the reason for this, “to make known His love for them, as they are likened to the stars which He takes out and brings in by name.” Rav Schorr points out that when Chazal said, “to make known his love for them” this was not just a random declaration. The intent was to make it known to us, each and every one of us. What Hashem is making known is that He loves us, and that we, too, are like the stars with a light that shines eternally.

Our individual light is expressed through our Hebrew name. Hebrew, lashon hakodesh, is different than other languages.  A Hebrew name is not just something we use to get someone’s attention. It is a description of essence and internal strength. When Hashem names something, he defines its spiritual purpose in this world. Everything that was created was created for a specific purpose. Each of us has a unique aspect of kavod shamayim which we are meant to express in the world, and unique spiritual strengths which we are given in order to accomplish our task. Speech is the vehicle by which we give expression to internal things. This is why naming things was an intrinsic part of the creation process. Having a name means that we have spiritual strengths, and the ability to actualize those strengths in the world.

When we call a child by a name, we are giving the child’s inner kochot expression in the world. After we name a baby boy at his brit, there is a bracha which is given by the community to the child: “Just as he has entered into the Covenant, so may he enter into Torah, into marriage, and into good deeds.” What we mean is, just as you entered into this brit with Hashem with these specific kochot and spiritual lights, we bless you to be able to continue to express your spiritual light, and to use it to enter into Torah, marriage and good deeds. We are blessing the child that he will have the ability to bring his kochot into expression in a way that is fitting with his name.

If the highest part of ourselves, our soul, is unable to express itself, it becomes imprisoned in our body. We become disconnected from our own light, and we fall into personal galut. We experience our own personal version of the slavery in Mitzrayim. The Ishbitzer Rebbe gives an interesting insight into the nature of this slavery, which is applicable on a personal level as well. Commenting on the midrash (Rashi, Shemot 18:9) that no slave was ever able to escape from Mitzrayim, the Ishbitzer says this doesn’t mean that there was a wall, or some other kind of barrier which held them in. Slaves stayed in Mitzrayim because they thought it was “like the Garden of Hashem” (see Bereisheit 13:10). They couldn’t imagine that there was anywhere else they wanted to go to.  

The Chiddushei HaRim makes a similar comment on Shemot 6:6, where Hashem says, “I took them out of the sufferings of Mitzrayim.” He says that the suffering of Mitzrayim was that we suffered Mitzrayim, we tolerated it. We did not understand that we wanted to go, and for this reason, Hashem had to make life in Egypt unpleasant, so that we would want to go. The first step of geulah, personal or national, is the knowledge that there is more, and the yearning for something better.

Chazal tell us that in Mitzrayim speech was in exile. This means that the aspect of ourselves that allowed us to express and actualize who we are, was not fully operational.  The thing that saved us was that we kept our Hebrew names. This is not just on the surface level, but on a deeper level as well. We remained connected to the essence of who we are.

Staying connected to who we are is our key to freedom. And we daven for it every day. At the very end of the Amidah we daven to “Hashem, our Rock and our Redeemer.” This is a request for personal redemption. We connect this request to our name, by saying a pasuk that shares the first and last letters of our name. The idea is that each day, every day, we remind ourselves as we daven to Hashem, that we have the ability to express our unique spiritual strength in the world. We do it while we use our power of speech. And we create, with Hashem’s help, our own personal geulah every day.

Parshat Miketz

Posted on by Rebecca

“Enough is Enough"

Toward the end of the Parshat Miketz, Yaacov is forced by famine to relinquish his youngest son Binyamin and allow him to go with his brothers to Mitzrayim. As he does so, he turns to Hashem with a prayer (Bereisheit 43:14): “May E-l Sha-dai grant you compassion before the man, and he will release to you your other brother and Benjamin, and as for me as I am bereaved, I am bereaved.” This is the tefillah of a tzaddik who is suffering. In order to understand it, we have to look a little more closely both at the test that Yaacov is facing, and also the particular name of Hashem he uses in his prayer.

At the time that he utters this prayer, Yaacov is facing his longest and hardest test. It had begun almost twenty-two years earlier. Rashi describes (Bereisheit 37:2) how Yaacov, after having dealt with Eisav, Lavan and Dina, and after having finally settled with his family in Eretz Yisrael, was hoping for and expecting some peace in his life. This was not just a matter of wanting to rest. Yaacov had a strong desire to return to his spiritual roots. As we mentioned previously, Yaacov was connected spiritually to the Eitz HaChayim, the tree of life. He was born to sit in tents and connect himself to the Torah. However, taking on Eisav’s avodah, in addition to his own, had forced Yaacov into galut. When he finally returns to Eretz Yisrael, having built the family his father and grandfather had dreamed of, Yaacov thought he would have the opportunity to relax into his essential avodah. And then, Yosef disappeared, and with him many of Yaacov’s hopes and dreams.

It was not just that Yaacov had lost Yosef, although that would have been bad enough. Yaacov knew that the future of the Jewish people hinged on his having twelve sons. He had a nevuah that as long as none of his sons died in his lifetime, he would not see Gehenom. Then, at exactly the time that Yosef disappeared, the presence of the shechina left him. What was Yaacov to think? Rashi, quoting the midrash, (Bereisheit 37:2) calls this test “rogzo shel Yosef, the troubles of Yosef” but Rav Schorr points out that rogez also means anger. This was the test where it appeared that Hashem was angry at Yaacov. R’ Bunim of Peshischa points out how astonishing it is that Yaacov maintained his avodah through this long test. For twenty-two years, without his beloved son, without any certainty that he had succeeded in his mission of building the Jewish nation, and without the presence of the shechina, Yaacov persisted and succeeded in his avodah of maintaining emunah when Hashem’s presence was hidden. 

This last test of Yaacov’s is the maaseh avot siman l’banim for the galut we now find ourselves in. Like the troubles with Yosef, our galut, too, began with lashon harah and hatred of one Jew for another. Like Yaacov, we live in a world without nevuah, and the galut feels like it stretches along endlessly. We too live with a reality that could be wrongly interpreted as Hashem being angry at us (this is, in fact, what the Catholic Church has been telling us for centuries.) And like Yaacov, our mission is to maintain our emunah, our knowledge of our relationship with Hashem, through it all.

Rav Schorr explains that we have the strength to get through all this because Yaacov planted it within us.  Maaseh avot siman l’banim would be meaningless if it were just a way for us to know what will happen in the future from what happened in the past. Instead, it is a spiritual reality that the Avot implanted within us. Their actions, their avodah, impacts us spiritually today. When I want to understand this on a more personal level, I think of my grandparents, a”h. They had a loving and joyful relationship, and a vivacious, youthful old age, Baruch Hashem. That reality gives me both the desire and the ability to build the same for myself. On a national level, the spiritual seeds the avot planted so many years ago are still inspiring us and keeping us going. Yaacov’s strength, his ability to hold onto his emunah for twenty-two years, is our strength as well.

Rav Schorr explains that the prayer that Yaacov uttered for himself and his sons is a prayer for us as well. The essence of that prayer lies in the name E-l Sha-dai. The meaning behind this name is given in Chagiga 12a which explains that when Hashem created the world it began to expand, becoming more and more physical. As it did so, Hashem’s presence became more and more hidden in the world. The physical expansion of the world needed to be limited so that the physicality of the world would not obscure the presence of Hashem. The name Sha-dai expresses Hashem’s ability to define the moment of perfect bechira, when the ability to see Hashem in the world and the ability to hide Hashem in the world were evenly matched, and to say to the world, at that exact moment, “Dai, Enough.”

Rashi (Bereisheit 43:14) says Yaacov’s prayer was, “May He Who said to His world, “Enough!” (שֶׁאָמַר דָּי) say to my troubles, “Enough!” The tefillah was an expression of emunah for himself, and also for us. Hashem is a creator who knows when to say “enough.” He knows that moment when the troubles have served their purpose as mechanisms for growth. At whatever moment the word “enough” needs to be said, Hashem will say it and everything will turn around. If Hashem has not yet said it, that means there is still room to move forward in our present situation. And we can draw on the strength we got from Yaacov to keep us moving.