Bereshith – the Torah of Self-Contraction

The stories of Rebbe Zusia’s wanderings illustrate the power of the Torah of going into exile. He sees his responsibility as a leader as a need to connect all of clal Israel, and to gain this perspective he needs to spend enough time outside of his ‘comfort zone’.

The whole idea of ‘going into exile’ was to attain a higher vision, of being in empathy with the Shechinah, which is in exile.

One sign of the times is that these days, you cannot find a rabbi who will pursue this way of service.  They no longer exist. There are no longer any rabbis who are willing to be homeless beggars, who will voluntarily leave their position as a way of improving their own midot and of tying them more closely to the fate of the Jewish people, and to the fate of the Shechinah.

The bottom line is that we are addicted to convenience, to salaries, and security.

The whole issue rests on the idea of the Mitzvot that we have been propounding. How many people – in this case rabbinic leaders and Jewish leaders – are willing to step outside their box, to really get outside their framework and see things from a different perspective?

Once, before he became renowned, Rebbe Zusia came to a stetl/town, where he was shunned by the wealthiest people. Finally, a poor family invited him to spend Shabbes with them. Some time later he returned to the same stetl, but by now he was a famous rebbe, and so the richest person in town invited him for Shabbes. When he was sitting at the rich man’s Shabbat table, he spooned up the delicious soup he had been served and poured it onto his shirt. His hosts, who were very proper people, were shocked.

“What are you doing?” they asked.

“Well,” replied Reb Zusia, “when I wore a poor man’s clothing you didn’t invite me. I can only assume you have invited my nice clothes to dinner, so I am giving them the soup.”

The question is how many people are willing to get out of themelves?

This is the story of Shlomo and Kohelet. He was willing to get outside of himself, to leave his position as king and become a homeless beggar. The whole book of Kohelet comes from that perspective. When he stepped out of himself, he saw that ‘everything is vanity’, most human activity is designed for an ego boost, and that the only saving grace is a person’s connection with Hashem: ‘The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere God and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind; that God will call every creature to account for everything unknown, be it good or bad.” (Kohelet 12:13-14) Some people view it as cynical, but to me, Kohelet is the most profound and inspiring book in the whole Tanach.

This kind of avoda/worship – of going into exile – once so profound, no longer exists. It was an amazing thing, especially for people in positions of leadership, who, at least for a short time, put themselves in positions of vulnerability.

The whole idea of Shlomo’s path is to achieve a position, and then purposefully let go of it. Doing this leaves an enormous space in which to connect with Hashem.

Often, the first thing a person asks is, ‘what do you do?’ This is truly bitul hayesh – the nullification of possessiveness and control that is so vital to the whole Torah. It is a concept that is understood much more profoundly when experienced in the context of an actual exercise – in a situation where you really step outside of yourself.

Another Reb Zusia story pertinent to this issue appears earlier in this book (see Parshat b’Har):

There was to be a wedding in the town of Annapol. The rabbi of the town was devastated to see that he was only third on the list of invited guests. On top of this, because the rabbi arrived late at the wedding, he was seated on the outskirts, served cold food, and he left early, angry and disgruntled.

 

Rebbe Zusia, whose name was last on the list, arrived early, knowing that the most important Mitzvah of a wedding is to rejoice with the bride and groom. Because he was so early, he was seated right next to the groom, he was served an excellent meal, and he was the first to dance with the bride.

 

Zusia became so excited by all this joy and celebration, he entered into an ecstatic state, calling to God, “Hashem, You are the Groom and we are the bride!” In this state of ecstasy, he danced out of the hall and into the rest, and continued dancing there day and night for three days, until finally he look up to heaven and said, “Master of the Universe, Zusia is hungry!”

 

When Zusia finally returned to town, the rabbi asked him how he could have had such an ecstatic experience at the same wedding which he, the rabbi, had not enjoyed at all.

 

Zusia responded: “Rabbi, you came expecting everything, and you got nothing. I came expecting nothing, and I got everything.”

 

The upshot of all of Zusia’s work and avoda was that he had within himself the ability to live a life of simcha and gratitude and not be overcome by disappointment brought about by his own expectations.

 

Rebbe Zusia was a very sophisticated person, but he came across as deceptively simple. The moral of this story sounds cute, but it goes much deeper than this. I think of this story at least once a day, because it represents the biggest part of what I’m trying to change in myself.

 

The deep meaning of this story holds the key to Simcha/joy, which can only be attained if we believe that the world is a a place of responsibilities and gratitude, rather than rights and entitlement.

 

The upshot is bitul hayesh. The real nullification of possession and possessiveness is a constant theme in the Torah. We must constantly work on our own egos and our own personalities.

 

Most of us are not going to go off and be homeless beggars, but we can move out of our house for a week, and we can do other things mandated by Torah to uproot our sense of security and self-identity.

 

Just as Hashem contracts Himself, so that man can exist, man must contract himself in order for God to exist. The whole spirit of Adam and Chava and Cain and Abel is that man will fill up his schedule and his life, and there will be no room for God. Under the solid roof there is no room for God in many people’s lives, even orthodox people. This is the symbol of the Succah – vulnerability and trust. There must be a space in your life where you really pursue this as part of your service to Hashem.

 

The human being has a profound instinctive drive for security, and the irony is that security can become a prison. Most people’s deficits and dysfunctions come from pursuing as adults what made them feel secure as children. What they achieve is short-term security but long-term pain.

 

In a world without change no one would connect with Hashem, and so when the world starts to change, in the Spring and the Fall, we take advantage of this, and maximize it, because it is only in this vulnerability, when things start to shift and people feel insecure, that there is a space open for Hashem’s presence.

 

This has become institutionalized throughout Jewish history. We count on Hashem not to ever let us become complacent or too secure, because if we do, the relationship is virtually over.

 

So on Simchat Torah, when we move from the last letter of the Torah to the first letter, we move literally from death to birth – from Moshe’s death to the birth of the world. Moshe Rabbenu represents the Torah perspective on the world. The Peleh Yoetz writes that Moshe presents the ideal of lev tov- a good heart, and ayin tov- a good eye, which brings us right back to ‘In the beginning’.

 

The Ben Ish Chai identifies the fundamental dialectic of creation in the Tree of Knowledge, in his commentary on Parshat Bereshit.

‘The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and desirable to the eyes and that the tree was attractive as a means to gain intelligence. She took some of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.’ (Genesis 3:6-7)

Three reasons are given for the woman eating the fruit: it was good to eat, attractive to the eye, and a means to gaining intelligence. Our sages of blessed memory say (Brachot 40) that the tree was really all three of these fruits. They say the tree from which Adam Harishon ate was wheat. They also say it was a vine, and they also say it was a fig tree.

And truly, these and these are the words of the living God. It is no great wonder that the fruit of the Tree had the taste of all three of these – wheat, grape and fig - for as our Sages tell us, the mann (in the wilderness) could be any taste in the world.

We see also that the initial letters of each of these fruits of the Tree of Knowledge correspond to ChaGaT (Chessed, Gevurah, Tiferet). Chitta/wheat corresponds to Chessed; Gefen/vine corresponds to Gevurah; and Te’enah/fig corresponds to Tiferet.

A human being is called Etz Hasadeh- ‘Tree of the Field’ (Deuteronomy 20:19), and also here are found three lines, which are Chessed, Gevurah, and Tiferet. This is why three reasons are given for the woman eating the fruit.

‘The tree was good to eat’ – this corresponds to fruit that has the taste of wheat. The word Chitta/wheat is hinted at in the word tov/good. The sum of the letters tet, vav, bet (tov) is twenty-two, as is the numerical value of the word Chitta. (There are also twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet).

‘It was pleasing to the eye’ corresponds to the fruit that tasted of fig, because Te’ena/fig connects with Ta’ava/appetite…

‘Attractive as a means to attain intelligence’ corresponds to fruit that had the taste of the vine, because the vine produces wine, which opens us, as are sages of blessed memory said (Yoma 76) ‘Wine and sweet aromas open the mind’.

 

Alcohol diminishes inhibition. It has a dark negative side, but it can also have a positive side. The Gemara says the wine either brings murder and rape, or it brings an expansive feeling and a mitigation of despair and sorrow.

 

As Jews, our use of wine is not to reject it because the fact that it has very negative potential means that it also has positive potential.  For centuries, Jews had the lowest alcoholic rate of anyone, because from a very early age we teach our children to use wine positively. We teach that wine is mekadesh/holy, the core of sanctity. The Gemara teaches: ‘When wine goes in, the secrets come out’. (Yayin/wine and sod/secret both have the numerical value of 70). This can have a very expansive, positive effect. We don’t conquer alcoholism by rejecting alcohol.

 

Noach was the world’s first alcoholic. Why? Because, like the rabbi in Rebbe Zusia’s story, he expected everything and got nothing. He felt totally humiliated. He expected a new, utopian, beautiful world, and he ended up drunk and sodomized.

 

Noach’s three sons were “Essence” (Shem), “Heat” (Ham) and “Beauty” (Yefeth). In Genesis 9:18-19, the Torah says, “The sons of Noah, who emerged from the ark were Shem, Ham and Yafeth. These three were Noah’s sons, and from them, the whole world was repopulated.”

 

At a deep level, the Torah here is asking – is “Beauty” going to go into the service of “Essence”/Shem, or is it going to go into the service of “Heat”/Ham? The key word is the first word of the next verse – vayachel. This word comes from the word chol, meaning “profane”, and the Hebrew word chol is generically connected to the English word “hollow”. So when the Torah says Vayachel Noach, it is telling us that after he got off the ark, Noach became a hollow man. On the ark, everything was filled with ruach hakodesh/the spirit of holiness. When Noach came out of the ark, he was facing the void. If the void is experienced as profane, then it is sterile, but if you can see the holiness behind the void, then it becomes the fruitful womb.

 

Noach has an open world, an open book. But he is missing one thing. He has no one to criticize. He spent his life criticizing people, and now there is no one left to criticize, he becomes depressed.

 

Another translation for Vayachel Noach  would be, ‘and comfort was hollowed out’.

Dating back to Noach’s invention of the plow, we live in a world of technological comfort and convenience, and this leads to emptiness. As we try to make life easier and easier, it becomes more and more hollow.

 

In his commentary on the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the Ben Ish Chai is saying that by seducing Chava, the serpent brought death and bitterness and division into the world.

We learn from the laws of Kashrut that the way something becomes traf  is also the way to purify it. The way in is also the way out.

 

Because the blemish of the Tree of Knowledge was caused by eating, eating is also the way out. And since the original eating happened on Friday at twilight, the main repair for this sin is the Friday night meal. This meal includes all three components mentioned by the Ben Ish Chai. Gefen in the form of the wine, Chittah in the form of the bread, Te’ena (beautiful to the eyes) in the form of the candles.

 

This gives us a hint as to how much we need to accomplish on Friday night, because it is at this time that we are performing tikun chet Adam harishon – repair of the sin of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We have these symbols of Chessed, Gevurah and Tiferet in front of us, and by the connections we make by having guests and bringing people together and speaking Torah we can be transported to a different reality. If the blemish came in through eating, the healing must also happen through eating. This is really the core of Judaism. This is why Avraham focused on eating at the very beginning of Judaism – by feeding people in his tent, and this is also why the Beit Hamikdash was a big kitchen. The core of everything was to get back to the sin of the first eating, and to repair it.

 

On the verse (Genesis 3:1) ‘[the snake said] even though God said ‘do not eat’…’, the Mei Hashiloach asks, ‘what is the meaning of ‘God’s Torah is pure and complete, it restores the soul’?

 

According to the teachings of the Mei Hashiloach, our primary task in life is to find our hisaron/deficits, and treat them with Torah, as if we were putting medicine with an eyedropper into a wound. Part of our task is finding the disease, and part of our task is finding out which Torahs are our medicine.

 

The Mei Hashiloach compares this to restoring a lost item.

 

The idea here is that every human being goes through a kind of adolescent rebellion – rebelling against God, the Parent. In that rebellion you discover both your uniqueness as a human being, and also the connection back to the Parent. If adolescent rebellion is handled properly, it paradoxically leads to a simultaneous sense of autonomy and of closeness between the parent and the adolescent teenager. But if the child doesn’t differentiate, and never rebels, there is a fusion of parent and child, which is not real love and support, because underneath it there is a lot of rage, submerged like an infected wound. If, on the other hand, the rebellion is so extensive that the child never comes back, the child’s life can become consumed in reactivity and running from parents.

 

This is the Chessed-Gevurah dialectic, represented in the three fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, and it is beautiful to see that these are all at the Shabbes table.

 

At the Shabbes table, we not only free our body from the working week, we also free our mind, and it in this transition, when we really let go of all our plans, of all the things we didn’t get done, we learn so much about ourselves. On Friday night, when we say vayechulu hashamayim veha’aretz – the heavens and the earth were finished, can we look at our world as done? In order to let go of it in your mind, you have to see it as completely finished. Paradoxically, this seeing the world as complete is the essence of tikkun. If you only see the deficits in the world and in yourself you can’t really change anything. Seeing and identifying the deficits is only the first step. Further to this, you must know that Shabbes is the main metaphor. Shabbes means that everything is done, and no matter how incomplete you are, you are complete.

 

When Noach got off the boat, he saw total emptiness - no grace, no Shabbes. He got drunk to fill up the void. He experienced the emptiness outside in the world as his own inner emptiness. He could not see the potential for birth inside the emptiness. What happened to Noach – being sodomized by this own son – is a thought to make every parent shudder. Nonetheless he was a great and holy person. He was one of the greatest human beings ever. The greatest thing of all was having the courage to write his Torah. He fell down totally, but he had the courage to tell us what went wrong, and his story was passed down. Most important he told Avraham, so that Avraham could start the process of tikkun.

 

Avraham was standing on Noach’s back. Without Noach before him, Avraham couldn’t have taken the next step. He studied all of Noach’s Torah’s at the academy of Shem and Eber.

 

Step One is finding the deficit, but Step Two is Shabbes, which means the world is perfect as it is. This is a hard idea to comprehend. This is the idea the Ishbitzer is trying to convey when he quotes the verse “The Torah is perfect, it restores the soul”. He explains that the Torah was given to fix our inherent deficits, just as the return of a lost article is restored to its rightful owner. The Ishbitzer continues:

 

When it was said to Adam, “from the Tree of Knowledge do not eat”, the snake jumped, as a hateful person identifies the deficit in the one he hates, and then traps him with this very imperfection.

 

The snake exploits a person’s vulnerability. Whereas the Succah promotes trust and vulnerability, the snake promotes distrust and vulnerability. Vulnerability coupled with trust is a healing, whereas vulnerability is coupled with betrayal and deception the hole of the deficit gets deeper and deeper.  This takes us back to childhood, when, if we felt that our vulnerability was exploited, our trust was compromised.

 

The tikkun of the Tree of Knowledge is to make the Friday night table an environment of Succah, of trust, so that I have a place on Friday night where I can open up my heart and feel supported. Creating an environment of trust is not so easy. You have to cut off from the world and focus your energy. This is why Shabbes is the greatest Gevurah in the entire Torah. You have to cut off from the phone, and the car, and all the invasions of the outside world, and create a bubble of vulnerable trust. This is what repairs the deficit that goes all the way back to the eating of the fruit in the Garden of Eden.

 

What was the vulnerability of Adam and Chava?

Firstly, the snake asked (Genesis 3:1) “Did God really say that you may not eat from any of the trees of the garden?”

This is a diagnostic question, because the snake knew that God did not say that, and it connects the snake to Amalek, who asks; “Is there God, or is there nothing there?”

The snake is trying to convince Chava that Hashem is antagonistic towards her, that He made a rule that is not for her, but against her, designed to deprive her of all nourishment.

 

All the shame and blame that is experienced by Cain and later by Noach comes out of this moment with the snake. The shame-blame chain starts here, with the deficit in eating, and it is only through eating, at the Friday night table, that we can repair this deficit.