VaYeshev: Stone in
the Bread vs. Fly in the Wine.
ABANDONMENT THEOLOGY
(If you believe all Chassidic stories you are an idiot, and if you don't believe any of them, you are a fool).
In tennis, the critical moment that distinguishes a great player from a mediocre player is the moment after they hit a bad shot. The great player will ask himself, 'what can I learn from this?'
The idea of space - Malchut, Shabbes, the Cherubim, the moon - is the feminine aspect, this is the void, the moment of abandonment, and inside it is the still small voice of God.
Echoes in Torah are associational - they are poetic, fictional and soft - they are not hard science. Understanding poetry requires soft flexible thinking.
The Ishbitz calls this "finding God in a cloud". In the Gemara you have both processes - exacting, precise left brain thinking, and soft, expansive right brain thinking.
The Mei HaShiloach characterizes these different processes in his commentary on the first of the Six Questions asked by the Heavenly Court (Shabbat 31a), where they represent the difference between Joseph and Yehudah.
Yosef (the Tzaddik) asks God why he must sit in an Egyptian prison for 12 years while his brother Yehuda is giving birth to Mashiach (Annointed One)?
God answers by way of two metaphors, in the form of the dreams of the baker and the wine steward.
The baker's crime was a stone in the bread.
The butler's crime was a fly in the wine.
The baker was punished, and the butler went free.
Why?
Bread baking is a methodical, step by step process requiring precision and attention.
A stone in the bread person (left brain) is a methodical person, committed to laws of cause and effect.
Fly in the wine, on the other hand, is unforeseeable and not preventable. In this world view, the universe is perceived as inconsistent in its essence. God made the world inconsistent and chaotic, there is always a fly in the wine, nothing follows a neat set of cause and effect rules. In this world-view, the unpredictable is the predictable.
A fly in the wine person (right brain) is a poet.
The Gemara says, When the Temple was burning, Titus brought a prostitute into the Holy of Holies. When he was having sex with her on the Altar, he saw the Cherubim embracing (indicating that this was a time of great intimacy between God and the Jewish people).Taking out his sword, Titus tore the Parochet, and the Parochet bled real blood, and Titus cried out "I rule the world!". At that moment, a mosquito flew into his ear, and buzzed and buzzed and buzzed until Titus finally committed suicide.
Every human being wants to make a neat box out of the world, but a fly will inevitably fly in. The difference between the two types of people - stone in the bread and fly in the wine - is that they each respond to the unpredictable in different ways.
The Ishbitzer says that these two personality types correspond to the parsha of the half-shekel, because each type needs to find its opposite, its complement, its ezer k'negdo.
The Fly in the Wine person needs to find the Stone in the Bread person, and vice versa, but of course, these categories are not consistent, they also are soft around the edges, like "God in a cloud". Metaphors are not formulae.
In order to look for our complement, we first need to know ourselves, and this involves a process of self-examination and refinement.
Finding one's complement corresponds to the question 'Did you argue (pilpul) with wisdom?'. This, says the Ishbitze, corresponds to the Parsha on Betzalel, because when Moshe confused the order of construction of the Mishkan, telling Bezalel to make the Ark and then the Vessels, Bezalel knew instinctively that this was wrong, and reversed the order.
Moshe was a Yosef/bread in the stone type person. He confused the order of construction, because his methodical, bread-in-the-stone/left brain mind did not allow him to hear it the way God said it, because the way God said it did not make 'sense'.
Bezalel was a Yehuda/fly-in-the-wine type person. He was an artist, a craftsman. Even though his grandfather Chur had been killed trying to stop the construction of the golden calf, Bezalel agreed to make the cherubim, which were also graven images. With his right brain/poet's eyes, he could see that although the golden calf and the cherubim looked the same, they were not the same in essence. A literal thinker would veiw them as the same thing, but Bezalel could see that they were all metaphors, and that no two metaphors are the same.
It's not Yosef/Moshe who defines Tshuva, nor is it Yehuda/Betzalel. They both define it together.
Yosef sits in prison, because a person is judged by the way he judges others.
As a Stone in the Bread person, his natural inclination is to be judgmental.
So God's answer to Yosef is, "if you judge by the breadth of a hair, then you will be judged by the breadth of a hair."
The very center of the Torah contains the tshuvah for this rivalry between Joseph and Yehuda. The center point of the Torah, Leviticus 10:16, says "and Moshe searched and searched". What was he looking for?
In this passuk, Moshe got angry, and whenever Moshe gets angry, he forgets his Torah. Moshe was angry because Aaron's surviving sons (after the deaths of Nadav and
Avihu) did not eat the sin offering in a holy area, as Moshe had commanded. Aaron responds, asking how, after such a terrible tragedy, could it be right in God's eyes to eat the sin offering? Instead of remaining intransigent, Moshe incorporates Aaron's world view. The Torah says "And Moshe heard this, and it was good in his eyes."
This is the moment of Tshuva. The unpredictable happened - Nadav and Avihu died - and Moshe moved from 'narrow eyes' to 'good eyes'. This Tshuvah is the heart of the Torah, when no one is 'right' and no one is 'wrong'. Instead, there is a complementary vision. Moshe and Aron learned how not to label each other.
The whole picture constitutes a triangle, which is the fundamental unit of thought.
In terms of basic interpersonal relations and differentiation within a family, the triangle consists of two parents and a child.
Murray Bowen, a pioneer of family therapy, developed a theory of the differentiation quotient in a family. (The core goal underlying the Bowenian model is differentiation of self, namely, the ability to remain oneself in the face of group influences, especially the intense influence of family life.)
According to this theory, a key moment in the development of family dynamics is when the father sees the mother nursing their child for the first time. At this time, the child senses how the father is going to deal with the moment of exclusion, how he reacts to the triangle. This moment is a test of the father's differentiation, and from it the baby gets its impression of basic differentiation. What happens in this moment has a profound effect on all three.
Three is a crowd. There is always an 'odd man out' - a moment of exclusion.
The father's response can be drawn either from the 1st Commandment, or from the 10th Commandment (see Mei Hashiloach Vol.1, Yitro).
The 1st Commandment is the concept of Kriah (calling as an expression of tenderness and affection), it is getting out of slavery, out of bondage, out of the narrow place of anxiety (Mitzrayim), and the symbol of this is the olive oil - the oil of illumination. We use our experiences to crush the olive, and extract a single drop of oil. This is tshuva, and it is this oil that distinguishes the cherubim from the golden calf. The cherubim and the golden calf are 'mute objects' - indistinguishable from each other. It is the oil that makes the cherubim holy. The oil extends holiness out into the world, and herein lies its
connection with the commandment to 'be fruitful and multiply'.
At a microscopic level, the egg and the sperm correspond to the Pintele Yid (the tiny spark of Jewishness in every Jew). This concept of all of the kedusha of life (which will expand and extend out into the world) being condensed in a single tiny drop exists on every level, from cosmic to microscopic. It is a series of parallel images.
Physiologically, the left side of the heart pumps hormones. This is a process described in Talmud as "the eye sees and the heart desires" - this is the dwelling place of the yetzer harah. The right side of the heart is a hidden point - which is the Pintele Yid - the point at the tip of the letter Yud. The right side only wants one thing - ruach/air, and so this is the dwelling place of ruchniut/spirituality.
The object is to balance these two sides out, to 'birth yourself' so that the right expands out and rules over the left, whereas naturally, the left (hormones) dominates the right.
If the father feels left out, his response is derived from the 10th Commandment (jealousy). If the father feels impatient and jealous, he will try to make the mother abandon the child, or else he will withdraw and abandon them both. If you allow your hurt feelings to predominate (as Cain did), then you either go off and sulk, or you kill your brother. This is why nes means 'run away' as well as 'miracle'. They are two sides of the same coin. Two ways of filling the void are to be included inside, and not lonely
(which is miraculous) or to run away, give up, and let someone else fill it up (and hence not feel the pain). The optimum response is to acknowledge the abandonment, but to long to be included.
The optimum reaction is to feel excluded, to long for one's wife, and through that longing, to remain connected. Wanting to be included and longing for his wife does not mean that the father must be jealous of the baby. Instead, he can use the time of exclusion to find out who he is. This is how Miriam uses her time of exclusion, when she is excluded from the camp. Although Moshe and Aaron cry over her leprosy, Miriam does not cry, because she knows that this time is an opportunity to know herself,
to find her portion. When everything is going well, and a person is included, they hear a different voice. The 'still small voice' is the voice heard in the moment of exclusion.
Moshe's moment of exclusion is when, after single-handedly erecting the Mishkan, he is excluded from it, while his brother Aaron takes over. (Exodus 40:35). In this moment, Moshe is like the husband, who after creating life, is excluded from nursing and sustainting it. Moshe at this moment feels bereft, like Esther, who when she goes into Ahasvereus says 'My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?' (Gemara, Megilla).
Abandonment theology is the song of longing, the song of the Magrefa (Esh Kodesh), in which the longing that comes from separation is what connects us to that from which we are separated.
This was the situation of the Rebbe of Piacezna in the Warsaw Ghetto. In that moment of
abandonment, he heard the song of the Magrefa, which is like the call of Hashem. In his Torah on Va Yikra, the Esh Kodesh notes that Rashi identifies God's calling to Moshe (Kriah) as an expression of tenderness and affection only at the Burning Bush, because it is here that Moshe feels abandoned. The calling of God's affection and tenderness is heard not at Mt. Sinai, but in exile, in Persia, in a time of persecution, when everyone's lives were threatened. The calling is the 'still small voice' heard by Elijah the Prophet in his moment of abandonment, not the thunderous sounds and lights of the revelation at
Sinai.
In Gemara Megilla, we learn that Ahasvereus' feast was to celebrate God's abandonment of the Jews, and yet it was in this moment of total abandonment that the Jews 'kimu v'kiblu'. In their moment of abandonment, they heard the calling (Kriah), and so they took initiative and took the Torah upon themselves.
Not only are we connected through the longing, we also discover ourselves in it. In the Purim story, both Esther and Mordechai are wrong. The Halacha requires Mordechai to bow down to Haman. Esther goes against everything she knows to be right when she goes in to Ahasvereus, and yet she is not looking for miracles. She feels abandoned, and so she falls back on herself. She does not want to be in this situation, but she stilll does her best, and uses this moment to find out who she is. The Rebbe of Ishbitz says, there is a time for breaking the Torah. Sometimes, doing the wrong thing is doing the right thing.
It is a question of balance. Torah is all about balance. The balance of being abandoned by God is using your initiative. In correct order and measure, patience and initiative balance each other out. This is the other half of the shekel. We need consistency and inconsistency. Pure consistency, always remaining within the letter of the law, becomes its own idol. And pure inconsistency, rebellion for rebellion's sake, also becomes its own idol. Any human formula becomes its own idol.
Everyone feels bereft at some time. It is what they do with this moment that is important. When the Rebbe of Piacezna felt it, he heard God's Kriah, and he produced the Esh Kodesh, which is the still small voice. The moment of abandonment contains the essence of freedom of choice. It can be the moment of human initiative, and this is the deep level of the Ishbitz's Torah on Tazria.
The natural tendency of the human mind is to value the orgasm, rather than the patience, yet it is in the emptiness, in the patience, that we hear the still small voice. The dark void of Malchut is the void of exclusion, of abandonment. This is the feminine, and from we either draw the 10th commandment, and jealousy erupts, with all of its dark consequences, or we can draw initiative, the 1st commandment, which takes us out of bondage, out of the narrow places.