Torat Hanefesh Annual Conference

Transcription

1 Torat Hanefesh Annual Conference 1 IYAR 5775 (Notes taken by Moshe Genuth during class, neither reviewed nor edited by Harav Ginsburgh),אני הוי' רופאיך A good month, we are in Rosh Chodesh Iyar, whose initials spell I am Hashem your Healer, which the Rebbe said pertains to both physical and to psychological health. May we all be good conduits to bring down Hashem s healing ot the entire Jewish people. It says that tehsuvah brings healing to the world and the end of the Jewish people is to do teshuvah which brings redemption to the world, one depends on the other. We ll begin by noting that today is the yahrzeit of the greatest tzadik who made aliyah to the holy land in the past few centuries, Rebbe Mendel Vitebsker who ended up in Tiberias, and there he is buried. May his merit protect all of us. We may say that much of what we learn here is inspired by his teachings. The topic of the conference is a person s ego and how to rectify it. So we saw fit to talk about the article אמונה ובטחון in Lev Lada at. The relationship between these two pillars of the psyche, faith and confidence. They are not the same thought they are of course related. The topic of rectifying the ego, one s feeling of self is actually to acquire the true and proper confidence in one s self according to the Torah. The verse reads, He who trusts in Hashem is encircled by loving kindness. The verse begins by describing the suffering that come sto one who is wicked, but he who trusts, puts his confidence in Hashem all his suffering both physical and spiritual is alleviated. There is another verse that describes how confidence is the לכל confidence, rectification of one s ego. The verse reads, All life has [a being of] which means a feeling of self goes together with,יש The word.החיים יש בטחון confidence. Faith on the other hand goes with noghtingness, the opposite of being. There cannot therefore be one without the other, confidence without faith. Just as God created the world something from nothing, so confidence is like a creation that comes out of the nothingness of faith. Now, if there are two extremes, the principle of Kabbalah says there must be an intermediate to connect them. Faith is the conneciton with nothingness and confidence is the conneciton with rectifided being, rectified ego. So what is between them? The Rebbe Rayatz says that the intermediate is good hope. Confidence is more than hope. You can hope that things work out well, but to have confidence means to be 100% certain that things will be good and turn out good. Confidence is an extreme in this respect. There is absolutely no doubt that things will be good. But, faith says, even if at the moment I can t see how things are good, I believe that at some point in the future I will see how it was all for the best. So I am calm, able to fulfill the verse, שויתי הוי' לנגדי תמיד equanimity towards the good

2 and towards the evil. In the future it will be possible to say a blessing only over the good, because it will be revealed how everything was good, but even in the present, when there is something negative, with faith one can still say the blessing over it happily and with joy. I believe that God is the essenital good and all that He does is for the good. But, with confidence, I know that 100%, I will see the good with my own two eyes. I have 100% confidence that the sick person will heal completely. At first, when one hears these two words, it seems that faith and confidence are very similar, but now we see that they are essentially opposites. Either like with faith you accept reality for what it is, believing that it is all for the best, or with confidence you paint a picture of what will be and you are confident that reality will change to fit your vision. The intermediate between them is hope: to hope for the best. It s more than face, it s an opening, תקוה,פתח but it s not yet confidence. The verse that proves that hope is the intermediate is hope is in Lamentations, hope. He will put earth in his mother, perhaps there is,יתן בעפר פיהו, אילו יש תקוה Perhaps there is is hope! With faith I believe in God and in other things as well, since God is omnipotent and therefore anything can be, but at the present moment I don t see what I d like in reality. This is another explanation of why faith is related to nothing ness, meaning that there is something not in reality, it is a state of there being a void in reality. Like the void that existed at the beginning of creation. Hope is the notion that perhaps a certain reality is possible. While confidence is certainty that this reality will exist. If we correspond these 3 (faith, hope, and confidence) to another Kabbalistic model, we can look at the process of creation, where first God created a void, and then He injected a ray of light into it, a ray of infinite light into reality in order to illuminate the darkness of the void. That ray of light, which in Hebrew is the word line (קו) is cognate with the word hope.(תקוה) In science there is a theory that there are particles being created in the vacuum at every moment, this is similar to this concept of the ray of light. Once the ray of light injects into the void, the first thing that is created is the partzuf known as Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man), who is higher than the world of Emanation and he includes all the worlds that will be created. In his understanding, his binah, he has a picture of all reality that will come to be. If the void is the root of faith (nothingness) and the ray is the root of hope (possible אל כל החיים יש earlier, reality) then Adam Kadmon is confidence. The verse noted that all life has the being of confidence, refers specifically to him. This Adam,בטחון (Kadmon) is the root of Adam David Mashiach, thus he sees all the way to the redemption. Let s give a simple example of how this all works. Say there is one who has faith, he bleieves in the principle of Jewish labor in the land of Israel. He believes

3 that we should only use Jewish labor, here in our holy land. He is looking for someone to work in his home, install new flooring, but he can t find a Jewish laborer to do this job. So he believes in it, but it doesn t currently exsit in reality. So he starts asking around, hoping that maybe such a reality could exist. After it seemed that there is no such thing in reality (even though I truly believe in this principle that this is the right thing to do), suddenly a ray of light appears: maybe there is such a person in existence. Once this happens, I say to myself: there must be a Jewish laborer who can do this job. The moment I say that he has to exist he will come into being. You begin with faith in the principle (even though it doesn t exist in practice), then you move to hope that this is possible, and then finally when you are 100% confident that this will happen it happens. There is another process called conscious determination which you may have learnt about. This process relates to the stages of confidence. So our correspondence here is between these three stages and the void, the ray of light, and Adam Kadmon. Now let s return to the two pillars. We said they are faith and confidence and אין, אולי יש, ( being being we can say that they turn into nothingness possible Together they correspond to the model of submission separation, and.(יש sweetening. Now where are these three in the sefirot. Faith as we know corresponds to the Radla, the unknowable Head of the Keter. The three heads of the keter are faith, pleasure and will, then there are wisdom and understanding (selflessness and joy), then the emotive faculties and finally kingdom (lowliness). Altogether they are 13. This is one of the foundations of the material taught here in Torat Hanefesh. Now, where are nothingness and being? Sometimes the entire Keter is called nothingness.(אין) But, sometimes wisdom is also referred to as nothingness (in relation to understanding, מאין תמצא.(והחכמה Therefore understanding is the beginning of being in the psyche היש).(ראשית Therefore, it is explained in Chassidut that the first instance of combining faith and confidence which are nothingness and being is the connection between wisdom and understanding, wisdom being selflessness and understanding being the joy of experiencing. Faith Pleasure Will Joy Selflessness Unification Awe Love Compassion Acknowledgment Confidence

4 Self fulfillment Lowliness One of the secrets of this structure is that the first four powers until wisdom (selflessness) everything is considered essence,(מהות) while from joy until lowliness everything is considered being.(מציאות) So the first four are relatively faith and the final 9 are relatively confidence. This is a particular explanation of what it means to be unified in the psyche: to bring these two parts of the full structure together. Before every mitzvah there is a kavanah to unify the Almighty and His Presence, the Kadosh Baruch Hu with the Shechinah, or to unify the light that surrounds all worlds and the light that fills all worlds. In the partzufim Kudsha Brich Hu includes all the partzufim from Or Ein Sof to Ze er Anpin, while the Shechinah (the active power in all that is active) refers to all the lower worlds. So this kavanah unifies all the worlds, from above to below. In this same manner, in the psyche, the unification is between the emotive faculties of Emanation (Atzilut) and the kingdom of Emanation. Here we are saying something similar, but not exactly the same: that the main unification in the psyche is between the nothingness in the psyche and the being in the psyche, which first of all as we saw is the unification between wisdom and understanding (this is also an explanation of why it is called Chassidut Chabad). And it this occurs properly unifying faith and confidence then the entire 13 faculties of the psyche are unified. Now, we ve divided the 13 faculties into 4 and 9, both of these are square numbers. When we sum two consecutive squares (as are 4 and 9), we get an interface or inspirational number, in this case 13. When we add the names of the 4 faculties we get ( (אמונה תענוג רצון בטול 1024, which itself is a square, the square of 32 שמחה יחוד אהבה יראה רחמים בטחון תמימות ( faculties If we add the values of the 9.(לב) Again, we also get a square number, 3136, which is the square of 56. (אמת שפלות combining the 4 and the 9 is the unification between nothingness and being. If the main thing is to unify according to this wisdom and understanding, selflessness and joy (which also equal a square number together, 400, the square of 20), then the whole idea is that faith will illuminate our selflessness, while confidence will illuminate our joy joy is about life, about being. The unification of wisdom and understanding also appears at the end of the sefirot. The foundation of Abba (wisdom) is long and extends all the way down to foundation (the tzadik who is th efoudnation of the world), while the joy of Imma (understanding) appears in the lower Imma, which is kingdom. [They are also the two letters hei in Havayah, which are destined to become one, and in Kabbalah this is called the Greater Rachel which includes both the partzuf of Leah and of Rachel]. What does this tell us? The foudnation is the tzadik, while kingdom is of

5 course realted to a king. At the onset of the tikunei Zohar there are 10 types of Jews listed. There are Chassidim, Heros, Prophets, Masters of Torah, etc. Foundation corresponds to tzadikim, and kingdom corresponds to kings. It is explained in various sources that this order of types of Jews is also related finds expression in the order of the generations of the Jewish people. In our own generation we are in a transition between the era of tzadikim to the era of kings. This is part of Jewish history. For the past few hundred years we enjoyed the presence of great tzadikim the disciples of the Ba al Shem Tov. And now we are entering into a stage of the tzadikim becoming kings. There are exmaples of tzadikim that wanted to go throug this transition already like in the court of the heilige Ruzhiner. How does this present itself in the psyche, this transition. Just like we said: Faith appears in foundation while ocnfidence in kingdom. Historically this means that faith kept us, the Jewish people, during the long exile. The verse says that he who has faith will not hurry things לא יחיש).(המאמין In exile there is no room to hurry things. It is a state that is akin to do not act ואל תעשה).(שב That is the state that corresponds with wisdom (nothingness), which contains supernal awe עילאה).(יראה So in the exile, there is a feeling that it is impossible still to create a Jewish kingdom in the land of Israel: I fully believe in the coming of Mashiach, but I can t get up to do something about it. But, the Rebbe told us that we are now in the time of history when we must act. This is confidence. It is no longer just faith. So the transition from tzadikim (who live on their באמונתו יחיה faith,צדיק and the word tzadik itself equals 2 times faith ) to kings is a transition from nothingess to being, from faith משיח ( Mashiach is equal to Mashiach (ישות) being to confidence. In fact the word You can t bring Mashiach with inaction, you have to get up and to. This is.(משיח rectified being the transition from tzadikim who have 2 faiths (faith in Hashem and faith in Moshe Rabbeinu) and with it they live forever (even with eternal life) until the coming of the Mashiach. But, to get up and act, to bring Mashiach now, today, for that one needs strong confidence. Now actually there are two types of confidence: active and passive. Active is to get up and actually act, while passive confidence even though I am fully confident that things will be good according to my undertsanding, I do not get up to do anything myself. The example of this is King Chizkiyahu, who went to sleep when surrounded by his enemies knowing full well that God will destroy his enemies. But, King David pursued his enemies himself.,(נצח) Active confidence is masucline and corresponds to the sefirah of victory.(הוד) while passive confidence is feminine corresponds to acknowledgment We are now entering the birthday of the Rebbe Moharash who coined the phrase, אריבער.לכתחילה You can always act and surmount an obstacle: this is active confidence. There is also a phrase coined to describe passive confidence by the

6 Lubavitcher Rebbe: Tracht gut vet zein gut think good and it will be good. So these are the two pillars of confidence: Lechatchila ariber (Jump over!) and Tract gut vet zein gut. We ll give a few more examples of what are faith and confidence. In the history of the Jewish people we are now transitioning from tzadikim to kings. The entire year we say in the Amidah, אוהב צדקה ומשפט,מלך a King who loves charity and justice. But during the 10 days of Repentance we say, המשפט,המלך the King of justice. Why? Do we no longer care for charity, tzedakah. There are opinions that if one said מלך אוהב צדקה ומשפט during the 10 days, he doesn t have to go back, since he already mentioned justice. But, most opinions say that this is not good enough. The idea is that in order to build God s kingdom (the 10 days are the building of kingdom in Kabbalah), one has to focues on justice alone. The essence of a king is that he is responsible for justice (the tzadik focuses on charity). The first believe in God was Abraham. We are all his descendants, believers, sons of believers. He performed tzedakah and justice, and tzedakah came first. But, by king David it says that he did justice and tzedakah, with justice preceding tzedakah. So again, Abraham who is the first believer does tzedakah first, but David who is the epitome of confidence in Hashem does justice first. Rebbe Nachman says that the segulah for having faith is to give tzedakah. He bases this on this verse, that Abraham did tzedakah and justice. Faith means that the money that I have in my pocket is not mine, I am nothingness, the money belongs to someone else, and I am just entrusted with it. The Rebbe explains that tzedakah is not exactly charity I m not doing someone a favor by giving him what is his! In order to rectify the judicial system in our holy land today, one needs a tremendous amount of boldness. And boldness can only come from confidence. It s not easy. You have to be cunning to fight against the present state and bring about a revolution. Revolutions require confidence. So to fix the judicial system you need confidence (for tzedakah, you need faith). This is another important example of how to explain the difference between faith and confidence. Tzedakah comes from my nothingness, my ayin, while justice comes from my being. Another exmaple is that they psyche contains both mah and ban. Mah is my selflessness, while ban is my being. These two parts of the psyche are described as human and animal. What we learn from this is that faith corresponds to my humanity, while confidence corresponds to my animal. They also correspond to my essence and my being, or my inner self and external self. The external aspect of every sefirah is the experience of that particular sefirah (for instance experiencing awe, or love, etc.), while the inner aspect of every sefirah is the mindfulness that descends from my mind instructing me about what it is proper

7 to hate, and what it is proper to love. In this respect, it is the external aspect that actually has a higher source than the inner aspect. Because the experience in this case takes its light from the crown, while the inner aspect comes from the intellect, wisdom and understanding. Another dimension of this relationshipo between faith and confidence can be seen in our experience of time and space. Abba (wisdom) is related to time, while Imma (understanding) is related to space. As we said before, he who has faith does not hurry things he has all the time in the world. I can t see time. I only believe that it exists so time is a type of nothingness, that I can t fully grasp. But space is something that we certainly experience directly it is being. What we learn from this is that to have confidence you have to have space. When the Jeish people are without a space, without the land of Israel, we can t have confidence. Let s add something about kingdmo and confidence. The government s problem is not faith, it is confidence, that is how we know that kingdom is related to confidence. So again, confidence requires space and this only happens in the land of Israel, because only in the land of Israel are we considered a tzibur a community. There are people today that have no sense of space they can only think virtually they think that you can live 120 years without having any space, thus they have only faith and are lacking in confidence. Faith and time are even related.מנ grammatically they both contain the two letters Furthermore, within time itself there is a unification of time and space, of faith and confidence. Grasping the past within the dimension of time is faith, while confidence is the future aspect of the time dimension. So again, faith is the past and confidence is the future, like the verse, יתד במקום נאמן.ותקעתיו Imma is described as the extreme end, while Abba is described as the extreme beginning. Between the past and the future we find the present, a single point of time. The past is no longer,(אין) the future is not yet, while the present passes in a flutter of the eye. You can grasp the present moment in two different ways. Externally, I wanted Mashiach to come at this very moment: Mashiach Now. That is what the Rebbe kept saying. According to this, the present moment is like the collapse of the wave function, which is like a descent from confidence to faith. I had very strong confidence that something would happen, but it didn t, so the present moment is like an experience of a collapse of the wave function in physics and I am like falling on the present moment; the Tanya refers to this as the tzadik falls seven times and rises. It s not that the tzadik falls and shatters, rather he falls back to his initial state, to his natural state of being a beinoni. So externally there is a feeling about that present that every passing moment when the Mashiach doesn t

8 come when what I am in confident doesn t happen I fall from confidence to faith. But, then I get up because it says that the the tzadik falls and rises. He falls from confidence to faith (he doesn t break his skull, because he falls on faith), and then rises, going back to confidence. This is the external sense of the present moment. What then is the inner sense of the present moment? One has to be both wise and understanding. A person who has an inner eye sees the present moment like Nachum Ish Gamzu, he sees not that the present has fallen, but rather that it is one step closer to fulfilling my vision. Every moment is another necessary step bringing me closer to my vision of Mashiach. You have to have a very inner wisdom for this. The Alter Rebbe and Rebbe Levi Ytizchak of Berditchev argued once about whether if they were God, they would run the world the same way that He does. The Alter Rebbe said that he sees that this is the right way (Rebbe Levi Yitzchak only came to this understanding at the end of his life). So this evening we ve opened a most important topic in Jewish psychology relating to faith and confidence. And as we said we are now entering this special day that is named after the Rebbe Moharash s saying Lechatchila Ariber. It is up to us to act, with confidence, in order to bring the Mashiach immediately.