Chasidut su Esodo 31:13

Leviticus 25,2. “the land shall rest, a ‘Sabbath’ for the ‎Lord.” In order to understand the meaning of the line “the ‎land will rest for G’d,” we must refer to Exodus 31,13 ‎ואתה דבר אל ‏בני ישראל ....את שבתותי תשמורו‎ “as for you, tell the Children of ‎Israel to observe My Sabbath days, etc.‎‏"‏‎
According to the ‎writings of the Ari z’al, in the Tur, 242 on hilchot ‎Shabbat we find the following: [not in my edition, ‎Ed.] “while in Egypt, Moses argued with Pharaoh, ‎suggesting that if he wanted to increase the productivity of the ‎Jewish slaves he should allow them one day of rest each week, this ‎day to be the Sabbath.” [It is not clear if Pharaoh accepted ‎the suggestion. Ed.]‎
When the Torah commanded the Jewish people to rest on the ‎Sabbath, Moses felt happy for having been the one who had ‎already suggested this while he was in Egypt. He considered ‎himself as having had a share in this legislation. [Probably ‎this is meant when we say in our Sabbath prayers in the morning ‎ישמח משה במתנת חלקו‎, “Moses may rejoice having received his ‎share (of the Sabbath).”Ed.]‎
This is the reason why the Torah writes: ‎אתה דבר...את שבתתתי ‏תשמרו‎, “you tell the Children of Israel you are to observe My ‎Sabbath days.” The Jewish people were to appreciate that the ‎Sabbath rest, even though they may have enjoyed it in Egypt, ‎was not to be a physical rest from the labours of the week, but ‎was something decreed by G’d, to bring them closer to Him. ‎Seeing that it had been Moses who was responsible for their relief ‎on that day in Egypt, it had to be he who told them that the ‎Sabbath now assumed an entirely different dimension.‎
A similar, non-terrestrial dimension also underlies the ‎legislation of the sh’mittah year introduced in our chapter. ‎The land does not have to rest for reasons of being “tired.” The ‎land which had served man during the preceding six years, having ‎been at man’s disposal, will take out a year and revert to being at ‎G’d’s disposal, so to speak.‎

The sin of Adam was the failure to achieve what was spelled out in the previous section. This is explained in the Etz Hayyim and the Liqutei Torah (Bereshit) of the Arizal.²⁹⁰Namely, failing to draw Da’at – Consciousness into the lower attributes, and the mistake of creating a separation between Malchut – Kingship – and the upper attributes. Adam’s sin was that he wanted to magnify the size of the crown (Keter) of Zeir Anpin (which contains the six attributes) before its time, and did not draw light into it.²⁹¹The crown needs to receive the proper intensity of light in order to be adequately illuminated. Increasing the size of the vessel of the crown without increasing the intensity of the light only reduces the illumination. An analogy in this world would be a person opening a charity organization without having the funds to distribute. Similarly he sinned with regards to the Nukva (female) of Zeir Anpin, in that he turned the female away from the male. This is not the place to explain this complex Kabbalistic idea in full, and God willing, we will return to it in its place. The root of Adam’s sin is mentioned in the Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkun 69, page 117a): The central principle of the four letters and the ten letters²⁹²The “four letters” refers to the Tetragrammaton, spelled Yud Hei Vav Hei. The ten letters are the expansion of the name, with each letter spelled in full - Yud Vav Dalet, Hei Aleph, Vav Aleph Vav, Hei Aleph. is Malkhut – Sovereignty. Malkhut is comprised of ten Sefirot, and all must be included within Malkhut. Anyone who takes the nine upper Sefirot without Malkhut is, “cutting the plantings” (committing heresy). And similarly, in the Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 19: Rabbi Shimon said to Rabbi Elazar, “Elazar my son, they sinned in them all: in their thoughts, and in their hidden thought. The word “et”²⁹³This whole passage requires kabbalistic knowledge. The Zohar refers to the commandment to send away the mother bird (Devarim 22:7): “v’et habanim tikach lach – and take the chicks.” The chicks represents Kingship-Malkhut. Meaning to say, always take Malkhut together with the upper sefirot. In R. Gershon Hanokh’s terms, a person must exercise his free will in a balanced way – by allowing the light of the intellect to shine into the attributes. Adam’s sin lay in his eating impulsively from the Tree of Knowledge, rather than carefully examining his motivations, in light of G-d’s commandment. As R. Gershon Hanokh will explain, Adam did this because he assumed that his innate desires were G-d-given, and thus always accurate. In the verse from Devarim, the direct object “et” is understood to be referring to the Shechina, which went into exile when the Israelites sinned. is said in order to include the lower Shekhina. Meaning to say, within the totality of the six attributes can be found the trait of the Malkhut, which completes them all. This is said in several places in the Zohar and the Tikkunei Zohar. The three upper Sefirot are also found in the six lower attributes, as is said in the Raya Mehemna (section of the Zohar), Parshat Pinhas (257a): The seventh is only from the side of the letter Yud ( י ), the crown on his head, Supernal Wisdom is a sign,²⁹⁴“Ot,” as in a sign of the covenant, like Shabbat or Brit Milah. Lower Wisdom is a sign … ²⁹⁵See Shemot 31:13, “The Sabbath is a sign – ot hi – beween you and Me.” The pronoun hi is spelled with the letter yud (היא), which represents Hokhmah – supernal Wisdom. The seventh sefirah - Malkhut, Kingship – is considered to be derived from the sefirah of Hokhmah (אבא יסד ברתא). The point on the top of the letter Yud represents the connection between the infinite and the lower finite world (“the crown on his head”). The implication is that the connection to the infinite is hidden within the world. When Malchut, which is the Shechina or the presence of God dwelling in the community of Israel, is revealed as, “the crown on His head,” meaning, when God’s sovereignty that was hitherto hidden among Israel is seen as connected to the Infinite and revealed in the supernal world and as a vehicle for the effluence of supernal wisdom, then malchut – G-d’s sovereignty – is complete. The author’s commentary on the Torah, the Sod Yesharim (Noah, beginning with the words “et kashti”), also heavily based on the Zohar, explains Adam’s sin in the following way: The Arizal writes that the sin of Adam was in attempting to enlarge the crown of Zeir Anpin before its proper time. This means that Adam wanted to draw Hokhmah – Wisdom – into the rest of his body in order for all of his actions would be a direct expression of God’s own will. In this way Adam seized Malkhut, meaning he held onto the power of nature disconnected from the nine upper Sefirot. If he had seized Malkhut through the nine Sefirot, he would have thus built the Kingdom of Heaven in a state of completeness together with the Keter-Crown of Zeir Anpin. In other words, then a permanent reverence for God would have been fixed in his being and in the being of all of creation. Then it would have followed automatically that the Keter of Zeir Anpin would have also been instilled with such awesome reverance. There would have been a complete state of consciousness (da’at shleima) in all one’s powers so that man would know where it was forbidden to enter, because that place would separate man from his roots and he would not see the presence of his Creator. So too, he would see where he was permitted to enter … However, since Adam took it before its time, rushing in with the desire to elevate the matters of this world at the outset, he fell into a state of concealed consciousness and forgetting, remaining in the physical aspect of the world. This is the meaning of, “taking Malkhut without the upper nine Sefirot.”

The students of the Great Maggid spread out to many different locations and were known as seekers of the knowledge of God. They were all masters of the mysteries, and all holy. Each one taught a path in the service of God according to his own particular qualities, using this path as the central method in his students. Among the Baal Shem Tov’s students, there were those who taught a way of Divine service based on great fervor in the fulfillment of the Torah, together with the nullification of worldly existence and the unification with the mysterium tremendum during prayer. There where others who emphasized the centrality of the love and unification of all of Israel, in order to draw Divine effluence and blessings down to the Jewish people. Their great love gave them strength in order to unite the hearts of Israel, inspiring them with words that drew their students to follow in the path of God. There were still others who taught a mystical form of exegesis, with discourses full of hints, numerical equivalents, acronyms, revealing holy names in the words of the Torah. There were even those who taught the Torah in an enigmatic language, even though they were disciples of masters whose entire aim was to explain and elucidate the Torah, bringing it within the borders of man’s intellect. Those who saw fit to hide their language did so due to the root of their souls and their particular locations, in seeing so many students and wary of the real possibility of misunderstanding, took care not to explain their teachings in a revealed language. Even though they spent much time in this holy and protective manner, there was a great lack of understanding on the part of their listeners. Such is the case when the mystery is wrapped in the enigma and expressed in a hidden language. Due to this, their opponents would incorrectly interpret their words. These students of the Baal Shem Tov were using all of their powers to instill the faith in the hearts of Israel to know that God fills the whole world with His glory, using the perfect words of Torah such as those found in the Zohar, which shows us how God fills all the worlds and surrounds all the worlds.¹⁴⁹See Zohar, Parshat Pinchas, 225a. So their opponents found a dark and narrow place in which to explain his words as the same as one of the foreign concepts in the belief in God’s providence that the Rambam quotes in the Guide (Section 1, Ch. 73) as, “the view of some of the Mutazilites.” They believed that existence and the absence of existence are accidents newly created at every moment. However, anyone seriously studying this matter in the Guide would see how at the end of the sixth argument of that same chapter the Rambam refutes their view, a belief that would do away with any need for Divine service or prayer. So of course neither the Rambam nor the disciple of the Maggid under discussion ever intended to claim that this foreign view is in agreement with the view of the Torah. This is not the direction any Torah leader such as the Rambam would take. Just as the Rambam, the disciple of the Maggid confronted these foreign ideas as a result of being exiled in a place of evil waters,¹⁵⁰The Zohar compares the study of secular philosophy to drinking “bitter and cursing waters,” as described in the section of the Torah that deals with the suspected adulteress. (Numbers 5:5) where the denizens of which would drink and swallow¹⁵¹See Ovadia, 1:16. from their local well. The attacks of their opponents are really as trivial as the drool dripping from a dreamer’s mouth. In their attacks they claim that the servant of God need not think that God fills all of the worlds, but only needs to know that God surrounds all of the worlds.¹⁵²R. Gershon Henokh alludes here to a major theological debate between the Hasidim and their opponents. To the Hasidim, God’s present not only “surrounds” the worlds (that is, creates it and directs it from above), but actually “fills” the worlds; meaning, the entire world is filled with Divinity, one only needs to remove the veils that conceal it. To the opponents of Hasidism, since God is exalted above creation (as it were), one can only serve Him by transcending the mundane, and choosing those paths and practices given specifically by God to man to this end – the Torah and mitzvot. However, to the Hasidim, God’s presence was immanent in creation; thus, He could be served even through mundane acts, such as eating, drinking, singing, and dancing. But in making such a misguided comment he is in fact voicing the view of the idolaters mentioned in the Talmud Menahot, 110a), “They call God, ‘god of the gods.’ “ This view is contrary to the view of the Torah, for our Torah says, “know that I am God who makes you holy.¹⁵³Shemot 31:13. “ Yet do not cast aspersions on these opponents. Their attacks are just a result of an inferior understanding of the fundamentals of these matters. They merely dressed their language in ill-fitting garments, totally unsuited for the one wearing them. Their attacks were a result of a musing of the heart which they were not able to adequately able to pronounce.