Chasidut su Proverbi 16:34

‎“I place (shiviti) Hashem before me, always” (Tehillim 16:8). Shiviti is an expression of equating. ‎That is, every matter that arises before a person must be considered as equal. This is true when ‎others praise or denigrate someone, and so too with all other matters. Similarly, regarding food, ‎whether eating delicacies or anything else, all should be equal in one’s eyes, because the evil ‎inclination has been removed from him entirely. Whatever arises, a person must declare, “This too ‎is from Hashem, and if it is proper in His eyes, etc.,” and all of a person’s actions should be for the ‎sake of Heaven, although from the individual’s perspective there is no difference [between good ‎and bad events] at all. This is a very high level.‎ Every person must serve Hashem with all their strength, for it is all necessity, for Hashem desires ‎that people serve Him in every way. Meaning: there are times when a person engages in ‎conversation and is unable to learn Torah. At these times, a person must maintain focus on ‎Hashem and perform [Kabbalistic] yichudim. And when a person is going on the way and is unable ‎to pray or learn as usual, and one must find other ways in which to serve Hashem, one must never ‎be distraught about these things. Hashem wishes to be served in many ways, and therefore He ‎grants the opportunity to travel or converse in order to serve Hashem in that way. “Commit your ‎deeds to Hashem, and your thoughts will be established” (Mishlei 16:3). Everything that occurs, a ‎person should think that it is from Him.‎ It is appropriate for one to ask Hashem to always grant what Hashem knows to be in one’s best ‎interest, and not what a person thinks based on their own mind. It is possible that what is good in ‎one’s eyes could be detrimental. As such one should cast everything, all of one’s matters and ‎needs, upon Hashem.‎

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai etc. (Ex. 6:3). Rashi explained, “Alas for those who are lost and not to be found!” etc. The meaning, as is known, is that the secret of Egyptian Exile is that the True Awareness was in Exile; they could not grasp the Awareness to serve the Blessed Creator, along the lines of what is stated, Know the God of your Ancestor and serve Him (1 Chron 28:9). For in truth, Awareness is the essence that brings one to complete Reverence and Love. For once a person knows and believes that the whole earth is full of [God’s] Glory (Isaiah 6:3) and no place is void of Him, and [God] is the pleasure of all pleasures, Blessed is He and Blessed His Name, Life of Lives – if so, for any of the pleasures if you imagine, God forbid, the absence of the influence of [God’s] Blessed Light and Life-Force among the created things, Creation would return to unformed and void (Gen. 1:2). And similarly for all the Upper and Lower Worlds, if you imagine, God forbid, the absence of [God’s] Life-Force, they would be as if they never were. And if that is the case, then [Awareness of God’s presence] is the essence in all things...

Each of us can be the simple peasant in the story. We were sent to this sphere of existence to display the breadth of God’s rule.⁴⁵King Solomon taught, “All that God made He made for His sake, even the evildoer for the day of retribution” (Prov. 16:4). The Gaon of Vilna explains that the verse is revealing the purpose of life, to reveal God as Ultimate Sovereign. Righteous individuals fulfill this purpose through observance of God’s commandments. Obeying His directives demonstrates that He is King. Wicked individuals ignore God’s ethical mandates. They reveal God as King when they are punished for their misdeeds. Thus, since all were created for the sake of increasing God’s glory, the wicked will suffer punishment for their misdeeds if they do not repent. When we obey His commands, while in a lustful, physical body and in a tempting material environment, we demonstrate that God is King even in the depths of the physical realm.

Furthermore, (Prov. 16:20 -- Rashi) one who gives heart to contemplate his words (to forge his way), will find good -- true advice how to guard one's self from any particular vice, through making sure to be safe from the vice which is close (in the set up of the book, and it thus revealed that they are associated) to, for they are neighbors to each other, and each one guards her friend, as (this is) explained subsequently in the introduction that I heard from his holy mouth. The importance of this book, there is no need to explain, to anyone honest, who desires truth, and longs with cherishing to grasp the ways of propriety, certainly he will find in it a repose for his soul. Fortunate is he who takes hold of it, then it will be good for him in this (world) and in the coming (world), because this entire book is founded on verses of the Bible (Torah, Prophets, Scriptures) and on the words of Our Sages OB”M, all of them cogent to the understanding and straight, for those who have found cognizance (Proverbs 8:9).

The Hebrew terms for mind, heart, and liver are moach (mind), lev (heart) and kaved (liver). An acronym of the terms is melech, literally, “king.”¹⁶⁰Words in the Hebrew language have many layers of meaning. In addition to the literal meaning of the words, the letters of a word might refer to a complete sentence. This occurs when each letter in the word represents the opening letter of a word in a phrase. Thus a three-letter word is in truth an acronym for a three-word phrase. This process is called roshei teivos, “beginning of words.” When man lives a life of mind first and then heart and liver, he is king over his lower self.¹⁶¹A king can rule others if he first asserts total dominion over his lower self. This unity between king over others and self-control was clearly expressed by Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi in his Kuzari, which is a record of a discussion between a Gentile king and a Jewish scholar.
Al Khazari: Give me a description of the doings of one of your pious men at the present time.
The Rabbi: A pious man is, so to speak, the ruler of his country, who gives to its inhabitants provisions and all they need. He is so just that he wrongs no one, nor does he grant anyone more than his due. Then, when he requires them, he finds them obedient to His call. He orders, they execute. He forbids, they abstain.
AI Khazari: I asked you about a pious man, not a prince.
The Rabbi: The pious man is nothing but a prince who is obeyed by his senses, and by his mental as well as his physical faculties, which he governs corporeally, as it is written, “He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city” (Kuzari, Part 3, quoting Prov. 16: 32). Frequently, we reverse the order. Our lusts lead. For example, we desire someone else’s money, or we are lazy and seek to avoid performing a moral duty. We then arouse our heart to love that path and we employ our mind to rationalize and justify misbehavior, saying, “He did not need that money anyway. I will use it for better purposes than he,” or, “The duty will be performed by someone else, I can safely ignore it.” In these instances our livers were really first, followed by the heart, and then the mind. The first letters of kaved, lev, moach (the reversed order) spell kalem, which means, “embarrassment, shame, and death.” A life in which lusts rule inevitably ends with this unholy trinity.¹⁶²Da’as Tefillah pg. 273.

Fortunate is the person who listens to these words, to fulfill all that is written herein. He will never slip (based on Psalms 112:6) and his righteousness will answer for him in the time to come (based on Beraishis 30:33), when he comes to receive his reward. In the measure that a person meets out -- so (In that same measure) is he met with. Fortunate is one who chooses life -- Hashem will repay his endeavors, if it is to scoffers He will scoff (Proverbs 3:34), he will not gain wealth and his wealth will not endure (Job 15:29), woe to his soul -- for the retribution of his handiwork will be done to him (Isaiah 3:11), it will not be cast to the ground (but on their heads -Job 15:29), one who is good before G-d will escape from it (Ecclesiastes 7:26). How great is the goodness hidden away for him (based on Psalms 31:20), in his joy no stranger will take part (Proverbs 14:10), a laboring soul benefits from its labor (Proverbs 16:26, see also Tractate Sanhedrin 99b -- he works here and his Torah works for him elsewhere). Let us pour out our souls to Hashem to put our portion with Him, to stand at the threshold of His shade, they will have no regrets -- those who put their trust in Him (Psalms end of Chapter 34), no eye has seen (their reward) except for You G-d, what He will do for those who put their hope in Him (Isaiah 64:3).

This idea has been hinted at when the Talmud in Taanit ‎‎29 stated that ‎משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה‎, normally translated as: ‎‎“once the month of Adar has begun we experience an additional ‎measure of joy in our lives.” The word ‎אדר‎, is a short form of the ‎word: ‎אדרת‎, “cloak,” or mantle, a garment that envelops the ‎wearer, a garment that the prophet Elijah is reported as having ‎worn regularly. (Compare Kings I 19,19, Kings II 2,8, Kings I ‎‎19,13) The Talmud means that prior to the beginning of this ‎month when the Jews tried to look at G’d, they were consumed by ‎awe, as G’d had not draped sufficient protective “clothing” ‎around His essence to enable those who worship Him to entertain ‎feelings other than awe and fear.
One of the supports for such an interpretation is presumably ‎the fact that all the miracles G’d performed for the Jewish people ‎during that time, in the lifetime of Mordechai and Esther, were ‎covert rather than overt miracles, i.e. G’d practiced ‎הסתר פנים‎, a ‎benevolent type of “hiding” His face, so that His creatures would ‎not have to experience too much fear when turning to Him. The ‎miracles performed at that time were in contrast to those ‎performed when G’d split the sea at the time of the Exodus, using ‎supernatural phenomena in doing so. In the Purim episode, not a ‎single supernatural element was part of the chain of events that ‎resulted in the salvation of the Jewish people. [It seems ‎clear to this editor that the author chose this approach to his ‎exegesis as this portion is read annually around the time of ‎Purim. Ed.]‎
An additional reason may be that around this time, nature ‎that had denuded itself and presented itself to us as awesome ‎during the winter months, once again bedecks itself with foliage, ‎arousing new hope and joy in the hearts of the people who have ‎just experienced a harsh winter.‎
‎Quoting Genesis 49,11 where Yaakov blesses his son Yehudah, ‎and zeroing in on the words: ‎עירה ולשרקה‎, the author sees in the ‎apparently extraneous letters ‎‏ ה‎ at the end of the word ‎עירה‎ and ‎שרקה‎, a mystical meaning based on the concept of ‎צירוף אותיות‎, ‎the ability to divine the deeper meaning of why certain letters ‎have been combined, [an art that according to our sages enabled ‎Betzalel, the master-builder of the Tabernacle to carry out his ‎task, Ed]. The use of the two letters ‎ה‎ where they do not appear ‎to be needed, is an allusion to the abundance of G’d’s largesse for ‎His creatures in the universe, whereas the letters ‎י‎ and ‎ו‎ allude to ‎looking at the overwhelming brilliance of light experienced when ‎looking at the Creator. These four letters, of course, are the ‎letters forming the tetragram of the holy name of G’d, ‎י-ה-ו-ה‎. The ‎system has been explained further by Shaar Hayichud ‎vehaemunah in the writings of Tanya, (Rabbi Shneer ‎Zalman of Ladii).
‎[Many of my readers are familiar with a mystical poem ‎appearing before the recital of ‎לכה דודי‎ commencing with the line ‎אנא בכח‎, where we find the respective first letters of each line ‎printed separately at the end of that line. This is one of the best ‎known examples of the system of ‎צירוף אותיות‎ having found its ‎way into prayer books even of the Ashkenazi (Charedi) ‎community which normally refrains from including passages that ‎the average worshipper cannot understand. The reader may also ‎be interested to know that this is the reason why in most ‎Ashkenazi communities the entire portion of the Friday night ‎service known as kabbalat Shabbat, and commencing either ‎with the saying of ‎לכו נרננה‎ or the preparatory saying individually ‎of the entire scroll of Song of Songs, was for hundreds of years ‎resisted; even when and where accepted, the chazan recites it on ‎the platform from which the Torah is read, to remind the ‎congregation that this was not part of the original Friday night ‎service, Ed.]‎ ‎

"Make an opening [tzohar] for the ark [teivah], closing up to a cubit at the top." (Genesis 6:16) -- The Baal Shem Tov, peace be upon him, explained these words in the following way: let the word (teivah) said in Torah or in prayer radiate light (matzhir)! For in every letter there are worlds, souls and divinity, that rise up and interconnect and cleave to one another and to the divine. Afterwards, these letters connect and conjoin, finally becoming a word. After that, they connect and unify unifications of truth in the Divine - and one must unify one's soul with each of the aforementioned aspects. In this way, all the worlds rise and become as one, and then there is immense joy and immeasurable delight. This is the meaning of "...bottom, second, and third decks," (Genesis 6:16) - that is the worlds, souls and divinities, as it says (Zohar I:159a) "there are three worlds, etc." In each and every word one must listen to what is being spoken, since the Shechina is the world of speech, as it is says (Zohar III:230a) "She speaks and He is Her escort." "Tzohar" - this 'opening' for light - that everything should be illuminated with clarity, giving pleasure to the Creator. One needs great faith (Emunah) for this, since the Shechinah Herself is called Emunat Amen, faithful faith (Zohar II:16b). Without faith, Heaven forbid, She is called (Proverbs 16:28) "A querulous one who alienates their friend." As for the end of the verse, "closing up to a cubit (amah)" -- this is the Mother (Ima). It could be said that after the word leaves one's mouth, it does not need to be remembered again, one does not see that it rises to an elevated place, just as one can not look at the sun, as it says, "closing up at the top." How does one do all this? "Go into the ark [teivah], you and all your household." (Genesis 7:1) -- this means that with all your body and strengths, you shall enter the word [teivah]!

Pride and egocentrism are the foundation of the kelippah. The kelippos are sometimes called eser kisrin de-misaavusa,²⁷⁵See further Tanya, Chapter 6. “the ten crown of impurity.” They are called a crown, for their source is a sense of privilege and a large ego, as if they were kings.²⁷⁶The kelippah says, Ana emloch, “I will rule,” while holiness states, Attah hu Melech Malchei Ha-Melachim, “You, God rule over all kings.” Evil’s root is a self- aggrandizement that causes one to imagine that God is not the absolute authority and to imagine the thought, “I control my destiny.” Ego is what creates the distance between man and God that causes sin.²⁷⁷Consider the following explanation of the Maharal of Prague: “Akavia ben Mehalel’s advice addresses the root cause of sin. God placed in mankind a drive for sin, which is personified as the yetzer hara…. The power of the yetzer hara arises from arrogance. All desire, jealousy and other causes of sin originate from a heart that swells in pride…” (Maharal of Prague on Pirkei Avos 1:1, pg. 142-143).
Evil will always try first and foremost to overcome man by making him prideful, for nothing is more fundamentally destructive of man’s spiritual life than pride. This is part of what King Solomon meant when he said, “Pride comes before the fall” (Prov. 16:18): a man’s pride is what precipitates the fall of the soul into the dark prison of materialism (The Juggler and the King, pg. 37). Chametz, leavened dough, is the symbol and embodiment of this arrogance.

To understand this matter we will begin with the verse, they have forsaken me, the source of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13). Its meaning is that Blessed God is the source from whom comes the flow of life-force to all living things in all manners, there is no other besides [God] (Deut. 4:35); and anyone who is attached to [God] is attached to the root of life-force whose waters do not fail (Isaiah 58:11) – but only so long as there is no blockage from his side. For if, God forbid, on account of his sins he blocks himself from the source, his life-force will become absent; but from Blessed [God’s] side there is no blockage as the verse says, but your iniquities have made a separation [between you and your God] (Isaiah 59:2). But one whose life-force is from the Other Side, who are called broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13) since they are gathered waters into which fell sparks of life-force at the moment of breaking, and for this reason they are called broken cisterns – such a person is blocked from his Upper Root and is called separator of close friends (Proverbs 16:28, 17:9). And therefore the Ancestors of the World, who opened the pipelines of intelligence in the world and taught awareness to all people, how to dig himself into the aspect of a well of living water (Gen. 26:19), to be attached to the source from which comes the root of his life-force. And [the Ancestors’] disciples are called by the name “servants,” as the verse says, Isaac’s servants (Gen. 26:32), since their service of the Blessed Creator came by way of the Ancestors.