Musar su I Samuele 9:78

The prophet Samuel alluded to this mystical dimension of Benjamin not having bent his knee to some alien deity when he commanded that the cook bring the portion which he had told him to set aside. Thereupon the cook lifted up the thigh and what was on it, and set it before Saul. Samuel then said: "What has been reserved has been set before you" (Samuel I 9,23-25.) Rav Galanti, in his book Kol Bochim (on Lamentations), elaborates on this when he discusses the verse in Lamentations 4, 18: צדו צעדנו מלכת, "Our steps were checked; we could not walk, etc." I myself have dealt with this verse elsewhere.

I believe this can be understood in light of an astonishing, beautiful and satisfying insight I heard from the holy mouth of the saintly Rabbi Heshel Zoref, z”l, in the name of a certain Kabbalist. He said as follows: First you must know that Tzefo son of Elifaz son of Eisav, mentioned in the verse, “the chieftain of Tzefo” (Bereishis 36:15), was the first of the husks of impurity of the seventy nations. Corresponding to this on the side of holiness was the “land of Tzuf” (I Shmuel 9:5), for both names are comprised of the same letters. Tzefo was the first king and his realm was the land of Poland [Polin in Yiddish]. This name alludes to the name Ploni [a nickname for the Samech Mem, the guardian angel of Eisav], for these two names also consist of the same letters. Note that the numerical value of Polin is the same as that of Tzefo. For this reason, too, the kingdom of Edom [Eisav’s descendants] is also known as the Metropolis [Metropolin in the language of the Sages] of the seventy nations (Megillah 6a). For this nation is under the guardianship of the angel of Edom, who was the first of the husks of impurity. Know also that the impure husk of Tzefo was a product of the sin of Adam and Chava. The “tree” from which Adam ate was actually the wheat stalk (Berachos 40a), because wheat — chitah [(חטה)] — has a numerical value of 22 (Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 16, 31a), indicating that by eating of it Adam blemished the twenty-two letters with which the Torah is written. It is well known that Adam’s sin affected the attribute of Splendor [Hod], which is the eighth attribute. Eight times twenty-two is 176, the numerical value of Tzefo. This is because the sin came about through Chavah, who was created from the attribute of Splendor, the eighth attribute, and through her came the blemish to the twenty-two letters, as above.