ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף דניאל 8:12

The Rabbati writes in this portion.⁵²The author uses the term “Rabbati” as a generic term for Midrash Rabbah. This is not a reference to a later Midrash known as Genesis Rabbati. Rabbi Simon says that when the Holy One wanted to create man, the angels separated into two groups. One group said that he should not be created because he is nothing but falsehoods. The other group said that he should be created because he does charitable deeds and acts of loving-kindness. Some said that he should not be created because he is not peaceful and he readily engages on quarrels. What did the Holy One do? He took truth and threw it down from Heaven to the earth.⁵³Daniel, 8:12. That is to say, the Holy One said [to the angels] that the person is better than you are. You are nothing but reason and good inclination and have no evil inclination, so you must always be pious. However, the human on the earth has an evil inclination which incites him to evil and when he becomes pious, it is a greater novelty than you angels. Regarding what you say that he is full of falsehoods and will quarrel and sin, I will let him die so that he will fear death and will be pious. I will take back the holy soul and will purify it in Gehenna, and then it will again come to its place, to the Throne of Glory. Thus, I will not lose it.⁵⁴Genesis Rabbah, 8.5.

וישליכם אל ארץ אחרת, “He expelled them to another land.” The letter ל is anyway the largest of the letters in the א-ב. Here it is written even larger. This may be an allusion to the exceptionally high spiritual level from which the people were flung down at the time they were exiled. The prophet Jeremiah (Lamentations 2,1) already speaks of this when he says: השליך משמים ארץ תפארת ישראל, “the Lord has cast down from heaven to earth the majesty of Israel.” Another verse referring to the same experience of the Jewish people is found in Psalms 78,61: “His majesty is in the hands of an oppressor.” This is similar to Daniel 8,12: ”it hurled truth to the ground.” This is a reference to the countenance of Yaakov engraved on the throne of G’d [he is known as personifying “truth” just as is G’d Himself, Ed.] This is also what we read in Midrash Eychah 2,2: “G’d said to Israel the reason you have the audacity to anger Me is that you rely on the fact that the picture of your patriarch Yaakov’s countenance is engraved in My throne, This is why I will fling it back at you right into your faces.” This (according to the author of this Midrash) is the meaning of the verse we quoted from Lamentations 2,1 that “He hurled the majesty of the people of Israel from the heaven.” This is also what David referred to when he wrote (Psalms 102,11) כי נשאתני ותשליכני, “for You had lifted me up high only to cast me down.” G’d flung down the Jewish people whom He had raised previously to such great heights (spiritual). It is as if the psalmist said that the very great height to which the Jewish people had risen previously was a reason why their fall became so phenomenal. Seeing that G’d had flung the Jewish people down from such great heights, “He no longer remembered the footstool of His feet on the day of His wrath* (Lamentations 2,1). [the thrust of this commentary, if I understand correctly, is that the upheaval caused to the Jewish people by its exile was matched by a similar upheaval in the celestial spheres. Ed.] The various portions of verses from Lamentations (5,16) or Amos (5,2), as well as from Ezekiel (19,12) cited by the author, all tend to describe the decline of Israel’s image in the celestial regions before this was followed by Israel’s physical decline and exile. It is part of the mystical aspect of what is referred to in our verse.