Now, on the last Shabbat of the month of Shevat, while we prepare to enter Adar, a month of happiness, there is reason to reflect on Shevat's first week. Thursday, 6 Shevat (29 January) was a very heavy day for many of us. Ten more innocent children of G-d, children of Israel were blown up mercilessly, and three more soldiers were brought home dead ready for burial. All day I wandered around my house and through Yerushalyim without strength, unable to pick myself up. In the evening, I was to teach, but I had no idea what there was to say on the terrible day. Shortly before my class, I opened this teaching of Rebbe Nachman and forced myself to see as deeply as I could at that moment. I wish to share with you a little of what came out of it for me.
Likuttei Moharan: Torah (teaching) 165
By Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, trans. Raz Hartman
"And you should love your friend (re'acha) like yourself; I am G-d (Hashem)" (Vayikra/Leviticus 19)
Meaning you should receive with love all the evils and suffering that come on you. For you should know, that according to your deeds, even after all the suffering and evils that you have, still He acts with you with compassion. For there was more and more coming to you, G-d forbid, according to your deeds. And this is: And "you should love your re'acha" - that you should love the evil (ra) that comes to you; meaning, the evils and suffering that come on you, G-d forbid, you should receive them with love. For "like yourself", like the way you are, meaning according to your deeds, I am Hashem - master of compassion*, still I act with you with compassion, as we said.
* - "Hashem" refers to the four-letter name of G-d, the name associated with the trait of compassion.
The surface understanding of this teaching - to me - seems like a simple statement of religious belief: whatever evil happens to us, really G-d is kind, because if we only knew what we really should be receiving for our deeds...
I do not really believe this is what the teaching is giving over but I want to acknowledge that it is possible to read it this way. We do not need Rebbe Nachman to teach us a simple statement of preachy faith that we could have gotten from any two-bit musar book or evangelical sermon. 'Your actions deserve burning hell, but G-d has mercy, so take your suffering with love, G-d's really giving you a much better deal than you deserve.' Just doesn't seem super deep or necessary, and then to plug that idea in to one of the most beautiful, deepest verses of our Torah - I don't know - it doesn't resonate with me. Also, Rebbe Nachman's approach to spiritual growth isn't based on powered by you-do-bad-you-get-punished energy.
As I reread this teaching and noticed some of the beautiful subtleties, Rebbe Nachman seemed to be saying something much more profound and more acutely relevant to a world in desperate need of compassion.
So what does it mean "love your friend like yourself"?
Who are we? Often we look to define ourselves by our traits or by our deeds - I'm a good person, I'm a doctor, I'm a student. But truly we are none of these things. Take all of your actions, thoughts, words, … it doesn't amount to a fraction of what you really are. You are, we all are, neshamot, souls - portions of "G-d on high." All the things we do, speak, feel, think - these are all but very small manifestations of something infinite, something beyond limitation that we have inside - which we inadequately call the soul. These things we do are but constrictions, inherent to this constricted world where all things must conform to physicality and must therefore be limited.
The truth is - it's not only our actions which are constricted. In order to create a world of people with free choice, a physical world "separate" from G-d, the Holy One Blessed Be had to - so to speak - constrict, making a void in the ultimate Infinite Light to make space for the world itself. In other words, the world is inherently limited. From this come two realities and experiences that are sometimes painful.
The first is what we call evil. For example, people who understand that free choice means freedom to be selfish and who choose to use their power to hurt. In creation, evil must be possible, since otherwise all is just a clearly apparent "finger of G-d." And yet it hurts so much - to suffer from evil, or just to see it happen in downtown Jerusalem or in Rwanda or anywhere else.
The second experience is what our tradition describes as judgment. Whether you understand judgment as G-d standing over us, punishing us for our misdeeds so that we can be responsible for our actions, or whether you see it as karma, boomeranging the energy we put out back to us so we can rectify our fallings, either way, a world where there is separation from the Source is a world of judgment. And here is our deepest pain. On the one hand, we are limited humans, and as such prone to failing and even aware that nothing we do will ever totally express our true most inner essence. On the other, each of those failings exacts a price, a judgment. For many, myself most definitely included, this is experienced as an existential trap. How many people bemoan their faults, their inabilities to overcome their "stuff", and yet feel their lack of power in this process? Even by G-d, so to speak. The Zohar, the Book of Shining, one of our treasuries of mystical understandings, describes tzimtzum, constriction, as G-d's anger. In other words, even G-d, so to speak, has a hard time with the limitation of G-d's own creation.
And so we receive a commandment, which the Zohar calls "advice", to "love your friend like yourself - I am Hashem". In this, G-d tells us do not look at the other person externally, like an other; do not define them, even appreciate them, by their actions, but come to them as you must come to yourself; love your neighbor by the G-d that is in them, their "I am Hashem" that is their soul. Love them. Not just appreciate. Truly connect.
You know of yourself (and this perhaps is the first part of the commandment - to know yourself) that you are a soul, an infinite spark of the Infinite Light, that anything you do is but an infinitesimal fraction of the potential you have inside. So know that of your friend. If you would look at their deeds, at their words, even at their emotions, and you would "love" them based on that - this is not love. "I love him because he is nice, I love him because he looks so good…" - that's not the real thing. I love her because… she is an expression of "I am Hashem" in the world - ahh then…it's something else.
If we look at our lives as freeze-frame shots, static moments, the truth is they don't look so good. "It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in the Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise." Thus spoke Gimli, son of Gloin the Dwarf in "The Lord of the Rings." And how much truth resonates in his words. And yet…
Rebbe Nachman, the Rebbe of comforting, teaches: you know all the bad stuff that's happening to you, all the suffering you are going through; know where it comes from - from the source of all suffering, the inherent gap between who I am, and what I could be. Evil itself is a result of constriction, of the necessary limitation of G-d's presence. And it's true inside ourselves as well; all the evil and suffering that happens within each of us, it is the pain of the inability to manifest our infiniteness. So Rebbe Nachman says, if you're going to look at it from the perspective of your deeds, your actions, your manifestations in this world, it really should feel much worse because the gap is infinite.
What a constriction it is just to speak words to someone else! " I love you" - Does that come anywhere close to what I mean or feel? "This apple tastes great" - Can that possibly describe the experience of tasting it? And this is so small when compared to real suffering, to the inability to combat selfishness, to the constricted capacity to do real good in the world, to the cut off faculty to heal the pain.
But that's only from the perspective of your deeds, says the Rebbe. The best way to describe your deeds is "like yourself" (kamocha). Everything you do is only "like yourself" - it's not really who you are. And G-d knows this. So G-d tells us the real secret - I am Hashem (Master of compassion). You know what compassion is? The Hebrew word is rachamim. It's related to the Hebrew word rechem (womb). All this constriction, all the limitation, it's like a womb, an enclosed space protecting the child until birth. Don't worry, G-d says, we need all the constriction because it's part of the process that leads to your birth - that leads to the true manifesting in this world of all the infinite potential and light our souls contain. All your failings, all the times where you fell or failed or didn't exactly manifest the way you wanted to, even needed to - all this becomes a part of who you are becoming tomorrow. Sure, if you look at your deeds and stop there, you'll surely be suffering, surely you will realize how "evil" it all is in comparison to what could be or what should be; but deeper, know, G-d is the master of rachamim, of the vision of the process of the unfolding of your soul. Just as the womb is constricted space and yet expresses the mother's deepest love to her child, so this world, with all its suffering, with all its pain, is that enclosed place that expresses G-d's deepest love.
It is a hard lesson, even viewing it from this reading, and not so simple to swallow - for me at least. Yet here is the seed of comfort we so desperately need in a world full of suffering and evils. Receive the constriction with love. This does not mean not to react - remember even G-d looks at the constriction and "is angry." But deep down we need so much to know that something is waiting, growing, about to burst forth in fuller manifestation, and the only block is our viewing it all merely externally when really G-d is the Master of compassion. I bless us all to see, in our own lives, and in the world's own life, the full manifestation of our souls, of our yearnings, the disappearance of suffering, of evil, the day of birth so rapidly approaching.
Rav Raz Hartman
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Rav Raz Hartman, born to Israeli parents, grew up in Southern California. He was attending U.S.C., majoring in Music Peformance, when he met Rav Natan Greenberg. That meeting eventually result in Raz's coming to the Bat Ayin Yeshiva, where he studied for six years and was given Semichah in 2003. He is married to Leah, and they live, with their three children, in Nachla'ot, Jerusalem. Raz serves as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo, and founder of the v'Ani Tefillah minyan. He has produced several albums of Jewish music. |