The holidays of Pesach and Shavuot, which are the holidays of our leaving Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai, are deeply connected. The single burst of spiritual energy which was freely given to us on Seder night was then withdrawn in order for us to bring it back step by step through our self-rectification, thereby making ourselves, and the world at large, an appropriate vessel which can receive and maintain this energy. The commandment to verbally count the 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot allow us to rectify each of the 49 levels of our character traits which are connected to their spiritual levels above, allowing the flow of energy to reach us. During these days we complete Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of our Fathers) which is a Mishnaic compilation dealing with various ethical and moral issues, from generation to generation, as they were handed down from Moshe at Mount Sinai through the five centuries of the Tannaic times.
These days are also days of mourning for the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died at this time because they didn’t give respect (kavod) to each other. However, the 33rd day of the counting is a day of rejoicing and dancing around bonfires, which was established upon the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (the author of the Zohar) who was among the five later students of Rabbi Akiva.
Through this weeks parasha we can gain a partial understanding of the relevance connecting the above-mentioned ideas. There is a lot more to talk about than can possibly be presented in this short article, but with the help of Hashem, and through the insight of His messengers, our holy teachers, we will try to lay out these ideas in some intelligible way.
In this week’s parasha the Torah teaches, “v’ahavta lare’acha kamocha ani hashem” “You shall love your fellow as yourself – I am Hashem.”
Lets begin with a fascinating story from the Talmud involving Hillel the Elder, the great, great grand-teacher of Rabbi Akiva.
A non-Jew came to Shammai and asked to be converted to Judaism on the condition that he be taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai chased him away with a builderas rod. Subsequently, he went to Hillel, who agreed to his request and complied with the condition by saying, “What you hate don’t do to your friend. This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”
Before we can understand how this statement from Hillel is the entire torah, let us look into an interesting dialogue brought down in the Jerusalem Talmud.
‘“Love your fellow as yourself,’ Rabbi Akiva says ‘this is a great principle of the torah.’ Ben Azzai says ‘‘this is the sefer (account) of the toldot (offspring or products) of Adam (man) on the day G-d created Adam; in the image of G-d (elokim) He made him’ (Bereishit 5:1)” - this is an even greater principle.”’
We need the teachings of the Chassidic Masters in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Torah and to reveal the mystical truths hidden within the statements of our Sages.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov explains the above-mentioned verse, “You should love your fellow (re’acha) as yourself (camocha) I am Hashem.” The word re’acha has a second meaning of “your evil”, that is to say, the bad that comes your way. So the verse is saying to love the bad that comes to you camocha because its from you, that is to say, its according to your deeds, I am Hashem, YKVK the name of rachamim (loosely translated as mercy), that is to say, “I still deal with you with rachamim”.
The words of Rebbe Nachman can always be understood on multiple levels. On the simple level he’s telling us that we should love the suffering that comes to us because it’s commensurate with our sins, and that in truth, according to the degree of our sins, we should deserve much more but Hashem treats us with mercy and doesn’t punish us as much as we deserve.
This is a true understanding, as our Sages teach that “there is no suffering without sin,” But how does this explanation fit into the verse’s simple meaning? And why should we love suffering?
“Unveil my eyes and I will perceive wonders from Your Torah” (psalms 119). If we delve deeper we can see how Rebbe Nachman brings together many levels of Torah understanding. It seems that the Rebbe is revealing the Torah source of an important teaching of his grandfather, the founder of Chassidut, the Baal Shem Tov. In line with its simple meaning the verse can be telling us to love your fellow even if he’s bad or even if he causes you harm, because it’s a result of your actions or it’s a reflection of yourself. YKVK, the name of rachamim, was the name revealed to Moshe though which was the name through which Jews were brought out of Egypt, as mentioned in Parashat Shemot. The five levels that the name YKVK represents (the four letters and the crown of the yud) are, in the way of toldot (offspring), all levels of consciousness within us. We are a microcosm of the universe. Rav Kook explains that the “Ani YKVK (I am Hashem)” was what brought us out of the constriction of Egypt by opening for us the realization of the infinite potential of the Ani, the I, within us. Like it says “the breath of our nostrils, Moshiach Hashem,” (lamentations 4:20). This is what we discussed in Parashat Shemini (see the DAFF archive on our website, www.batayin.org) about the small flame of moshiach within each person, which, when free to express itself, joins together with the flame of others, creating the greater fire of redemption.
One of the main teachings of the Baal Shem Tov is that since each person is a microcosm of the universe, he determines whether the reality will be positive or negative. He can view the world with an ayin ra (bad eye) or an ayin tov (good eye). Whichever way he chooses to view the world is the way his world will be. The Baal Shem Tov says he was brought into this world to bring back ahavas Yisroel (love of all Jews) to the Jewish people. It is due to the lack of brotherly love within the Jewish people that the temple was destroyed and we were sent into Exile and it is only through a new awakening of this unity that we will be redeemed again. The Baal Shem Tov advises that when one sees another Jew doing something wrong, one should not automatically make a negative judgment about him, since he is only doing something wrong in the way we perceive it. Instead, try to search out the positive points within the other person. “There is no bad without some good in it”. Even within the negative act itself, there lies some goodness. Through finding the good point and judging him favorably we actually change this element in the person from bad to good. This is the basic teaching of all the Chassidic masters. We can see from the stories of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berdichev how he was a living example of this teaching. Rebbe Nachman’s famous teaching, Azamra, is about how we have to search out the good points within others and within ourselves, as the verse says “And in a little bit the sinner is not; you shall reflect upon his place and he will not be there.” Rebbe Nachman explains that by searching for the little point of good within the “sinner” and focusing on it, he will no longer be a sinner. There is a Yiddish saying “tracht gut un zain gut,” - think good and it will be good.
This past week we rectified the character trait of gevurah. One main aspect of gevurah is din (judgment). One would think that the way to rectify this trait is to try not to be judgmental of others. This week’s parasha tells us that there is a lot more to it than that. The verse says, “With righteousness you shall judge your fellow”, Rashi explains this to mean that you should judge your friend favorably. This is actually from the chapter of Pirkei Avot which we read last Shabbat afternoon, “You should judge every man favorably.” This is not merely telling us to lessen our judgment of others, what it is telling us is to actively go out and judge every man to the scale of merit. There is a Chassidic teaching which says, that the reason we need two eyes is to use one eye to search out what seems to be bad, and the other eye to turn it into good.
This is what it means when it says that we are created in the image of G-d. Everything we see around us is a manifestation of ourselves. And it is up to us to correct it. This is how it is possible to say after each counting of the Omer (days leading up to Shavuot) that the perfection of my individual character trait will perfect that character trait in every other Jew and perfect the entire universe.
You may still be wondering how this all relates to Torah, as well at to Shavuot, the time of the receiving of the Torah. How is Hillel’s statement equivalent to the entire Torah, and what did Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azai mean when they mentioned the great principles of the Torah.
Our problem is that we don’t really know what Torah is. We did not receive the five books of Moses, the way we have it today, at Mount Sinai. That couldn’t have been, since all of the later events after Mount Sinai are recorded in the Torah as we have it – giving it in that form then to Am Yisrael would have compromised our free will. Further, in connection to the Midrash which relates how the angels begged Hashem to give the Torah to them instead of to human beings, it wouldn’t make any sense that the angels would so desperately want a human history book and laws which can only be kept by humans. It is also taught that the Torah preceded the creation of the world and that Hashem peered into the Torah as a blueprint for creation. These ideas do not fit with the basic common understanding of what Torah is.
Torah is the Glory (kavod) of Hashem. K’vod Hashem is the “light” and unity of Hashem within the physicality and multiplicity of this world. This glory is within every created thing. This is the ani Hashem within us. And it is the exact same light that is hidden within everything around us. It is the connection between the spiritual and the physical. It is the spiritual within the physical. This connection is called rachamim. It is a synonym for the character trait of tiferet (beauty or harmony), which we begin to rectify this Friday. It is also called emet (truth) and is represented by our father Yaakov who is called Israel (the Jewish people). Our Sages say, “Hashem, the Torah, and Israel are one.” When we are not unified in this fashion, we cannot be called Israel and therefore cannot be the revelation of Hashem in the world. When we are separated and misaligned with our true selves, the world reflects it back onto us. It does not matter in what form it comes back to us in, whether it’s people who try to kill us or a deadly disease which quickly destroys 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students. We can have all the greatest scholars in the world, but if they don’t come together and reveal the glory (kavod) within each other, they are worth nothing. Rabbi Akiva became the advocate of this teaching. He did not lose hope in his old age after losing all that he worked so hard for; he continued teaching Torah. He left five students who became the pillars of the Oral Torah as we have it today. They can very well be denoting the five levels of YKVK, with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the teacher of Kabalah, who makes teachings like this possible, bringing it all together to create the great fire of Moshiach. As it says in the Zohar, “The Jews will be redeemed from exile due to the teachings of Rabbi Shimon.”
After the mourning of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva, we have new reason to rejoice, because of our redeemer, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who brings unity back into the Jewish people by revealing the glory of Hashem within each person and bringing us together regardless of any external differences. Every year he brings tens of thousands of Jews, from all walks of life, to his burial place in the small village of Meron on Lag B’omer, to create a bonfire from each of our little sparks of holiness. If you ask people why they came, you’ll get many different answers, but most of all its because “it’s the thing to do.” “It’s the ani within me that brought me here.”