The Ba’al HaTanya says in a deceptively simple statement, “The intellect follows the will.” The truth is, all of a man follows his will. The will is how one is programmed – the basic intention at the root of one’s being. It is manifest in every one of his actions – in a decision made in a moment of pristine clarity or in an impulsive response that apparently involves no decision at all. Thus, if one is capable of confronting his will, any slight changes that he makes will send ripples into every facet of his life. Conversely, if one is stuck, it may be that any changes he is attempting to make in his life are not touching the level of will, and therefore only contribute to the feeling of spinning in endless circles. Rather than grow frustrated with one’s self for, say, not waking up in the morning when he thinks he wants to, one must really ask himself, “Do I really WANT to wake up that early? And if I do not, why do I pretend that I do? Perhaps I have grafted someone else’s will onto my own? If I really do think it is important and worthy, what is preventing it from happening? Do I have a conflicting will?”
Will-work is among the most difficult to do; it is root-work. It can leave one exposed to the very infrastructure of one’s being – and this glance can be disheartening. The true seeker knows, however, that the broken heart is the ground from which true growth happens.
The astrological sign of this month of Shvat is dli, the water-carrier, Aquarius. The word dli is connoted in the verse “Aromimcha Hashem ki dilitani” (Psalms 30:2) which is translated in the Jerusalem Bible as “I will extol Thee, Hashem, for Thou has lifted me up.” But it also has the connotation of lowering down. The verse continues, “And Thou has not let my enemies rejoice over me.” The bucket is lowered into the darkest, dankest depths to draw from the waters of that place. The enemy spoken of is not the dark depths; the enemy is illusion. The enemy is when one pretends to be what one is not. The dli being lowered is a momentary abortion of the attempt to stay afloat, a willingness to descend and put in real effort at doing this root-work. It is no mystery that in Jungian psychology the unconscious is characterized as water.
When one has lowered one’s bucket to the depths of one’s self, and has tasted of the waters there and found them sour, what is one to do? Really, the confrontation with one’s inner self is the changing of one’s self. The damaged link makes itself known (with the help of the Most High), its recognition is the beginning of its reparation – “I have not acted with integrity; I have not been true to myself.” But this is assuming (and a huge assumption it is) that one finds one’s self in fertile earth that stimulates growth, that implies the next step once one has decided to change. Often one’s root-work leaves one with the feeling “I must leave this situation.” Fortunate is the one who has arrived at this clarity – but unfortunate is he if his next move is not obvious to him. When one is planted in a place that is deep beyond his own depths, (after all, who planted him in the first place?), the next decision will be made according to an ingrained ethic or sense of right-ness that is beyond him, yet completely obvious to him. It is a will beyond his own that he cannot deny.
Whose roots are nurtured by this fertile earth? One who is planted in Torah, the will of the Living G-d. It says in Chapters of the Fathers 2:4 ‘Make your will His will’ - this is not work that is done merely because one wants to. It is work done in the dire existential confrontation with one’s self, at the moment of the decision to let go of a part of one’s self in favor of something higher. The Torah is living water, as it says, “His delight is in the Torah of Hashem, and he meditates in the Torah day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. Its’ leaves shall not wither, and in whatever he does he shall prosper. Not so the wicked; they are like chaff that is blown by the wind (Psalms 1:2-4).” Important that the tree brings forth fruit in its season. There is a season for root-work (which for most of us is now) and a season for bearing fruit. When the roots are secure in truth one can have faith that the fruits will bear truth. One can even trust that his impulsive reactions will be coming from a place of truth. One may then trust one’s self – and let go.
It is my sense that the seat of the will is in the heart – it is not in the place of the intellect. In fact the will is quite effective in protecting itself from the influence of the intellect. If we actually knew what we have heard and learned we would probably all be saints. But the will keeps the intellect at bay; “the intellect follows the will.” Pharoah is a fine example of this trap – despite the word of his advisors, despite what he could see with his eyes, he was still able to deny the omnipotence of the Living G-d by some technical loophole or another. It was his heart that was hardened.
Interestingly, as Rebbe Nachman points out, the heart is also the seat of happiness, as it says in Psalms 4 “You have put happiness in my heart.” But it is impossible for the heart to be happy until it removes the crookedness and deception within it, until the heart becomes “straight” or “upright”, as it says in Psalms 97 “And happiness to the upright of heart.” And this crookedness (which has self-deception in it) is broken by thunder, as it says in Tractate Brachot “Thunder was only created to break the crookedness of the heart.” And thunder is the concept of voice, that one prays (in many different forms) with strength and power. When one brings forth his voice with great strength, the voice strikes the clouds of the brain and from there come forth droplets, as it says in the Zohar on the verse from Song of Songs ‘A well of living waters flowing forth from livanon,’ “this is from the whites – lebona – of the brain.”
We say at the end of prayer, “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be ‘for will’, Hashem”; we pray that these things we pray for be incorporated into our will (ie. Healing, blessing, unity and peace).
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“And there was a darkness over Mitzrayim, and it was a darkness that was felt” – the commentators agree that the repeated mention of the word ‘darkness’ alludes to a double darkness. We might understand this with an insight from the RaMChaL. He says there are some who are not just blind, but doubly blind. “[There is a] distortion of their sight, so that they see evil as though it were goodness itself and goodness as though it were evil itself, and because of this, strengthen themselves in clinging to their evil ways. For it is not enough that they lack the ability to see truth, the evil staring them in the face, but they also see fit to find powerful substantiations and empirical evidence to support their evil theories and false ideas.” (Mesilat Yesharim chapter 3)
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“And there was darkness on Mitzrayim for three days; and a man did not see his brother” – this is true darkness.
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From the Zohar translation by Daniel Chanan Matt – “One day Rabbi Shim’on was sitting. Rabbi El’azar his son and Rabbi Abba were with him. Rabbi El’azar said, “The verse written here: ‘I have appeared to Abraham Isaac and to Jacob…’ Why ‘appeared’? The word should be ‘spoken’.” He answered “El’azar, my son, it is a high mystery! Come and see: Certain colors can be seen; certain colors cannot. These and those are the high mystery of faith. But human beings do not know; they do not reflect. The colors that can be seen – no one was pure enough to see them until the patriarchs came and mastered them. Thus the word ‘appeared,’ for they saw the colors which were revealed. Which are revealed? Colors of Kel Shakkai (a name of Hashem implying ‘played out over time’), colors in a cosmic prism. These can be seen. But the colorsabove, hidden and invisible – no human has mastered them except Moses. Therefore the verse concludes, ‘But by my name Hashem I was not known to them.’ I was not revealed to them in high colors. Do you think that the Patriarchs were not aware of these colors at all? They were aware, through those that are revealed.”
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In the plague of darkness, the surface reading of the word, vayimash, is that the darkness was tangible. However, Unkulos translates this word as meaning ‘removed’. The darkness was taken away, and Divine light poured down into Egypt. However, too much light can be blinding. We understand that during this plague while the Egyptians were entrenched in tangible darkness, the Jews had light in their dwelling places (hidden in the hebrew word is shabbat – meaning that the Jews had mitzvot and the light of the shechinah) (Kedushas Levi). So only those people that could contain the light because they were connected to the Divine Oneness of the world were sitting in light. The rest were stuck, alone and in the dark. So it is with our own lives, that perhaps the darkness we sense is actually light, and all we have to do is the work to build ourselves, our understandings, our relationships, etc. that we might become capable of receiving that blessing and find freedom and sight in His glorious light. And sometimes the only way to see ourselves and our lives clearly is through isolation and darkness that we might yearn, cry and pray enough to connect again to Life.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |