MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Friday, October 24
Tishrei 25

TURNING INSPIRATION INTO ACTION


If you want the inspiration of the High Holiday season not to dissipate but to be turned into eternal moments that you can draw on for the rest of the year and for the rest of your life, you have to do something about it.

While meditation can be very beneficial, action is more powerful than any meditation can be. Indeed, meditation only lays the groundwork for action. Action changes human beings, moves mountains, and ultimately changes the world.

How can action change the world? It melts the tension between matter and spirit, fusing them into one.

Matter (our material, earthly realm) is temporary but tangible. Spirit (our soul) is eternal but intangible. Hence the tension between them. The Jewish solution is to fuse the two—to spiritualize the material.

To do so, you must take your material life, which is the antithesis of anything eternal, and you must connect it to something eternal. That's the key.

Many people interpret this to mean that they should free up more moments in their life for eternal and spiritual activity—that, for example, instead of working fourteen hours a day, they should come home earlier and spend more time with the family.

That is very good but there is another way.

When you go to work you should transform your workplace into eternity. One suggestion, especially if your work is about making money, is to put a charity box on your desk. While it might seem like a token gesture, it becomes a constant reminder in the midst of financial deal-making that other things are more important.

Another suggestion—since so much attention is paid to food consumption—is to take the time to always make a blessing before and after eating. While it might seem like another token gesture, a blessing is a powerful reminder that the material world is not here for us to indulge in, but to be refined and transformed.

Ask yourself: How do you plan to capture the inspiration of the High Holidays? How can you turn it into action?

Exercise for the day:
-Commit to one action that will fuse the material with the spiritual in your life.
- Do it.

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Saturday, October 25
Tishrei 26

MEETING THE CHALLENGE


Every challenge we are presented with in life packs a certain amount of energy. And to meet that challenge requires of us an amount of energy equal to that of the challenge. If the resistance is, say, 10 pounds, we need to counter it with 10 pounds. And we need 11 pounds, or more, to overcome it.

When it comes to the tension between matter and spirit (see essay for the 25th day of Tishrei), the spirit must apply that much energy, and then some, to overcome matter.

Physically speaking, two of us cannot sit in the same seat at the same time, because physicality by definition takes up time and space. So, in order to share with another, we have to give up something. If we have food, and we share with another, we have less. If we have money, and we share with another, we have less. That's how things are measured quantitatively in the world of matter.

But, spiritually speaking, two people can sit in two different seats a million miles apart, and their love is so deep that they're like one. For them to share food or money means not giving but gaining something far more precious.

So matter and spirit work in two different directions entirely. Matter (being selfish) always holds onto its own space, but spirit (being selfless) doesn't have a problem with giving up its space. The spirit understands that money runs out, food spoils, everything material eventually rots and erodes. But anything with spiritual value, by definition, is eternal, unchanging.

This means that every moment in life which becomes spiritualized is immortalized. So, if you dedicated extra time to the High Holidays, you have gained something eternal.

Ask yourself: How much energy did you put into this High Holiday season? How much did you get out of it?

Exercise for the day:


- Calculate the time and effort you put into the preparation and celebration of the various High Holidays?
- Know that in the coming year, this time and effort will be returned to you in manifold ways.
- Watch for it.


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ETERNAL MOMENTS

Thursday, October 23
Tishrei 24, Isru Chag




A story is told about the 19th century Chassidic Master, the Rebbe Rashab, who was visited by a friend he had not seen for 37 years.

The re-union was strange—the two once-close friends had seemingly nothing to say to each other after all that time—and then the Rebbe began to sing. It was a song from another time, and he closed his eyes as he sang, transported to another place. In a trance-like state, he sang for a long while, and when he finished, he turned to his friend and asked, "Do you remember?" And the friend answered, "Yes, I remember." That's all they said to each other, and a week later the friend died.

Later the Rebbe explained to his students who had witnessed that moment: "Thirty-seven years ago, when we parted ways, this was the song that we sang. The song was, in a way, a time capsule that held for us all the years that passed. When my friend said that he remembered, I knew that we didn't need to reunite because we had never parted ways—that song lifted us to an eternal time and place as if these years had never passed."

Eternal moments have the power to transcend time and space because they capture inside them the fleeting connection between the finite and the infinite. Such moments are gifts from G-d and are extremely rare. We'd all love to experience such eternal moments, because immortality is what we all yearn for. But unfortunately, life is, for most of us, an accumulation not of eternal moments but of finite, "dying" moments.

As we process the experiences of this High Holiday season, we want to capture the eternal moments that we experienced, be able to recall them, and use them to return to the closeness we felt with our own soul and with G-d.

Ask yourself: What eternal moments did you experience in this High Holiday season? What will it take to recall them later at will and be transported above time and space once again?

Exercise for the day:

Describe in detail as many eternal moments as you can recall.

Simchat Torah

Monday, October 20
Tishrei 21, Hoshana Rabba; Seventh Day of Sukkot

ONE TWIG AND ONE LEAF

The word "simple," when applied to human beings or physical objects, usually implies an absence of something. A simple man, for example, is one who has not been blessed with much intelligence or depth of feeling.

There is, however, another application of the word "simple"—in the sense of something that is pure and singular, as opposed to something that consists of various parts and elements. Thus G-d is described as "simple oneness."

In our world, we have no model for such a simple oneness, for even the most homogeneous entity is a composite of various parts, qualities and aspects. G-d, however, is utterly and absolutely one.

And yet, the Baal Shem Tov draws a parallel between human "simplicity," defined by a lack of learning and spiritual sophistication, and the Divine "simplicity." He singles for distinction the simple Jew who has a simple faith in G-d not observed in his more sophisticated fellows. This is not because scholars do not possess faith or commitment to G-d (which is intrinsic to every Jewish soul), but because, in them, its innocence is blurred by the sophistication of their understanding.

On Hoshana Rabba we celebrate the simple Jew by selecting for a special mitzvah the simple willow twig. Indeed, the day is called "Day of the Willow." Among the "four kinds," the willow twig stands for a Jew who neither excels in his wisdom nor his accomplishments, and it is the willow twig that makes Hoshana Rabba.

Generally, when the "four kinds" are waved, there must be at least two willow twigs, each with at least three leaves, but the special mitzvah of Hoshana Rabba is fulfilled with just one willow twig, which need only have one leaf.

This mitzvah is considered so important the rabbis of the Talmud arranged the Jewish calendar in such a way that Hoshana Rabba never falls on Shabbat when the handling of tree branches or twigs would be forbidden.

Hoshana Rabba must be kept aloof of the changes and vacillations of this world. If the cycles of time threaten its consistency, we must divert these cycles, manipulating the calendar if necessary, to ensure that the simplicity of the willow twig—the simplicity of the Jew who puts all his trust in G-d—always assert itself on the seventh day of Sukkot.



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Tuesday, October 21
Tishrei 22, Shemini Atzeret; Eighth Day of Sukkot

A DAY RICH WITH ESSENCE


The name of this holiday, Shemini Atzeret, has many meanings.

The Hebrew word shemini means "eighth" but it comes from the same root as shuman meaning "fat" or "rich." The Hebrew word atzeret can mean "retention/absorption" or "restraint/retreat" or "in-gathering/assembly." And it can also mean "essence." Thus Shemini Atzeret represents the richness of the essence of the entire year, because this day consummates all the energy of the holidays of Tishrei and channels it into all the days of the year.

Rashi, in his commentary on Torah, explains the significance of Shemini Atzeret with the following parable:

There was once a king who invited his children for a banquet of several days. When it came time for them to go, he said to them: "My children, please, stay with me one more day—your parting is difficult for me..."

In the parable, the king does not say, "our parting is difficult for me," but "your parting is difficult for me." Indeed, G-d is everywhere and so He never parts from us. It is we who part from G-d, moving on to a state of diminished awareness of our relationship with Him.

"Your parting" has yet another meaning—the parting we take from each other, which, in G-d's eyes, is synonymous with us parting from Him. When we are one with G-d, we are also one with each other, united as children of our royal father. The same applies in reverse: when we are one with each other, united in our common identity as G-d's children, we are one with G-d.

This parting is distressful to G-d. So He retains us one day longer, for an eighth day of "retention" or "absorption" or "in-gathering"—a day on which dwelling in the sukkah is no longer a commandment but on which the unity of Sukkot suffuses us nonetheless.

On this day it is not we who are in the sukkah, but the sukkah is within us. On this day we are empowered to internalize the unity of Sukkot, to distill it into an essence, and store it in the pith of our souls so that we may draw on it in the months to come.


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Wednesday, October 22
Tishrei 23, Simchat Torah

CELEBRATION OF THE INDESTRUCTIBLE


On Simchat Torah we complete the cycle of reading the Torah (the last verses of the Book of Deuteronomy) and we begin anew (with the Book of Genesis).

The very last words of the Torah read: "...and all the great deeds which Moses performed before the eyes of all Israel." (Deuteronomy 34:12)

Rashi states that this refers to Moses' breaking of the tablets. But, surely, his breaking the tablets was a failing rather than an accomplishment. How could it be a great deed?

It was a great deed because his breaking of the tablets made possible the inscribing of the second tablets which were indestructible.

The first tablets can be compared to a tzaddik—a person who is born innocent and leads a holy life; the second to a baal teshuvah ("master of return")—a person who falls, but then gets up, repents and starts anew, and is infinitely stronger for the experience.

The second tablets—which came into being because the first ones were broken—reflect the challenge of life itself: the fall of man and his ability to rise to new, unprecedented heights.

The second tablets also reflect the power of human initiative: They were carved by Moses and were given by G-d on Yom Kippur after 80 days of Moses' tireless efforts. The second tablets therefore revealed a new dimension in our relationship with G-d. That even after we have fallen, through our efforts (of teshuvah), we can demonstrate the invincibility of our inherent connection with G-d and Torah, that transcends all our weaknesses. It was the breaking of the first tablets that uncovered this power and invincibility.

The second tablets, in short, revealed a new and unprecedented dimension within us, the Torah, and our relationship with G-d.

Simchat Torah is the celebration of that new dimension. We therefore dance with absolute passion and no limits. We dance with our legs, our arms wrapped around a Torah scroll. It is a dance that touches the very essence of the Jew, the very essence of the Torah, and the very essence of G-d. It is a dance that transcends our limited intellects and emotions, that encompasses all people, regardless of education, background, and spiritual station. It is an infinite dance that touches immortality itself.

Hemshech Tzaddik-Dalet Part III

DO YOU WANT TO DANCE OR DO YOU WANT TO DANCE?
By Simon Jacobson

What would you do to get a glimpse, just a glimpse, of a reality that is beyond the one you usually perceive?

As we are about to celebrate the unfettered dance of Simchat Torah, the Chassidic series Tzaddik-Dalet – which has been the focus of this column in the past few weeks marking the 75th anniversary of this discourse’s delivery – helps us enter a new zone, which can lift us above the trappings of our daily routines and the din of our demoralizing anxieties.

The story until here: All of existence is a process, a transmission consisting of three stages, yesh, ayin, yesh. All matter – the “body” and being of our physical universe (the created yesh) – carries within it energy (ayin), which in turn originates from a source, the “transmitter” (the true yesh).

As we travel deeper into the worm-hole that connects our perceived reality and the deeper reality within – concealed by layers upon layers of thick curtains – we discover that in the in-between ayin state there are actually many levels and dimensions.

In the continuing process of deconstructing existence – which this classic discourse does so methodically – the Rebbe Rayatz further dissects the transitionary ayin into two: Ayin of the Yesh Ha’Amiti and the ayin of the yesh ha’nivra. Since the transmission is not of the Essence itself, but of a reflection, it goes through gradations as it moves down the pipeline. First comes a state that carries the transmission, removed from the essence while reflecting it. Then this state metamorphasizes into another, lower form of ayin, which is more customized to the final recipient, yet still beyond it.

The first ayin is called “non-existent” or “nothingness” simply because of its actual insignificance, completely paling in comparison to its source. The second ayin is so called not because of its insignificance; it actually carries much significance, indeed, it is the source of the recipient’s existence. It is called ayin because from the perspective of the recipient 1) it remains unknowable and mysterious; 2) its existence is of a different “personality,” one that our existence cannot relate to and sees as “non-existent”.

In other words, every state of being, which inherently originates from a higher state of being – i.e. every transmission from one state to another – consists of four levels: The source (Yesh Ha’Amiti), the way the source manifests and is reflected as it begins to transmit and evolve (ayin ha’amiti), the transmission getting closer to the recipient (ayin of the yesh ha’nivra), and the recipient (yesh).

To make this a bit more palatable, take the example of a teacher and student: As the teacher (the first yesh) transmits an entirely new idea, he first must gather his thoughts and condense the idea in his own mind (the first ayin). Then he must find words and examples that the student can relate to (the second ayin), which will carry and plant the idea into the student’s mind (the final yesh). This is true for every form of transmission and process.

And these four levels in a sense repeat themselves again and again as we move through the cosmic order. Each “section” of the process consisting of a state that evolves into a lower state, with two levels of “ayin” in-between connecting them.

[The following two paragraphs can be skipped if you find them too esoteric:

There are actually three different ways to explain the meaning the two levels of ayin. 1) The infinite light (sovev) divides into two dimensions: the essence of the light and its extension. 2) The infinite light (prior to the tzimtzum) is the first level of ayin and the finite light (after the tzimtzum) is the second level. 3) The finite light itself (memaleh) divides into two.

It seems obvious, though the Rebbe Rayatz does not state it specifically, that every stage of existence, from the highest to the lowest, has two stages in the in-between process that connects every two states of reality. Relative to your existing state, the level above you is a lower form of ayin, and the level above that is a higher form of ayin, which follows the yesh above it].

What this all means in practical terms:

Understanding the dynamics of existence and how our reality came to be is not just an academic exercise which satisfies our natural curiosity to know “how things work” (the proverbial clock, which we take apart to see what makes it tick), but something far more profound and consequential. The inner workings of reality teach us how to retrace the steps and reconnect to our core source, how to integrate our surface level existence with the inner forces that shape and define our very being.

All of life is a journey. Not just a journey on earth, but one that carries us from one state of being to a higher state of being, from one state of consciousness to a higher state of consciousness, like climbing a mountain, the mountain of perception, where each leg upward allows you to see and experience new horizons. When humans say that they like to improve and perfect their lives what does that mean? Is perfection physical – instead of one million, two million dollars? Instead of one car two, instead of one home two homes, and so on? True perfection and self-actualization is when we release all our potential, when we reach higher states of awareness. It is about spiritual perfection – not being trapped by our own limited perspectives and possibilities, and reaching for heights (hitherto) unimaginable. It is the story of the finite yearning for the infinite.

How high and what exactly constitutes these heights is subject to various opinions. Hemshech Tzaddik-Dalet tells us that no limits exist in how high we can reach – but only if you are ready to “pay the price.” There is no way to get beyond mediocrity and experience transcendence if we ourselves and our mindsets remain mediocre. Climbing upward requires the readiness to suspend pre-conceived notions and experiences, to set aside self-interest and other ego-driven pursuits, and allow yourself to be carried to a broader place.

To climb the mountain and elevate our lives from one state to a higher state we need to experience two states of bittul. The first realization is that our existence is very limited and that there is a far greater force, unknown to us, that energizes our very beings. Once you assimilate this new perception (which is no small feat and takes much work), you can begin to climb to the next level and realize that not only is our existence inferior to its source, but that there is a level where there is only light and energy, reflecting a higher reality, and all of existence is completely engulfed, and has no identity of its own, in that light. Not only that something greater than us exists; not only that’s is not all about you, but that that you compared to it are nothing at all.

Once you come to that profound awareness, then you can integrate your being with that higher state, and then something dramatic happens: You become absolutely significant – not because you think you are somebody, but because the essence makes you somebody.

To understand this we need to further analyze the meaning of light and bittul. This we will leave for the future columns of this ongoing series. Let us for now return to Simchat Torah, which immediately follows the festival of Sukkot.

One of the personal lessons of spending an entire week in a Sukkah instead of in our comfortable homes is to remind us of the temporal nature of existence. The material world is not our home. We must never succumb to the illusion that our man-made structures and mortal edifices are our natural environments. Corporeal life is a means, a road that leads us to a deeper, higher reality. The transitory Sukkah reminds us that we are just travelers in this impermanent material world; we are spiritual beings on a material journey, not material beings on a spiritual journey.

The vulnerable Sukkah has many layers, but as we travel inward each layer makes us stronger – and wiser, realizing new states of transcendence and joy.

Seven days in a Sukkah prepare us to enter yet another dimension of reality, called Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, when we dance the seven circles (hakofot). Each circle sucks us further into its vortex, helping us melt away the fears of our limited perspectives in a narrow universe.

To enter a higher reality we have a narrow passage called “ayin.” To enter this passage you must first shed layers of ego and self-interest, recognizing that there is a reality that precedes you and is concealed from view; a reality beyond your grasp and of another dimension. Once you travel up this state of selfless ayin, it will lead you to yet another passage. There you need to shed not just any shred of self, but you need to know that compared to the Higher Reality your reality has no significance at all.

And then.... And only then a new passageway opens up for you – wider than anything you have ever seen, transforming you into a new being, a new reality.

Yes my friends, the secret to immortality is to disappear. Disappearance can never disappear, the invisible cannot be obliterated, selflessness cannot be annihilated.

Want to catch a glimpse of another reality?

Dance on Simchat Torah. Don’t just dance. DANCE.

Ahh, to dance and dance into oblivion. An oblivion that carries us into the ayin, and then into another and yet another – as we deconstruct existence and catch a glimpse of a something beyond…
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