{"id":468,"date":"2016-11-20T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T00:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/?p=468"},"modified":"2016-11-20T00:00:48","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T00:00:48","slug":"derech-hashem-239","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/2016\/11\/20\/derech-hashem-239\/","title":{"rendered":"Derech Hashem 2:3:9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Derech<\/em> <em>Hashem<\/em> &#8211; The Way of G-d 2:3:9<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve spoken about people succeeding or not <sup>1<\/sup> based on their spiritual standing <sup>2<\/sup>, but we&#8217;ll now focus on how it touches on certain aspects of nature we&#8217;d cited before <sup>3<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>It comes to this: sins just naturally sully and pervade our beings and the world at large <sup>4<\/sup> and they have G-d&#8217;s light grow dimmer and dimmer <sup>5<\/sup>. But that light becomes brighter and brighter again <sup>6<\/sup> the more thoroughly sin is cleansed, and we become purer as a consequence of that cleansing <sup>7<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>But, what cleanses? It&#8217;s tribulations that cleanse us and the world overall. And it&#8217;s the tribulations that the righteous and pious who don&#8217;t deserve to suffer but who do so nevertheless whom we&#8217;d cited <sup>8<\/sup> that manage to cleanse the world on an ongoing basis, and to subsequently lead it to perfection.<\/p>\n<p>Footnotes:<\/p>\n<p><sup>1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>Spiritually or materially.<\/p>\n<p><sup>2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>Or on that of the righteous people they depend upon, as cited in 2:3:8.<\/p>\n<p><sup>3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>See 2:2:5.<\/p>\n<p><sup>4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>That&#8217;s to say that aside from having personal repercussions for the sinner based on his ethical standing, sins also affect the tone and quality of his and the world&#8217;s reality.<\/p>\n<p><sup>5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>It&#8217;s important to realize that G-d&#8217;s light only <em>appears<\/em> to dim as a consequence of our sins, for in fact nothing could ever actually diminish or otherwise affect G-d&#8217;s light itself which is constant. The point is that we and the world suffer because of the <em>impression<\/em> we have of G-d&#8217;s light diminishing when we sin which we wouldn&#8217;t have if we didn&#8217;t sin.<\/p>\n<p><sup>6\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>To our eyes (see previous note).<\/p>\n<p><sup>7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>See 1:2:3.<\/p>\n<p><sup>8\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup>See 2:3:8.<\/p>\n<p>(c) 2016 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to contact me at <a href=\"mailto:feldman@torah.org\">feldman@torah.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman&#8217;s translation of Maimonides&#8217; &#8220;Eight Chapters&#8221; is available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.targum.com\/product.php\/378\/the-8-chapters-of-the-rambam--shemonah-perakim\">here<\/a> at a discount.<\/p>\n<p>You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman&#8217;s translation of &#8220;The Gates of Repentance&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tinyurl.com\/49s8t\">here<\/a> at a discount as well.<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon &#8220;The Path of the Just&#8221; and &#8220;The Duties of the Heart&#8221; (Jason Aronson Publishers).<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/torah.org\/learning\/spiritual-excellence\/archives.html\">Spiritual Excellence<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/torah.org\/learning\/ramchal\/archives.html\">Ramchal<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Derech Hashem &#8211; The Way of G-d 2:3:9 We&#8217;ve spoken about people succeeding or not 1 based on their spiritual standing 2, but we&#8217;ll now focus on how it touches on certain aspects of nature we&#8217;d cited before 3. It &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/2016\/11\/20\/derech-hashem-239\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,2,3,4,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hashkapha","category-jewish-thought","category-kabbalah","category-ramchal","category-torah","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iqof-7y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/derechhashem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}