{"id":20,"date":"2009-12-15T16:13:40","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T16:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theneshamaanditsparts.wordpress.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2009-12-15T16:13:40","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T16:13:40","slug":"what-matters-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/2009\/12\/15\/what-matters-most\/","title":{"rendered":"What Matters Most"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that what matters most, as far as we\u2019re concerned, are the three <em>lowest<\/em> levels of the soul, <em>Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama; <\/em>as <em>Chaya<\/em> and <em>Yechidah<\/em> are totally out of our experience. Only Adam and Moshe (and only as he stood on Mount Sinai at that) were said to have been granted the latter two.<\/p>\n<p>Rav Y.E. Chaver writes in his <em>Biur<\/em> to <em>Likutei HaGra<\/em> that the <em>Nephesh<\/em> is actually lower than man, and that man\u2019s essential self is found in the <em>Ruach<\/em>. The <em>Neshama<\/em> is above man, in the Heavens, and only sparks of it touch upon the <em>Ruach<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Megalah Amukot<\/em> (175) maintains in fact that Adam alone merited a <em>Yechidah<\/em> in full, which is the whole intent behind the statement, \u201cBehold, the man will be like one of us and live forever\u201d (Gen. 3.22). Moshe experienced it when he experienced the revelations of G-d\u2019s \u201cexalted wisdom\u201d at Sinai, but it was taken away from him at the incident of the golden calf, when he only merited a <em>Chaya<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Ohr<\/em> <em>HaChaim<\/em> (Lev. 22:12) also holds that only Adam achieved a <em>Yechidah<\/em>, as did <em>Limudei<\/em> <em>Atzilut<\/em> (36), and Rav A. Shapiro of Dinov in <em>Regel<\/em> <em>Yeshara<\/em> (33c). And Rav Chaim Volshiner contends that even Adam only merited the faintest glimmer of <em>Chaya<\/em> and <em>Yechidah<\/em> (<em>Nephesh<\/em> <em>Hachaim<\/em> 1:15, 2:17).<\/p>\n<p>The Zohar often speaks of the \u201c<em>Neshama<\/em> of the <em>Neshama<\/em>\u201d. What is that? According to HaRav m\u2019Fano the combination of <em>Chaya<\/em> and <em>Yechidah<\/em> are subsumed under that title (<em>Ma\u2019amar<\/em> <em>HaNephesh<\/em> 1:3).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that what matters most, as far as we\u2019re concerned, are the three lowest levels of the soul, Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama; as Chaya and Yechidah are totally out of our experience. Only Adam and Moshe (and only as he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/2009\/12\/15\/what-matters-most\/\">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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iqmI-k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/neshamah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}