Nothing but nothing is ever forgotten (4)  

Let’s back up a bit and consider something that Ramchal offers in his own comments to our Petach. He cites the Trace and the Line spoken of at length above [1]. Let’s examine that in light of what we learned above, in Petach 78.

We’re told above in Petach 27 that everything that was to exist in the world has its roots in the Trace, which is a shadow of God’s presence [2]. That is, God has left a trace of His being in the world when He (apparently) left it, with the onset of the Tzimtzum process, and everything here is rooted in that trace of His being.

Petach 37 above goes on to say that the interaction on God’s part with the Trace is termed His having extended a single “line” … into the “emptiness” brought on by the Tzimtzum. That is, the Line represents God’s re-entering the empty space created by the Tzimtzum and His interacting with the world at large.

That having been said we see that Petach 78’s statement that each deed’s outcome continues to exist even when the deed itself is gone suddenly has a whole other import. And the idea there that when a flaw has been repaired, the trace (!) of the original flaw doesn’t disappear, etc. now implies this. A trace of the past always remains behind everything we do, to be sure, but we’re to know that given that that trace itself interacts with God’s being, it’s thus never overlooked or considered worthless. And so rather than seeming to be a nefarious remark to the effect that there’s no hope and that nothing but nothing is ever forgotten, the truth is that everything is indeed remembered and remains — that’s because everything matters in God’s interactions with the universe.

Notes:

[1] See Section 6 above.

[2] Da’at Tevunot 48.

 

(c) 2014 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

 

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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