Erich Anpin and its counterpart Zeir Anpin (3)

There’s more to be said about the relationship of Erich Anpin and Zeir Anpin, and that will the gist of Petach 93.

The very fact that judgment emerges for the meanwhile for the sake of utter benevolence alone actually mitigates judgment. That’s to say that judgment achieves a sort of merit for living up to its role which is its mitigation (i.e., its being “sweetened” as its termed in the original).

Judgment — which is to say the system of reward and punishment and the like — is given sway for the meanwhile, to be sure, but again the point is that benevolence — which is not merit-based — will reign in the end. For a king’s ultimate goal is to be benevolent, even when that’s not always evident. Understand that God could very well have allowed the universe to function through rank judgment alone ad infinitum, but He didn’t want to, as Ramchal underscores in his comments.

 

(c) 2015 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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