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The most famous depiction of humankind in the Torah lies in the statement that “God created man in His image” (Genesis 1: 27). With all of its lofty and ennobling implications it’s at once the most challenging, the most potentially accusatory, and the most inspiring portrayal. Less well known, far more humbling, and less challenging is the rhetorical statement, “what is man that You (God) are mindful of him, the son of man that You (even) care for him?” (Psalms 8:4).

The sages recognized our complexities and characterized us as standing somewhere between angels and animals, with our combination of biological needs and spiritual promise [1]. More discouraging, though, were their ruminations about whether we should have been created in the first place [2], of course. They ultimately decided in the negative (after arguing back and forth for two-and-a-half years!), and thus apparently hadn’t much confidence in us. But the Zohar and the Kabbalists were decidedly optimistic about our potential, as we’ll see.

Notes:

[1]       See Breishit Raba 8:2 for example.

[2]       See Eiruvin 13b where the usual implication is that they were arguing as to whether it was to our own best interests to have been created or not, but where it might also be read as we do above.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

And finally, quite a lot is said here about the aforementioned and counter-intuitive usefulness of the “necessary evil” that is rah [1].

Ramchal makes the point in Petach 39 that everything in creation exists only for the glory of the Creator…. In this are included all created beings — good and bad — as the whole of it is a single system and a single phenomenon of a creation that implements the revelation of the sovereignty and glory of Ein Sof.

That is, everything contributes to the eventual revelation of God’s utter sovereignty, including rah. Consequently, rah is good, too — if we understand “good” to mean contributing to the ultimate goal [2], which it does.

After all, “if God had so wanted,” Ramchal points out, He could certainly have produced the universe “rectified from the first, without rah at all. But He wanted rah to exist and … to not be rectified until the end, when all that was withholding perfection (i.e., rah and its offshoots) was removed” (comments to Petach 36).

Here are some other statements to the effect that rah simply had to be so as to no longer be in the end, and so as to thus prove God’s greatness for having thwarted so mighty a seeming threat to His sovereignty.

“Everything linked in any way to rah must return to good so that through this overall return, the veracity of God’s Yichud will be revealed and made manifest. Thus, if any aspect of these details is missing, then the overall intention — the revelation of this Yichud — would remain unfulfilled…. For God’s Yichud will be revealed through the good created entities when the good in them is strengthened, and it will likewise be revealed through the ‘bad’ ones, when despite the fact that they are bad, they will have returned to good” (comments to Petach 39).

“Despite the great power of rah, it’s (nonetheless) one small matter that God wanted to display in order to demonstrate His perfection” when it’s to be undone by the revelation of His Yichud (comments to Petach 41).

And, “rah thus has two aspects. The first is when it first appears, when it brings about all sorts of blemishes and it functions as a ‘stain on the glory of the King’, so to speak, since it restricts the flow of His blessing…. The second aspect, though, is after it has already existed but God’s Yichud takes control over it…. Rah then evidences the glory of the King’s great sovereignty, as if to say, ‘This is what the King prevailed against by His great perfection!’” (comments to Petach 49).

That’s all to say that, according to Ramchal, rah was set up as a sort of straw-man — a false premise — which was to have its day, to thrive, and to seem a potent nemesis, but which will eventually be undone. And it’s having been undone will underscore and prove God’s sovereignty, as if to say that if so rampant, noxious, malignant, and potent a phenomenon can apparently be allowed to hold sway but then be undone, it’s having been undone in fact adds luster onto the face of its Undoer, Almighty God.

Note:

[1]       See 1:5 and 4:3.

[2]       See Moreh Nevuchim 3:13.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

            We’ll offer a couple more paragraphs to the middle of this post below.

For now, though, he makes a number of other points about the nature, meaning, and purpose of rah. Referring once again to the source of wrong and injustice lying in the upper realms, Ramchal notes here that it couldn’t have derived from a higher point than the world of Nikkudim. Since “higher up than that there’s nothing that can be relevant to any feature of the other side whatsoever. In Nikkudim, though, something’s revealed that does bear some relation to the function of the other side” (comments to Petach 44).

He also addresses its roots in a couple of Petachim in our section, offering that rah started to come about when the light of Atzilut and its offshoots, which is from Ein Sof, had to … wait for its vessel to be complete, since that’s where the root of evil lies. Only afterwards will the light shine within it, i.e. join with it, after which everything will be completed. And it’s also explained here that the light wasn’t originally joined with the vessels in the world of Nikkudim, but remained hidden above in Adam Kadmon until the vessels completed their task in order to provide a place for wrong to rule and to complete its rule (Petach 41).

He informs us that wrong was in fact rooted in nothing other than in the mystical notion of the “garments” of Atzilut, i.e., Briah, Yetzirah and Assiyah … which had to be separated into all their component elements … to first provide an environment for wrong(Petach 43).

            And continuing to make the point about how tenuous the connection between God Himself and wrong is (which necessitated the Breaking of the Vessels) Ramchal then says that the aforementioned slender trace of a root for the “other side” only manifested itself in the very lowest aspects of the vessels, i.e., in the lower seven Sephirot of Nikkudim(Petach 45).

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

After introducing the creation of rah in the world of Nikkudim, Ramchal underscores the fact that a form of repair occurred there afterwards. Yet the repair was only partial and only to the degree that would allow human actions to bring on the sequence of flaw and repair to continue in the universe in the course of the 6,000 years of Divine service (which we’ll discuss below). Nonetheless, in the end everything will be utterly repaired, as a consequence of which there’ll no longer be any flaws (Petach 37).

This addresses the idea we’d cited before about rah being turned to good and thus playing a role in the revelation of God’s Yichud, His utter sovereignty. Ramchal expands on that in his comments to the Petachim that comprise this section.

As we offered elsewhere though, Ramchal spoke about this in his comments to Petach 27 where he said that “rah can only exist when God’s perfection is concealed, and as soon as His perfection is revealed, wrong ceases to exist…. In order to (eventually) reveal His sovereignty in the clearest way, He (thus first) concealed it and instituted a way of imperfection so as to create and govern imperfect creatures”; “the intention behind these deficiencies is … to make it possible for God’s creatures to exist on different, relative (moral and spiritual) levels, and to draw closer to perfection gradually, level by level”; and “with the concealment of perfection, God’s governance itself hangs in the balance (as it must be decided) whether to confer goodness or its opposite, depending on humanity’s deeds in the lower world”.

Let’s see what he adds in this section.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

Apropos to the various elements that went into the creation of rah, as we’d cited before, Ramchal addresses a lofty and esoteric phenomenon known as Tsur Tak (צו”ר ט”ק) in his comments to Petach 39. He says there that it was attributed with “the ability to bring the various phenomena from (a state of) nothingness to somethingness”, which is obviously a very sublime function. He attributes it there to Sefer Yetzirah, when it fact it isn’t there but rather at the beginning of Ra’avad’s introduction to it, and it seems to derive from the ancient Heichalot Rabbati.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

Ramchal reports that the world of Nikkudim was like a single mass out of which all the details, i.e., of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah, had to come about” (Petach 39). We’ll return to this theme soon.

For now, though, he makes a number of other points about the nature, meaning, and purpose of rah. He notes that it couldn’t have derived from a higher point than the world of Nikkudim. Since “higher up than that there’s nothing that can be relevant to any feature of the other side whatsoever. In Nikkudim, though, something’s revealed that does bear some relation to the function of the other side” (comments to Petach 44).

He draws an analogy between the Breaking of the Vessels and our people’s state of exile: “The primordial kings remained broken for just as long as it took to allow the powers of rah to be revealed in them. To explain this more fully (i.e., to use an analogy we‘ll point out that) The Nation of Israel went into exile and must remain there for as long as it takes for all … that exists in the wrongful phenomena that rule over them to unfold. In much the same way, these kings remained in their state of destruction for just as long … as was necessary to produce the various divisions of rah. (Once that will be complete, though,) the Supreme Will (i.e., intentions) will be revealed … and the mystical process of Yichud” will come about (comments to Petach 47).

And he raises the question as to why rah was produced in the first place. There are a number of answers to that, including the idea that we wouldn’t be privy to free choice if there wasn’t a good versus bad paradigm. While that’s discussed elsewhere in his works, Ramchal offers here that rah had to exist for the meanwhile since it served a valuable albeit temporary role in the long process of cosmic progression. For God’s “ultimate goal wasn’t to produce rah per se, but rather to have it turn back to goodness: it’s just that it couldn’t turn back to good until it first actually existed as rah” (comments to Petach 39).

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

We’re told that the existence of all the world’s flaws and of their immediate and ultimate repair is rooted in the issue of “The Breaking of the Vessels” (Petach 37), which occurred within the Sephirot of the world of Nikkudim that we depicted in detail above.

What’s the difference, though, between the world of Nikkudim and the ones that followed: Atzilut, etc., all the way down to the universe we know and experience? And what’s the source of the state of “repair” he refers to here?

As Ramchal put it, “This is … how Atzilut developed: The Supreme Will began to design it above in His ‘mind’. And while it was beginning to take shape (and hadn’t yet come into existence)… the lights of Nikkudim emerged…. Afterwards the design for Atzilut was complete, and it emerged in all the beauty of its intrinsic form, all of which is the state of Tikkun (i.e., repair) which we’ll discuss below” (comments to Petach 36).

In other words, another realm existed for a limited time before the cosmos came about — that is, before the supernal worlds of Atzilut, etc. that preceded the reality that we now know and experience came about. That temporary realm is termed the world of Nikkudim, and it was the arena in which the whole drama of the Breaking of the Vessels took place. This world of Nikkudim allowed for all the world’s rah and flaws, but take heart, because the worlds of Atzilut, etc. allow for the repairing of all that harm.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

He spoke a great deal about rah in Da’at Tevunot (96-133), where he touches upon rah and man’s place in undoing it; on the fact that rah was a created, i.e., un-Godly, phenomenon; on the fact that while He created it God doesn’t fully “feed” (i.e., have His emanations freely flow upon) rah — only enough to allow for its existence; on its being a symptom of God’s hidden-ness and withdrawal, and a result of His not yet revealing His Yichud; on its eventual undoing; on its role in the workings of the Afterlife as well as reward and punishment; on Adam and Eve’s role in its role in the universe; on rah’s effects on the world and on humankind; on the Jewish Nation’s specific relation to rah as well as the role of the righteous; and much more.

He spoke of rah in more arcane terms in Sefer Kina’ot Adonai Tziva’ot in terms of exile and redemption; he reintroduced the idea of its being undone in Peirush La’Arimit Yadi b’Tzalutin; and he expanded upon these and related themes here, in Klach Pitchei Chochma.

But all of this will take us far too afield. So we’ll now expand upon the contents of this section of Klach itself.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

He goes on from there to describe the various elements of the sitra achra, including the fact that it has four levels, the highest of which is a very weak and nearly-good degree of rah, and the other three of which are deeper and darker degrees of rah — all in contradistinction to the four holy worlds of Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah.

As such there are two mirror-opposite but otherwise analogous systems.  And when some wrongdoers saw these two systems “they assumed there were two domains, God forbid”, since “they saw an unclean tree (i.e., system or configuration) spreading out like the holy tree, and they thought it had a lord just as the former does, God forbid. All instances of idol worship stemmed from that (misperception).”

This alludes to the idea we’d covered earlier on and which we’ll touch upon again here about the revelation of God’s Yichud undoing all rah. The implication here is that while there are in fact two systems — right and wrong — which might lead one to think that God somehow shares His sovereignty with a lord of wrong, that’s simply not so. And in fact we’ll see just how wrong an assumption that is when God’s utter sovereignty is made manifest (“when rah is subsumed into its source” as Ramchal puts it here), and it then becomes clear that rah is also under God’s control and likewise plays a part in His intentions for the universe.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.