Ramchal

As we pointed out above, though, Ramchal was of the opinion here that it’s the intellect that enables one to overcome the yetzer harah [1]. As he put it elsewhere as well, “realizing the truth (of things by means of your intellect) strengthens the soul and distances it from the yetzer harah, as there is nothing that makes the soul more susceptible to the yetzer (harah) than lack of knowledge” (Derech Eitz Chaim). In fact, he goes on to offer there that “if one’s knowledge was broad enough and stood (firmly enough) upon his heart, he’d never sin”. Thus Ramchal seems to hold that it’s the mind alone that resists the yetzer harah.

He does acknowledge elsewhere, though, the role that the emotions play in that process. He pointed out that “the more one reflects upon the exalted nature of God, the infinite nature of His perfection, and the great and unfathomable difference between His greatness and our lowliness, the more will he be filled with trembling and reverence before Him”. And that “when one reflects as well upon the great goodness He has provided us with … an intense and powerful love will arise within you, and you will want nothing but to attach yourself to Him” and to avoid sin (Messilat Yesharim Ch. 21).

So he seems to be of the opinion that one can best resist the enticements of the yetzer harah when both heart and mind are focused upon God and one’s goal in life [2].

Notes:

[1]       Also see Derech Hashem 1:4:6 which while cited earlier in explanation of the yetzer harah also makes the point that man was “placed in this world to overcome his yetzer (harah) … by means of his intellect”.

[2]       Rabbi Yisrael Salanter (19^th Century), the founder of the modern Mussar movement, stressed other phenomena including the chanting of pertinent verses and teachings about a particular sin one is tempted by in order to avoid it, or in order to foster a particular trait one is pursuing. His theory was that one thus “mesmerizes” himself that way and bolsters his fortitude from within (much the way reciting a national anthem reinforces one’s love of country, reciting poetry and the like affirms one’s emotions and convictions, and the like).

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

Ramchal himself seems to take a more utilitarian attitude toward the existence of the yetzer harah and to side with the “necessary evil” approach. He first acknowledges the existence of evil in the human heart (aside from goodness) by saying simply that man is “equally inclined in two (ethical) directions” given that he was “created with a yetzer hatov and a yetzer harah” (Derech Hashem 1:3:1). And he offers that, given the reality that “mankind was created with a yetzer harah and a yetzer hatov” it’s consequently “impossible for there not to be some good and some bad” among us (Derech Hashem 2:2:2); or put another way, “the world was created with (both) good and bad elements” (Derech Hashem 2:3:1), so wrong and injustice are to be expected.

But as he put it elsewhere, he holds that the yetzer harah is to man’s advantage in that, inasmuch as “something that needed to be rectified was created within man so that he could earn merit” by rectifying it in fact (Klallei Pitchei Chochma V’Da’at 1).

At bottom, though, he states that man was in point of fact “only placed in this world to overcome his yetzer (harah)” (Derech Hashem 1:4:6), and that it’s important to understand that “you will only be the full man worthy of clutching onto your Creator if you are … victorious in your battles” to overcome your yetzer harah (Messilat Yesharim Ch. 1).

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

Other than the very best and worst of us, we humans are morally, psychologically, and existentially complex and incongruous beings. But given that “the imaginings of a man’s heart are wrongful from his youth” (Genesis 8:21) along with the fact that “God created man in His image” (Genesis 1:27) and that “God the Lord (Himself)… breathed into his nostrils the soul of life” (Genesis 2:7), our complexity is understandable [1].

Our complexity could also be said to be the natural course of things, given that “God saw all that He had made,” when He created the whole of the universe, and He determined that “behold it was very good” en toto, notwithstanding — or perhaps for the reason that — the day and life itself was comprised of both “evening and… morning”, light and darkness, good and evil (Genesis 1:31).

In any event, we’re taught that our goodness is a product of the promptings of our yetzer hatov, while our wrongfulness comes from the promptings of our yetzer harah [2].  And while the yetzer harah is inborn, the yetzer hatov doesn’t take effect until one is of bar- or bat-mitzvah age and thus more mature and reflective [3]. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the yetzer harah is all wrong, though; it’s in fact a “necessary evil” for without it much good wouldn’t come about [4].

We’ll see next what Ramchal adds to that.

Notes:

[1]       In fact, it’s those very best and worst of us we’d spoken of who are harder to explain, other than to depict the worst of us as aberrations and the best of us as exceptions.

[2]       See Berachot 61a.

[3]       Kohelet Rabbah 9:14.

[4]       See Breishit Rabbah 9:9.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

Ramchal introduced the idea of morality (as well as free will and the system of reward and punishment) at the beginning of this section, in his very first comments to Petach 14. Explaining the structure of the Sephirot, Ramchal introduces the idea that God granted humankind “an intellect and a yetzer hatov (i.e., an “inclination toward goodness”) and a yetzer harah (i.e., an “inclination toward wrongdoing”) that he could control” with that intellect. He went on to say there that God also granted humankind “a means of serving (Him or not serving Him) as a result of which man would earn (either) merit or punishment (in the Afterlife) until he becomes purified”, and He likewise “granted him an eternal reward (in The World to Come)” once he is purified.

Bringing this all back to the subject of the Sephirot, though, Ramchal then adds that “each one of these things involves many details,” and that we’re obliged to understand “just how many gradations were needed to attain this”, meaning to say that we need to study the makeup and interplay of the Sephirot if we’re ever going to understand how Divine Justice plays itself out in the world.

The point is that were it not for the system of multifarious and sequential Sephirot man wouldn’t have free will, and there’d be neither reward nor punishment. The logic seems to be that if sequence and hierarchy weren’t in place, then all of God’s beneficence would emanate evenly from His single Being without regard to the worth, merit, or standing of the recipients given that everyone would stand on the same moral and spiritual ground [1]. But that couldn’t be, since we’re to be free moral agents and to deserve reward or punishment.

Let’s see how Ramchal put it elsewhere: “God created the world through the (sequential and hierarchal) system of ten Sephirot, and so the world is … (hence to be) governed according the dictates of these ten Sephirot. And (because) God wanted man to have free choice He ‘decreed’ (i.e., decided) that He (Himself) wouldn’t function according to His own full being and will (which is beyond sequence and hierarchy, and is utterly benevolent), but rather according to how His recipients (i.e., according to how we, the recipients of His benevolence, who do indeed function according to sequence and hierarchy) would establish things” through their free will [2].

So we’ll now spend some time explaining the classical ideas of a yetzer harah and yetzer hatov (and their relationship to the intellect which Ramchal alluded to above), of reward and punishment, and of free will, and we’ll compare and contrast them with Ramchal’s understanding of those things.

Notes:

[1]       See Kinat Hashem Tz’vaot.

[2]       See the work that R’ Friedlander published as “Da’at Tevunot 2”, p. 22.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

As Ramchal laid it out elsewhere, “among the fundamental things that God instituted” when He created the world “were the factors of ‘measure’ and ‘dimension’”, which is to say sequence and the subsequent reality of relativity, “… because He wanted (the world) to function sequentially, … (so that) one (thing) would be beneath another one, and so on down the line” or some other thing would be above another. The point is that God created sequence so that things would compare and contrast with each other positively or negatively, both physically and morally, as we’ll discuss below (Da’at Tevunot 118).

We’re thus told that God purposefully created a world of relativity, opposites, multiplicity, nuance, and — the truth be known — doubt. For “thanks to” measure and dimension we have the ability to catch sight here and there of God’s intention, but we’ve nevertheless been forbidden entrance into God’s own realm of unity and absolute truth in the process. That affects our thoughts, utterances, and actions; it influences our inner beings very, very deeply; and it too has great bearing on our moral and spiritual standing.

Before we discuss Ramchal’s view of human morality though, let’s see his other major point about God’s usage of sequence.

As he points out at a certain juncture, “sequence is what allows for time” to exist (comment to Petach 121). That’s a very important point, needless to say, given that we depend on time for our knowledge of the world and ourselves. Yet he points out elsewhere that “time … won’t exist in the World to Come” (Adir Bamarom 1, p. 107) indicating that it’s a temporary phenomenon. Still and all it is indeed a vital factor, for as Ramchal says elsewhere, the sort of universal perfection we’re promised with the revelation of God’s Yichud “won’t occur in one fell swoop but rather sequentially” and in the process of time (comments to Petach 42).

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

One can’t help but be stunned by the wonders of nature and its varieties and laws. How many times does one have to catch sight of the wide range of human hearts, faces, and realities, to say nothing of the even wider range of animal, vegetable, and mineral realities on earth, in the vast seas, and in the wide skies, before he steps back and is overtaken by the sheer magic of it all? And how stunning are the laws of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and more that seem to serve as the universe’s very keystones!

Yet, it could all have been otherwise. Not only could everything have looked, sounded, smelled, interacted, etc., differently than it does now; and not only could the “keystones” have functioned utterly unlike the way they do now; but, reality could have been formed to behave in astoundingly unknowable ways. Rather than needing to breathe to exist, as one trite example, we might have needed to irradiate one color one moment, and then to irradiate another color at another moment. And what if we were all somehow colorblind, and could thus never understand our situation?

So as people of faith we’re to believe that God created things just as it is and purposefully; and that He had everything follow certain rules and to interact in ways we can grasp just so we can grasp them and know what to expect (for the most part). After all, God is under no imperative to do anything whatsoever, given that His rule is sovereign, and that He’s omnipotent and omniscient.

So Ramchal makes the point that “The very first thing to know about (God’s) governance is that it’s dependent upon sequence, which is the first principle God wanted” to exist in the universe (comments to Petach 30), rather than the universe be “formless and empty” (Genesis 1: 2). In other words, God deliberately created sequence and order so that we might understand His ways herein. “No one could say that God was forced to act that way” or within such a system “… given that He’s utterly omnipotent” as Ramchal put it there and as we’d suggested ourselves above.

One clear implication of God’s having chosen to allow things to function in sequence and predictably (for the most part) is the fact that He chose to forgo or to delimit His omnipotence as a consequence, as Ramchal points out there, too. And He allowed things to work themselves out in time, bit by bit, otherwise we simply would never understand His ways whatsoever [1].

But there’s more to it than that, as one would expect.

Note:

[1]          See Ramchal’s Klallim Mitoch Milchemet Moshe, Da’at Tevunot 40, as well as his comments to Petach 10.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

I thought I’d fill in some blanks before going on with Ramchal’s concentration on sequence.

For one thing, here’s the chronology of the Kabbalists we cited: Ramban (13^th Century), Ra’avad (12^th Century), R’ Yitzchak Sagi Nahor (13^th Century), R’ Azriel (13^th Century), R’ Meir Ibn Gabbai (16^th Century), R’ Yoseph Gikitilia (13^th Century), R’ Racanti (13^th Century), and the author of Ma’arechet Elohut (16^th Century).

And I’d like to add this about Ari’s concentration on Partzufim. While no one added on to the Sephira and Partzuf system per se, some went in other directions with it. The subject calls for a long discussion but let this suffice. Ramchal concentrated on explaining Ari’s references as we’d mentioned, and others followed in his wake (especially R’ Y.I. Chaver in Pitchei Sha’arim); disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov addressed certain psychological analogies to the Partzufim (as well as the Sephirot); R’ Yehudah Ashlag (20th Century) addressed certain ethical, psychological and sociological issues suggested by Ari’s revelations; and R’ Shalom Sharabi (18^th Century) and his disciples could be said to have added “width” and “heft” to the Sephirot and Partzufim by speaking of their assuming “dimensions” other than linear ones.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

There have been three areas of concentration among the earlier and later Kabbalists as we’d said: the Sephirot, the Partzufim, and the letters of the Aleph-Bet and their role in the Names of God. Ramchal has been concentrating upon the Sephirot until now and will continue to do so here in this section (which, as its title “The Essential Elements of Sephirot and their Governance” indicates, will lay out the makeup and role of the Sephirot), but he’ll also begin to discuss the Partzufim in this section’s final Petach, where he points out that there are Sephirot (to be considered) and Partzufim. He’ll then begin to concentrate upon the mystical implications of the various names of God in the next section. So let’s trace the movement from one area of concentration to the other.

As we’d indicated, the earlier Kabbalists focused on the Sephirot. They include the authors of Sefer Yetzirah who spoke of them right off the bat (along with a discussion of the letters), of Masechet Atzilut (which first displayed their names at its end, as well as the names of the Worlds at its beginning), of Sefer Bahir (who cited their names in 141-146), as well as the earlier masters such as Ramban, Ra’avad, R’ Yitzchak Sagi Nahor, R’ Azriel, R’ Meir Ibn Gabbai, R’ Yoseph Gikitilia, Rabbeinu Bacahai, R’ Racanti, the author of Ma’arechet Elohut, and the bulk of the Zohar. And Ramak spent the preponderance of his time on an analysis of the Sephirot too (though he did touch upon the Partzufim later on, as we said in note 7 of Section Three).

It was Ari who first merited delving into the Partzufim in great detail. He drew upon some of the more esoteric sections of the Zohar for his depictions, including Iddra Rabba (“The Greater Assembly”), Iddra Zutta (“The Lesser Assembly”), and Sifre deTzeniuta (“The Book of Concealment”) [1].

As he laid them out, the Sephira of Keter is analogous to the Partzuf entitled Adam Kadmon (which we cited earlier and will discuss below, too) and to Erich Anpin (“The Greater Countenance”); the Sephirot of Chochma and Binah are analogous to the Partzufim termed Abba and Imma; the Partzuf termed Zeir Anpin (“Lesser Countenance”) is analogous to the six “extremities” or “limits” better known as the Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod and Yesod; and the Partzuf of Nukveh is analogous to Sephira of Malchut. There are other names for the Partzufim and other analogies which will also be discussed.

What concerns us now is the fact that all of this is very carefully and purposefully “arranged in a specific order” (Ramchal’s comment to Petach 9) as we’d cited at the end of the previous section. So we’ll now delve into Ramchal’s concern with sequence.

Note:

[1]          See note 3 to section 3.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

There have been three areas of concentration among the earlier and later Kabbalists as we’d said: the Sephirot, the Partzufim, and the letters of the Aleph-Bet and their role in the Names of God. Ramchal has been concentrating upon the Sephirot until now and will continue to do so here in this section (which, as its title “The Essential Elements of Sephirot and their Governance” indicates, will lay out the makeup and role of the Sephirot), but he’ll also begin to discuss the Partzufim in this section’s final Petach, where he points out that there are Sephirot (to be considered) and Partzufim. He’ll then begin to concentrate upon the mystical implications of the various names of God in the next section. So let’s trace the movement from one area of concentration to the other.

As we’d indicated, the earlier Kabbalists focused on the Sephirot. They include the authors of Sefer Yetzirah who spoke of them right off the bat (along with a discussion of the letters), of Masechet Atzilut (which first displayed their names at its end, as well as the names of the Worlds at its beginning), of Sefer Bahir (who cited their names in 141-146), as well as the earlier masters such as Ramban, Ra’avad, R’ Yitzchak Sagi Nahor, R’ Azriel, R’ Meir Ibn Gabbai, R’ Yoseph Gikitilia, Rabbeinu Bacahai, R’ Racanti, the author of Ma’arechet Elohut, and the bulk of the Zohar. And Ramak spent the preponderance of his time on an analysis of the Sephirot too (though he did touch upon the Partzufim later on, as we said in note 7 of Section Three).

It was Ari who first merited delving into the Partzufim in great detail. He drew upon some of the more esoteric sections of the Zohar for his depictions, including Iddra Rabba (“The Greater Assembly”), Iddra Zutta (“The Lesser Assembly”), and Sifre deTzeniuta (“The Book of Concealment”) [1].

As he laid them out, the Sephira of Keter is analogous to the Partzuf entitled Adam Kadmon (which we cited earlier and will discuss below, too) and to Erich Anpin (“The Greater Countenance”); the Sephirot of Chochma and Binah are analogous to the Partzufim termed Abba and Imma; the Partzuf termed Zeir Anpin (“Lesser Countenance”) is analogous to the six “extremities” or “limits” better known as the Sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod and Yesod; and the Partzuf of Nukveh is analogous to Sephira of Malchut. There are other names for the Partzufim and other analogies which will also be discussed.

What concerns us now is the fact that all of this is very carefully and purposefully “arranged in a specific order” (Ramchal’s comment to Petach 9) as we’d cited at the end of the previous section. So we’ll now delve into Ramchal’s concern with sequence.

Note:

[1]          See note 3 to section 3.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

There have been three main areas of concentration among the earlier and later Kabbalists: the Sephirot, the Partzufim, and the Names of God. Ramchal has been concentrating upon the Sephirot until now and will continue to do so here in this section, but he’ll also begin to discuss the Partzufim in this section’s final Petach, and will then begin to concentrate upon the names of God in the next section.

And so we’ll delve here into the structure of the Sephirot including a discussion of the makeup of the structure and its gradations, the makeup of the gradations themselves, and the makeup of their parts, properties, and of their interactions (Petach 14). We won’t be discussing the first Sephira, Keter, which is rooted in the Divine Will itself, but we will be delving into whatever come after that, from Chochma and onward including the gradations and about how they function in the governance of the universe (Petach 15). We’ll focus first on the “forward” and “backward” movements of the Sephirot, from Keter to Malchut and back again, with some emphasis on the implications of all that (Petach 16). Then we’ll introduce the Partzufim, each of which is a full, detailed expression of the Sephirot (Petach 17).

And we’ll also spend some time discussing the yetzer harah and the yetzer hatov, reward and punishment, and creation by gradation.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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

יש ספירה ויש פרצוף. ספירה הוא כח מן העשר כחות בכלל, שהוא המוסד שעליו נבנה כל בנין הפרטיות התלוי בו. אך פרצוף הוא שלמות כל הכח ההוא בפרט, נראה מפורש בסוד דמות אדם. ועיקרו בסוד התרי”ג, שהוא כל בנין האדם:

There are Sephirot (to be considered) and Partzufim. A Sephira is one of the ten generic forces that serve as the foundation upon which the entire structure of particulars that depend on it is built. But a Partzuf is the full, detailed expression of each force which is explicitly “envisioned” in the mystical form of a man, and is comprised at bottom of the mystical 613 (elements) that constitute the full structure of Adam (Kadmon).

And here are the ancillary themes listed in Ramchal’s comments: the difference between Ramak’s and Ari’s Kabbalistic systems, the difference roles played by Sephira and Partzuf in governance, the reason behind the use of the term Partzuf (“face”) in particular, and the significance of the number 613.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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