Part 1: Faith, Truth, and Trust
Para. 1: Jewish Joy
The first entry starts off with the rather broad and electric statement that, “The point of it all, and the intention behind the entirety of Torah and its 613 mitzvot is to be ‘attached’ thus by (I.e., mystically “fused”) onto the Living God. And also to grasp the truth of the first thing we heard from His own mouth that, ‘I am God your Lord’ (Exodus 20:2) [1].
“For each one of us can in fact attach himself onto Him”, Reb Tzadok continues, “since there’s always a portion of Him with us” [2].
This can be a source of “continual joy” – one that’s available to each and every Jew, the fact that we can always attach ourselves onto God. It can be unvarnished joy that “nothing can thwart or take away” from us, our “having a portion of the Living God within us”.
His point is that that’s so regardless of everything. For “even if you’re stuck wherever you’re stuck” (i.e., even if you’re otherwise attached onto wrongdoing and malevolence) and are chock full “of countless sins”, you still and all can never be “separated or cut off from that attachment”, given that you’re a Jew — a “descendent of Yaakov, who was perfect”. And given that God always “devises ways for a banished person not to remain banished from Him” (Samuel II 14:14) [3].
For even if you find yourself “in the depths of the darkest well” and are captivated by and “wedged within all the world’s (untoward) pleasures … and their nonsense” you can still have faith in the fact that God will never abandon you [4].
(From Resisei Layla 53)
Footnotes:
[1] That is, we’re able to and are to attach ourselves onto God’s presence, and to realize the fact that the whole of life itself, the Torah, and the mitzvah-system is meant to have us once again the experience of the Living presence of God that we had when He spoke to us at Mount Sinai.
[2] That’s to say that each one of us can attach onto Him given that He is Himself attached onto us.
[3] Despite everything. The point made in context is that while people may allow others to remain “banished” and abandoned, God never will, and we’re to take that to heart.
[4] In other words, deep in the warm and liquid core of your Jewish soul is a sure and irrevocable tie to God. Know that and you’ll be forever happy.
(c) 2015 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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