בין המצרים

Between the Straits: The Matter of Mourning the Destruction and the Exile of the Shechina

Introduction: Maintaining the Jewish Calendar Within a Busy Life

My dear brothers, today is erev Shabbos kodesh, parshas Pinchas, which is the first week of the days of bein hametzarim, the three weeks between the seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av. We are standing in the middle of studying the matter called midas hakedusha (the attribute of holiness), but we are obligated to also maintain the Jewish calendar, for the time of mourning has arrived, the time of remembering Yerushalayim and remembering the Beis Hamikdash.

And our entire way of life is built such that we should be organized in the order of the day, and particularly in a period of life when a person is very busy, it is extremely difficult to truly live all the orders of the calendar, to be sadder in bein hametzarim and happier in Adar. When a person is a yeshiva bachur and has no other occupation, he makes of it a complete state. But the moment he is occupied with practical life, indeed he does what is written in the Shulchan Aruch and what is written in the siddur, and everything is proper, except that it is difficult for him to be connected to it, to truly live the thing, that he should know and feel: behold, the seventeenth of Tammuz has arrived.

For naturally, when a person is busy, it becomes like this: there are several more matters to worry about, and this enters the list of things to worry about—to remember to fast on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and to ensure that he has the page by which he can conduct himself during the nine days, what is forbidden and what is permitted and the like.

The Shiur as a Place for Matters of the Heart

Therefore I wanted, since this shiur, as we have spoken many times, is intended especially to set aside time for matters of the heart, for matters of the soul—it is fitting that in this shiur we should at least engage with the matters at hand, “from time to time”—that this is the place where one should speak about these. And therefore, even though there are still matters that we must continue to clarify, nevertheless the time requires that we now dedicate time and study to the matters of these days. And certainly it is possible to connect the matters to each other.

The Beis Midrash of the Mekubalim in Tzfas

And what I wish to arouse is this: there is something very interesting here. Our shiur is built on Kabbalah, and there is a very interesting point in this. Anyone who examines and knows the later mekubalim, those we call our rabbis, our rabbis in Kabbalah—they are the beis midrash of Tzfas: the Ramak, the Arizal, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, Rabbi Chaim Vital, that entire group. For approximately one hundred years, and not all at once, but most of them knew each other, that entire group of Jewish mekubalim who dwelt mainly in Tzfas around the year 5300, approximately four hundred and fifty years ago, and they founded and established that form of Judaism upon which the Chassidus that followed is a commentary, and perhaps even other paths are commentaries upon it. The Sephardic mekubalim, the Sephardic Jews, the Chassidic Jews—everything is commentary on that beis midrash.

And the more one studies them, studies the words of the Ramak, the words of the Arizal, the words of Rabbi Chaim Vital and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, and even the Beis Yosef from the mouth of his maggid, the things are extraordinary in their flavor, extraordinary in their relevance and extraordinary in their depth. There is great study and great scholarship in the way they learn Kabbalah. They strive greatly to explain and clarify the matters, modern in a certain way, very relevant to our lives. Even though they lived four hundred years ago, and it is not the same world we live in, nevertheless in many ways the beginning of our world is that period, as everyone knows about the periods of the world. Then began what is called the modern world, and we are their students, and we learn their words.

The Emphasis on Mourning the Destruction Among the Mekubalim

And anyone who studies these sefarim sees a very strong emphasis on the matter and on the action and avodah of mourning the destruction. It is a very interesting thing, and it must be brought to mind, for there is in it deep learning and a great point in the matter. And as we learned in previous shiurim regarding the matter of kedusha, the topic of prishus (separation) and bodily pleasures, that sefarim such as Reishis Chochma—who was also a student of the Ramak, from that same beis midrash from which come the Chassidic sefarim and the entire path of which we are part—intensified the matters greatly in the way they expressed the matter (as we explained in previous shiurim about midas hakedusha and this is not its place).

So too in the matter of mourning the destruction, of longing for Yerushalayim, of yearning for the Beis Hamikdash, of the pain of the Shechina, of the matter of the exile of the Shechina—that beis midrash placed very great emphasis. And just as we seek to uproot the error, that people think Reishis Chochma was some kind of oppressed and pressured Jew, who wanted people not to enjoy their lives, and spoke about Gehinnom and about the prohibition to take pleasure in any pleasure and the like—and we say that this has no foundation at all, rather his entire desire was to express what is the meaning of light, of happiness, of taste and sweetness, of radiance of face, abundance, light and holiness, of those lives called kedusha—

So too and in exactly the same way in the matter of mourning the destruction, of the pain of the destruction, of tikkun chatzos, and of the other customs of mourning the destruction that they established and raised—they did not come to be pressured and tormented.

Chassidus as Commentary on the Beis Midrash

And behold, Chassidus, incidentally, we see the Chassidim seeking to interpret a commentary on a commentary: Chassidus is a commentary on that beis midrash, the beis midrash of the Baal Shem Tov and his students is a commentary on the beis midrash of the Ramak and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and the Arizal and their colleagues. And in Chassidus we see, and this is a large part of Chassidus, that they struggle somewhat with the matter of mourning the destruction, and we also see that they struggle with the matter of prishus and kedusha. Anyone who knows and examines the original Chassidic sefarim sees that this is one of the matters they struggle with.

And why do they struggle with it? Because an explanation is lacking, the one who errs lacks a way in which he can express and fulfill the matters. For Chassidus did not come primarily to say new chiddushei Torah, but primarily to express in actual practice, in deed, how one lives the matters. And therefore one must emphasize, one must change the emphasis, change the stress in certain ways, and explain the matters in other ways. For naturally, from studying the sefer, from looking at what is written in it, a person is liable to err and think that indeed it is fitting for him to be depressed, that there is value in being depressed during the three weeks. Therefore we see in Chassidic sefarim, as is known, that it is not fitting to be depressed, and that one still must serve Hashem Yisbarach with joy, and to be happy and good-hearted always, and the like. And one even must be lenient in certain halachos, among certain Chassidim, because one cannot be so tense.

But one must understand that this is a commentary. This is a commentary on the matter of mourning the destruction, and this is the correct commentary. For the truth is that anyone who learns Zohar, who learns the writings of the Arizal, the Ramak and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, sees that this is not what they intended, that we should be depressed. They were not Litvaks—this is the truth—rather they were very Chassidic. But when one reads the thing in a sefer, one thinks it is written there that one should be tense and alienated. Therefore one needs the commentary of Chassidus to clarify for us that this is not what they intended.

The Zohar as a Living Sefer

But what did they intend? This is what I wish to arrive at. What did they intend, and why? Two questions I wish to ask. Why? Let me bring one proof, from which we see that the Arizal, the Ramak and all those Jews emphasized the matter greatly. For example, anyone who has ever opened the sefer of the Zohar on the Torah knows that the sefer of the Zohar is arranged according to the order of the parshiyos. And more or less every section of Zohar—usually at the beginning of the parsha, and sometimes even in the middle, but usually at the beginning—the Zohar opens with a picture, with a description of the way in which the chachamim, the chavraya d’Zohar, sit down to learn the parsha.

The Zohar Seeks to Be a Living Record

And how do I think one should learn the Zohar in general? That is, the Zohar very much seeks to be a living sefer, almost like the Gemara, and even the Gemara is less so in a certain way. That is, the Zohar does not simply seek to say: I am writing a sefer, a commentary on the Torah, to add more chiddushei Torah, more commentaries according to Kabbalah. Rather it seeks to be a record, a living thing. It seeks to be a living sefer, a living record, and not merely a record. It must be able to arouse, that they should be able to learn it with enthusiasm, that from it they should be able to see how Jews learn. How Jews learn what is called Torah lishmah, according to truth. And pnimiyus haTorah does not necessarily mean to learn the matter of Torah, for this too is truth, since many times it speaks simply about the plain meaning of Scripture. Not everything, not all the Zohar is the secrets of Torah—perhaps a secret is hidden in everything, but part of it is even simply peshat. Many times they learn Chumash there, and we see how they struggle to interpret the plain meaning of a verse, even peshat.

But in this the Zohar is almost unique among all Jewish sefarim, that it very much seeks to be a sefer that is not only a deed that was. First of all, indeed it is a deed that was, a deed with the sages of the Zohar who sat down to learn the parsha of the week each week. And not only that, but just as everyone knows, the purpose of such a sefer is that they should do like it. In other words, it is more like a cookbook, or a book of instructions for law, than a book that establishes a theory.

Parable: A Book About Love

There are sefarim—and as we say, we speak about love, love between a man and his wife, which is the greatest example that the Zohar used much—one could have a sefer that writes a theory of love, how one loves, how love begins, how it ends, and how to guard against all the obstacles to love, and the like. And there are such sefarim. And then there is a sefer that tells a deed that was, a novel, that tells a deed of a young man and a young woman who fell in love, and what they did, and the like. This is one way.

And there is a sefer that everyone understands: if a person wants to arouse himself, to ignite his love, and even to learn how to conduct oneself in the matter of love, how to begin to love—I think everyone would agree that to learn a sefer of theories and explanations, of philosophy of love, is not a less good way. Perhaps there are advantages in it, and this is an important matter in itself to understand, for the world runs on love, the continuation of the human species runs on this. One cannot nullify the matter, one must understand it, and undoubtedly enormous secrets are hidden in it. But if a person wants to do in practice, if he wants—he must read a novel, he must read the sefarim that tell the stories of one Jew who loved another Jew. And thus he sees how it is done, and sees there the fears, and what difficulties there were, and what obstacles one must overcome, and how one must appease, and how one must strengthen the love afterward when it falls, and so on and so forth—the one who knows can see there, and then can imitate and do like it. And this is what we learned last week, that every time a person has love between a man and his wife, and truly in every relationship, in every deed a person does, he does it fundamentally from the stories and deeds he read, that he added, that he received (as we spoke in the previous shiur and this is not its place).

A Sefer That Is Not Perfect

And there is an even better sefer, and perhaps this is the sefer, but a better version of that same sefer, that not only does it tell a deed—and one can say another thing, that within the deed it integrates, for it is understood that one who truly understands, who has learned the philosophy of the thing and the theory of it, can write a better novel, for he knows what the matters depend on, and can insert within the story more understanding, to tell the deed more correctly, and to express what truly needs to be expressed so that it fits the way the matters work. And not only that, he can make a sefer that when they read it, it almost causes the reader to get up and do it himself. There are tricks how to do this. One of the tricks is that the sefer should not be perfect. This is an interesting trick: that the sefer should not be perfect.

When one reads a sefer, there are—for example, sefarim such as the Akeidah, Akeidas Yitzchak, a perfect sefer. Every derasha there, every parsha has several derashos, and every derasha opens with questions, with verses, and then he builds and brings different approaches in the matter he seeks to learn, and plays until he arrives at the interpretation, and interprets according to it the verses and the parshiyos. Always perfect. Everything always fits perfectly. And this is a very good sefer for one who seeks derashos, seeks explanations in an intellectual way, seeks explanations on midrashim and on verses—a very good sefer. But this is not a sefer with which a person can ignite his fellow.

Chassidic Sefarim Are Not Perfect

And anyone who learns Chassidic sefarim, incidentally, sees that Chassidic sefarim are usually written in a very imperfect way. There is almost not one Chassidic sefer, or only a few, but there is almost not one Chassidic sefer written in the manner of complete derashos, where the entire derush fits, and one can repeat it like this, at the table at the father-in-law’s. Chassidic sefarim were not made for this, and especially the early sefarim, but even the later ones—almost most Chassidic sefarim are a record of the Rebbe’s words at the table. Even a sefer like Tiferes Shlomo, it is not that he sat down and wrote to explain something, but a sefer that was written to remind the Chassidim who were at the table what the Rebbe said that week. This is more or less the essence of the sefer. And naturally it is much less perfect, it does not bring sources, it does not open with a verse, it does not go to interpret the statements of Chazal, it brings everything incidentally as much as possible—because it is alive, because the Jew sat at the table and said the Torah, and now you can learn it.

And the true way to learn Chassidic sefarim is to be aroused, either from being able afterward to examine the Chumash himself to find its expansion and to see how the thing relates to him, or from imagining in his soul and picturing as if he is hearing the Rebbe’s Torah and receiving his word of Torah. This is a different way of learning, not learning like in iyun, like Minchas Chinuch, but Chassidic learning.

The Zohar Was Written to Arouse

And the Zohar was written one hundred percent in that same way, that people should learn and be aroused. Many times it opens with a question and does not finish the answer, or one says something, and the thing is made such that you will say: “Wait, what is the meaning? One could say thus, but one must continue thus”—and this is its desire.

The Arizal: Learning Zohar Through Inspiration

And therefore, one who learns the Arizal knows that the Arizal said many things from the Zohar that are not written in the Zohar. There is always some hint there. Many times, in the language of the Arizal, when Rabbi Chaim Vital brings in the name of the Arizal, it says they are hinted in the Zohar in this parsha—the secret, the topic—and one does not understand. The Gra said that in his opinion the Arizal learns Zohar through pilpul, not through peshat. I think this is not correct. The Arizal does not learn Zohar through pilpul. True, his way of learning was more full of pilpul than certain precisions—learn in the Ramak and in Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and you can see the way of learning how they learned Zohar, but this is the true peshat, this is iyun, that one must examine it. I think the Arizal hakadosh learned Zohar not only through peshat, but through inspiration. As the Arizal himself describes that he learned Zohar until Eliyahu Hanavi came to him and told him the interpretation.

In other words, the Arizal learned Zohar and was aroused, and thus it happened. And thus it happens, true, every sefer, every true sefer is made for this, but the Zohar was written in this manner. It is made to bring you to thought, it is not made to tell you everything. The Torah does not seek to tell you everything. There is a part where you must be the wise one who understands on his own. But it is made so that you should learn the verse—the Zohar brings the verse to the table, and brings the situation, in what situation you are learning the verse, and now you say: “Ah, if this is what you mean, the next step is thus.” And many times the Arizal simply tells you the next step, or three steps later, which the Zohar intended to say in its derush. And it is not written, but it is hinted, the Zohar aroused, simply.

The Secret of Rising at Chatzos in the Zohar

Now, therefore you will see that it opens the Zohar in almost every parsha with an introduction, that is, the Zohar tells a deed—almost always an explicit deed, but even when it is a derush, I think it is built on the deed—that opens: “Behold now the tzaddikim and chachamim sit down, they sit down to learn.” This is what they do, now they sit down to learn the parsha of the week. Perhaps every week—I do not know—one can imagine that the authors of the Zohar had an order: every Friday night they sit down to learn the parsha of the week, let us say, and they wrote the Zohar. They wrote it at the time of the deed, and afterward one brought it to writing, but the thing was precise.

The Periods of the Night

The beginning of the Zohar almost every week speaks of that same state, that same situation of sitting down to learn. And the order that the mekubalim, the chavraya d’Zohar, innovated, was to learn after midnight. Everyone knows that the best time to learn is after midnight. And it is true, it is built on the parable, as it is written in the Gemara, “In the third watch an infant nurses from his mother’s breast and a woman speaks with her husband” (Berachos 3a). The Zohar bases much on the foundation of the Gemara in Berachos, that there is a period in the night. At the beginning of the night they go to sleep, and the Zohar calls this “ta’am d’mosa,” the world becomes somewhat dead, the angel of death comes, the “one of sixty of death,” a closure is poured upon the world, and everyone goes to sleep. And this is what the Zohar calls the spreading of midas hadin, Gehinnom opens, all kinds of busi d’mesavusa, wild animals, all kinds of thieves begin to wander, all kinds of wicked ones, all kinds of kelipos. This is at the beginning of the night, this is the time to go to sleep.

But afterward—there are people who sleep the entire night and rise in the morning, and miss the entire thing. But afterward, if a person is a Jew—and once the thing was more possible, they went to sleep before it became night, and afterward, if a person was diligent, if he loved to learn, or in general, one who loved another person, he rises at midnight. And when I say “at midnight,” the intention is not precisely at the moment it becomes midnight—I think this is an error. The intention is late at night, or very early toward morning, and they rose then. There is research that says there was a custom to rise, everyone would rise then.

The Time of Love After Midnight

And they rise when they have already rested, the body is already calm, it has already digested the food eaten at the evening meal, and the world is already quiet. And then everyone goes with his love. The “woman speaks with her husband”—one who has a beloved, then this is the time he speaks with her, or writes her a poem, or meditates on her. This is the calmest time of the day, and a very good time to express things, to enter into things that all day they are occupied with. Now they go to pray about love, whereas all day they are occupied with work, occupied with the tasks of the night that must be done.

The entire day is the time of yirah, one can say usually, or at least at the beginning of the night, and here begins the time of love, begins a time like “Kol dodi dofek” (Shir Hashirim 5:2), and the Zohar regularly brings the verse “You who dwell in the gardens, friends are listening to your voice, let me hear it” (Shir Hashirim 8:13). In other words, at this time the tzaddikim, the people whose love—for everyone has something he loves, which is his love, they are his lights, the thing that attracts him most, for which he truly lives—rise.

One Who Fell in Love with Torah

And one who fell in love with Torah, who fell in love with the Shechina, this is his love. He rises at the best time, when it is cool, when a cool wind comes, that northern wind blows that is written in the Gemara about David’s harp (Berachos 3b), and begins to sing, begins to hear how the angels begin to sing, “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Iyov 38:7), and then he gathers with his friends, or alone, or with his friends virtually, or with his friends actually. And in the beis midrash gather the mekubalim, the inner sages, the lovers of Hashem, and learn Torah.

And almost every section of Zohar, almost every parsha of Zohar, opens with a section of derush—sometimes a few lines, sometimes at much greater length—about what is called in the sefarim the virtue of rising at chatzos. And again, this is another thing that is understood in a completely strange way incorrectly, for people think that you should rise at midnight, or that today there are chatzos kollelim for avreichim who do not have shalom bayis and seek to flee from the house at midnight, or that you must afflict yourself, truly not to sleep at night and to rise at midnight. No—the entire matter of rising at midnight to learn Torah then is built on this being the calmest time to arouse love, and one who loves Torah rises then, and then, says the Zohar, the gates of Gan Eden open, and the Zohar has a derush according to Kabbalah that then as it were the left hand of Tiferes begins to raise the Shechina, until in the morning there is truly a yichud at Shacharis, and this is the secret that the Zohar constantly begins to speak about.

The Innovation of the Later Mekubalim: Tikkun Chatzos

And behold, all this is the plain meaning of the Zohar. Now comes the Arizal—I think this is the Arizal, and perhaps one must examine the mekubalim before him whether they too learned thus, but if I am correct, certainly this is something from the later ones. In the Zohar nothing is written of the matters of mourning over the destruction, of tikkun chatzos, of crying—not one of these things is written. It is written that they rise and learn Torah. And certainly the later mekubalim say that one should learn Torah after midnight, that this is perhaps the essence, the essence of rising at midnight, the essence of rising at night, that the later a person sits down to learn, that then is the best time to learn the secrets of Torah.

The New Prayer of Tikkun Chatzos

But the later mekubalim added something very interesting here, and said, and everyone knows there is something called tikkun chatzos. Tikkun chatzos they established—I think not the Arizal, perhaps a bit before the Arizal, but the group of sages established a new prayer, a new order of prayer, called tikkun chatzos. And it is built mostly on verses from Tehillim, verses from Yeshayahu, verses from Eicha, verses from the prophets, and also there are a few piyutim of their own that they wrote, printed in siddurim of tikkun chatzos—songs, kinos, the song of yearning, the song of devekus, the song of lamentations—that the sages of Kabbalah wrote on the topic of the exile of the Shechina, on the pain of Israel, on the death of tzaddikim, and all kinds of troubles connected to the pain of exile. And they were accustomed to rise at midnight, and before the learning, beforehand, they cried a bit over the exile of the Shechina.

And Rabbi Chaim Vital, in the list of instructions that a Jew must do to be a mekubal, includes this in his instruction in the introduction to Eitz Chaim, that one must rise at midnight every night and cry over the destruction. And he also says an important thing, and from here we begin to see that the thing is not so simple: that this is a segulah for attainment. One who wants a segulah to be a mekubal, let him rise at midnight and cry over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash.

The Proof That the Mekubalim Innovated Something

Behold what I see: there is here proof that the sages of the later mekubalim innovated a strong emphasis on crying, on mourning over the destruction, which we see is not so in the plain meaning. The plain meaning is that rising at midnight is only a matter of talmud Torah. And they added to this a kind of prayer, a part of prayer, which is also built on the Gemara. For this is that same Gemara where it is written that Hakadosh Baruch Hu rises at night and roars “He will surely roar over His habitation” (Berachos 3a), Hakadosh Baruch Hu rises then and cries over the destruction and cries over the exile. And on this the thing is built, that they come to rise and cry at the time when it is written that Hakadosh Baruch Hu cries.

The Parable of the Widow

And this is certainly built—let us understand a bit, on what is the thing built? It is built on that same idea we said before, but the part of pain in it, and one must understand why. It is built on that same part, as it is written in Eicha “She weeps bitterly in the night” (Eicha 1:2), that the parable of Eicha is about a widow, and the two parables are the parable of the love of a man and his wife, and the parable of mourning the destruction is “She has become like a widow” (Eicha 1:1)—like a widow whose husband went, died or went—”she has become like a widow and not a widow, a widow whose husband went to an overseas country.”

And what does she do? Why does she cry at night? Because all day they are busy, all day there are things to do, one must worry about the matters of the day. Even a widow has work, she too has children, and she must worry about them. This is the Shechina, who all day worries about Israel in exile, and cannot cry over what she truly lacks.

Night comes—and why specifically at night? One can say, that usually she remembers how it was when “her husband was with her,” when he was here; this was the time she would be aroused, for this was the time of “a woman speaks with her husband.” And now she too rises at the time when they could well have been in seclusion, to calculate what passes over a person who truly loves her. But she sees that her husband is not here, as the holy Zohar describes this in the language of their pictures. He is not here. And naturally “she weeps bitterly in the night,” then come out her cry of woe, her weeping, her pain, her lamentations—this is the time of lamentation.

This rule is almost not seen in the Zohar, perhaps in Zohar Eicha the thing is hinted, but one almost does not find in the Zohar that one should use this time to cry. But the later mekubalim emphasized the thing and innovated the text of tikkun chatzos.

The New Prayers of the Mekubalim

Tikkun Chatzos as Personal Prayer

There is one more thing I wish to mention, that we all practice—tikkun chatzos. There are several prayers: as we know according to halacha, in tradition there are three prayers a day, Shacharis Mincha and Maariv. Avraham Avinu established Shacharis, Yitzchak established Mincha, Yaakov established Maariv. Thus did the Avos. But there are several more prayers that we practice—and who made them? As I say, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz. Another prayer, called tikkun chatzos. A personal prayer. This is not a prayer of individual and community, but a personal prayer. It is a liturgy, a certain order that they say, and on which days they say it, it enters into halachos—when they say tikkun Rachel, when tikkun Leah. This is a new enactment that they made.

And in bein hametzarim there is a custom, it too comes from those same mekubalim, to say tikkun chatzos also during the day, after midday, even midday, when it begins to be afternoon, when a spirit of destruction begins to descend upon the world, they use this to cry over the Shechina. This is one prayer they innovated. And not everyone does this—I do not know, a large part of our friends do not practice doing this.

Kabbalas Shabbos

But there is another prayer that the mekubalim innovated, very connected and very close to this, and it is the prayer called Kabbalas Shabbos, which every Jew does, and in almost all the dispersions of Israel the custom of Kabbalas Shabbos has spread. One cannot say they innovated it completely, for the custom of saying “Mizmor shir l’yom haShabbos” (Tehillim 92:1) before Maariv of Shabbos already existed long before, but they added to it. And it is written that the thing is built on the Gemara, they did not invent anything from their hearts, everything is built on the Gemara, but it is a bit as I said before: that when one learns the Gemara, one can be aroused from it to do something. It is not written in the Gemara that they should go out to the field and make Kabbalas Shabbos, it is written that there were Amoraim who practiced thus and thus. One examines in the Rambam, one examines in the Shulchan Aruch how he brings the customs, one seeks to receive inspiration from this, one seeks to see how one should conduct oneself on erev Shabbos. But the mekubalim made from this a deed, they said: they were aroused from this and made an order called Kabbalas Shabbos. And there too they used that same thing, they took verses from Tehillim, made their own song, the “Lecha Dodi” that Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz wrote then.

The Topic of Lecha Dodi: Receiving the Face of the Shechina

And what is spoken of in Lecha

The Topic of Lecha Dodi: Receiving the Face of the Shechina

And what is spoken of in Lecha Dodi? About that same topic. Placed within the topic of Shabbos, receiving Shabbos, that Shabbos indicates the Shechina, that we receive the face of the Shechina. And if we speak of receiving the face of the Shechina, you see here an interesting thing.

A question from the audience: Someone asked me, “Why does it enter into Lecha Dodi that they should cry over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash? I want to know according to peshat.”

I told him that if he is looking for an answer according to peshat, let him search until the end of all generations, for this is not according to peshat, but according to Kabbalah. And Kabbalah too is not Kabbalah in the sense that one must know technical distinctions here and the like, but Kabbalah in the sense of the picture, the picture of kedusha, the picture of the Beis Hamikdash, the picture of Judaism that the mekubalim have. And the picture they have is that there is something called the indwelling of the Shechina. A verse is written, the indwelling of the Shechina upon Israel. The Shechina—she is called Yerushalayim, she is called Shabbos, everything is the same thing. And since Shabbos is receiving the face of the Shechina, they insert “Lecha dodi likras kallah” (Lecha Dodi), and we are not in our fullness.

And just as they said, for in its source—incidentally, the Zohar too was written during the time of exile, but in its source—the correct way was simply that a person rises at night, rises for the day, and begins to learn Torah, to connect with the Shechina. But since we are not there, we cry a bit beforehand.

So too with Shabbos. For Shabbos is receiving the face of the Shechina. And since usually in the world the Shechina is not yet in her repair, the Shechina is still in the dust, one still must cry “Shake yourself from the dust, arise” (Lecha Dodi), we speak of this. And when Shabbos comes there is truly an elevation, they raise the Shechina a bit from the dust.

And this is another proof, another source, another example that we all practice, how the mekubalim inserted the topic of the exile of the Shechina and the topic of Yerushalayim in a very central way. It is not written so beforehand. This certainly one cannot say has a source. There is a source that they should make Kabbalas Shabbos, that they should go out to the field, perhaps it is written in the Gemara, yes. But certainly there is no source that they should receive in this the face of the Shechina, that they should cry a bit over the exile, that they should say “Sanctuary of the King, royal city, arise, go out from the midst of the upheaval” (Lecha Dodi). For this there is no source. The source is the attainment, the lights that the mekubalim had to live with the Shechina, to express and to raise the Shechina.

The Foundation: To Return the Shechina to the World

The State of the Shechina in Every Generation

And I think the explanation for this is very simple and very basic. At the time when Israel dwells on their land, and certainly at the time of the Beis Hamikdash, and perhaps even before and even after, in every period and in every generation, there is their way how they see the world, there is their existing culture. And the thing does not relate only to Jews, but to the entire world. And this thing itself is the state of the Shechina. The state of the Shechina is not only a few Jews dwelling in Williamsburg. The Shechina governs the entire world. And there are all kinds of ascents and descents. The Shechina is the part from which we speak, the way in which we can speak as it were from the Divinity, from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, which changes. Hakadosh Baruch Hu does not change, but the indwelling of the Shechina, the reception, the way in which people speak of Divinity, of kedusha, the way in which kedusha is perceived in the world—changes according to the state of the generations, according to the state of the souls, according to the state of the reincarnations, according to the state of history.

Periods of Kedusha and Periods of Destruction

There are periods in which the ethic of kedusha, the ethic of the Beis Hamikdash—mikdash, and this connects to my series on kedusha, as I already said in the first shiur (as we explained at the beginning of the series about midas hakedusha and this is not its place)—there are generations and periods in which the ethic of kedusha, whatever its meaning may be, which certainly means something called the indwelling of the Shechina, something relating to this that here dwells Hakadosh Baruch Hu, here Divinity dwells in the world. There is such a thing as prophecy, there is such a thing as Shechina, there is such a thing as kedusha. And then, the things one learns, one must learn them in Torah, one must answer various questions, one must justify many things, but the very thing that there is such a thing as kedusha, that there is such a thing as Shechina, is not in doubt, is not so much in question in the world.

And as the historians tell us—and one must always be precise about how true this is, for things are much more complicated, but let us speak in Jewish history, and certainly they say thus, but one must understand; incidentally, this is another thing I do not wish to enter into completely and I do not know if now is the time. But let us say as the historians like to say—until my Rishonim, for example, one does not see; one who learns in the writings of the Rishonim, there is no difference whether one learns Rambam, whether one learns Kuzari, whether one learns Zohar, one does not see that there is something that does not exist at all, that no one knows at all what kedusha means. One does not see such a problem. Incidentally, according to this one must say that the thing relates to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, but as I say, it is much more complicated than this, and one must speak of this separately.

But there are periods when they do not know at all what this is. They lose—at least the Jews in their way—they lose the entire way to say that there is something called kedusha, that there is something called “the sacred” in the foreign language, or Divinity. They do not know at all. The world becomes very—what we call chol (mundane). The opposite of kodesh is not tamei, one cannot say that the world becomes more tamei, but it becomes more chol, more everyday, more uninteresting, boring, occupied with business, with making money, with material things. But things of the soul, things of kedusha, and certainly in the Jewish way which has its own problems because Israel is in exile—they do not exist.

The Destruction of the Beis Hamikdash: The Departure of the Shechina

And in such a period, in such a situation in which we find ourselves, this is truly the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. We already have a word for this, a very ancient word: the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. The destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, or the exile of the Shechina, the departure of the Shechina. There is no Shechina in the world. Or the Shechina is with us in exile. But about this we will need to speak with Hashem’s help in the next shiur, to explain more the positive side of Shechina in exile (and we will explain more be’ezras Hashem in the next shiur). But indeed there is here truly a departure of the Shechina. There is no Shechina in the world.

And in such a state—true, one asked a question: but one does not see even in the midrashim and in the Gemaros that they should be occupied with this in a terrible way, that the thing should take such a place. I brought a proof from the Zohar, but even from the Gemara—one does not see that the topic of mourning the destruction should take such a place. As far as I know, the Amoraim—we did not hear that they cried every day over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. True, they mention it regularly in the prayers, I am not saying. This is a very basic thing in Judaism. Perhaps a third of Shemoneh Esrei speaks of the exile and of the redemption. It is a very basic thing. But this was enough.

Why Was It Not Enough for the Mekubalim

And why was it not enough for the mekubalim? Must one add “l’David”? What is wrong with saying “Yerushalayim Your city” three times a day? Why must one add? Because it began to be lacking. In prayer one says things, as the Rambam says, “all the needs of people.” All the regular things that people need, we speak of them in prayer. And it is understood that Jews in exile speak much of the exile, they ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu to redeem us and to help in all the ways that are lacking.

But there came a time when they do not know at all what is being spoken of. They lose the language completely, what is being spoken of. Says the Arizal, say the mekubalim: one must find a remedy for this, and one must return the Shechina to the world. This is fundamentally what must be done. As long as she is not here—when there will be a Beis Hamikdash, when they have already repaired everything, this is not a problem. But there are still many more steps before. And one must begin to speak a bit of the Shechina. One must make of this a reality, one must make her real to people.

The Secret of Crying: To Make the Shechina Real

Why Specifically Crying?

Now, there is an interesting thing here. There are positive ways and negative ways. Let us say that crying is the negative way. But one must hear that there is something very important in this. Why? Because people think that crying means simply sadness, simply a negative thing. But the truth is that in crying is hidden something much deeper. In other words: the positive works only as long as the thing is in your hand. And to say a lie, to say “Hakadosh Baruch Hu is with us” when one does not know at all what kedusha means, one does not know at all what Shechina means—this is not great wisdom.

Says the Arizal: you want now to live with the Shechina, certainly this is what you want to do. The problem is that you know very vaguely, you know a bit, you heard, you remember, but very vaguely to know at all what this is. There is one wonderful remedy. The wonderful remedy is to cry over it. And certainly in order to cry one must also know. The meaning of the thing is that you do know, except that you know that what is here, what is being spoken of here—you cannot even say what you lost, what you once had, even that you do not know. One cries over something one knows, but much is lacking from it. It is lacking in its completeness, it is not in its fullness. One must explain precisely what is lacking and in what way it is lacking, but much is lacking from it.

The Lack Reveals the Connection

And everyone knows that what pains a person, his lack, is a much greater proof—not only a proof, for now we speak of renewing the thing through this—but a much greater connection, to know what a person loves, who he is, what is reality for him: it is what he cannot live without, what pains him, what he cries over when it is not there, more than what he rejoices over when it does exist. This is a very interesting thing. One can say to a person, “Here is something tasty for you.” Well, who said it is free? Give two, why not? But when do we see that this is truly part of a person’s life, part of his world? When he goes and does not have it, or he has only a little and it breaks him, and he cries.

It comes out that when one cries over something—and when I say crying, I mean literally to cry, to find a way to arouse oneself, whether at midnight, it is not so difficult, after a shiur, after they spoke, it is not so difficult to arouse oneself over the lacks of the worlds, over the lacks of the Shechina, and to cry over it. One does what one does know, it is understood. And he says that crying over this will primarily make the thing real for him. For as long as one does not cry, as long as a person has—it is very tasty for him to dance by the Rebbe’s table, but he never cries when the thing is not there, or he never cries that the entire Rebbe’s table is only a taste in passing, a remembrance in passing of what should have been—that it should have been that the entire world should understand the Rebbe’s table, that it should have been that all the gentiles should come to see the Rebbe how he conducts a tish, that it should have been that they should not need to conduct a tish at all, that every Jew should make a tish himself, that it should have been so much better. And yet he knows that he is by the Rebbe’s table. He cries over this.

Whoever Mourns Over Yerushalayim Merits to See Its Joy

And in what he cries over this—here is the secret written in the Ramak, he says it, in Rabbi Chaim Vital, here is the secret of “Whoever mourns over Yerushalayim merits to see its joy” (Taanis 30b). That is, since we are in the fall of Yerushalayim, in order that there can be life, in order that there can be Jews, that we can establish our house of life, establish Jewish life built on the holy Shechina—our attributes need that we should have the Shechina, and we do not have her properly. And the first way, the beginning of the avodah, is that a person must cry a bit over the lack of the Shechina, to cry over all the pain.

This is a bit of a trick, for he says, “I do not have, if I do not have…”—yes, this is crying over what you do not have, this is the approach of the Baal HaTanya: that crying over what you do not have, to make of this a reality for you, in this we return the Shechina.

From Tikkun Chatzos to Kabbalas Shabbos

Therefore, when one cries here in tikkun chatzos over what one cries, then one cries almost completely only negatively. And afterward one cries in Kabbalas Shabbos, that from saying “Sanctuary of the King of kings,” then the Shechina is elevated, and they begin to be elevated already here: “Do not be ashamed and do not be humiliated,” “Why do you bow down and why do you moan,” “Right and left you shall spread out” (Lecha Dodi). And incidentally, on Yom Tov we do not skip over the sad part—I do not know why the customs were made thus, this is not understood.

We raise the Shechina in that we cry over her, and then one can make Shabbos. You cried that in the entire world there is no Shechina, and now you have Shechina? Why are you crying over her? Because you can make the Shechina real for you to a sufficient degree, that you can cry over how much she is not. And in this one can receive Shabbos, and in this one can return a bit of kedusha to the world, and in this an entire group of people is made for whom the Shechina is a thing, they cry over how much she is not, they rejoice over how much she does exist, and in this they begin to go and receive Shabbos of the week.

Gut Shabbos.

The Secret of Supporting the Shechina Through Kabbalah

Introduction — Continuation of the Topic of Holiness and Tikkun Chatzot

My teachers and rabbis, my dear brothers, today is Erev Shabbat Kodesh, Parshat Matot-Masei, Shabbat Mevorchim Chodesh Av 5786. We must now continue with what we began last week and what we promised. The verse says ‘kol hayotzei mipiv ya’aseh’ (whatever comes from his mouth he shall do) (Numbers 30:3), and we promised last week that we would continue to try and understand the secret, the foundation, and the practical halacha of the topic we discussed as a continuation of the topic of holiness, but it is also the topic called tikkun chatzot. For the later mekubalim — and I searched for this even today and I don’t have complete clarity — the Arizal, and perhaps already earlier in Reishit Chochma, though I myself haven’t seen this before, and in the words of the Ramak I haven’t seen this clearly — made from the point that the Zohar says one must rise at midnight and learn Torah, also a matter that one must cry over the destruction.

The Purpose of Learning Zohar — Building the Beit HaMikdash

And our claim was that this has a deep connection with the way of Kabbalah, and this is already a point explained earlier with clarity, according to the truth in the Zohar explicitly, and the Ramak explains it perhaps tens of times in his writings, that the purpose of learning Zohar is not simply to understand something. This is not a simple purpose, but rather there is in it a purpose of holiness. In other words, the intention, the secret intention of what was written in the Zohar and of what one learns in Zohar, is that very secret of building the Beit HaMikdash. The secret of — and one can call it more precisely — the restoration, the re-establishment of holiness. For the Beit HaMikdash is the house of holiness, the place where holiness dwells, the place where the Shechina dwells in the world.

And since there is exile, and since there is destruction, and not only is there destruction but the destruction goes and intensifies from day to day, as the Zohar says many times. The Zohar very much loves the language of the end of Tractate Sotah, ‘since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, there is no day whose curse is not greater than its fellow’ (Sotah 49a) — each day the curse grows. So says the Mishna or the Gemara at the end of Tractate Sotah, and when the Zohar speaks about the exile it brings this language almost every time. And everything can be explained in many ways, but it brings something in that it specifically uses this language in this way. And what it seeks to say is an answer to something I began to raise about it last week in hint.

The Problem of Positive Holiness — The Dwelling of the Shechina

What I seek to clarify is, see that there is a problem here, and we will explain it. The problem is that negative holiness — the topic of separation, elevation to be a better person, control over desires — this one can understand. But the topic of positive holiness, which cannot be interpreted except as the dwelling of the Shechina, as we read ‘ikkar Shechina b’tachtonim hayta’ (the essence of the Shechina was in the lower realms) (Bereishit Rabba 19:7), as the reader sees at the beginning of Parshat Bereishit and in the parshiyot of the Avot — to speak with the Holy One Blessed be He should be something so natural, like speaking with a person, to know, to be present in the reality of Hashem, in the reality of the Shechina, that this should be among the natural things like human relationships with one another.

And the great example of this is what we read about the Mikdash. For even the Mikdash is already a tikkun for a problem, and perhaps it shouldn’t be spoken of at all on its own. For this is the meaning of ‘ikkar Shechina b’tachtonim hayta’ — originally there was no Mikdash, and so too with Adam HaRishon in Gan Eden. Gan Eden can be called a Mikdash, for there was no world outside of Gan Eden. When Adam HaRishon dwells in Gan Eden, this is a place where ‘vayishme’u et kol Hashem Elokim mithalech bagan l’ruach hayom’ (and they heard the voice of Hashem God walking in the garden in the spirit of the day) (Bereishit 3:8) occurs — just as Adam HaRishon strolls in the garden, so too the Holy One Blessed be He strolls, both stroll together.

The Mikdash as Tikkun — Everyone Has a House

And what they made a Mikdash, and the Mikdash is that same matter itself like ‘v’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham’ (and they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them) (Shemot 25:8), its meaning as we have said many times — every Jew has a house, and when one walks around the camp of Israel and asks where does Moshe dwell, they say Moshe dwells here, and where is Aharon, Aharon dwells there, and where is Elazar, and where is Korach, and where is Reuven — each and every one has his house. And where does the Holy One Blessed be He dwell? The Holy One Blessed be He dwells there. So He dwells among us. And He has His activities — there are activities that are the activities of Hashem, that we recognize as the dwelling of the Shechina, as the providence of Hashem, and the matter is natural like the relationships between us.

The First Eicha — Adam HaRishon

Except that already here there is a change, for about this the Midrash says that the first eicha — that they say ‘eicha yashva badad’ (how she sits alone) (Eicha 1:1), which is the title for the mourning of the Shechina — even the first eicha that they cried over was of Adam HaRishon. ‘Vayikra Hashem Elokim el ha’adam vayomer lo eicha’ (and Hashem God called to the man and said to him where are you) (Bereishit 3:9) — the Holy One Blessed be He says to Adam eicha. Eicha are the letters of eicha, and even though the vocalization is slightly different, eicha means eicha. Where are you, man? What happened to you? ‘B’gan Elokim hayita’ (you were in the garden of God) (Yechezkel 28:13), and until one time you fell, and you are no longer there. Afterwards they even expelled him, ‘vayegaresh et ha’adam’ (and He drove out the man) (Bereishit 3:24), but the eicha was already said about the very novelty that was created in him — that he hears the Holy One Blessed be He and no longer knows, ‘vayitchabe ha’adam v’ishto mipnei Hashem Elokim’ (and the man and his wife hid from before Hashem God) (Bereishit 3:8) — there is a place where the Holy One Blessed be He is found, and there is a place where the Holy One Blessed be He is not found. This is the first eicha, the eicha over the loss of Gan Eden.

The Mikdash Comes to Fix the Destruction

And even when there is the Beit HaMikdash, the meaning of the matter is that there is a house where the Holy One Blessed be He dwells, which implies that in other houses the Holy One Blessed be He does not dwell. And already there is in this a kind of destruction. And the Beit HaMikdash comes to fix the destruction, meaning, it lives in a world where there is already a certain fall. Before the sin, in the completely original state, there is also no Mikdash, and this is the meaning of ‘ikkar Shechina b’tachtonim hayta’. But ‘bati l’gani achoti kala’ (I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride) (Shir HaShirim 5:1), says the Midrash — I returned to my garden, to my little garden, meaning to my place, ‘to the place where its essence was originally’, not to a new garden that was made, but to my garden that I have myself, ‘vayita Hashem Elokim gan b’Eden mikedem’ (and Hashem God planted a garden in Eden from the east) (Bereishit 2:8), the garden that the Holy One Blessed be He planted in Eden from the east, where His garden was and where He dwelt.

When they said ‘bati l’gani’, when they made the Beit HaMikdash, when they said ‘yavo dodi l’gano v’yochal pri megadav’ (let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choice fruits) (Shir HaShirim 4:16), ‘bati l’gani achoti kala’, they made as it were such a garden. The Holy One Blessed be He returns to the lower realms like in the garden, but not completely as it was. For if it were completely as it was, they would not make Mikdash on its own and chol on its own. There, there is no chol, and in the aspect of Gan Eden there was still no chol.

The World After the Sin — Never Fully Returns

But now, from the time of Adam HaRishon darkness already descends, and we have never fully returned. ‘Achen k’adam temutun v’k’achad hasarim tipolu’ (but like man you shall die and like one of the princes you shall fall) (Tehillim 82:7) still applies, even in the time of the Beit HaMikdash, even in the greatest time, people still die — whatever the meaning of the matter may be, this is the aspect of the body that dies, and perhaps the soul does not die — but in the sense of the world, for what is the world, since the sin of Adam HaRishon there has not yet been a period when the sin was completely nullified, perhaps for half a moment at Matan Torah, and perhaps in the kingdom of Shlomo, but fundamentally no. And with all this there were tikkunim in which the world was fixed, the world became better, and they made the Beit HaMikdash.

In the Time of the Mikdash Versus Today — The False House of Hashem

Now we say, that in the time of the Mikdash at least people were speaking — where are you going, where are you coming from, ‘samachti b’omrim li beit Hashem nelech’ (I rejoiced when they said to me, to the house of Hashem let us go) (Tehillim 122:1). Where are you going? The Holy One Blessed be He. Today people can hang a sign ‘Beit Hashem’ — where are they going, the Holy One Blessed be He — but I think this is false. There is here inwardly — and I’m not saying if there is a mitzva to make a Beit HaMikdash, perhaps it is a good thing — but a destruction remains, for to simply say that there is a Mikdash, a house, a mitzva, this is not the essence of the matter. For to say that there is destruction means that we cannot live, we do not understand what it means to live in such a world, where the Holy One Blessed be He has a house and I have a thousand.

And it may be that there is a reason for this, it may be that according to Chassidut one must speak about this, it may be that the ultimate purpose — indeed there is a certain sense that when one cries over the Shechina, one truly cries over the sin of Adam HaRishon, over the eicha, ‘vayomer lo eicha’, where is the man who went and was lost from the garden of God — and to narrow this and say that one cries only over the place of the Shechina, only over the place of the house, is already a kind of narrowing, it would be fitting that the crying be even greater than this, that there be a nachala without metzarim. Now is bein hametzarim, and bein hametzarim is the greatest narrowing that can be, as long as the mouth is closed in bein hametzarim — that already made a house, but became stuck between the straits.

Nachala Without Metzarim — The Boundaries of Gan Eden

And in the future to come, you know, one who keeps Shabbat properly, ‘v’ha’achalticha nachalat Yaakov avicha’ (and I will feed you the heritage of Yaakov your father) (Yeshayahu 58:14), nachala without metzarim (Shabbat 118a). And the meaning of ‘without metzarim’ is that there is here something that is above Gan Eden, from before what was, for what are the metzarim of Gan Eden? The metzarim of Gan Eden are ‘hakeruvim v’et lahat hacherev hamithhapechet lishmor et derech etz hachaim’ (the cherubim and the flaming sword that turns to guard the way to the tree of life) (Bereishit 3:24). This is the boundary, the gatekeepers of Gan Eden, that the moment there is such a thing — it itself is the destruction, it itself is the root of the destruction — that says there is man and there is Gan Eden, and the man is not in Gan Eden. Perhaps there is a place that is Gan Eden, like Yerushalayim, the place of the Mikdash, where there will be the Mishkan, where there will be Gan Eden.

And the truth is that the entire Mishkan is only to remind man, to remind us, ‘adam ki yakriv mikem korban’ (when a man from among you brings an offering) (Vayikra 1:2) — let man know, just as Adam HaRishon, that there was once Adam HaRishon who did not need a Mishkan, who dwelt entirely as it were in the Mishkan, whose entire world was in the garden, who was in Gan Eden. We will return to this, and we will immediately see another way to say this.

The Original State — Man and the Shechina Are Friends

But what I wish to finish now from what I began is, that it emerges that there is an initial state, an original state. The original state — so one must say — of man, the original state of the Shechina, is that they are friends, everything is one thing, they walk together.

‘V’hithalchti b’tochechem’ (and I will walk among you) (Vayikra 26:12) is said for the future to come, ‘v’hithalchti b’tochechem’, lest you say without fear, therefore ‘virattem oti’ — there will still be a certain fear of the Holy One Blessed be He, but man, as it were, strolls in the garden, like ‘I and you will stroll in Gan Eden’ (Sotah 17a). The Jews and the Holy One Blessed be He, man and God, stroll in the same garden together. This is the original state, and this is the state of the future, the state of souls, that if this is not the state of the future of the world, in any case this is the state of the future of souls.

In the Meantime — The Great Building of the Generations

In the meantime there were states in which we made a great building, and much work was done on it. For ‘from the day I brought up the children of Israel from Egypt’ (Shmuel II 7:6) they did not tell the Holy One Blessed be He to make a Mikdash. It is an entire deed that the Holy One Blessed be He said to David HaMelech, that no one thought of this for three-four hundred years since the Exodus, there was a Mishkan, ‘va’ehyeh mithalech b’ohel uvmishkan’ (and I walked in a tent and in a tabernacle) (Shmuel II 7:6), I did all these. The matter took a long time, this is very deep work, ‘ad avo el mikdashei E-l’ (until I come to the sanctuaries of God) (Tehillim 73:17) — until they make the Beit HaMikdash there was very great work, this is not a small thing.

And they had to work hard work to bring into the world anew a feeling of the Shechina. Avraham Avinu already worked, ‘vayikra sham b’shem Hashem E-l olam’ (and he called there in the name of Hashem, God of the world) (Bereishit 21:33), made altars, established the place of the Shechina, ‘b’har Hashem yera’eh’ (on the mountain of Hashem it will be seen) (Bereishit 22:14), and Yitzchak Avinu worked, and Yaakov Avinu worked, and Moshe Rabbeinu worked, and as the Midrash says, seven generations — Amram, Kehat, Levi — worked, everyone worked. Finally it was possible to make a kind of Mishkan, though the Mishkan itself is only a temporary thing. Finally it took another fifteen generations, and Shlomo HaMelech was able to build the Beit HaMikdash. Awesome work was done here, and the peak of the work was Shir HaShirim, the day when Shlomo HaMelech made the Beit HaMikdash. This was the peak of success of the matter.

From When Did the Destruction Begin?

And the truth is, that since then there is no day whose curse is not greater than its fellow. And one should know from when the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash began. I wish to say now that it is from the sin of Adam HaRishon, but even from the tikkun that was made in the Beit HaMikdash, when did the matter begin to fall? As the verse says, ‘al api v’al chamati hayta li ha’ir hazot l’min hayom asher banu ota’ (for My anger and My wrath this city has been to Me from the day they built it) (Yirmiyahu 32:31) — from the moment it was made, from the moment of ‘bati l’gani achoti kala’, from that moment it began to descend.

But the moment that we call the greatest descent — like the moon that was at its fullness in the time of Shlomo, after fourteen generations, after fourteen kings, like the fourteen days of the moon, and descended completely back — is in the time of Tzidkiyahu, in the time of the destruction of the First Temple, when the greatest degradation occurred, and the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. And now, as the verse says, ‘ototenu lo ra’inu ein od navi v’lo itanu yode’a ad mah’ (we do not see our signs, there is no longer a prophet and there is not with us one who knows how long) (Tehillim 74:9). We do not see signs, not the appointed times of God in the land, we do not see the Beit HaMikdash, we do not see Shechina, we have no prophet, we do not know what is still happening in the world. ‘V’ein itanu yode’a ad mah’ — he already said this explicitly.

The Fact of the Loss of Wholeness

And here there is truth. Indeed one can always say that he said this when he was depressed, and when he was happy he saw thus. And indeed one can always find encouragement, and one must find encouragement, and we will speak more about this. But the very fact of the existence of wholeness, of a complete way of life, in which man and the Shechina are not a contradiction, in which one can live both of them as one, in which one can come close, ‘v’hithalchti b’tochechem v’hayiti lachem l’Elokim’ (and I will walk among you and I will be to you as God) (Vayikra 26:12) — this is something that was, that we once had, but was lost. And on the day the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed — and I think that when we speak about the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash we mean the destruction of the First Temple, for the Second Temple did something, a certain tikkun it did, but not an eternal tikkun, a shaky building was the entire Second Temple — and since then we are losing it.

The Disenchantment of the World

Now, each time one speaks about this, as I said, there are wise men of our time who speak about the “disenchantment” of the world, about how the world has become an empty world, in which there are no angels, no seraphim, no demons, no spirits, no constellations. We do not believe today in anything. Barely are there people who still believe in the Holy One Blessed be He that He is at least the source of everything. Chassidic Jews believe in the Holy One Blessed be He that He is in everything, but only one.

And in a certain sense, this is what Chassidut — and it is proper that I clarify this — this is what Chassidut came and innovated. Not that there was no opposition and true controversy, but I think that those who understood well always understood thus. The Gaon of Vilna did not understand, what can I do. But I learn the Rambam, and I learn Zohar, and I learn the Ramak, and this is written in all the different books without any doubt. But what the Chassidim innovated — that there should be ‘melo chol ha’aretz kevodo’ (the whole earth is full of His glory) (Yeshayahu 6:3), that one can always find the Holy One Blessed be He, there is no difference, even in the place of the greatest concealment, “Anochi mi she’Anochi”, even the Master of the world, “in every movement and movement”, all those formulations — this should be understood as a kind of attempt, as a kind of effort to fix the problem that the world has become empty.

The Historians on the Mechanistic Worldview

And very many historians speak about this recently — and of course I wish to disagree somewhat with the historians — but they explain that when one reads books from the period we call the period of the Rishonim, the Middle Ages, one sees how the world was full of mystical things as they say. The world is full of magic, the world is full of living things. There are spirits, souls, reincarnations, angels, of all kinds. Sometimes one sees them, sometimes one feels them, sometimes one believes in them, but the world is full of all these.

And the scientists came, modern science, and emptied the world. They made the entire world like a machine, it moves, the world is a dead thing. As they say, there are those who think there is a God who directs it from above, like a watchmaker who made the whole thing. There are those who think He even supervises. But this is the picture we have, and this is called a mechanistic worldview. The world is mechanical, everything is like a machine. A dead thing, in other words, a dead thing. The world by its very nature is a dead thing. They expelled all the demons, there are no demons, no spirits, no angels, no souls, there are none of these in the modern way of looking at the world.

And this is very different from the old way of looking at the world, in which the world is full of all kinds of creatures, all kinds of angels, all kinds of spirits, all kinds of living things. That it may be that on every tree there is an angel that one can see. One goes to the forest and feels, so people once felt, so they tell stories. And I think that one who examines different old books and old tales sees that indeed this was the view.

Modernism — In Different Periods

And indeed, in other places the news, or the trouble, of modernism, of modern times, arrived in different periods. Sometimes one hears that a person’s great-grandfather still thought the world was full of demons. In places the news has not yet arrived. I do not know even one person, or almost not one person, who lives completely as they tell supposedly about once. But in other places the matter arrived at other times, that new view that the world is empty.

Three-Four Systems in Knowing Reality

Now, one must understand that this problem has different answers, and even the Chassidic answer, which is the topic of ‘melo chol ha’aretz kevodo’, still has a problem in it. Indeed, we are for Chassidut, and if there is no other advice it is proper to say thus, but still there is a certain problem in this. And why? Or perhaps this is not a problem, perhaps this is the complete tikkun, and I only need to emphasize it. And it is, that in a certain sense everything still remains the same thing.

Meaning, let us understand. There are here three systems. There is the system of Kabbalah — and one who learns classical Kabbalah sees this, and we will immediately explain the system of Kabbalah more. The system of Kabbalah says that there is a God, the Holy One Blessed be He directs everything, and His power is in everything, and no one disputes this. And the light, the light of the essence of Ein Sof, spreads through the order of hishtalshelut to the last, to the ‘smallest dominion of the sea’, to the last level of the order of hishtalshelut. No one ever thought that there is something that goes out from the domain of His instruction and from the domain of His government, there is no doubt about this, not even in “their grasping in the totality of His government”, not even in the Sitra Achra, no one ever disputed this.

But still there are levels, still there are levels of hishtalshelut, levels of hitlabshut, and they are real things. And one can see this, that therefore everyone in Klal Yisrael who is a mekubal almost believes that there are demons, there are spirits, there are souls, there are angels, there are sefirot, there are all kinds of levels between the essence of Ein Sof and you. And even though the essence of Ein Sof is also within every sefira, and ‘mesovev kol almin ummalei kol almin’ (surrounds all worlds and fills all worlds) (Tikkunei Zohar), but the worlds exist, and in all those worlds, each and every one of the worlds has a certain life of its own.

Meaning, it receives it from the light of Ein Sof, which spreads in them, but it has a certain life of its own, and one can speak about it. And one goes outside, and when one looks at the world one sees a world that is full — here there is the Beit HaMikdash, there is Yerushalayim, each thing has holiness of its own. Indeed, ultimately, all the holinesses have their root from the Ein Sof that spreads in them, but He does not speak only about the Ein Sof, for he lives in the world, and the world is full of life, full of grace, full of living things. This is the Kabbalistic view.

The Dead View in Some Chassidic Books

In Chassidic books — meaning in some Chassidic books at least — one remains at a certain time, or there are people who understand that one remains a bit looking at the dead view. Meaning, the entire world is still the same thing. There is no multiplicity of shades, no multiplicity of images, no difference between angels and seraphim. What is the difference?

I sometimes look at Chassidic commentaries on the Kabbalah of the Arizal, and I see — not in him himself, but even the Komarner many times — that a wonder occurs. The Arizal comes and says that there is a certain name for bein hametzarim, another name for Pesach, another name for Sukkot, and one who learns Chassidic books sees that essentially everything means the same thing. Ein od milvado, there are no names, and the intention of the kavanot of bein hametzarim is to show that ein od milvado even in bein hametzarim. And the intention of Pesach is the same thing, and the intention of Sukkot.

And I do not dispute this, but why did the Arizal trouble himself and make so many kavanot and so many names, and special names for this thing, and special kavanot for this thing, and special deeds for this thing, so that through them he would arrive and return and bring them back to the One, to say that everything is Ein Sof? Heaven forbid, the Arizal also said that everything is Ein Sof. But therefore life is in the world, and the world, let us say after the sin of Adam HaRishon in any case, the way of tikkun of the world is through standing on that certain life, on that certain vitality of each individual thing, of each intermediate part in the world, of each level, of each angel, of each cheftza d’kedusha, and so forth. This was not to make everything equal, to make everything as if everything is the same thing.

The Four Systems in Detail

And about this I say that there are here systems. There is the system of atheism, which says that everything is equal, and there is nothing more, there is no God. The heretics cry out there is no God. And let us say another system of idolatry. There is idolatry that says there are all kinds of gods, and each one is a god, and the Persians cry out that their god is a god, and the Egyptians cry out that their god is a god. In short, there are all kinds of other gods, gods in the plural, many gods. This is a bad system, meaning, there are many things, but many other gods, many other true powers.

Then there is a system that says there is only one thing, that everything is the same thing, everything is equal, and one God directs it. This is the system of Chassidut. But it is lacking, even this system is lacking. For there are two separate questions here. One question — is everything equal, is everything the same thing, and the other question — is there a God. And this is not the same question. And one must know this, that many times in Chassidut they think this is the same question. If everything is equal, then everything is one God. But it may be that everything will be equal and nevertheless it will be empty.

And in a certain sense, the belief that everything is equal, that everything is the same thing, is itself a flaw, it itself is false. There is a multiplicity of shades in the world. The Holy One Blessed be He made the world so that there would be in it all kinds of things. And it is proper to say that the Holy One Blessed be He is a fact in the world, and one somewhat denies reality when one says that everything is the same thing. And one who denies reality denies the Shechina, for the Shechina is the one who has determination over all the details, over all the changes that there are in the world.

So it emerges that there can be four systems. Meaning, it may be that everything is equal without God, and it may be that everything is equal with God, but still there is a deficiency of “everything is equal”, which is all the time an advantage, but everything is without God. Then it may be that everything is different, everything is separate, but there is God — this is the system of idolatry, which has a great deficiency of “everything is separate”, separation, but it has an advantage that there is divinity in it. Then there is a fourth system, it is the system of Kabbalah — there are many things, and there is God, and there is one God. One God gives life to all the many things.

This is the fourth system, and I do not know if Chassidut disputes this, but this is a question of emphasis — this is the correct system. That both there is God, and there is a world, and the world is full of divinity, full of the illumination of divinity, full of other ways to speak with God, and many levels, and even tarcha reika — tarcha reika is a living thing, it has no completely special power, His kingdom rules over all, but it even has something to rule over, for there is no king without a people, and the Holy One Blessed be He rules over it. This is the view of yichuda tata’a, but it is important to grasp that this is the opinion of the completeness of knowing true reality — the completeness of knowing reality is the fourth system, and not the third system, and not the second system.

The Problem After the Destruction — Atheism and Not Idolatry

So we return to the place where we stand, and we hold that there was a tikkun, that they made the Beit HaMikdash, that there is a place where holiness will dwell, but it was broken

The Problem After the Destruction — Atheism and Not Idolatry

So we return to the place where we stand, and we hold that there was a tikkun, that they made the Beit HaMikdash, that there is a place where holiness will dwell, but it was broken. And when we say it was broken, I think this is more in the time of atheism than in the time of idolatry. Meaning, I do not know many Jews who because there is destruction of the Beit HaMikdash began with idolatry. Perhaps this was once a test in the First Temple, but from the Second Temple this is not the test, and this is truly the difference between the destruction of the First Temple and the destruction of the Second Temple. And indeed we will think about this another time.

But in any case, all that is from the destruction of the Second Temple, our problem is not that perhaps there is another god, that perhaps there are too many other things, but rather the problem is that there is nothing. As it says, there is no longer a prophet and seer, there is not with us one who knows how long. It does not say “and perhaps I will be to them”, as is said in other verses. And it is possible, God forbid, ‘and what will You do for Your great name’ (Yehoshua 7:9)? And why will the nations say? The nations will say that perhaps their god is stronger, as Moshe Rabbeinu said, as Yehoshua bin Nun said — no, there is nothing.

The Nothingness Goes and Intensifies From Day to Day

Now, this nothingness must be understood. The Zohar says, leaves it thus, and the Ramak explains it — this nothingness goes and intensifies from day to day. Meaning, what the nations say occurred in the seventeenth century, when they began to grasp that the world is empty — the Torah says, the Jews know, that the matter began on the day the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. Already a problem of two thousand years it is, and perhaps more, perhaps as I say from the First Beit HaMikdash, perhaps from the sin of Adam HaRishon, a much more ancient problem.

Why Did Kabbalah and Chassidut Solve a Problem?

But what? And if so, why do we say that we see the fact — we too admit that Kabbalah came, Chassidut came, and they came to solve a certain problem? The Rambam, the Raavad, Rabbeinu Saadia Gaon had other problems, for they did not have these problems. One does not sense from them that they speak about prophecy, that they speak about the dwelling of the Shechina, that they speak to us about things that — indeed perhaps they do not have them now, temporarily they were broken — but they do not speak about them as things that one does not know at all what they are. Whereas in the later generations, one must first explain at all what the thing is.

What is the explanation of this difference? The explanation of the difference, say the mekubalim, is that this is simply a continuation, another stage of the descent of the Shechina. From the moment the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, the Shechina began to descend.

The Ramak on the Secret of the End

The Ramak says thus, a wonder, that when they calculated — for they deal much with the teachings of the end, when must Mashiach come, when must the exile end, “what is the secret of the final end?” — he says, that when one contemplates one sees that the need, as he explains, and one can examine and see if he said exactly thus, and I can still say how I understand this.

Daniel, for example, thought seventy years are the measure of the exile. And what is the explanation of the matter? The explanation of the matter is that the world can exist — the world, let us say the Jewish world — can exist only as there is in it a certain life, which in Kabbalah they call “yichud”, a certain dwelling of Shechina. Meaning, so one must believe, so Jews believe, that without the Beit HaMikdash the world is not alive. A world cannot be possible if the atheists are correct, God forbid, for then the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash does not raise or lower. And even if the Chassidim are correct, it does not raise or lower, for the Holy One Blessed be He gives life to everyone in any case. But if there is a difference between a world with yichud, with Shechina, and between a world without Shechina, in separation — a special Shechina, which is ‘I am Hashem your God who unifies My name upon you’ in a special way — then how can the world continue?

The world cannot continue forever in exile. The exile cannot be an eternal thing. Meaning, if it will be an eternal thing, it will end at a certain point. Either it will end with ‘and the children will return to their border’ (Yirmiyahu 31:16), or it will end with ‘and you will be lost among the nations’ (Vayikra 26:38). There are two ways in which it can end, but certainly it must end. And since there is a certain promise, there is a certain condition, there is a certain nature, that we already know that there is such a thing that “and you will be lost among the nations” cannot be, it must be ‘and Hashem your God will return’ (Devarim 30:3), there is a certain point.

Seventy Years — A Complete Generation

Now the Ramak says thus: Daniel calculated seventy years — he calculated, seventy years are ‘the days of our years, in them seventy years’ (Tehillim 90:10). And I think Yirmiyahu calculated this, for it is written, and this is true. What are seventy years? Seventy years are a complete generation. After seventy years no memory remains of what was. This is reality. In the Zohar it is written that he forgot the language “seventy years”. About Choni HaMe’agel it is said, indeed, that a person who arises after seventy years, the world is no longer his world. We spoke about this at the time of Pesach — ‘until here is the mercy of a father on a son’, one can transmit the tradition for three or four generations, and seventy years are more or less the strongest way. One can say, as long as one more person still lives, one can still see the grandfather of seventy years, he can still speak with you. After eighty he is already somewhat nullified from the world, let us say at one hundred, but there is no longer any connection. A bit of connection, but not a real connection. So seventy years, this is the length of time that can be.

The Renewal of Life — New Abundance From the Yichud

Meaning, if there was — in other words, for the world to continue, for Judaism to continue, there must be life, there must be renewal of life, which we call new abundance from the yichud, that there was once history, “once there was”, there was once. Now there is yichud. I can understand that there will be exile for seventy years. In other words, in one year they will still remember. In the first years the Jews will still remember, ‘by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and also wept when we remembered Zion’ (Tehillim 137:1). They still remembered. They still remembered Zion. They could still say “eicha”, ‘how shall we sing the song of Hashem on foreign soil’ (Tehillim 137:4), ‘if I forget you Yerushalayim’ (Tehillim 137:5). Indeed, one can sign in another place, “good within the bad”, they still knew what it means. Another year came, and they already said in a weaker voice. Another year came, and it became even weaker. Indeed, the gathering becomes weak each year, for they forget, and do not know from what was.

Yirmiyahu HaNavi thought, after seventy years, either the Holy One Blessed be He will redeem the Jews, or no, or there will no longer be Jews. There is only one, as Rabbi Bunim said, or there will no longer be Jews. There are only these two possibilities. This is fundamentally what the end is built upon, or one of the explanations that the end is built upon. And since seventy years cannot be, it must be more. But the Holy One Blessed be He showed us better.

The Levels in the Shechina — No One Can Estimate

True, Daniel already said that one can say seventy times seventy, there are greater ones. In other words, as much as the earlier tzaddikim could estimate, Yirmiyahu HaNavi, or other people who were later at the time of the destruction, they said that it cannot be that the exile will continue much more than such and such years. All this was their estimates of how deep, how many levels there are in the Shechina. One can say this in a positive way, and one can say this in a negative way. I say this in the positive way.

Meaning, they thought that the impression — in Kabbalah it is called thus, the Ramak says thus, in the language of the Zohar thus — yichud is like planting. One plants, ‘light is sown for the righteous and for the upright of heart, joy’ (Tehillim 97:11). One plants light, and a tree grows from it, the fruits of the yichud grow from it, the souls, the Jews who emerge from the yichud of Kudsha Brich Hu and His Shechina, the Beit HaMikdash, where ‘all your males shall appear’ (Shemot 23:17), they make yichud, and from it babies are born, Jewish babies. Jewish babies means babies with a Jewish soul, who have reception in them, who have feeling for Judaism, who have feeling for the Shechina.

The Parable of the Aftergrowth

And what happens if one stops planting? Indeed, such a shemitta, ‘and the land shall rest a Sabbath to it’ (Vayikra 25:2), a shemitta is made, they do not plant. But every person knows that even in shemitta it grows, and this is called sefichim. Meaning, from yesterday’s planting it can grow. In other words, the babies can give birth to babies themselves, or in a certain sense this grows by itself. And the parable of the sefichim is a better parable — they do not plant, but seeds fall by themselves from the previous year, and somehow it grows by itself even without planting. Indeed much weaker, this is not renewal, this is not a living thing, it is a dead thing, but it grows, this is offspring, light and offspring, this is the offspring of fire, the offspring of light, it grows.

And every Jew once said an end, every tzaddik once said an end. He contemplated, how deep can the matter descend? How far? How many times can it continue? How many levels are there? In other words, how many levels are there in the Shechina? The first level, a copy from it, a copy from the copy, a copy from the copy. This one thought, there are seventy levels after that. The second said, a thousand levels, a thousand years, ‘a thousand years in Your eyes’ (Tehillim 90:4). Indeed, a thousand years is the exile written in the Zohar. A thousand years is the exile. He thought it is more than a thousand years. Either this is another Torah, another Judaism, or there must be redemption. There are not more than a thousand levels in the Shechina. It cannot be.

The Infinite Levels of Descent

But we know that the exile still continues in a certain way. And this means that all of them, not even one of them understood how deep and far the matter descends, how many levels there are in the Shechina, what is the measure of its stature — meaning the measure of the stature of the Creator of the world, how many levels there are in the Shechina — ‘she has fallen, she will not rise again, the virgin of Israel’ (Amos 5:2). She will fall, and when she falls completely, she will not rise again, so the Ramak explains in the Gemara, when the Shechina falls, that there will no longer be where to fall in the last levels, when she stands on the letter tav — then will come “the virgin of Israel”.

The problem is that it was revealed that there are still levels at the end, and who knows how many more there are. The Shechina can fall much, much more, one can descend much more. Do you think to be an idolater of the generation is a problem? I will show you what it means to be an atheist. Do you think to be an atheist is a problem? I will show you what it means to be a Litvak. I mean to say, a certain Jew who can be completely dry, but still he is some remnant of a Jew. One can still much, much, as they say, this is the mistake that everyone knows about, there is a mistake, all the tzaddikim erred in the end, “I troubled myself to calculate and erred”, for they could not understand how deep, how many levels there are still in the Shechina, that there is still in them a certain life. And this is what informs us, that there is still that certain life, for if there were not, the matter would have to end, or the redemption would have occurred.

The Remedy — Small Ends

The mekubalim come and say, it cannot continue thus. It cannot be, true, it continues, but it truly cannot continue thus. And it may be, I truly think, that this is another Chassidic interpretation of the end, that they say that every end truly was a certain awakening, truly did something, but not actually, not in the sense, not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense, the opposite, all kinds of excuses. But in other words, the tikkun of the world that they speak about, the dwelling of the Shechina that they speak about, it is clear that it is not one thing, but a thousand parts. One can fix one part and another part will remain, and vice versa, and there is no problem with this.

And in a certain true way — and this the Zohar also explains and in the Ramak at length — what was destroyed in the Beit HaMikdash does not necessarily mean that everything ended. Indeed this is a fall, and a certain measure that one can see, one can ask the experts and they will see how much impression still remains, how many sefichim still grew in the time of the Baalei HaTosafot, and in the time of the Rama they no longer grow, already much weaker. But for this there is a remedy. The Holy One Blessed be He made for Himself a remedy, or brought a remedy. There are remedies for this. In other words, there are small ends. In what that person understood that the world cannot continue further, lies that truly in that period a new prophet came. But they do not call him a prophet, they call him ruach hakodesh, a master of a level, a master of comprehension, an innovator of Torah innovations, a rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov, Zohar, Arizal, whoever it may be, each one in his generation, a new way, for all the ways are always lacking, for all of them are still not the completeness of yichud, all of them add a bit more and a bit more.

Somech Hashem L’chol HaNoflim (Hashem Supports All Who Fall)

And with all this, it is proper that the Ramak, that is Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, calls this samach, ‘somech Hashem l’chol hanoflim’ (Hashem supports all who fall) (Tehillim 145:14). And she falls and in the future will rise, when she falls completely, He will raise her. But even at the time she is falling, a verse is said, the Gemara says, and nevertheless David returned and rejoiced in ruach hakodesh, as it is said, as is written in the letter samech of Ashrei, somech Hashem l’chol hanoflim. The Holy One Blessed be He supports. Somech does not mean that He makes it so she will not fall. When she is not falling, this is not somech Hashem l’chol noflim, but rather raises the fallen. This is the raising of the virgin of Israel. But somech Hashem l’chol noflim means that she is truly falling, that she is in free fall. But somech Hashem, the Holy One Blessed be He supports a support. And the Zohar calls this se’ad or samach. And the language of se’ad, I think it is from the language of “kisei David l’sa’ado”, to support, like placing a hand underneath, like — I do not remember who said about the State, a cushion for Israel in exile. To place a hand underneath, to place a support for the Shechina.

The Support — Renewal Within the Previous Light

And the support is always renewal within the previous light. This is not new light, this is not completely new light, but rather commentary on previous Torah. But many times it is so great that it is a new yichud. One can say that according to this measure, indeed it is redemption, according to this measure indeed it is new light. And as we spoke the previous time, that then they specifically begin to cry over what is lacking, for then they return — that we said that by the rivers of Babylon they still remembered. Now they no longer remember, but when they are reminded, for the Holy One Blessed be He sent se’ad and samach, one can cry over the last exile, and this does something additional.

The Way of Kabbalah — Raising the Yichud

And this is the way of Kabbalah. The Ramak said many times that the entire intention of the Zohar, and the intention of what the Zohar was revealed in the later generations specifically, is built to do, to raise that yichud, not the true yichud — that therefore it is said that it will bring — ‘with this composition of yours they will go out from exile’ (Zohar), if it succeeds. And if not, a second se’ad will come later, which already came. I mean, since then already two-three more have passed, the wheel has already turned two-three more times, and there are new things, and this is not correct, one should not hold specifically to what they were. But still we live very strongly from the Zohar, from the yichud, from the se’ad and samach that they made, that the Zohar made, and that the later mekubalim made.

And they built a kind of Shechina, a kind of Mishkan, a kind of Mikdash, through the crying, through “they made the bed like all who recline at night”. And the crying makes it so we can live further, so we can continue to live.

The Great Question — The Emphasis on Mitzvot of Holiness

Now I wish to explain on what the foundation is based, and it is very similar indeed to what I said, that the Beit HaMikdash is itself a tikkun for the problem of exile, for Adam HaRishon did not need a Mikdash at all. And with this we will resolve a great question that people have about the mekubalim, and I think here lies the secret of the answer.

The question is thus: One who learns Kabbalah sees an enormous emphasis, an emphasis renewed in a way that there was nothing like it. One can learn earlier books and not find this emphasis in this way, on what one can call mitzvot of holiness, or what they called in foreign language ritual mitzvot. Meaning, one who learns in earlier books sees that there are mitzvot between man and God and mitzvot between man and his fellow. But even when they speak about between man and God — there is Torah, service, acts of kindness — even when they speak about things that are between man and God, generally the one who knows knows, that there is almost not even one book from the Rishonim, and perhaps even from the Midrashim, that is like a book about the holiness of Shabbat, or about the holiness of the festivals, or even about the importance of eating kosher. It too is indeed holiness, he says.

One sees that there is exactly the same emphasis on, let us say, the topic of good character traits, on the topic of fixing society, and even when they speak about between man and God, they speak about certain understandings that a person will understand the Holy One Blessed be He, or about things that are like the perfection of man that he does not have other people, separation, devekut, such matters. But one does not see, for example, that an entire book will be dedicated to kavana, to the secret of the mitzva of tefillin, to the laying of tefillin as something that sanctifies the person, that brings the person close to divinity, that brings divinity into the world. One does not see in the books before the Zohar, and in later Kabbalah even more, but one does not see this emphasis at all.

On Three Things the World Stands

And there is here a correct claim, and the Mishna says ‘on three things the world stands’ (Avot 1:2): service, which is the service of the Mikdash, or let us say in this time when we do not have a Mikdash, we have prayers in its place, we have that type of mitzvot, practical mitzvot, mitzvot of service of Hashem. Indeed this is only a third, but Torah and service are two other things. Torah means learning Torah, it does not mean learning Torah with devekut. The pillar of service. Acts of kindness does not mean to do acts of kindness with the kavanot of the Arizal. There are no kavanot of the Arizal at all on acts of kindness. Indeed, one can see which mitzva there are almost no kavanot of the Arizal on — there are none. For one gives tzedaka. Indeed there is a kavana on tzedaka, but this is because the tzedaka given as a ritual, like “baruch David”, but what one gives tzedaka, what one gives money to Jews, this is not a way of being a mekubal. This is not Chassidic service. Chassidim indeed do these services, but these are not services that they present as Kabbalistic services. Simply, one must also be a person.

The Question — From When Is This the Most Important Thing?

And people can even ask, when they ask such a question, that in Kabbalah they say that all the mitzvot that one must do are in order to fix the tikkunim in the upper worlds. And the meaning of the matter, in order to build the Mishkan, to build the Shechina. This is the meaning of upper worlds. The Shechina in the world must be built, but there is a structure, as they speak about the entire order of hishtalshelut, one must build it, so that there can be “a house I have formed”, “the house destined to be built”, that there can be in this world.

And people ask, from when is this the most important thing? Why has this become such a great emphasis? For in the prophets it is said many times — what, the Beit HaMikdash? People rely too much on the Beit HaMikdash. The main thing is to be a person, the main thing is ‘to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God’ (Micha 6:8). The main thing is not all these, the main thing is not the service of Hashem. The main thing is the perfection of the world, and indeed grasping Hashem is part of it, but not the ritual mitzvot, the mitzvot that we call mitzvot of service. This is not the emphasis.

And one sees apparently that our rabbi says explicitly the opposite. One who learns Kabbalah, who walks among Chassidic Jews — and I think that all Jews today are Chassidic in this way — sees that the main emphasis is on the mitzvot specifically. This is the life. When they speak about Shabbat, about Yom Tov, about tefillin, about tzitzit, about prayers, about singing songs and praises, all kinds of such things that belong as it were to the pillar of service, to what they did in the Beit HaMikdash in doing such things.

What happened to the other pillars? No one denies, God forbid, that there are other pillars, but what happened that this became like the central view of what Judaism means?

The Answer — A New Way to Build the Beit HaMikdash

And the answer is that this is a new way to build the Beit HaMikdash. Meaning, until now, if there was Gan Eden, or even another world, where the entire world in its very essence is a place of holiness — the weekdays no one ever thought are not part of Shabbat. There is ‘six days you shall work… and the seventh day you shall rest’ (Shemot 20:9-10), this is a cycle, everything is part of the same cycle. What one works on weekdays is not separate from Shabbat. But this is as long as one understands that there is an angel of the first day and an angel of the second day, and from Shabbat it is the Holy One Blessed be He Himself. But what happens when a person no longer believes in that angel of the first day and that angel of the second day? One can barely convince him to remain believing in the Holy One Blessed be He of Shabbat. But rather the entire world becomes a place of chol, much more than it once was.

If so, what does one do? One does as the Holy One Blessed be He said, make Me a Mikdash. At least one place will be made that is full of holiness, that is full of angels, sefirot, names, devekut, all kinds of shades of devekut, not just one simple thing, with all kinds of images from it. Like the world, that the world is full of all kinds of things, ‘blessed is the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever’, ‘Your kingdom is a kingdom of all worlds’ (Tehillim 145:13), all those worlds.

Bringing in All the Parts Through Mitzvot of Holiness

And the truth is that when one does thus, one brings into it even all the other parts of the world. Meaning, instead of saying that there is Torah, service, acts of kindness, they say indeed, that one who lays tefillin will be awakened in him to love another Jew, for tefillin teach about ‘who is like Your people Israel, one nation’ (Divrei HaYamim I 17:21), the tefillin of the Holy One Blessed be He, and he will remember the tefillin of the Holy One Blessed be He, and this remembrance to love another Jew. Or that he will come to the Rebbe on Shabbat, which is as it were a small Mikdash, and there he meets with additional people, and thereby love of Israel is made and so forth, and other ways.

But then they learn Torah so that there will be devekut. Why was it bad to learn Torah in order to learn Torah? So they once did. But the matter lost its value, for once, one who learned Gemara of the Rishonim — I do not believe that even one of them learned Torah with devekut as the Chassidic books demand — but they did not learn separately from devekut, for they lived and the entire world was in their eyes the garden of Hashem, Gan Eden, at a certain level, not at that level that was with Adam HaRishon or even in the time of the Temple, but enough that it could continue in this way.

But afterwards such a thing was made, that if they will learn Torah and they tell him what they demand — Chassidic talks discuss this thus explicitly, and you grasp that this is a new problem — if they say that they learn Torah in order to understand the wisdom of creation, in order to understand the world, in order to understand what is the halacha that one must do, the person will say, this is secular learning, this one can learn in the academy. And it is said that to learn science is a thing of chol. And who put this into the heart? Ah, the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash put this in. The destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, which took out the Shechina from the entire world, which did not leave even in the Beit HaMikdash, put into the heart that the world is empty.

If Everything Is So, Then Everything Is Also Not

Do you want to return a bit, you must build anew somewhat the Beit HaMikdash. If you wish to say melo chol ha’aretz kevodo — behold, again, if you say it in a simple way, everything, automatically everything is the same thing, automatically everything is nothing. If everything is so, then everything is also not. If every day is holy, then every day is not holy. There is no difference. For one must first understand what holiness is.

For automatically, says the mekubal, do you know what? We will build anew the Beit HaMikdash. True that there is no Beit HaMikdash, but it is indeed permitted, in a small aspect, in the aspect of Ze’ir Anpin, the small Mikdash, and one can build anew the Beit HaMikdash. They do not have the Beit HaMikdash. So they expand, they find in every point where there is a mitzva of holiness — laying tefillin, wearing tzitzit, keeping Shabbat — that all of them are mitzvot of holiness, not mitzvot of fixing the world. Mitzvot of bringing down the Shechina to the world, or of bringing the Shechina into them. And they put as many forces as possible to expand in the mitzvot, meaning to add to them interpretations, kavanot, orders, customs, to add decorations, like customs that are around the mitzvot. And thereby there will be a world that is a bit the world again, and everything is a bit standing on one. By emphasizing the mitzva of holiness, they return a world that is full of holiness.

When Can One Say the Sermon of Yeshayahu

And even though originally one did not need to emphasize this — originally it was the opposite, in a world where everyone understands in it that the entire world is full of holiness, one can enjoy and say, indeed, but do not think that this is enough, do not think that going to the Beit HaMikdash is enough. One must also do the between man and his fellow, one must also do as Yeshayahu HaNavi says, that a person will find a poor person and give him to eat, and so forth. But this works only when you still believe in the Beit HaMikdash. Yeshayahu HaNavi did not say not to believe in holiness, he said to know what holiness demands from you in practice, how to bring it even in between man and his fellow, all those things.

But if one lives in a world that is after the destruction, then one cannot say the sermon. They then say the sermon in reverse, meaning, they try to bring everything into the holiness, and thereby return the world. This is the secret of the Shechina, that thereby they return the Shechina to the world, and then one can already say the sermon again, then one can already say again even the sermon of Yeshayahu HaNavi. But one can say the sermon of Yeshayahu HaNavi only to a mekubal. One who believes originally that the entire world is flat, that everything is the same thing, what does he say in the sermon? Atheism. He says, ah, there is no world, there is only that one should be a good person, in any case. And why should one be a good person, by the way? I do not know, it is pleasant, it is not clear why.

Summary — The Secret of Supporting the Shechina Through Kabbalah

But the advice, the way of Kabbalah to build the Beit HaMikdash, is the way of all those ways, the way of emphasizing all those mitzvot of holiness, and thereby to continue into them all the other types of levels, all the other types of values, all the other types of good character traits, all the other types of virtues that there are in the world, that there are in Torah. And this is my explanation of the secret of supporting the Shechina through Kabbalah.

The Secret of the Exile of the Shechina — How the Shechina Meets a Companion in the Forest

Introduction: From Holiness and the Temple to the Secret of Exile

Here we stand now on the eve of Shabbos Parshas Devarim, Shabbos Chazon, the year 5786, and in this shiur we will come to discuss the secret of the days of Bein HaMetzarim. In the two weeks that have passed, we already engaged in the secret of holiness, the secret of Jerusalem and the Temple, and how we bring this into practice in our service — in deed and in speech — as the Mekubalim expounded and established the various ways of building the Beis HaMikdash: building the Beis HaMikdash in the heart, and also building the Beis HaMikdash in deed, both in the deeds of the mikdash me’at and in the deeds of the great Temple that we hope to build. All this through all the takanos they established, and all they did to bring holiness into the world, through contemplating what holiness is and how it is proper to conduct it (as we explained in the two previous shiurim about holiness and the Temple, and this is not the place for it).

In this shiur I wish to continue the explanation of the secret of exile, which is the deeper secret, the inner level that comes afterward.

The Foundation of Kabbalah: The Shechina and Its Levels

The foundation of Kabbalah is that there is something called Shechina, and the Shechina is that thing which was present in the Beis HaMikdash, present in Jerusalem and in Eretz Yisrael in the time of holiness, in the time of redemption and in the time of building. And meanwhile there are times of non-building, times of all types of non-building, and in practice there are different times of descent. Therefore a person must know how to understand and how to feel the state of the Shechina, the state of holiness in truth, in those times.

As they learned from the Ramak, that the secret of the end, the secret of knowing the end, the secret of knowing the end of exile, depends on knowing all the levels of the Shechina — those levels which ‘our fathers did not fathom,’ the early tzaddikim. The Jews who were in the time of the Churban, the Jews who were in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim, certainly could not picture in their souls how many levels still exist in the Shechina, how much further it could still descend, as it were.

But the truth is, as we explained, that the fall does not mean only a fall, descent after descent. On the contrary, the very ability to fall means that it is possible to remain, for if it had fallen completely — everything would already be lost. The thing fell, but was not lost. And if it fell and was not lost, then the meaning of the matter is that there are still very many levels of understanding, very many levels of grasping Divinity, of the dwelling of the Shechina, which we have not yet stood upon.

This is a fundamental and very important principle in Kabbalah, and I wish to explain it. We will begin thus: It is known ‘in the way of service.’ The words ‘in the way of service’ everyone knows, but one must incline one’s ear well, for it seems that people are accustomed to say this as words of encouragement, and indeed it is a fine thing to improve a person’s feeling, but it is true, and there is depth in it, and this depth depends on the depth of all the understanding that Kabbalah comes to tell about the secret of the exile of the Shechina.

The Zohar in Parshas Acharei Mos: Weeping and Joy

And behold, as we once learned the words of the Zohar in Parshas Acharei Mos, which are brought in Tanya, Rabbi Shimon explains there the secret, the great secret, the tremendous secret of the separation of the Shechina from her husband — that the letter hei of the Name departed from the letter vav, and this is the secret of the Shechina, the secret of the exile of the Shechina.

And it is said there, ‘Rabbi Shimon wept, Rabbi Elazar wept,’ they wept over what they understood. Rabbi Elazar said, “Weeping is lodged in my heart from one side, and joy on the other side” (Zohar Parshas Acharei Mos) — great weeping is placed in my heart on one side, and on the other hand, great joy I feel.

For tremendous joy is placed in this: I am grasping something new, a new illumination, a new flash, that there is such a thing, that there is such a type of dwelling of the Shechina, that there is such a union of the Holy One Blessed Be He, such a separation, that there is such a fall and still not everything is lost. They did not know at all that there could be such a fall, that one could distance oneself so much and not lose. A new place is created here, a new grasp, this is a chiddush.

Let us say this simply: This is a chiddush. And a chiddush is a joyful thing, and especially if the chiddush is not just any chiddush, but a chiddush that has love in it, a chiddush that has pleasure in it that tells how — one can call it “In all their troubles, He was troubled” (Yeshayahu 63:9) — that every time there is a new trouble, there is a new place where the Shechina is placed, there is a new revelation that the Shechina has a new garment, a new position, a new kind of way in which it is possible to see her. In such a grasp lies a great chiddush.

The Chiddush: That the Lowly Person Overturns the World

When a person contemplates the matter, one can say it thus: When one learns Kabbalah and sees what great damage is caused by the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, the destruction that is in every sin, the destruction that is in every degradation, one learns that it overturns all the worlds, overturns all the channels, and you say, “Woe, my small and foolish transgression overturns all the worlds.” Therefore Rabbi Nachman said that one must also believe about mitzvos, “If you believe that you can damage, believe that you can repair” (Likutei Moharan) — one must believe this also about mitzvos.

But a tremendous chiddush is placed here, that the lowly person overturns the world. And about this — this is the thing that the Ramak already said, and the Arizal emphasizes in his teachings as Rabbi Chaim Vital brings — and all of them said such a thing, after they struggled a bit: Is it possible that we who live here at the end of days, and we do mitzvos, do yichudim, cleave, we have ruach hakodesh, and the Holy One Blessed Be He loves us? How is this possible? We would understand that some Tanna, some Jew, prophet, one of the prophets of those generations, Moshe Rabbeinu, Aharon HaKohen — had such a thing. But how does it reach us? How does such a thing reach us?

The Parable of the Ramak and the Arizal: The King on the Roads

And the Ramak said — I bring this from the ‘Reishis Chochma’ in the name of the Ramak, and the Arizal explained, as Rabbi Chaim Vital brings, the same exact thing — that there is a parable in this, and thus he said: A parable of a king who found himself on the roads. This is the parable that the Chassidic sefarim say about the preciousness of the days of Bein HaMetzarim. But this is a parable, and it is a very fundamental thing. I think that this is not only encouragement about the end of days or about Bein HaMetzarim, but a parable about — essentially this is the foundation of all Kabbalah, the foundation of reality, for the reality of the world is this.

The King Who Was Lost on His Way

He says a parable: A king who traveled on a road and was lost on it, he did not have with him his important garments, his important vessels with which he usually conducts himself, for he is a king, and in the royal palace he walks with royal vessels, with royal garments, with royal garb, with servants, and everything in the best way possible, the greatest thing that can be.

And behold he is on the road, and there is someone who has mercy on him, and that person barely knows what a king means, but he sees in him some important person, something refined, something that is not like other people, and gives him a bit of honor, gives him meager bread and scant water, dry bread and peace with it.

And the king feels such affection, such love, for that Jew, for that servant, for the one who helps him in his time of trouble, in the time when he is not a king, in the time when he is not in his kingdom. To such an extent that it seems he is more grateful to him, for when he is in the king’s palace, when he is in his place, it is not such great wisdom that they honor him. Here, this one truly honors him, gives him to eat a piece of bread, a bit of food, a cup of tea in the forest, at night, when it is dark and gloomy and cold, and gives him to eat there — there is such affection in this.

The Shechina Alone After the Tzimtzum

And the Ramak said that one must incline one’s ear and understand, that at this time — as the Shechina said to Rabbi Yosef Karo, to the Beis Yosef, on the night of Shavuos, which is one of the powerful times of the night of Shavuos — one must know that the Shechina is in a state where she has no companions, alone and truly alone. So it was then, and perhaps it was always so, but since the first tzimtzum, since ‘a moment for the moon,’ since the breaking of the vessels, since the creation of the world, she is very much alone, she is not in her place.

That is, what was supposedly her place — then that is indeed her place, but what should have been her place, what would have been fitting for the Malchus Shamayim to be in the king’s palace, in all the glory and splendor, “Strength and gladness are in His place, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary” (Divrei HaYamim I 16:27) — that would have been fitting. But when she is not found in her place, when she is present in a foreign place, in a place of exile, there is additional love, additional affection, additional excitement, much greater excitement in the fact that she finds a companion, finds a companion in the forest, the Shechina finds companions, Jews. Now we must understand; let us delve a bit into the matter.

A Small Thing in This Time Is Important Like a Great Thing

This is what they said, and from here they said, and thus it is brought in the language of the Arizal, which all the later authorities bring, “A small thing in this time is important like a great thing”. And we think that this is a kind of encouragement: Ah, you are such a weak Jew, you already know that there are no expectations from you, nothing can be demanded of you. You put on tefillin once in a while, it’s nothing really, and they give you a pat on the shoulder, “Woe, you put on tefillin.”

No and no, on the contrary. Incline your ear to what he is saying here. That is not what he is saying. What he is saying is that the Shechina is in a weak state, not that you are in a weak state. The Shechina is in a weak state. You are helping the Shechina in her weak state. Not that you are helping her because you are such a weak generation, and therefore the thing is so difficult, that there is such a great yetzer hara, that there are such trials — let’s say even if there are greater trials today — for everything is according to the suffering, so is the reward.

It is not according to the suffering, the reward, but according to the suffering of the Shechina, the reward. A completely new feeling is this. According to the poverty of the Shechina, that when the Shechina has her friends coming to her, when there are groomsmen and companions with her, and when there is a complete state, and His kingdom is complete, and there is a complete tzaddik in his time, and everything is running, and everything is present — then ah, no… the Shechina does not love us so much, it is not such great love. One must toil hard to merit the elevation of ruach hakodesh, one must toil hard to merit devekus, one must toil hard to merit excitement, connection of such a kind, a bond of such a kind.

But at a time, in a place, in a state where the Shechina is in a weak state — and we must speak for a moment about what it means that the Shechina is in a weak state, how is this possible — the king is in a weak state. And that Jew who does not have great understanding of the king, he is not a minister among the ministers in the kingdom, he is not a minister in the king’s house, but a simple person, but he sees that mercy worked in him. Yes, there is no need even for great comprehension.

Rabbi Nachman and the Baal HaTanya: Mercy on the Shechina

And the Baal HaTanya said to him, in his way, a long discourse in Chassidus, in Kabbalah, in deep matters. And Rabbi Nachman came out and said — one must incline one’s ear, this is a delicate matter, and there is a bit of criticism in it — he said that one thing, after he heard all the talk, all the Chassidus, one thing hit the truth. The Baal HaTanya explained “Your mercies are many, Hashem” (Tehillim 119:156) — there is already great mercy on You, Hashem. About this explanation he said that it hit the truth.

In other words, Rabbi Nachman is criticizing a bit here. He says: The Baal HaTanya is not a bit in reality. The Baal HaTanya says deep teachings, Chassidus, Atik and Arich and Yechida Ila’a and Yechida Tata’a, and speaks as if there are great comprehensions, there are great Divine comprehensions, from which — this is reality, this is what he seeks to bring into the world. Rabbi Nachman says: You need to hear the true state of the Shechina. Perhaps you don’t know, perhaps you are a Rebbe, sitting in your house and saying Chassidus. The true state of the Shechina is that there is great mercy on the Holy One Blessed Be He, there is great mercy on the Shechina. Not mercy on us, mercy on the Shechina. Understand, the spark of the Shechina within us — the mercy is on the Shechina. We are not the whole matter. The mercy is on the Shechina in the world in which we are.

The Excitement of the Shechina and the Jew

And now you say that certainly, when a Jew comes and learns a bit of Chassidus, and in a state of mercy on the Shechina, the Shechina is terribly excited. Not you are excited, no — nebech, there is nothing to expect from you. The Shechina is excited. And the Jew is also excited, certainly, when the Jew sees the great excitement of the Shechina, that behold, she found some companion in an unsown land, in a distant place, somewhere ‘He raises the poor from the dust,’ he is filled with desire, and feels tremendous love.

Certainly, he weeps with the Shechina, he cannot say that this is not a time of joy, that this is not a state of completeness — it is a state of deficiency, but he says: Woe, Jews have met, and I have mercy on the Shechina, and the Shechina has mercy on me. And a kind of bond emerges, from the bond that Jews know, a bond that people create in times of trouble, in times of sorrow, in times of tragedy, which can often be a much greater bond than the bond in times of joy. But in times of joy one needs much, one needs to do something, one needs to be something, so that the other…

But this, two Jews met, they met in a place of trouble, and helped each other a bit. Not much, it’s not possible to do much, there is no ability. Both of us are in the same sorrow, both of us in the same mud, both of us in the same garbage. They helped each other a bit, and such a union is created that is not created in the time of the terrible joy, where perhaps with great effort and great difficulty, it is very hard to find such a union.

The Beis Yosef and the Shechina in Exile

And about this they say, as we learned, that the Shechina herself said to the Beis Yosef that they should incline their ear and appreciate the chiddush, the excitement that the Shechina has when there is a Jew, and there are not so many Jews in the world, and there are not so many people in the world who remember the Shechina. And she finds a few Jews gathering together on the night of Shavuos, or on this night, or on this day, or in this afternoon, or at shalosh seudos, or on Friday night, or at melaveh malka, and they speak words of mercy, words of affection, words of love to the Shechina, words of longing, words of awakening.

He says tikkun chatzos, or a niggun that he sings, “Have mercy in Your kindness on Your people”. He remembers some spark, he has a bit of mercy, a bit of caring, a bit of empathy. To the spark, to the Shechina in exile, a connection is created there that did not exist. In other words, a new yichud is created there, a new drawing down of a new secret is created, a new drawing down of ruach hakodesh is created.

It Is Easier in Exile: The Parable of the Convert

Therefore the Maggid of Mezeritch said, and so said the Arizal and the Ramak, all of them said thus, that a person should not think that it is more difficult. That is, when they say that this is a greater level, the intention is not that one must believe that the thing is more difficult. A person should not think that it is more difficult to find Hashem, to find ruach hakodesh, to find everything that a Jew needs, all the supernal comprehensions that a Jew needs, that it is more difficult in this time because the world is a world that… No, it is easier. For you do not need to do anything.

In other words, let us say a simple thing: A convert who comes to convert in this time, they say to him, “Don’t you know that Israel is afflicted and downtrodden?” (Yevamos 47), and he says, “Despite this,” they accept him immediately. In the time of Shlomo HaMelech, in the time when the Jews are successful, “We do not accept converts in the days of Mashiach” — such language was said, we do not accept converts, for then, if a convert comes, perhaps they accept him, and there is a Rambam in this, and deep matters of ‘a prince and most of his people,’ but it is not wisdom. Now you come because the Jews are successful, certainly you will become a convert, certainly you need to prove him much more. The convert who comes in a time of tranquility needs to prove much more that he means it seriously, needs to prove much more that he truly desires Judaism, that he truly desires love of Hashem. Perhaps he is just seeking the money, perhaps for those reasons that Jews were once destroyed to make money, and now he is a Jew from love and fear, from compulsion, because he wants to be among the successful.

Incidentally, perhaps this is our desire, we hope that it will be a great elevation of the Shechina when such a state is fulfilled. But meanwhile, as long as it is not so, it is not great wisdom. A convert who comes to convert — they say to him: Do not delude yourself, yes, you agree, this is what you desire, you know that you mean it seriously.

In the same way, when the reality of the world is such, that one does not receive much honor for doing for the Shechina, for loving the Shechina, for having mercy that the Shechina does not receive — and this is what I wish to clarify here more. Now we will clarify more: I say, we need to explain what is the meaning of the descent of the Shechina.

And everyone understands: What does this have to do with me? There is a question to ask. And from here, I think that there are people who do not receive ruach hakodesh from this. Even though the Maggid of Mezeritch said that he thinks — and about this is the verse of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, “The glory will arrive in Bein HaMetzarim”, that one must speak about this, and I hope with Hashem’s help that we will reach this, but first one must enter a bit into the matter so that they will see it as it is.

And the Maggid of Mezeritch said that it is easier to receive ruach hakodesh in exile than in Eretz Yisrael, than in the time when the Shechina is in her place, for the same reasons. And perhaps people will say that they do not see that he receives ruach hakodesh. Perhaps so, that he will indeed receive ruach hakodesh. Perhaps there are people who say that he does not see. Let us say that the answer is: Because you do not grasp what is being discussed. You do not grasp at all what is being discussed.

What Is the Descent of the Shechina?

What is the descent of the Shechina? You say that a person sits in his beis midrash, closed within himself, sits in his corner, and he has his four amos of halacha, his four amos of tefillah, he settles and knows nothing, separated from the world, withdrawn and separated and isolated. And still he speaks about the weak generation. There is no weak generation in your room, this is not a weak generation. On the contrary, he specifically must prove something. When sitting in yeshiva, sitting in the beis midrash, and there supposedly everyone wants to be worthy and wants to be good, and wants to be more of a talmid chacham, and more of a chassid, and more of a servant, and whatever it may be — this does not say anything that you are there, that you pray there well. This does not say anything in truth, one does not receive anything for this.

That is, what works? It will not be anything, one must toil much, one must innovate a complete chiddush, so that it will be considered something. But just like this it is not considered anything. In Avraham’s generation, this is not considered anything. But who told him that he should delude himself that this is Avraham’s generation?

Two Ways: External and Internal

First of all, there are two ways: in the way of externality and in the way of expanding the world, which I don’t know if to call it externality, and in the way of internality. One thing is, that one who desires to know the state of the Shechina must look at the newspaper, he desires to know the reality of the world. And one must know that — yes, this is the first derasha that I say every year, in honor of Tisha B’Av — that they sit in yeshiva, and ‘for the rest and the inheritance,’ and there is no lack.

One Who Does Not Weep Over the Exile of the Shechina Is Constricting

And they speak that this is Avraham’s generation. That they sit in yeshiva, and ‘for the rest and the inheritance,’ and there is no lack of anything, they never lacked all year the ‘radish and lettuce.’ Every shalosh seudos had salted fish and stuffed fish, for there are Jews who are particular about this, and there are Jews who are particular about this. And in that beis midrash sit Jews and say: Well, we do not feel the pain of the Shechina, it is not for our level. Perhaps once there were Jews who wept on Tisha B’Av, who were pained about the Shechina, and are distressed, and say such derashos.

Why should they weep on Tisha B’Av? And you, do you grasp, do you live either in the world of imagination or in the world of redemption, only a problem — with you Mashiach himself almost did not come, you are satisfied, and one must indeed be grateful, if things are going well, one must be grateful, this is not acceptable. But one must be a bit blind, one must be a great constrictor.

In short, one who does not weep over the exile of the Shechina, over the exile of the generation, over the exile of the descent of the Shechina, he is constricting. And afterward he says teachings, and still thinks that he is a yerei shamayim, that he is a tzaddik, that he strengthened himself when he found some awakening, that he was inspired by some Chassidic sefer, that he found some awakening — how can he weep on Tisha B’Av, after all?

What is being discussed is: Do not be in constriction, open your eyes a bit, look around you at the world, and you will see that the world, as it is, you can see the good life lived in it, you can see that there are good parts, there are good parts in a wondrous way, these are not just good parts. There are things in which we live in a kind of abundance, in a kind of illumination, which are certainly the reward, we almost already live in the World to Come, in the days of Mashiach. But there are things, and certainly when thinking spiritually — and by spiritually I mean the level of humanity, wisdom, culture — which is deep deep in the ground.

The Shame to Be a Companion of the Shechina

And if a person has a feeling for the thing called Shechina — most people do not have such a feeling, most people do not have a feeling for the thing we are saying, that it should be a natural thing to say ‘Baruch Atah Hashem,’ that it should be a natural thing, that there should be feeling in it. And he sees that this is not acceptable. Even in the beis midrash this is not acceptable. It is acceptable only as long as it is written in Shulchan Aruch that one must pray, then they pray. But to say, to speak to the Holy One Blessed Be He, or to speak from the Holy One Blessed Be He, or to speak of the angels, to speak of the Shechina — yes, you are a mekubal, you are some servant, ah, I hear — this is not acceptable. This is a kind of exile, this is a kind of concealment, this is a kind of lowliness, a kind of distress.

And it is a shame, to this very day a shame. Shame in the street, and shame at home, and shame in the beis midrash. It is a shame, a person must be ashamed. It is said in the saying of ‘Chai’ of Purim, “All who hope in You shall not be ashamed”. The meaning of the matter is, in this time ‘as you hope, you will be ashamed’ — one who yearns for the Holy One Blessed Be He, is ashamed.

If I approach a friend and say to him, I wish to do this thing, it seems to me that this is a way to draw close to the Shechina, to feel the dwelling of the Shechina in the world, the spirit of the Shechina, “The spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters” (Bereishis 1:2) — he says to me, yes, they will look at your face, or he says to me, you will not make shidduchim. He says, what does it mean you will not make shidduchim? Do you believe that you will not make shidduchim? Do you believe that the Shechina does not have enough shidduchim for everyone? That the Shechina does not have enough institutions for everyone? That you will not have institutions?

This is the meaning of the exile of the Shechina, and one must also justify oneself and find. Incidentally, permitted, forbidden, there are all kinds of halachos and ‘separating from the community.’ I do not understand, after all we are speaking about love of the Shechina. How can there even be such a question? What has become of us? Ah, we are in exile, we do not live in a world where the Shechina means something.

We live with those who have basic faith, simple faith. He says, I wish to do the good thing, I think I will succeed, I want to move to the Shechina. If someone will write a piyut from love of the Shechina, in which yeshiva will they look at it as an important thing? In none that I know, or almost none. This is the exile of the Shechina, the Shechina has no place. One who holds himself a companion of the Shechina — he must be silent, he must hide, he must hide exactly like a Marrano, he must hide in the Shabbos candles. One who truly loves — in Vizhnitz they are enthusiastic about ‘Melech Dodi,’ no. One who would write ‘Melech Dodi’ himself, and makes a new ‘Lecha Dodi’ in English, because his head runs in English, and his heart runs in English, and he sings it for the bride.

The True Level of the Shechina Means Completeness

And we clarified that it is not enough to say that this is a parable with a nimshal, or that this is the same thing of “As it is above so it is below”, that just as there are different attributes in a person so too in the Holy One Blessed Be He, or the deeper things that the Mekubalim say, that when a person conducts himself with the attribute of chesed he awakens the attribute of chesed in the Holy One Blessed Be He.

The truth of the level of the Shechina means the level of union, the level of completeness of the person. Let us speak about one person: his level of completeness, how complete he is, how wise he is, how good he is, how righteous he is, how successful he is, all those things — this is called the level of the Shechina.

And the descent of the Shechina means, in other words, sins. Ways and stories, situations in which there is no completeness, no wisdom, no Torah, no mitzvos, no fear of Heaven, no abstinence, no holiness, no purity, no thing. This is the meaning of the matter: no scholarship, no analysis, no expertise, no thing. This is the meaning of the descent of the Shechina. True, this is the meaning of the matter.

When a person is doing well, when he personally is doing well, he can desire Shechina. But the descent of the Shechina, its meaning is the places where the Shechina has no place to come — in truth, supposedly, for the Shechina means that there must be completeness, the Shechina should not be broken, there should be completeness and joy and light. This is the greatness of the Shechina. And the descent of the Shechina is when there is not, when there is what we call the spiritual state. Or in other words, when the completeness is not truly completeness. The person is truly in a lowly state, truly broken. He would want to learn, and does not learn; he would want to make money, and does not make money; he would want to be a better father, and is not a better father. All those things. In such a state, in truth it is not possible, there is much less dwelling of the Shechina, it is barely possible to find the Shechina there.

The Shechina Finds a Companion in a Place of Spiritual Descent

And just as we understand that when outside, when other people have no honor, no appreciation for the value of the Shechina, and there is one who appreciates, he is special, he deserves a pat on the shoulder — so too when he himself does not appreciate the value of the Shechina. In other words, he is in a state of lowliness, which is not a state of completeness, upon which the union cannot truly dwell except in a state of completeness. He is in a state of brokenness, in a state of sin, in a state of failure — and then he remembers the love of the Shechina.

Ah, the same thing. The Shechina says to him: “Ah, I found a companion in a place of spiritual descent, in a place that is truly descent. Not physical descent, for all physical descent does not truly prevent the Shechina. In the place that truly prevents the Shechina, which is truly the opposite of the Shechina, which is truly bad in a certain way.” And there the person remembers: Yes, true, I am not a great diligent one, I am not a great talmid chacham

The Shechina Finds a Companion in a Place of Spiritual Descent (continued)

And just as we understand that when outside, when other people have no honor, no appreciation for the value of the Shechina, and there is one who appreciates, he is special, he deserves a pat on the shoulder — so too when he himself does not appreciate the value of the Shechina. In other words, he is in a state of lowliness, which is not a state of completeness, upon which the union cannot truly dwell except in a state of completeness. He is in a state of brokenness, in a state of sin, in a state of failure — and then he remembers the love of the Shechina.

Ah, the same thing. The Shechina says to him: “Ah, I found a companion in a place of spiritual descent, in a place that is truly descent. Not physical descent, for all physical descent does not truly prevent the Shechina. In the place that truly prevents the Shechina, which is truly the opposite of the Shechina, which is truly bad in a certain way.” And there the person remembers: Yes, true, I am not a great diligent one, I am not a great talmid chacham, I am not a complete person. Every time I delude myself that I am a complete person, I catch some anger, some desire, some fall, and I already grasp that they did not mean me when they said that only one who ‘his belly is full and he is a yerei shamayim to the masses’ should engage in Kabbalah. No, not for that, they did not mean me — only that he should do yichud, only that he should have ruach hakodesh. No, they did not mean me.

Ah, so they say to us: One moment, you deserve the Arizal, you deserve the Ramak, the Shechina comes to you and says to you, “Certainly they did not mean you. But that person, in that place, in that state, in that time, gave a place to the Shechina.” He remembered and said, “Me yes, me no.” Still he has some yearning, still he has some longing.

He Has a Desire for the Shechina Like for Eating

Still he has some longing for the beauty, for the refinement that we call Shechina. In other words, he loves to say ‘Lecha Dodi,’ not because he is a tzaddik who says ‘Lecha Dodi,’ not because he is supposedly still in completeness. No, but because he loves it, just as a person can love when he is depressed, when he is in lowliness, when he is in smallness. For some reason, he has no desire to learn, he has no desire to give tzedakah, but to eat he has desire, doesn’t he? Because this he truly loves. And when he truly loves this, he has desire. Exactly so it is possible that yes he has desire for the Shechina, yes he has desire to sing a niggun of longing for the Shechina, to say tikkun chatzos.

What does it mean that you are of importance? Do you even know what the thing means? No, I say some tikkun chatzos, not to show that I am a tzaddik. I say tikkun chatzos because I have a bit of mercy on the Shechina. The mercy is not on me, I am secondary, forget about it, whatever. Mercy on the Shechina, “Your mercies are many, Hashem” (Tehillim 119:156). And the Shechina is a kind of good thing, a kind of beautiful thing, and she is like ‘an abandoned wife’ waiting for the husband of her youth. There is a bit of mercy on her.

And he does some mitzvah, or says some chapter of Tehillim, or sheds a tear, or sits on the ground, or does whatever it may be, for Your Shechina, yes, for the Shechina. So, about this is truly said what the Rebbe says, “All her pursuers overtook her in the narrow straits” (Eichah 1:3), for this is the true thing that is the true strait. The true strait is spiritual lowliness. And there can still be.

Her Feet Descend to Death: The Shechina Can Reach Even to Sheol

This is the chiddush that Kabbalah says, that this is the thing that no one grasped. No one could believe that the exile could be so long. No one believed that there could be such a descent. In other words, no one believed that this is not a deficiency, for they had too much ‘tikkun hasegulah.’ In a certain sense they had Divine comprehensions easily, they had enough faith. On the contrary, they could not know: “Her feet descend to death” (Mishlei 5:5) the Zohar and the Mekubalim say about the Shechina.

The simple meaning of Scripture, its meaning is a harlot woman, but you grasp that the harlot woman is only another level of the Shechina, only another level, another garment. The letter hei became a bit longer, became a kuf. “Her feet descend to death”, to death, to Sheol, all the way to Sheol the Shechina can reach.

In other words, in Sheol a Jew can love the Shechina, not fear. Fear — he knows, perhaps he does not have it, he strayed from the path. But he has a certain love, he has love of the Shechina. And there the Shechina says, “Ah, in Gehinnom I found, I found one who loves me.” This is greater ruach hakodesh than this, so he has true ruach hakodesh, so he has actual prophecy. Not because he is a tzaddik, wise, mighty and rich that he has prophecy, no, but because he is “How she sits alone” (Eichah 1:1) that he has prophecy, a different kind. A better kind, or there is an advantage in it over the previous kind, for then there is no need to examine the whole question of whether he intends for its own sake or does not intend for its own sake.

When a person holds himself perfect, or he is perfect, he must intend much that when he weeps over the exile of the Shechina, indeed the exile of the Shechina disturbs him, or that he is now fulfilling mitzvos from complete completeness. But one who is not a great diligent one, who is not a great wise one, is not a great perfect one, and still he loves the Shechina — he does not need to examine. He truly intends. He is truly a companion of the Shechina, the Shechina speaks with him. She does not speak with the God-fearing Jews, she speaks with the “one who sits alone”, who together with her, “weeps bitterly in the night” (Eichah 1:2).

Emek HaMelech: The Advice of Bein HaMetzarim

And we clarified that it is not enough to say that this is a parable with a nimshal, or that this is the same thing of “As it is above so it is below”, that just as there are different attributes in a person so too in the Holy One Blessed Be He, or the deeper things that the Mekubalim say, that when a person conducts himself with the attribute of chesed he awakens the attribute of chesed in the Holy One Blessed Be He. Now, this is according to the simple meaning, according to the more revealed, according to a clear way, that everyone understands.

The holy sefer “Emek HaMelech” says. The “Emek HaMelech” was a great mekubal, and wrote for himself in his sefer “Emek HaMelech” to build the entire system of the Kabbalah of the Arizal, I think built a bit on Rabbi Yisrael Sarug and others, but he built for himself, and it was very important to build on every matter the clear system, the entire clear process of Judaism, of the inner dimension of Torah, of how the Shechina appears, the foundations of Atzilus — and this was his sefer.

And he writes in his sefer, a wondrous thing: He is on the way, he writes in a practical manner, intentionally practical, that he went very strongly in the matter of the kavanah of the Name Havayah, every time, every day, in every way. This is the root of everything. Thus he brings, he says in a practical way, that thus he did, and thus he succeeded. All the success of his comprehensions was built on having before his eyes always the Name Havayah.

When the Name Havayah Does Not Illuminate

Now he says thus: But there are situations in which it is difficult to have kavanah on the Name Havayah. It is a difficult thing, there are days when it is difficult. He says, for example, the days of Bein HaMetzarim, tested and tried, thus he says, tested and tried. When trying to have kavanah on the Name Havayah, it is more difficult to remember it before the eyes, more difficult.

That is, the Arizal says such a kavanah, for example, that one who desires to know what his spiritual level is, should try to picture to himself the Name Havayah, and according to the clarity of the picture, according to the color, according to the brightness, he will know what his level is. And there are sometimes situations, perhaps not through the person’s fault, but the state of the Shechina is such, that the Name Havayah does not illuminate. Very difficult, and ‘does not illuminate’ means — it is not simple, very difficult to remember before the eyes the Name Havayah. Difficult.

What does one do in such a situation? One who does not learn secrets, the kavanos of the Arizal, does not know what to do. He says, incidentally, it seems it is hidden, the Name is hidden. It is in concealment, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me” (Tehillim 22:2), he can cry out, but he does not know what else to do. He cannot merit such devekus, such kisses of His mouth, which exist when one remembers Names before the eyes — he cannot merit them when he is in such a state.

The Advice: Temuros and Letter Exchanges

The Emek HaMelech says, that when you reach the kavanos of Bein HaMetzarim, you found that there is advice for this. There is advice. And he never reaches this — I did not find in his sefer that he reaches this, perhaps he did not get to write that part, or it is not in our possession, or perhaps yes it is, and I could not find it. But I know what he intends, for the kavanah that he seeks to bring in his sefer is mainly collected and organized from the kavanos of the Arizal.

In Shaar HaKavanos it is written that in Bein HaMetzarim — whoever learned Bnei Yissaschar, a Chassidic tzaddik who knows the kavanah — that in Bein HaMetzarim one should remember before the eyes, instead of the Name Havayah, and he inserts this into the blessings of Shemoneh Esrei, and we are not going to speak about all the details, but instead of the Name Havayah one should remember before the eyes the letters adjacent to the hei. There are different exchanges, temuros, how one can exchange the Name, just as there is Atbash, one can also exchange the letters before the Name, tet-dalet hei-alef, the letters after the Name, kaf-vav zayin-vav, one can exchange the Name Havayah, one can take many more ways, in any case another twenty-two ways, and even more, that one can exchange.

The Arizal z”l says, that his students should remember before their eyes this. And Rabbi Naftali Hertz Bachrach explains in Emek HaMelech, what this is — as I understand from his explanation — that its meaning is thus, that the Name Havayah does not illuminate, whatever its nimshal may be. But in its simple meaning, a person tries to picture to himself the Name Havayah, and it is so, “Woe, where is the Name Havayah?” The Arizal z”l says to him, “I have advice for you. First of all, you are not at fault. The reality in the world is thus, it is Bein HaMetzarim. If you wish to know what is the connection of Bein HaMetzarim? I tell you.”

You need to understand that in the letters, in the world, there are twenty-two letters. “He created His world with thirty-two paths, with ten sefiros and twenty-two letters” (Sefer Yetzirah). All the world is included from twenty-two letters. Now, from the twenty-two letters it is written in Sefer Yetzirah, “He selected three letters and established them in His great Name”. Three letters from the twenty-two are Names.

The world, if one can say that the atoms, let us say the aspect of atoms, twenty-two types of atoms in the world, from which they made all the world. Three of them, yes — for the hei is doubled — three of them are holy atoms. From them, “He selected and established in His great Name,” from those things, when one looks at them, one has kavanah on the Name.

But all the other nineteen letters are also letters. And not only are they also letters, but they are also neighbors of the Name. For one can write, one can make a code, a cipher, one can write as they speak about alef to write tav, and about beis to write shin, or some other cipher called temuros in the language of the Mekubalim. One can exchange every letter with another letter. In other words, understand that I am not now saying that this is an intellectual explanation — one can explain it in an intellectual way, but one can also explain it simply, in the way of Kabbalah, in the way of faith. The yud is only that the tenth letter is a Name, incidentally, but one before the tenth is the ninth letter. Well, why is this not a Name? It is not a Name, very good, when it is in revelation they call it yud-hei-vav-hei. But you can understand that it is only one level distant from the tes.

You Are in the State of Exile: To Walk in Garments of Exile

And today you are not a Jew in the regular state, you are in the state of exile. The Shechina, as we said before, the king’s daughter should have worn some weak garment, some clothing of a pauper, she is a wayfarer, walks on the road, walks in garments of exile. “Make for yourself vessels of exile” (Yechezkel 12:3), they walk in garments of exile, he cannot therefore walk with the Name Havayah, for then the holy letters, the Name Havayah, are hidden, concealed. This is supposedly an examination with dalet and hei and dalet, or kaf-vav and zayin-vav, and mem-tzadi pei-tzadi. And the meaning of the matter is that you walk here…

And the truth is, that all four letters need to be examined in them, one needs to learn the order of the entire alef-beis how and what. I say a chiddush: The Arizal says only the first three, for in truth there are nineteen blessings in Shemoneh Esrei, and there are in any case nineteen ways, for there are only nineteen ways that are possible, for corresponding to each one of the twenty-two letters there must be one of the combinations of the alef-beis that one can exchange it, temuros, except for three which are themselves the Name, yud-hei vav, it comes out nineteen. It comes out that in truth every blessing must have in it a temurah. The Arizal revealed to me the first three, and the rest one can complete by oneself, for this is the secret that he is teaching here.

And I think that in actual practice, one can look in Pardes in Shaarei Temuros and see how to make other combinations — I need to learn this — but one can calculate each one, as one can say that instead of tes-dalet hei-dalet, one goes another letter backward, ches-gimmel dalet-gimmel is also a Name, for it is only two letters distant from the Name, it is a bit more distant, more distant, an even greater fall. But he thinks, has kavanah, and it is no easier to have kavanah on this in its entirety than to have kavanah on the Name. There it is holiness, for every Jew can have kavanah on the Name an entire day, but this is a great thing, and in Bein HaMetzarim it is not possible.

Imagine that one can say this even more, that one from the bathroom — imagine, from the bathroom it is certainly forbidden to have kavanah, perhaps it is permitted, I do not know, one is not obligated to have kavanah in an unclean place.

The Parable of the Mezuzah

Dalet-hei dalet, about this is written in the name ‘Kuzu,’ which they write on the mezuzah on the other side, for a mezuzah in truth should be open. Written in it are the Names “Havayah our God Havayah”, and the Names guard this, remind of the Name of Hashem, and the Rambam says that this is the angel, “The angel of Hashem encamps around those who fear Him and rescues them” (Tehillim 34:8), that when a mezuzah is placed on a Jewish door, this is the angel standing at every Jewish door, the Names of Hashem.

The problem is that many times, it is written in the poskim, many times around the door it is dirty, this is not a place befitting the Name of Hashem. And the early authorities came — I do not know if they were Geonim — who decided that they would write on the other side of the mezuzah, the other side of the Name. For according to Atbash they write ‘Kuzu,’ and those Names can be in an unclean place, for this is not a Name. It is only one letter distant from the Name, it too is truly a Name, it is a code of the Name. And this is permitted.

He says, I think, in an unclean place it is permitted to have kavanah on tes-dalet hei-dalet, Names of Bein HaMetzarim, for this is not a Name — yes it is a Name, but a Name only for one who understands — but these are the studies, and one can go even more distant and more distant, one can go to all the three how they return to the Names. These are all studies of how one can do, that there is a Name, that there is a level of the Shechina truly at that level. And this is the study that the Arizal taught what to do in the days of Bein HaMetzarim.

The Main Kavanah: That the Name Should Illuminate Into the Substitute

The Arizal adds another thing, that the main kavanah is to have kavanah that the light of the Name Havayah illuminates into the substitute. That the exchanges are only a garment of the Name Havayah, they are only another level, another level from outside, more in externality, more in the temurah of the Name Havayah. And one who finds the Name tes-dalet hei-dalet — this is what the Arizal said, that he is a mekubal.

One who knows only the Name Havayah — every Jew knows it. But all those impressions only mekubalim know. What does it mean, why do only mekubalim know? Because the mekubalim are not people who are at greater levels, but they know all the levels. The mekubalim are those who know the smaller levels. The mekubalim are those who know the states of separation, the states in which the Name is clothed in those kinds of temuros and letter exchanges and gematrios and such things, and through them they find a way.

And this is a practical way. I say truly practical, my friends: He is in a state where it is difficult for him to strengthen himself, he feels bad, he feels that he sinned too much, he needs to go to the mikveh, he can be in the grip of Hashem on iron, and have kavanah on mem-tzadi pei-tzadi. And it is truly written that the Arizal says such advices about different things, if they want to say something, it is not possible to say until Atbash, and so on. And this is truly good advice, literally, I say in the way of understanding the letters, and one can speak about this in the way of mussar another time.

This is until here, and may we have a joyous Shabbos, and may we find all the letter combinations that exist, that each one of them truly is only a code, a bit more distant, a bit closer, of the Name Havayah.