The Commandments of the Master of the Universe: The Secret of the 613 Commandments and “Remember” and “Keep”

Our Place in the Series

Today is erev Shabbos kodesh, parshas Shoftim, the first Shabbos of the month of Elul 5786, bringing us to the year 5787. This shiur is the second in our series on that section in the holy Zohar called ‘Pekudin d’Mara Alma’, the Commandments of the Master of the Universe. In the previous shiur we jumped ahead a bit to the second mitzvah, ‘to serve Him with all your heart’, assuming we had already dealt with the introduction which is the first mitzvah. But we must return to the introduction and explain what can be understood from it.

This week there was a shiur in Monsey, and I recorded it — and even sent the summary that the device recorded — and it was also connected with the verse ‘and you shall keep all My commandments and do them’, which is the introduction to the Pekudin in the Zohar. And here I wish to enter a bit more, more in the way of Kabbalah, since there the background and ‘structure’ of the discourse being made here is given.

What is the Explanation of Mitzvah?

We said that we wish to learn about the commandments of Hashem, and for this an introduction is needed. And the introduction is divided into two matters: One, what is the explanation of mitzvah. And the second, what might help understand the explanation of mitzvah — how many types of mitzvos are there. For often, when one enters into something and divides it into its parts, the essence of the thing itself becomes clear, and particularly when one observes how the thing is divided. The manner of division of the thing is what reveals to us what it is.

For example, man is created from different limbs, he has hands and feet and a head, and one can divide him in several ways: to speak of his intellect versus his emotions versus his actions; to speak of his body, of his hands versus his feet, of his upper parts versus the lower ones, of his internal parts versus the external ones. And all those modes of division teach us, that when we return them and combine them together — that is, when we understand them as one — we understand what the thing is, and what it should do, through understanding each and every part and its function. And each person according to his understanding of the essence of the thing, so will he divide its parts differently.

Why Speak Specifically in the Language of ‘Mitzvos’?

The same thing in the subject called mitzvos, and it needs to be explained a bit more clearly. First one must understand why we would speak at all in the language called mitzvos. For we are accustomed to say that a Jew is one who keeps Torah and mitzvos, that he fulfills the Torah and the mitzvos — and this is a double expression. And it seems to me that this is the simple meaning in the book of Devarim, where there are many verses saying ‘the Torah and the mitzvah’, and already in the book of Shemos come ‘Torah, mitzvah, chukim, mishpatim’, all those synonymous expressions that we say in the text of Maariv, ‘Torah and mitzvos, chukim and mishpatim You taught us’. And perhaps there are other expressions that I don’t recall now, but in the Chumash these expressions are repeated.

And the simple meaning, as with all synonyms, is that everything speaks of the same thing itself. And yet, each of the expressions expresses presumably a different aspect, a different version, a different part of that thing. In any case, it emerges that when one says ‘mitzvah’ one means the same thing itself that one means when saying ‘Torah’, ‘chukim’ or ‘mishpatim’ — in the most general way everything is one thing. And so we see in the simple meaning: sometimes the Torah will say ‘this mitzvah which I command you’, ‘and you shall do My chukim’, ‘and you shall keep My chukim’ and the like, and all those expressions mean keeping the mitzvos.

But it’s worth noting that there is a complete version, a complete chamber, a complete world, in which one speaks primarily in the version of mitzvos. That is, they understand everything differently — perhaps as one type of mitzvah or as one aspect of mitzvos — but what they speak of is fulfilling mitzvos. And there are other people, other chambers, other ways in which they don’t speak this way: they speak perhaps more about Torah, others speak more about mishpatim, more about chukim; one can speak of ‘the good and the right in the eyes of Hashem’, another version that the Torah speaks of much in the parshiyos, and other formulations that exist and I don’t recall now.

Therefore, if one speaks specifically about mitzvos, one should take a moment and grasp that mitzvos is a type of thing, a way of looking, a way of life, a way of thinking about everything. And perhaps this is not the only way, and it depends on what type of people, in what generation and with what soul that seeks to think about mitzvos.

The Zohar is Built on Parshiyos, Not on Mitzvos

The holy Zohar itself, which is like the vitality of the Torah that was written down, for the most part is not built on mitzvos. It is built on parshiyos, on the order of the Torah, on the order of the parshiyos. This is one way, but it is not really like the way of mitzvos. Certainly the mitzvos are found in it, but it is not like making the mitzvos into the order.

The same thing with Mishnayos: there are six orders of Mishnah, there aren’t 613 mitzvos there but rather the orders of Mishnah, and the Gemara is built on the order of the Mishnah. This is always the order that one can call the order of the Torah, or the order of time. In the Written Torah we customarily learn the order of the parshiyos, the order of the year, to go through each year the five books of the Torah — it’s a different order, not the order of mitzvos.

And this is very interesting when speaking: there is an order of mitzvos, and who established the order of mitzvos? Essentially, the order of mitzvos is the contemplation in which one looks at the thing. There is something hidden here, there is something that all those formulations — Torah, mitzvos, chukim, mishpatim — are as it were vessels for it, like embodiments of something. One could say: vitality, life, love — in the language of ‘eternal love’ — something that all these are ways to grasp it.

The Historical Source of the Order of Mitzvos

The Statement of Rabbi Simlai and the Azharos

The source of thinking about the order of mitzvos is certainly, in the most famous way, in the statement of Rabbi Simlai in tractate Makkos, which is a midrash, and one must contemplate what the midrash comes to accomplish. And in practice, the custom was to speak of this primarily on the festival of Shavuos, when many Jews wrote azharos — that is, lists of the mitzvos — built on the fact that on Shavuos we received the Torah, and many understood this as an order of prayer.

What I wish to explain is that the version of speaking about the mitzvos and their list, to count all 613 mitzvos, began more from prayer than from Torah. That is, on Shavuos the Jew wishes to express love, wishes to elevate the enthusiasm of matan Torah, and they speak either of the Ten Commandments or of the 613 mitzvos.

And therefore, as is known to all, Rashi brings in the name of Rav Saadia Gaon — and it seems to me not only Rav Saadia Gaon, but also others who wrote azharos went in this direction, as if according to the midrash — that all the Torah in its entirety, all 613 mitzvos, meaning they are included in the Ten Statements and in the Ten Commandments. And when do they say this? So that it would be possible to say a beautiful piyut. One must write a piyut. On Shavuos they also speak of the Ten Commandments, for in the event of matan Torah it is written that they received the Ten Commandments, and afterwards it says ‘and the Torah and the mitzvah which I have written to teach them’ (Shemos 24:12), and Rashi says in the name of Rav Saadia Gaon that in this are included the 613 mitzvos.

That is, if one wishes to express through prayer, through praise and thanksgiving, the joy of the festival of Shavuos, one speaks of matan Torah, of the giving of the Ten Statements, and speaks about this in more detail about the thing called 613 mitzvos. There is the source, this is the first place where Jews speak about 613 mitzvos. That is, not when learning — for then they learn Mishnayos, Gemara, Chumash, parshiyos — but here they learn 613 mitzvos, and learn them in the order of the Ten Commandments. This is for the most part the order in which they say them, for this is the order of appearance, as the Shavuos piyut appears so according to the Ten Commandments. Already from the verse the matter emerges so.

It emerges therefore, and it is simple, that the order of mitzvos goes according to the order of the Ten Commandments, which begins ‘Anochi’, ‘You shall not have’, ‘You shall not take’, and according to this order they placed the mitzvos that connect to the order.

The Rambam: All the Torah as the Order of Mitzvos

And now, after there were Rav Saadia Gaon and the other counters of mitzvos, the ‘Halachos Gedolos’, and the azharos of the other paytanim and sages who wrote, came the Rambam, and he is the great man — so it seems to me — who rewrote all the Torah in its entirety as the order of mitzvos. This is a completely new perspective, a completely new understanding in Torah. For in all the Torah, instead of saying there is Torah from ‘Bereishis’ to ‘before the eyes of all Israel’, or there are Mishnayos from ‘Berachos’ to ‘Uktzin’, there are now 613 mitzvos.

And the Rambam in his introduction to Sefer HaMitzvos criticizes with great sharpness the counters of mitzvos who preceded him, who did not count properly. And he says clearly that many of them were paytanim and not rabbis. That is, they really didn’t deal with this, and their function was not to rewrite all the Torah in its entirety. They wrote piyut, wished to elevate the beauty of the Torah, and wrote it as a beautiful midrash, a beautiful way to express through a list of 613 mitzvos that goes in the order of the Ten Commandments. But they didn’t intend to make here a book of halachos built on Sefer HaMitzvos, built on 613 mitzvos.

The Rambam is the first, or almost the first, who decided that if Sefer HaMitzvos, if the 613 mitzvos are the principles of all the mitzvos in the Torah and their list, then one must take them with complete seriousness. And if so, the learning called halachah, called Talmud, from which emerges how a Jew should conduct himself, all the life of the Jew — one must write it anew in the order of mitzvos. And he was very careful about what he considered a mitzvah and what not, what is called a mitzvah and what isn’t, how the thing is divided, which mitzvos divide into two, how they become two and how they become one. And how many things that appear at first glance as two mitzvos but really are one, and so forth, and what is d’Oraisa and what is d’Rabbanan, what is truly obligatory and what isn’t truly obligatory. And at great length in all those principles of Sefer HaMitzvos, and he rewrote all the mitzvos of the Torah in order.

And his great work, the ‘Mishneh Torah’, also went in this order — not exactly the same order as Sefer HaMitzvos, but a similar order, and also similar to the order of the Ten Commandments. Indeed it also begins with ‘Anochi’, and so it continues. All the mitzvos according to subjects are arranged in order, but the main thing is that the Torah now became a list in the order of mitzvos. This is the innovation of the Rambam.

Sefer HaChinuch: Mitzvos in the Order of Parshiyos

It’s interesting that most Jews, for example, when you ask them what is the first mitzvah, say that the first mitzvah is procreation. And one should know that this is not true. How so? It is not true except in a different way. In the Rambam the first mitzvah is always ‘Anochi Hashem your God’ (Shemos 20:2), and so in all the azharos, which all go in the order of the Ten Commandments. From where comes the idea that the first mitzvah is procreation? From a book called Sefer HaChinuch.

Sefer HaChinuch saw — it followed the Rambam, accepted from the Rambam that the Torah is 613 mitzvos — but saw that people don’t learn in the order of mitzvos. The life of the Jew is not arranged according to it, there is no time, except for Shavuos, when they say the 613 mitzvos: some say them in the piyut of Musaf, some say them in the tikkun for the night of Shavuos. But besides this the Torah is not arranged so, and not only the Torah but also the order of the Jew’s life throughout the year, and the order of learning studied in yeshiva, and what is done in the beis medrash when a person comes to shul on Shabbos — there is no order of learning of 613 mitzvos, except for those learning Mishneh Torah and whoever happens to. But in another way this is not the order, it was not customary so.

The Rambam did not succeed in changing the order of all the yeshivos to learn Rambam. Almost all the yeshivos, both in the time of the Rambam and after him, still learn the order of the Mishnayos, which became the Talmud, and they made a new order — it too is not the order of mitzvah, it’s a different order.

The Main Learning: The Order of the Weekly Parshah

And what order do they learn? The main Torah learning that we see all Jews share in, from small to great, is the order of the weekly parshah. This is very important. This week it struck me, I saw someone speaking about teaching people who are destined to be leaders, rabbis, influencers, and saying that he will be careful to learn the Chumash well, at a certain level of seriousness, since all his life he will say each week a dvar Torah on the series. It’s a shame that if this is the main learning, at least they should teach it in yeshiva with some seriousness, know a bit of the commentators, Chumash with Rashi — and many people don’t learn this.

And afterwards, the main learning — and I’m not speaking about bnei Torah sitting in yeshiva learning seder Nezikin, but about baalei batim, the masses, all of Israel, the women, the children — everyone learns the parshah, and the rabbis and leaders each one looks, enters ‘Kol HaLashon’, ‘Kol HaTorah’ and the like, and what does he seek? A shiur on the parshah. One must elevate a bit the level of the shiur on the parshah, for there they learn the Torah.

And this indeed was the function of Sefer HaChinuch. So he says in the Ramban’s introduction to the Torah, two similar sources — Sefer HaChinuch was a bit after the Ramban but in the same region — and both say the same thing: that if one wishes to teach the Jews the Torah truly, it would be good to go in the order of the parshah. So he went in Sefer HaChinuch and rewrote the entire order of the Rambam, and looked in the Rambam which is the mitzvah, from which verse, where it is found in the Torah, and wrote in each parshah how many mitzvos are in it, and brought some halachos, some midrashim, some aggados, some mussar in the order of the parshiyos. And he says clearly that he wants the Jews, the children going to shul, to discuss among themselves how many mitzvos there are this week and what are the halachos of the mitzvos, and he notes each time in which Gemara the halachos of the mitzvah are found, for whoever wishes to expand a bit. And this was the function of Sefer HaChinuch.

And it’s possible that he didn’t always aim at the truth from which verse the mitzvah really comes. There is the knowledge that learning Rambam in depth, and also what is learned here in the Zohar, reveals that the Rambam doesn’t always bring the correct verse. That is, the Rambam’s function was not to go in the order of the Torah. The Rambam wished to know what are the mitzvos. It’s understood that the mitzvah comes from the verse, but often a mitzvah that comes from two verses — not for a precise reason — the Rambam brought one verse because it is simpler, clearer.

The Chinuch taught the public the mitzvos in the order of the parshiyos, and therefore most people going in the order of the parshiyos say that the first mitzvah is procreation, for this is written already in parshas Bereishis. And even though according to the Rambam it is not at all correct to say there is a mitzvah in parshas Bereishis — there are several investigations one can investigate in this — this is not learning the order of 613 mitzvos but the order of the weekly parshah.

And this is a bit like grafting, a bit like kilayim to go so: if one already wishes to learn the order of mitzvos, there is in the order of mitzvos a great light, a great clarity, that is not there when one learns that ‘be fruitful and multiply’ is the first mitzvah. One should tell children who review the 613 mitzvos — there are such programs — that one should not go in the order of Sefer HaChinuch but in the order of the Rambam. There is simple Torah in the Rambam, and there is something more complex than this. The order of Sefer HaChinuch is simply the order of the parshah, the logic and flow of its order go according to the flow of the weekly parshah, which is the way one learns mitzvah. But the 613 mitzvos are a new order, there is in it complete wisdom, complete light, in what order the 613 mitzvos are arranged, and there is light also in contemplation and understanding of the matters, and also in life — and if a person wishes to live so, also his life will be in such an order.

The Zohar and the Order of Mitzvos

The Books in the Zohar That Go in the Order of Mitzvos

And now we come to our Sefer HaZohar, and we see that the Zohar indeed, as I said, most of the Zohar is the order of parshiyos and not the order of mitzvos. And even when there is a mitzvah, it doesn’t make a business of the mitzvos in the parshiyos specifically. But the authors of the Zohar did write a book of mitzvos, perhaps more than one book, perhaps more than two. The Zohar indeed had an interest in the order called mitzvos, they were one of the things that were important to it: to understand the Torah in the order of mitzvos, to understand the mitzvos in the order of the Torah.

Therefore there are, as I say, two or three other books in the Zohar, or sections in the Zohar. The first is the section we are learning now, called ‘Pekidin’, which is more in the language of the main Zohar. It doesn’t go through all the mitzvos — not even one of them through all 613 mitzvos — but it goes through many mitzvos, fifty, forty-six mitzvos, in the order of mitzvos, closer to the order of the Rambam, not exactly the same order but similar to it. The same thing exists in ‘Raya Mehemna’, which also explains a book of mitzvos. And in the third place there is in the introduction to the Zohar a list of eleven mitzvos — or fourteen, I don’t recall the number — in which the Zohar goes in the order of mitzvos to understand the Torah as the order of mitzvos.

The Printers and the Confusion of the Books

And now the matter is a bit ironic, and in this we see that Jews are not drawn so much after the order of mitzvos. In practice, the main order of learning of the Jews was and is and will be in the order of the parshiyos. And when they printed the Zohar, they didn’t print the books properly, indeed for those very same reasons. Those who printed it wanted to make a good book that the public would learn. Perhaps they were not the greatest scholars, but presumably people who understood a bit of Zohar. It seems to me that their main purpose, being printers, was to sell a book that people would buy. And everyone knows that if one wishes to print a book that the public will buy, and there is a chance they will seek it, it must be in the order of the weekly parshah.

Therefore the printers of the Zohar went, and those two or three books — the first is still separate in the introduction to the Zohar, but the two books that the Zohar wrote in the order of mitzvos — they took them, broke them into pieces, and took out each section according to the parshah they thought it belongs to, where the verse of the mitzvah is written, in the way the Chinuch did to the Rambam, and wrote the sections of Zohar there. And this caused great confusion, and this is not now our discussion to enter into the history, for there are many differences. Often the section of mitzvos is from the book ‘Raya Mehemna’, which is a completely separate book, and sometimes from the book called ‘Pekidin’, and not everyone knew that ‘Raya Mehemna’ is a separate book. In any case, they are two different books, and they don’t connect with the section before them nor with the section after them, and people thought this is a confused book, difficult to understand.

And besides this we see that the Arizal and the Gra wrote in the side of their Zohar the correct order how it should be learned, all this is explained in the introduction to the book ‘Raya Mehemna’ that was printed recently in recent years, so that it would be possible to learn.

The Mitzvos are an Internal Jewish Concept

And we clarified that it is not enough to say that this is a parable with a lesson, or that this is the thing itself ‘as it is above so it is below’, that just as in man there are different attributes so with the Holy One Blessed be He, or the deeper things that the Kabbalists say, that a person who conducts himself with the attribute of chesed arouses with the Holy One Blessed be He the attribute of chesed. What do I mean to say in my words in Jewish language? That instead of expressing this from the outside and saying there is a subject of 613 mitzvos, and someone will say that the Rambam said that the 613 mitzvos are like a book of laws, that one needs a list of laws — for every proper country, every proper people, have something like a book of mitzvos, they know what their laws are and what they do, and the Jews didn’t have, and the 613 mitzvos are the source that the Rambam found that one can say these are the Jewish laws, there is a list, six hundred and thirteen laws — this is an external thing, something that as it were imitated the Greeks, imitated the Muslims, I don’t know whom, and this is not the Jewish language.

For the concept of mitzvos is a Jewish concept. The concept of 613 mitzvos, and the division of mitzvos into positive commandments and negative commandments — which is the main division we will speak of in the course, and perhaps there are more internal divisions within the mitzvos — all this is a completely internal Jewish thing, in Jewish language. Therefore the Zohar, instead of entering into all the thing I gave you as background, goes straight to the thing without the background. Because of this, if one learns Zohar without the background and doesn’t know all the context, one doesn’t understand what it seeks. And if one understands what it seeks, one grasps that this is what it does, that it speaks in all the language. Instead of making an introduction and explaining, it says this simply, as if it were a commentary on some verse with midrash and hint and secret, but this is its intention.

Therefore the introduction to Pekudim speaks exactly of this, so I am convinced. I see that I made a long digression just to understand the thing, but I wish to continue still a bit.

The Secret of the Two Types of Mitzvos

Positive Commandments and Negative Commandments in the Statement

Let us try to see what the Zohar understood is the intention, the secret of the thing called 613 mitzvos according to secret, according to Kabbalah. Let us return to what is said in that statement. Let us leave all the external question, as a structure of law, and let us all come to the subject of the statement of Rabbi Simlai, the original first statement speaking of 613 mitzvos. The original statement said ‘613 mitzvos were given to Moshe at Sinai’ (Makkos 23b) — this is a very important fundamental part — and whoever made the count of mitzvos had to be careful in the division, and said ‘248 positive commandments corresponding to the limbs of man, and 365 negative commandments corresponding to the days of the solar year’ (Makkos 23b).

And now, we will speak afterwards, perhaps in the next shiur, about deepening in the Zohar itself already in the first mitzvah, where it speaks in depth what is the secret of the 248 and the 365. If so, the subject it speaks of in the introduction — indeed it speaks of it further also in the mitzvos themselves. But I wish to speak first of this, that in order to build the building called 613 mitzvos — this is a new innovation, a new light, how one arranges the Torah.

I once spoke about Rabbi Simlai, the author of the statement, who has very many statements in the midrash, and he deals with the order of the Torah. There is also a famous section of Rabbi Simlai that Rashi brings at the beginning of parshas Tazria, ‘just as man’s creation was after all beast, animal and bird, so man’s Torah was explained after beast, animal and bird’ (Vayikra Rabbah 14:1). This is another source that Rabbi Simlai dealt with the subject of the order of the Torah. There is a secret in the order of the Torah.

The Principles in Halachah of Positive and Negative Commandments

Therefore, Rabbi Simlai, in order to make this order, spoke about there being two types of mitzvos: positive commandments and negative commandments. And now, the subject of two types of mitzvos is not the first place and is not the only place where they speak of it in order to make a list. Rather, whoever learns halachah, whoever learns Gemara, knows that there are different practical differences, different levels, different principles connected to positive commandments and negative commandments.

Let us recall, and I wish to tell it so, that the discourse that speaks more clearly from the background — let us say so: the Zohar goes straight to the subject, what is the secret of the two levels. What is positive and negative, what is zachor and shamor, male and female, and so forth. I wish to give you the background further, the hidden and concealed background in the Zohar. We already spoke in general about the background of the concept of 613 mitzvos; now I wish to speak in general about the background of the two types of mitzvos.

From the fact that there are two types of mitzvos, positive and negative, and whoever connects a bit the two things — the first that I know who raised it a bit, not completely clearly but a bit, and presumably there is also background missing for me and I still need to search, but who raised a bit the subject of how the thing connects with the subject in general, as they say according to halachah, according to Gemara, from the types of mitzvos that exist — this is the holy Ramban. And the Ramban, in his commentary on the Ten Commandments, indeed in parshas Yisro, and again in parshas Va’eschanan, and in two more places where the Ramban goes in this way, but in parshas Yisro he explains more than anywhere the context regarding the mitzvos.

Therefore I wish to recall two things he says about the subject of positive commandments and negative commandments. There are many more differences, and whoever looks in the encyclopedia will see many differences between positive commandments and negative commandments according to halachah, according to midrash, according to Gemara, how the subject works.

First one must truly understand — and it seems to me there is also length in this that I cannot finish, and I only wish to finish the point today — the first: a positive commandment is something one does, and a negative commandment is something one doesn’t do. And now, this is not completely precise, for there are positive commandments that one doesn’t do, and negative commandments that one does — that is, a negative that comes from a positive, and perhaps a positive that comes from a negative. Not always is the language of the mitzvah the same language, but there is such an essence of mitzvah.

And one of the great differences, that anyone who learns Torah and halachah knows: for positive commandments there is no punishment, except perhaps rabbinically. From the Torah certainly there is no punishment, almost never is the thing written, except for a real exception — perhaps Pesach and circumcision, which are positive commandments that are exceptions where the punishment is written in the Torah. But in general, one who doesn’t fulfill a positive commandment has no punishment on him, not from the Torah and not rabbinically. There is indeed a rabbinical law, that they give lashes of rebellion, they force a person to fulfill the mitzvah, but from the essential law of the Torah they don’t punish for positive commandments.

Generally, a positive commandment is something written in the Torah that one should do. A negative commandment is something written or ‘beware’ that one shouldn’t do, and so the Gemara always learns that ‘beware’ is a negative commandment. Another difference, very important, between positive commandments and negative commandments, and whoever knows the principles knows there is a principle ‘a positive commandment overrides a negative commandment’ (Yevamos 3b). They learn this from kilayim in tzitzis, and from the mitzvah of yibum, which is in place of a brother’s wife, that a positive commandment overrides a negative commandment.

And here one can already see very interesting differences. It’s possible there is a contradiction — I’m not clear on this, and all the commentators on the Ramban here labored over what is the simple meaning. For the Ramban speaks of two differences: that a positive commandment is as if greater, for we see it is great, so great that it overrides a negative commandment. And on the other hand it is as if less severe, for one doesn’t receive punishment for it. I don’t know if not receiving punishment means it is less severe, perhaps the opposite, and this must be understood. But these are the two facts that exist, that we are speaking of now about positive commandments and negative commandments. And presumably there are many more facts that should be brought into the picture, but this is enough for now.

The Ramban: Positive from Love, Negative from Fear

The Ramban says thus: the inner aspect of the thing is so — positive commandments are connected to the attribute called love. Everyone knows that in the relationship between man and his God, between man and reality truly, there are two attributes: one is called love and one is called fear. This itself, as we spoke afterwards, like children and like servants, this is approximately love and fear.

And the Ramban gives a few words and explains: Why? Because a positive commandment one does it, meaning: I do something that the Holy One Blessed be He loves. And what is the language? ‘One who does the commandments of his master is beloved to him and his master has mercy on him’ (Ramban Shemos 20:8). Indeed he speaks of the love of the Holy One Blessed be He for man, not of man’s love for the Holy One Blessed be He. He says that a person who does what his master loves, the things his master requests of him to do, his commandments — his master loves him, and consequently also has mercy on him. There is an attribute called love, and there is an attribute called mercy, and they are not exactly the same attribute, but this is the explanation of a positive commandment that has in it the attribute of love.

As opposed to a negative commandment, he says,

The Ramban: Positive from Love, Negative from Fear (continued)

As opposed to a negative commandment, he says, it comes from the attribute of fear. Why? Because one who guards himself from doing something his master doesn’t love, this is because he fears him. And one must understand well, for one could say both about both: seemingly one could say, I do what he wants, what he desires, because I fear. And one could say, I guard myself from what he doesn’t desire, also because I love him. Why should one make the distinction? There is a deep matter here.

What is the True Explanation of the Distinction?

One must understand that the distinction doesn’t speak of the reasons why a person does a mitzvah. It seems to me that the Ramban raises this, but it’s not sufficiently clear that this is not his intention, but rather his intention is mainly for another part of his words. For the reasons why a person does a mitzvah — both can be done from love and from fear. The intention is to something else, and this can also resolve why there are positive commandments that one does without action, and positive commandments that one does with action — it’s not completely so.

The intention is to something else a bit, and this will help us understand what is a mitzvah in general. This is the main point. For if one says that mitzvah means that the Holy One Blessed be He commanded and I fulfill, both can be done from love and from fear, and the distinction is not a true distinction. And why at all should one labor and make separate lists, positive commandments and negative commandments? There are differences in halachah, one must know a positive overrides a negative. But a positive overrides a negative itself, says the Ramban, is for this reason: because a positive commandment is from love and a negative commandment is from fear, and love is greater than fear, therefore a positive commandment overrides a negative commandment.

In other words, one must understand much better the essence of a positive commandment and a negative commandment, and so it will be possible to understand everything differently, and to understand also what is a mitzvah. And the explanation is thus, so it seems to me. A negative commandment means that there are problems in the world, there are things that are not good. There are different situations that are not good, different actions that are not good, different people who are not good, all kinds of things that are not good. And from things that are not good one must distance oneself. ‘Not good’ means that the Holy One Blessed be He hates it, means bad things in the eyes of one’s master.

And one must understand the following secret: that fear, that they mean here essentially seemingly fear of punishment. The distinction of love and fear here is not ‘to fear’ and ‘to love’. The distinction of love and fear here is: love is when one goes toward something, love is a positive attraction, I want something. That is, there are things in the world that are good, that the Holy One Blessed be He loves them, they are good things, and it is good to do good things, good to go to good things, to remain in them and so forth. And there are bad things, and it is bad to go to them.

The attribute called that one does the good, that one does the sweet, the light, the pleasure, is called love, that he is drawn. And the quality called that one flees, that one doesn’t go to what is not good, is called fear. Fear doesn’t mean here to fear the master. Fear means truly that he fears — not from… the Ramban says fear of the master, but it seems to me more correct to say that he fears the thing, in the way they call this fear of sin. Fear of sin — does he fear the Holy One Blessed be He or the sin? Because he fears, meaning he goes away. Fear means he goes away. Not fear of exaltedness, which is more like love, but fear here means he goes away.

And since fear means he goes away — he has in him the attribute of fear, and indeed he becomes closer to the Holy One Blessed be He also in the attribute of fear, he doesn’t go away from the Holy One Blessed be He, but goes away from the things that the Holy One Blessed be He hates them. And this means he has in him the attribute of fear. This is the secret of the attribute of fear.

Two Types of Service: Zachor and Shamor

And now we understand that there are two types of mitzvos. This is not just ‘turn it over and you will find’ for learners, that they should know different principles in halachah, that for this one receives lashes and for this one receives something else. The distinction is, in other words, that as it were there are desired things and hated things, not good things, things one should fear from them — as it were the Holy One Blessed be He Himself fears them, not that He fears them, but that He distances them, things He abhors, that He hates.

And there are two types of people one could say, there are two types of service, not just the same thing, but two completely different types of service. There is a service that is a type of good attribute, a type of action called to do the good, to seek to bring about the good things. And there is an attribute called shamor (keep), to guard oneself from things that are not good.

And now it is understood, I must hear that the two things are not separate from each other. And yet, it is not possible to do good things when one does them in a bad way, in a bad place. One who does only positive commandments and doesn’t have fear in him, is not a person. And yet, there are many ways that a positive overrides a negative, and there is a contradiction.

And here I must say that the Torah — and this is the main point I had to finish today — the Torah is not a Torah that the Ramban innovated, but this is truly simple meaning. The Ramban says that this is the secret, this is zachor and shamor. Zachor is what one does indeed, the attribute of male, in the aspect of the male, in the way that the attribute of the male is that he does. Shamor is the attribute of female, that she doesn’t do, that is night, that at night one sleeps, one doesn’t do, but at night there is fear. One must ensure that enemies don’t come, that kelippos don’t come, that things that are not good don’t come.

The Secret of “Zachor and Shamor Were Said in One Utterance”

The Contradictions in the Torah

And the Ramban says, when one looks one sees that this is truly simple meaning. I will need next week to begin again from the subject of zachor and shamor. I have in mind that I already spoke of this once, but I am coming already very late and I must finish. The subject is thus: it is written in the Gemara, and in the midrash Mechilta it is written, and the Gemara brings it in interesting places in the laws of Rosh Hashanah, in tractate Rosh Hashanah, in the subject of ‘two voices cannot be heard’. But the Gemara says, in the midrash Mechilta it is written, ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’ (Rosh Hashanah 27a). That is, there is a contradiction. In Va’eschanan it is written ‘keep (shamor) the Shabbos day’ (Devarim 5:12), and in Yisro it is written ‘remember (zachor)’ (Shemos 20:8). And it was difficult for the Gemara what this means.

And the Ramban elaborates to say that the intention is not simply that it was difficult why there are changes between the two versions of the commandments, for there are different changes, and the Ibn Ezra already said this is not a problem: the Torah, here a vav is written and here a vav is not written, there is no necessity that it be exactly letter for letter the same thing. So says the Ibn Ezra, and it seems the Ramban agrees with this if it were true. But the Ramban says, and the Ibn Ezra says the same thing about zachor and shamor — the Ramban says: No, this is an error. The Ibn Ezra claimed the intention is the same thing, and the Ramban claimed the intention is not the same thing. Shamor means a negative commandment, and zachor means a positive commandment, means to do indeed, and these are not the same teachings. How is it possible to say this is the same thing?

He says, the Ramban explains, that what the Gemara and the midrash make a whole business from ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’ — a person cannot say that as it were the midrash gives an answer, that the Holy One Blessed be He said both as one, for a person cannot say both as one, and the Holy One Blessed be He can. The Ramban says, this is not its simple meaning, for you can say the same answer. The intention: here it is written zachor and there it is written shamor, and in one utterance they were said, the Holy One Blessed be He says, say both. And why did He have to say both? What does He want?

The Ramban says: No. The midrash intends to say, first, you understood that these are teachings, and this is a positive commandment and a negative commandment, but this is not enough. Indeed there are two. Indeed there is in Shabbos a positive commandment, to make kiddush and rest, and to fulfill the positive commandment of keeping Shabbos, and not to do work. The Holy One Blessed be He could say separately. What is written in the midrash ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’, says the Ramban, the intention is to a secret. The intention is not its simple meaning at all.

The Mechilta: Contradictions of Positive and Negative

And the truth, and I wish to give the background to the secret further — the Ramban jumps straight to the secret, I wish to give the background to the secret — and this is written explicitly in the Mechilta, this is not an innovation of the Kabbalists. It is written explicitly in the Mechilta, the Mechilta says thus: ‘Zachor and shamor both were said in one utterance’ (Mechilta Yisro). And the Mechilta explains: What do I mean by saying ‘both were said in one utterance’? It says thus: The Holy One Blessed be He said both things in one utterance.

On one hand it is written ‘its desecrator shall surely be put to death’ (Shemos 31:14), and on the other hand it is written ‘and on the Shabbos day two lambs’ (Bamidbar 28:9). And which should one offer, to slaughter on Shabbos, which is one of the 39 labors, or not?

Another example: it is written in one verse ‘the nakedness of your brother’s wife you shall not uncover, it is your brother’s nakedness’ (Vayikra 18:16), and in a second verse it is written ‘her yavam (brother-in-law) shall come to her and take her to him as a wife and perform yibum’ (Devarim 25:5). A contradiction.

A third thing: it is written ‘you shall not wear shaatnez’ (Devarim 22:11), and it is written ‘you shall make yourself twisted threads’ (Devarim 22:12). Here are one, two, three, four contradictions.

And because of this the Mechilta says ‘both were said in one utterance, what is impossible for a person to say so’, as it is written ‘God spoke one thing, these two I heard’ (Tehillim 62:12), ‘is not My word like fire’ (Yirmiyahu 23:29), that Rashi explains it splits into several sparks. In other words, the Mechilta raises, that when I say ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’, my intention is not that the Holy One Blessed be He is like magic, that the Holy One Blessed be He can do everything, that He can say twice. Even a person can, that two people say together — although this is a problem, two voices cannot be heard — so he says: ‘for a mouth cannot speak and an ear can hear’. What is there in the fact that the Holy One Blessed be He says in one utterance and you cannot hear it?

The Mechilta explains that its intention is not to say simply that the Holy One Blessed be He said. What did the Holy One Blessed be He say? A historical investigation, I don’t know, this is not the subject of the Mechilta. What the Mechilta intends to say is that there are many mitzvos where the positive in them and the negative in them are a contradiction. One should not desecrate Shabbos, one should not work on Shabbos, and one should indeed offer the Shabbos sacrifices. One should not do the forbidden relations of a brother’s wife, and one should indeed do yibum. One should not wear shaatnez, and one should indeed wear tzitzis. That is, there is here a contradiction of positive and negative.

The Answer: Both Come from the Same Thing

For we have the principle, indeed the halachah says that a positive overrides a negative. A halachic Jew will say: “Nu, the difficulty is resolved, a positive overrides a negative, there is a principle.” How so? Is this a good thing? In other words, is it a good thing to marry a brother’s wife, or a bad thing? A negative means this is a bad thing. A positive, yibum, says this is a good thing. And the answer is ‘both were said in one utterance’. In other words, with the Holy One Blessed be He — one must understand the Torah in a divine way. When one says that the Torah is 613 positive and negative commandments, hidden in this is such a deep secret. And in this is hidden the secret of ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’. And in this is hidden: what is a mitzvah? It is not so simple.

You cannot say that from bad things one must flee completely, and good things one should do always. Also in good things there are principles, as the Gemara has principles: a positive doesn’t override a negative that has kares, doesn’t override a negative and a positive, and the like. There are principles when the thing is not so. But also there are principles that go opposite from what you would think. You say one should never desecrate Shabbos, and in the Temple it is permitted — you are permitted to offer Shabbos sacrifices. And not only permitted, but obligated.

And the Ramban adds the problem, for in love there is freedom. One asks: “Yes, I love so much — as they say, I love the Holy One Blessed be He so much — I want to blow shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbos.” The Gemara comes and says: “No.” Even though this is a small concern, the shofar of Rosh Hashanah doesn’t desecrate Shabbos, even things that are shevus. According to the commentators on the Mishnah, that the thing doesn’t go, that fear overcomes love. And this is the ruling that the Sages understood from ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’, that here the ruling is different.

The Complete Understanding of Mitzvah

But ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’ raises that the complete understanding of the explanation of mitzvah — and we will explain with the help of Hashem better next week, and whoever heard the shiur from Wednesday will be able to connect with certain things — the complete understanding of what is a mitzvah, one must understand that the positive and the negative, the action that is good to do and the guarding from what one must guard, come from the same thing, they are the same thing. There is here something that… a person cannot understand it, but the Holy One Blessed be He can in one utterance do both things. And when one does mitzvos truly, we too can.

And what is the explanation? We keep Shabbos, and we bring two Shabbos candles, two hadassim, one corresponding to zachor and one corresponding to shamor. That is, we elevate ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’. This is in the aspect of ‘and you shall keep My charge, I am Hashem’. The Holy One Blessed be He is one, He can say one, and the faith that the Holy One Blessed be He is one — that you can say one.

And I am only saying an introduction here, for here is hidden a very deep understanding of what is a mitzvah. This is much deeper than what most people understand. And it is understood that according to this the Zohar is built, for the mitzvos have in them the level of the Shechinah and the level of Zeir Anpin — which is the level of zachor — and the unification of both, this is what makes a mitzvah. And without this there is no mitzvah truly that is not positive and negative. As we understand, every positive means “and don’t do not to”, and every negative means “and do not to”. This is only a way of saying, only teachings. But if a person doesn’t understand that the positive and negative, the zachor and shamor of every mitzvah — he lacks the essential unification, he lacks the divinity of the mitzvah. For then he says that the mitzvah is a human thing, and one must say that this is something only the Holy One Blessed be He can do. This is the explanation that this is a mitzvah of Hashem. As the Zohar says, ‘pekida d’mara alma’, this is a mitzvah of Hashem, a mitzvah of the Master of the Universe, and not just mitzvos.

And this is the explanation of the background of the introductions to the Zohar. And with this we will continue.

Zachor and Shamor: The Secret of Positive and Negative Commandments in the Tablets

Opening of the Shiur: Zachor and Shamor and Two Types of Mitzvot

At the end of the previous shiur we saw that we need to return and open from the beginning the discussion regarding zachor and shamor, and therefore I ask to return and say the beginning of the matter from the start — from the point that explains what is the simple meaning of shamor and zachor and what is their secret. Based on this we will try to continue and understand that there are here two types of mitzvot, positive commandments (mitzvot aseh) and negative commandments (mitzvot lo ta’aseh), and to understand their content, their inner meaning and the meaning of the entire matter. And all this is expressed in the teaching of our Sages ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance.’ We must therefore explain the context and prove and clarify the matter properly.

The First Great Revelation: Matan Torah

Everyone knows that the first great moment of the Torah, the first great vision, the first great revelation in the Torah, is Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah). The Holy One, blessed be He, descended upon Mount Sinai and gave Israel Torah and mitzvot, as we say ‘and You redeemed us our King at Mount Sinai to teach Your people Torah and mitzvot.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, made all of Israel hear, through Moshe and directly, the Ten Commandments, ‘which Hashem spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire’ on the day of the assembly.

It is also known to all that the Ten Commandments appear twice in the Torah. Once directly within the event, in Sefer Shemot in Parashat Yitro, and a second time as Moshe told Israel in one of his discourses in Sefer Mishneh Torah (Deuteronomy), within ‘the words that Moshe spoke,’ in which Moshe Rabbeinu repeats and tells Israel. We are accustomed to say simply that he repeats and tells, but one must emphasize this: Moshe Rabbeinu is the one speaking to Israel.

The Torah’s Perspective: An Objective Narrator

An interesting thing is, that we already have the earlier version, the earlier level, the earlier stage of those same things — which is the first four books like Sefer Shemot. There the Torah stands as narrating in an objective manner, as the Ramban explained in his introduction, that the Torah does not write ‘Moshe said: Hashem said to me thus and so,’ but rather narrates the event that occurred as it is, from a super-personal point of view, what is called in literature “the Creator’s perspective.” That is, the event is written not from the perspective of a particular person — not of Moshe, not of Pharaoh, not of Israel, and not even of anyone — but as it is. Moshe himself, even though Moshe Rabbeinu is the author of the Torah, does not write from his own perspective, but writes as the thing is.

Until we reach Sefer Devarim, at least most of Sefer Devarim, which opens with ‘these are the words that Moshe spoke’ (Devarim 1:1). Here stands clearly a title: these are the words that Moshe spoke, and from here onward we hear clearly that Moshe Rabbeinu spoke. And even here stands a framework, for the narrator of all the Torah is the one who says — as the Ramban explains truly in the introduction to Mishneh Torah — that there is no contradiction in saying ‘the words that Moshe spoke,’ for Moshe’s words in Parashat Sefer Devarim also stand within a framework, for they were preceded by the title ‘these are the words that Moshe spoke.’ And who is it that writes ‘these are the words that Moshe spoke’? It is not written ‘Moshe said: I Moshe write the words that I spoke,’ or the like, but rather ‘these are the words that Moshe spoke.’ The simple meaning is that this is a continuation of that same order itself: he speaks as an objective narrator narrating the things, except that within the things he says that Moshe Rabbeinu said, and then we indeed hear how Moshe Rabbeinu said: ‘I said,’ ‘I went,’ ‘I heard.’

And the truth, as the Ramban noted, is that there are such passages already in the earlier Torah. It may say ‘and Moshe said to Hashem’ and the like, and the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moshe. There are such things within the events in the earlier Torah. The main innovation of Mishneh Torah is essentially that the discourses heard from Moshe’s mouth are very long and extensive, and in them stands the discourse as Moshe Rabbeinu spoke it to Israel in his time.

The End of the Torah: Return to the Objective Order

And here is the interesting thing: until we reach the end of Mishneh Torah. This week’s parasha is Ki Teitzei, and after it Ki Tavo, Nitzavim, Vayelech. And when we reach Parashat Vayelech, where there are almost no more discourses — for Ki Tavo is truly the end of the discourse, and after it the rebuke, and after that a few more discourses in Nitzavim — but when we reach Vayelech, which is truly the end of the Torah, the parasha of Moshe’s death, there the Torah truly returns to its regular order. Again this is not in the aspect of Mishneh Torah in that sense. The verse already speaks about the Torah, as it says ‘take this book of the Torah’ (Devarim 31:26); a Torah already exists, the main Torah, Mishneh Torah, is what was said before. And then the matter returns to the regular order.

The Question of the Last Eight Verses and Who Wrote Them

And therefore there arises the question of the eight verses at the end of the Torah, which in practice — as the Ibn Ezra already noted — one can expand the question to several sections before that. It even speaks of Moshe’s death, just as it spoke of Moshe’s birth: this is not Moshe speaking from his perspective, but rather the Torah’s perspective, and therefore there arises an inquiry who wrote this. In other words, what is the meaning. The question of who wrote is a historical question, and I do not think this is the true question of the Gemara according to the foundation, for even when we come to speak about Mishneh Torah we will understand the entire matter in this.

But as I have posited, this is more a question of how we understand the sections differently, that the speaker, the owner of the voice, the owner of the Torah’s narrative, is here different from the rest of the Torah. For here we see clearly that one cannot call him Moshe, because Moshe is no longer alive. He clearly says an event in which he is not alive, but essentially the matter returns to the general Torah — just as the Torah can write about Moshe before he was born, from Bereishit until Shemot, and just as Moshe did not even remember how he himself was born and placed in the ark, and all this Moshe writes from the mouth of the Almighty, it is written in a divine way, in an objective way.

The same thing at the end of the Torah: one can say that the Torah returns. It returns to objectivity, to the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He. ‘Bereishit bara Elokim’ (Bereishit 1:1) is not really the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, for it also speaks about the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Nor is it written ‘I am Hashem’ — there are passages where it says ‘I am Hashem’ — but the Torah is not written as the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks, as He so to speak expresses His personality.

The Attribute of Malchut and the Level of Torah

In other words, the attribute of Malchut (Kingship) is the important thing. The attribute of Malchut is when a person speaks from within his personality, says ‘I,’ ‘I say.’ Sometimes a person narrates something because he represents, conveys the reality. And so stands the Torah. And the Torah, so to speak, is prior even to reality and to the Holy One, blessed be He, that is, it is outside of this. And the simple meaning is not that the Torah writes, and when we say that the Torah is from the mouth of the Almighty, that the Torah is a divine thing, the intention is not that it was written from the attribute of Malchut of the Holy One, blessed be He. The intention is not that it was written from within the personality of the Holy One, blessed be He, for it speaks in it about the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. The Holy One, blessed be He, is Himself a character in the Torah; the Torah is so to speak something greater. One cannot say that it is greater than the Holy One, blessed be He, for the Holy One, blessed be He, includes all of reality, but it is greater than what we would call ‘I am Hashem,’ than what we would call the Holy One, blessed be He, as He reveals Himself as ‘I.’ The Torah begins before that. These are already deep secrets, but the matter is simple, and I place it in simple peshat.

Moshe’s Death and the Secret of ‘And Moshe Died There’

And therefore, from there the Torah begins to transition to the length of Moshe’s personality — this is the meaning of Mishneh Torah — until it returns to ‘and Moshe died there’ (Devarim 34:5) according to all opinions. There are approaches and Tannaim regarding exactly how to interpret this, but according to all opinions the matter already returns to the regular order, so to speak to objectivity. And this is truly itself the secret of Moshe’s death.

There are those who hold that the early ones already said that Yehoshua wrote it, but in my opinion according to all opinions the matter is different, as the Gemara says: even according to the one who says that Moshe himself wrote it — it changed. And one can say the opposite: even the one who says that Yehoshua bin Nun wrote it, his intention is not that this is not part of Moshe’s Torah, for the Chumash is called Torat Moshe. His intention is only that at the moment Moshe disappeared, when it already says ‘and Moshe died there,’ there is already here a place for Yehoshua. One cannot say that Yehoshua bin Nun wrote it in the historical sense; we do not believe that it is truly so. If they say that there is here historical proof that the matter of Shaul was so, one can reject the proof — this is not proof, neither from here nor from there, this is a very weak proof. The main intention is to raise the meaning, what is the meaning of the matter and how it appears from the inner understanding of the Torah.

Why All This Introduction: The Root of the Torah

And now, why all this introduction? Because it is important to return and go back to what we said. We said that the root of the Torah — the first thing we spoke about in the previous shiur — is the thing that Israel celebrates on Shavuot. And the matter is important, for Yom Kippur is also a day on which the second tablets were given, and it too is an aspect of Matan Torah, and all of the month of Elul is preparation, for we revolve around those forty days before Yom Kippur, in which Moshe ascended to the mountain and received the Torah. And the essence of the matter, its shortest formulation, are the Ten Commandments that all Israel heard. These He wrote on the tablets, the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote on the tablets. There is more Torah that was learned in all forty days, and all this is already explanations of the Ten Commandments and expansions, but this is the Torah, the greatest in the order of the Torah that we received.

The Order of the Torah and Its Form: The Ten Commandments

And in the order itself — and this is the important thing — just as they say that 613 mitzvot is a midrash that stands in the Gemara, that Rabbi Simlai said it, and it is not an explicit verse, for the Torah’s way is to call the mitzvot by different names: mitzvah, or chukim and mishpatim, and all these are one name. But if one wants to find a root for a list in the Torah, for a count of one, two, three, certainly the greatest list is the Ten Commandments. In other words, this is the order, the form of the Torah. Everyone understands that understanding means making order, means giving form. A confused person, who has no order, does not understand what stands before him. The order and form of the Torah in the section of the Torah are the Ten Commandments. Ten things, the Ten Commandments — this is the first form that it gives to the Torah, and from them emerge 613 mitzvot and thousands more branches, and also the Rabbinic laws and customs, all as additional decorations upon this.

The Tablets: A Thing That Endures

Now, if we study the Ten Commandments, and if we want to see — the Ten Commandments are a visual thing, these are the Ten Commandments that were written on the tablets. A tablet is something visible to the eye, something written, that remains fixed and enduring, engraved on two stone tablets, ‘engraved on the tablets’ (Shemot 32:16), ‘and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets’ (Shemot 32:16).

And it is also something that endures. For speech is not like something written: speech is something that I speak with you, you can hear it, but you must remember it, and it remains only in memory. But what is written is already something that becomes substance, and you do not even need to remember it. That is, it is remembered, it remains in stone, as they call a memorial stone, ‘and he set up there a monument’ (Shmuel I 15:12). It becomes like a reality, a tangible reality in the world. The Torah descended, the Torah came, the Ten Commandments were written on stone, on two stone tablets. This is not only that one must remember the Torah — that too exists — but it is deeper than this. The Torah truly descended, what is called investiture, investiture in physicality: a stone was made in the world upon which the Torah is engraved.

The Mitzvah of Writing a Sefer Torah

And the truth is that upon this also stands the mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah, which we also learn — at the end of Devarim stands the commandment ‘write for yourselves this song’ (Devarim 31:19), the mitzvah of writing the song or writing the Torah. And there is a deep intention in this, and we read every Shabbat in the synagogue from a written Sefer Torah, that a scribe wrote with his hands on parchment, with all its details, all its laws and particulars. And we take out the Torah and kiss it and show it around. This is not only a way to remember the Torah.

And what is the proof? For there is Torah she’be’al peh (Oral Torah). Torah she’be’al peh teaches that one can remember without writing, there is no problem with this. Indeed afterward we wrote it, when it appeared that forgetfulness was being forgotten, but in practice, for thousands of years it survived. And the truth is that even today we see Torah she’be’al peh — and this is not now the subject of our discussion — that they remember it today. The Torah is remembered, the Torah is not something that must be written; we write it even though it is possible to remember it.

Why Do We Write It: The Point of Permanence

Rather why do we write? There is here a point of permanence, that the thing should not be done only in the realm of wisdom. I do not mean simply that it should not be done in the realm of wisdom, for one can remember; but the deeper meaning is that it becomes like a cheftza (object). Now it becomes something that cannot be torn so easily; it is not torn. Moshe broke the tablets. And the meaning of breaking the tablets is that Torah she’be’al peh remained, as it says in the Gemara: ‘a great voice that did not cease.’ Hearing and understanding are always possible; when he broke the tablets the voice was not broken. The great voice was not broken, but the writing was broken. And this is a great difference. But on the other hand, writing has a weakness: it still has not come to substance, it is not an object visible to the eye.

‘There is nothing in the ark except the two tablets’ (Melachim I 8:9) — these are the tablets that they stored, the tablets of testimony, and Israel could always see them. One must know how they could see them: sometimes they opened the ark and showed them, from time to time they saw them. And this is something that came to substance in a body. And this is truly the special work of writing a Sefer Torah.

In truth, the Gemara says that every Jew must write for himself a Sefer Torah. And even though one fulfills the obligation if he bought one — and there are poskim who say that the main intention is in order to learn, and the Rosh says that therefore in our time the main mitzvah is to buy books, but we do not learn so and we do not rule so completely, at the very least — there is a great matter in writing the Torah, and if a person can learn to write himself, certainly in this he continues the matter. And it can be so even in writing chiddushei Torah, or in printing, and in other ways in which one makes substance from the matter. It is a very important matter. Today everything is on computer, and one must examine what kind of substance a computer has (and in this we will return to our shiurim on that subject and this is not its place), and this is not substance like handwriting. Still there is a great matter in writing.

Three Levels of the Tablets

Thus the tablets are also the list, also the thing heard, and also the thing written. One can see them, one can touch them. One can touch the word of Hashem, the tablets. What is placed in these stones? And every Jew must have something from the aspect of the tablets. Everyone puts on tefillin every day, and in the tefillin are written certain principles of the Torah that correspond to the Ten Commandments. We have a mezuzah, and we have such things. One must emphasize this, and we said that the shiur will come to emphasize the daily matters. And every Jew has a Sefer Torah, we go to the synagogue on Shabbat and Monday and Thursday and take out the Sefer Torah.

This is a tremendous light. The Arizal has many kavanot (intentions) on holding the Sefer Torah, on kissing it, on placing a crown on the Torah, and on those rimonim (pomegranates) that they used to call the decorations of the Sefer, and on the other customs with which they decorate the Sefer Torah. There is a great light in this, as a mitzvah, like building the Mishkan — like the mitzvah of writing the Torah or building the Mishkan — to make a physical object, to remove from a person the burden that he should always be in his mind, that he should always remember himself. That is, when he remembers, and Torah she’be’al peh that must be remembered — he does not need to review, for it is placed there, ‘and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates’ (Devarim 6:9), it is placed by your entrance and you do not need to remember. This is advice to remember even when you are not remembering. And it seems to me that we have already spoken many times about the virtue of the sanctity of the object (as we have already explained regarding the sanctity of the object and this is not its place), but it is a great virtue and speaks to a person powerfully. And these are the tablets, and in the tablets are found all these levels.

The Question: Why Do the Ten Commandments Stand Twice in a Different Way

And now, when we look at the tablets, for in the Ten Commandments on the tablets, which we want to be absorbed within, that every Jew should remember all the Torah by heart — but in the Ten Commandments with their text, it would be fitting that a person should be able to repeat them and know them by heart. Indeed the Sages did not institute that they should say the Ten Commandments but rather Kriat Shema, and everyone knows Kriat Shema, and perhaps even in saying the Ten Commandments there is a matter. And it would be fitting even to know the differences between the two versions of the Commandments. And this is like a novelty. Let us understand. I say this so, because perhaps in this the novelty or the difficulty is better expressed.

In Both Tablets Stand the Ten Commandments: A Secret

Now in both times — in both tablets that are so important, and in both ways in which the Torah is written — stand the Ten Commandments. Very important, and this itself is a secret. In both they stand. That is, not everything stands repeated twice; one should not call this repetition, but rather this is like another level of Torah. Not everything, not every mitzvah stands both in Sefer Shemot or Vayikra Bamidbar and also in Sefer Devarim. There are many mitzvot that stand only in one of them. The Ramban throughout Sefer Devarim proposes different theories to explain which and why, but not every mitzvah, and certainly not every event, and certainly not in the same language. This is not something said in it ‘and Hashem said’ — for the Holy One, blessed be He, said the mitzvot to Moshe in languages, ‘and Hashem spoke to Moshe saying’ (Vayikra 1:1), ‘a person when he brings from you an offering’ (Vayikra 1:2). Thousands of mitzvot stand in the same language, but very few stand in the same language with repetition. There are a few verses with the same language, or with an added word or a changed word, but very few — and one must examine this — very few sections and mitzvot, and even those that are repeated and stand in Sefer Devarim, very few stand in the same order, and certainly in the same language, almost word for word. One can examine and find one of them. But from the thing that stands again, twice in the Torah, are the Ten Commandments.

From this itself one can see how important they are. And this is what I ask to say: not the idea of the Ten Commandments is the novelty, for one can say that the idea stands in all the Torah. ‘Do not steal,’ ‘do not murder,’ ‘I am Hashem,’ ‘do not take’ — all these stand almost many times in different ways, with additional details, with additional laws. ‘According to all that comes from his mouth he shall do’ (Bamidbar 30:3) is similar to ‘do not take the name of Hashem your God in vain’ (Shemot 20:7) and the like. It stands many times in many ways: ‘what comes from your lips you shall keep and do as you have vowed’ (Devarim 23:24), and all these are languages connected to ‘do not take.’ And so every verse and verse. Shabbat certainly stands dozens of times in the Torah, and so every thing from the Ten Commandments stands many times. This is not the novelty that it stands repeated again.

But that the language should stand ‘I am Hashem your God’ (Shemot 20:2) and all the language entirely until ‘and all that belongs to your neighbor’ (Shemot 20:14) — this is almost the only section that stands repeated at such length. I can remember a few more verses that one can see are the same verse, with an added word or a missing word, but such a long section as the Ten Commandments — more than ten verses according to the lower cantillation, and according to the upper cantillation ten long verses — that stands truly written again word for word, this is the only thing: the Ten Commandments.

Thus one can see — and I am not entering into this discussion — how important the Ten Commandments are. The Sages had an argument about this, that they did not want them to say Kriat Shema lest they think this is the entire Torah. Simply put, they are a very important part of the Torah, and not only an important part — and this is what I ask to raise — they are important as the form of the Torah, as the order of the Torah, for this is the thing that the Torah wrote repeated in the same order and in the same words.

The Language That Is Important: The Verse Repeated to Establish

There are other things that are important. One can see that the Torah speaks very many times about the prohibition of idolatry. The subject, the content of the matter, is very important, but each time it stands in different language. Thus the language itself is not the important thing. It is important, but there is such a law ‘the verse repeated to establish,’ or ‘a prohibition that comes from two prohibitions,’ that the Rambam learns that its meaning is not that the transgressor is lashed twice, but that the matter is more important. Thus we see that what stands many times, simply it is an important thing. And here the language is the important thing. In other words, what stands on the tablets, on the stones — simply it was already established, that it descended with such strength, that it was defined with such strength on the language — this is the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments Are Very General Things

Now it stands itself that there is in this also limitation. For a person will say: the essence is not the language, for according to the place, according to the time, according to the person, it must change a bit in law. And therefore indeed the Ten Commandments are very general things. There does not stand in them even the most detailed thing, the most specific thing, that stands in the Ten Commandments which is the mitzvah of Shabbat. It stands ‘and on the seventh day you shall rest’ (Shemot 23:12), the seventh day; it does not stand when is the seventh day, but the seventh day of every week. This is the most concrete thing. All the rest: ‘honor your father and your mother’ (Shemot 20:12) — what is honor? The Gemara will already say what is the meaning of honor and what is the meaning of fear, but in the Ten Commandments the matter is not explicit. What is ‘do not murder’ (Shemot 20:13)? Whom? And how? And what is intentional and what is unintentional? It stands in other sections, but details do not stand. Only the most general thing stands, that one can, as they say, “engrave in stone.” This one can write on stone: ‘do not murder.’

Laws one cannot already write on stone. Every time the law stands in the Torah, it stands a bit differently, in slightly different details, because there are so many situations, until one must learn a complete Rambam, Hilchot Rotzeach, to know the laws of ‘do not murder.’ ‘Do not steal’ is all Choshen Mishpat; all of it is only laws of ‘do not steal’ or ‘do not covet,’ as the Ramban learns and they discussed it at length. This is not something that can be written — it is not fitting that it should descend to the level of stone, and if it descends there will be damage in this. One cannot establish it so.

Things That Are Oral You Are Not Permitted to Write Them: A Novelty in Halachah

And it seems to me that there is here a novelty, a novelty in halachah. For there is a thing ‘things that are oral you are not permitted to write them’ (Gittin 60b), which means that there is a level of writing, and the writing itself is a certain permanence; one cannot change the writing of a Sefer Torah. For every week arises a matter of one letter, dalet or heh or alef, about which they have already argued for a thousand years whether to write thus or thus. This is not — the Torah must be precise to the last letter. And therefore it is forbidden to add. ‘Things that are oral you are not permitted to write them’ means that it is forbidden to take seriously the text of the Mishnah as we take the text of the Torah. This is the meaning. People think this is a decree of the verse, and why was it necessary to leave specifically this; rather this is the meaning. There is a boundary, there must be a boundary, how many things descend to writing, and descent to writing means descent to such a physical garment, for in this world everything is physical.

The Beit HaMikdash: One Place of Sanctity

Just as there is a law that the Beit HaMikdash is only in one place — and it too stands in Sefer Devarim — coming from the appreciation of what is the meaning of a physical place that Hashem chose, that was established for the sanctity of the Name, ‘to cause His name to dwell there’ (Devarim 14:23). That is, certainly if we speak in spirituality, if we speak in an abstract way, then the thing is more blurred. And this is not that spirituality and the high levels are blurred; they spread in this world in a blurred way, but they are more abstract, less limited by certain physical boundaries of the level of this world. And everything, as it stands in the verse, ‘in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned’ (Shemot 20:20). Everyone, certainly, has a small sanctuary, everyone in his intention makes a sanctuary in the heart. But if we want and there is a great need and great benefit to take a specific thing and make that there should be here a holy place, a place for Hashem — it must be only one. And the words are very limited, only specifically in this way. And limitation means that the thing will be in a very general way.

The Beit HaMikdash is a general thing. In the Beit HaMikdash, as the Arizal says, thirteen gates, and there they pray in all the nusachot (prayer versions). And the Beit Midrash is the aspect of Torah she’be’al peh, it is not a holy place; this is not the place to which all Israel come to ascend and see the face of Hashem. Certainly whoever comes sees the face of the Shechinah in the Beit Midrash, for the Beit Midrash is a Beit Knesset, and this is done for the sake of the Shechinah, Knesset Yisrael. But if every Beit Knesset makes a different nusach, the matter does not disturb, because the permanence is not placed on the level of the nusach. This is a more blurred thing. But if you make a Beit HaMikdash, you cannot say there that the Beit HaMikdash prays in a certain nusach. In what nusach did they pray in the Beit HaMikdash? In all of them, in whatever they wished. The Beit HaMikdash establishes only the very limited amount of things that can be established in writing. And this is the secret of ‘things that are oral you are not permitted to write them.’

Levels of Permanence: Torah She’be’al Peh, Writing, and the Tablets

And even though they wrote the Torah she’be’al peh, still the Torah she’be’al peh changes much more. Indeed one must be more careful about one who takes every text that stands in some Acharon seriously like a verse in the Chumash; this itself is the prohibition, truly the prohibition of ‘things that are oral you are not permitted to write them.’ And just as there is the matter regarding Torah she’be’al peh within Torah she’bichtav, so there is the matter regarding the tablets in relation to the entire Torah. That is, the words of the general Torah you are not permitted to write them on stone. Indeed they wrote on two stone monuments the entire Torah — but this is an additional level.

There is in this a great dispute among the commentators, whether they wrote the entire Torah from Bereishit until ‘before the eyes of all Israel,’ or perhaps only the list of mitzvot, or perhaps only Mishneh Torah. Something less than the entire Torah they wrote there apparently certainly, for it is very difficult that they should write the entire Torah on stones. But such stones as tablets — only the Ten Commandments are permitted to be written on the tablets, because this is already a greater level of permanence, a greater level of the descent of the thing truly to a physical limb, to a physical boundary, and at such a level there can only be the Ten Commandments.

Return to the Question: Why Does Not the Same Thing Stand in Both Times

Now, after all the introduction to understand what is Torah, and what are the two types of Torah, and what are the tablets, and what are the Ten Commandments, the question becomes very interesting that in the Ten Commandments the same thing does not stand in both times. For it is simple that if it stands twice, its meaning is that in the meantime they repeated it. Perhaps Moshe Rabbeinu himself? One can say that he remembered this again and wrote in prophecy. I do not know, but presumably certainly there was memory. They repeated — Israel repeated throughout all forty years of the wilderness the Ten Commandments, and more, they repeated all the Torah, but the Ten Commandments even more, for this is the thing that was heard from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself at Mount Sinai. And every Jew knew by heart the Ten Commandments. And if a person will say: ah, they wrote them the second time at a later stage, and they

forgot a few words — for an upright Jew does not forget even one word, and certainly such a supreme thing he does not forget.

The Differences Between the Two Versions of the Ten Commandments

A person will say: but the Ibn Ezra claims that there is no difference which word we write, for the essence is the intention. But we just said that the Ten Commandments are not something that is only a matter of intention. The Ten Commandments are something that if it were only a matter of intention, the subject would stand again, and the Ten Commandments would not stand again. It is indeed important that there be the words, and perhaps a certain amount of words, and a certain amount of commandments must be specifically ten — for what would be bad if there were nine, or twelve, or eleven, or thirty? It is not that there must be ten, but that there must be these words. And if so, if a few words stand in a different way, this is truly a wonder. What is the simple meaning that different words stand in a different way?

And I think this is a very good question. Let us explain thus.

The Different Types of Differences

There are several types of differences between the first commandments, standing in Parashat Yitro, and the commandments standing in Va’etchanan. And whoever examines for himself will see different differences, and although they are countless, they can be divided into different categories.

There are differences of one letter. Here it stands ‘lemitzvato’ and here ‘mitzvotav,’ we read “mitzvato” but a vav stands in place of a yud. And another great difference: in the last five commandments it stands here ‘lo tirtzach, lo tin’af, lo tignov’ (Shemot 20), and in Parashat Va’etchanan ‘velo tin’af, velo tignov, velo ta’aneh’ (Devarim 5), with a vav. This is one type of difference, that the letters are different; I remember that there are such small differences.

After that there are things in which an entire word was exchanged. For example, here it stands ‘ed sheker’ (Shemot 20) and here ‘ed shav’ (Devarim 5). Or that an entire word was added, as here it stands ‘lo tachmod beit re’echa’ (Shemot 20) and here ‘lo titaveh’ (Devarim 5). A word was exchanged: the second ‘lo tachmod’ was exchanged for ‘lo titaveh,’ and ‘sadehu’ (Devarim 5) was added, and in the first ‘sadehu’ does not stand. And I saw a nice peshat: because in the second he speaks to the generation entering the Land, who would always have fields, and in the wilderness there were no fields, and therefore it was not necessary to write ‘sadehu.’ A nice understanding. These are small differences, let us say.

Another small difference: here it stands ‘zachor et yom haShabbat’ (Shemot 20), and here ‘shamor et yom haShabbat’ (Devarim 5).

Another type of change is that entire sections are added. This is perhaps the greatest difference: there are entire sections that are added, and sometimes entire sections that are exchanged. For example, it stands ‘shamor et yom haShabbat lekadsho’ (Devarim 5), and besides that ‘zachor’ does not stand, it also stands in Parashat Va’etchanan ‘ka’asher tzivcha Hashem Elokecha’ (Devarim 5). That is, he adds a section to the sentence, that he should do as the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. And furthermore, the same thing at the end: he adds a bit even in the next verse of Shabbat, and at its end also stands ‘lema’an yanuach avdecha va’amatcha kamocha’ (Devarim 5). That is, after it stands that the servant and maidservant must rest, it stands ‘lema’an,’ and adds like a section of explanation.

And similarly it stands ‘kabed et avicha ve’et imecha’ (Devarim 5), and here too ‘ka’asher tzivcha Hashem Elokecha’ (Devarim 5) — twice that same section was added. And after that it stands ‘lema’an ya’arichun yamecha ulema’an yitav lach’ (Devarim 5), a kind of blessing was added, an additional addition.

One more: like an entire verse that is different. In Parashat Yitro it stands ‘ki sheshet yamim asah Hashem et hashamayim’ (Shemot 20) etc., that therefore there is Shabbat. And in Sefer Devarim stands an entirely different reason for Shabbat, ‘vezacharta ki eved hayita’ (Devarim 5) etc., ‘al ken tzivcha Hashem Elokecha la’asot et yom haShabbat’ (Devarim 5). An entirely different reason. The reason of the six days of creation does not stand at all, but rather the entire new reason of the Exodus from Egypt for Shabbat.

These are the different differences. There are perhaps more differences, small and large, that I did not notice.

How to Weigh the Differences

In any case, small differences like a vav that is not a vav, one can say that perhaps they are not critical, this is not such a great difference. Certainly, in depth one must find an explanation even for this, but it is difficult to begin from there.

Other small differences, that a word is exchanged — ‘shav’ or ‘sheker.’ It is true that there is a law that there is a false oath (shevuat shav) that is different from a lying oath (shevuat sheker). And the same thing, ‘lo tachmod’ and ‘lo titaveh,’ the Rambam rules that they are two different prohibitions, that ‘lo tachmod’ means something else. But according to the peshat one can say that synonyms are not so critical, and still the thing is the same thing. And even if I say that the text must be the same text, nevertheless if a synonym stands, in place of ‘lo tachmod’ stands ‘lo titaveh,’ perhaps one can accept this.

The most difficult thing to accept is when the entire thing is exchanged. In the mitzvah of Shabbat, in the commandment of Shabbat, there stands an entirely different thing, an entirely different reason for Shabbat. For the entire commandment of Shabbat, besides other small differences that exist even in the commandment itself.

These are the observations that we must have when we want to place these two versions of the Ten Commandments opposite each other. And in the words of the Sages we find thus.

The Rambam on the Two Reasons for Shabbat

Thus at least says the Rambam — and one should examine better in the midrashim, perhaps there is a midrash — the Rambam spoke at length about the two reasons for Shabbat that stand, and tried to reconcile them, but not the text but rather the matter: what is truly the peshat, whether Shabbat is a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt or a remembrance of the work of creation?

In language, if we speak about the language standing in a different way — if there is a contradiction in the matter, this is a greater difficulty. One must understand that this is already a greater difficulty than the difficulty we are speaking about regarding the Ten Commandments, which is the concept of the Ten Commandments that such language stands. It stands differently — I do not know.

The Ramban and the Ibn Ezra: They Guard the Matter and Not the Words

But if I speak about the language, the Ramban says thus in Parashat Yitro, and repeats the same thing, or something like it, in Parashat Va’etchanan, and perhaps a bit differently. For there is one difference that is a difference of a word in total, and about it there is a Gemara — I think the Mechilta and Yerushalmi — that several things, as is the way of our Sages, everything apparently comes from one statement, standing in the Mechilta, and afterward brought in the Gemara and several times in other ways and in midrashim. The Gemara speaks about the fact that it stands ‘zachor’ and ‘shamor’ — once it stands ‘zachor’ and once it stands ‘shamor.’ This is something that the Gemara speaks about.

The Approach of the Ibn Ezra

The Ramban in Parashat Yitro gets angry and argues with Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, because Rabbi Avraham said that he thinks that the Torah is not particular to say the same thing with the same word, as long as the content agrees. And he brings proof and speaks a bit at length about the Ten Commandments. I do not see that the Ramban quotes here the Ibn Ezra, but I remember that this is his intention, and he speaks about this. The Ibn Ezra said at length that we see from this that there are different differences — here ‘shamor,’ here ‘zachor’ — and both mean the same thing, and there is no difference which word we say. The sanctity of the Torah, which he calls lashon hakodesh (the holy tongue), the “Hebrews,” as he says, ‘guard the matter and not the words’ (Ibn Ezra Shemot 20). One must be sensible: the essence is not which word we say, but the content.

The Ramban’s Agreement on the Way of Peshat

The Ramban relates to this — as I thought that he writes explicitly, but I see that he does not write explicitly, but I remember that the commentators explain that his intention is to attack the Ibn Ezra — and the Ramban says that this is very nice, that everything can be good peshat, and he does not disagree that according to the peshat one can say that it is the same thing.

And so indeed in Parashat Va’etchanan he says clearly that according to the way of peshat Moshe Rabbeinu explained. It is difficult for him: what did the Holy One, blessed be He, say? The Ramban says that the Holy One, blessed be He, said, let us say, ‘zachor,’ and Moshe Rabbeinu explained that its meaning is ‘shamor.’ It seems to him that ‘zachor’ is difficult to understand what its meaning is, and this is like an explanation of ‘zachor.’ This is the Ramban’s first peshat in Parashat Va’etchanan. ‘Zachor’ means remember, but remember — what is the meaning that I will remember? Moshe Rabbeinu explains that its meaning is to guard the Shabbat; this is an explanation.

And how does Moshe Rabbeinu change what the Holy One, blessed be He, said? There is no problem with this. And it seems to me that this is simple, that when it stands ‘ka’asher tzivcha Hashem Elokecha,’ the Holy One, blessed be He, did not say this, for the Holy One, blessed be He, does not say ‘ka’asher tzivcha Hashem Elokecha.’ In general, in all the commandments, besides the first two, such languages stand, because this is what Moshe Rabbeinu says in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. And even here, what he added in Mishneh Torah, is understood, for he says ‘ka’asher tzivcha’ the Holy One, blessed be He; there is no need for additional explanation. He can add such a word, and he does not say ‘the Holy One, blessed be He, says and this is His language,’ but he says clearly ‘ka’asher tzivcha Hashem Elokecha.’ And you understand that this is not the language of the Name but the language of Moshe, who says about what the Holy One, blessed be He, now said, even within the sentence itself. This is one peshat.

The Ramban’s Claim: The Ibn Ezra Did Not Understand the Gemara

And now the Ramban says, that what the Ibn Ezra claims that the Sages said their words casually — that they said ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’ (Mechilta Yitro), and the Ibn Ezra says that this is not correct, because the Torah is not particular about the words — about this the Ramban says: it can be that this is truly the simple meaning of the verse, and he agrees with the Ibn Ezra that one can understand thus. But two things: at the very least the Gemara, and how the Gemara understood the verse, about this the Ramban says that these are empty words.

The language of the Ramban here: ‘And this reasoning will only be heard by one who is not accustomed to the Talmud’ (Ramban Shemot 20). The Ramban says: one who does not know Gemara thinks that the Gemara simply did not know this. The Gemara thought that the verses are precise in every word, and Moshe said this, and there was a difficulty, and the Gemara says an answer that the Holy One, blessed be He, said both. Thus the Ramban learns, and thus the Ramban understood the approach of the Ibn Ezra.

The Two Reasons in Which the Ramban Disagrees

The Ramban says that this is not correct, for two main reasons in which he disagrees with the Ibn Ezra. One: the Ramban says, for we see that the Sages did not ask why here it stands ‘kol temunah’ (Shemot 20) and here ‘vechol temunah’ (Devarim 5), a difference of a vav. We do not see different midrashim about this question. Why? Because we will assume, that about such small differences there is indeed no insistence, and a difference is possible, and it does not disturb that there is one small thing that is different.

And the same thing even in additional things, one can say, that the Sages did not ask even why here it stands ‘ka’asher tzivcha’ and there ‘ka’asher tzivcha’ does not stand, and there it stands ‘lema’an yanuach’ and there ‘lema’an yanuach’ does not stand. And interesting, one should check this better. But thus the Ramban claims: the Sages did not ask about the small differences that mean the same thing. And for our matter as well, that it stands twice in what means the same thing, it does not disturb. Perhaps there is to learn from the addition, if it stands twice, I do not know. Thus says the Ramban.

Thus the Ibn Ezra thought that the Sages who said ‘zachor and shamor’ intended to ask, essentially — and thus I think, that in general the Ibn Ezra learns — they intended to ask in general, not that they spoke specifically about ‘zachor and shamor,’ but they intended to ask in general about what stands in the two commandments in general in an entirely different way, and they answered with the answer ‘one utterance,’ that is, that the Holy One, blessed be He, said both — not only ‘zachor and shamor,’ but all the other changes standing in the two places, even those the Holy One, blessed be He, said in both. Thus Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra learns, and about this he disagrees, and says that there is no need to come to this, because according to the peshat it is possible that it is the same content.

The Subject of Zachor and Shamor According to the Ramban: Positive and Negative Commandments

The Ramban says: no. When it stands ‘zachor and shamor,’ they mean ‘zachor and shamor,’ and they do not mean to ask about the entire thing. And what do we do with all the other differences? It appears that in this the Ramban agrees and agrees here, that indeed it is the same thing, and there is no problem with this. But what truly stands here? The Ramban says, first of all, about this he mainly claims that the Ibn Ezra did not understand the words of the Gemara. The claim, the Ramban claims, that ‘zachor and shamor’ mean an entirely different thing.

That is, one cannot say — when it stands ‘shav’ and ‘sheker,’ you can say that perhaps there is a derasha that makes a difference, but according to peshat ‘shav’ means false and ‘sheker’ means false, both the same thing. And when it stands ‘vechol temunah’ and ‘kol temunah,’ ‘velo ta’aneh’ and ‘lo ta’aneh,’ certainly everyone understands that the meaning does not change with a vav, and therefore there is no need to ask the difficulty.

But ‘zachor and shamor,’ the Ramban says, it is true that according to peshat — thus apparently his intention — it is true that according to peshat both can mean the same thing, both mean to guard the Shabbat, and it seems to me that this is indeed the simplest peshat. But according to midrash — not according to halachah, according to Talmud, according to the ways of the Gemara — they are never the same thing. For there is a rule ‘every language of pen and al is only a negative commandment’ (Eruvin 96), and when language of guarding stands — guarding means according to the Sages a negative commandment. That is, a positive commandment means that they should remember the Shabbat, that they should do, that they should not forget the Shabbat, and in a positive way that they should rest on Shabbat. But guarding means a negative commandment, that they should not desecrate the Shabbat.

An entirely new peshat. There stands as it were an obligation — it does not stand ‘do not desecrate the Shabbat’ — but a negative commandment is made not only from the language of ‘do not,’ but also from the language of ‘guard.’ ‘Guard the Shabbat day’ means: beware of desecrating the Shabbat, ‘to sanctify it,’ that you should sanctify it. And its negative side: beware of desecrating the Shabbat, and this is what the word ‘shamor’ seeks to say.

And if so, that we do not ask about the other difficulty — when the Sages say ‘zachor and shamor,’ they ask as it were a difficulty, why here it stands ‘zachor and shamor.’ They do not mean to ask why there stands a difference of a word, for a difference of a word does not disturb; why did they not ask about all the other words? Rather they mean to ask that one cannot exchange a positive commandment with a negative commandment — this is an entirely different thing.

One cannot that Moshe Rabbeinu should explain. Let us say, as the Ibn Ezra says, that the second time Moshe Rabbeinu explained — he explained, it was easier for him to explain, ‘ka’asher tzivcha’ he explained, you did not understand, or perhaps even the reason for Shabbat, that Moshe Rabbeinu explained somehow that the same thing standing ‘ki sheshet yamim’ can be explained also ‘ki eved hayita beMitzrayim’ — good, an explanation. Moshe Rabbeinu is permitted to say explanations and not to say only the language. But to exchange the halachah? Moshe Rabbeinu cannot exchange the halachah, he cannot exchange a mitzvah from a positive commandment to a negative commandment, these are two different things. This was the difficulty.

The Answer: They Were Said in One Utterance

And about this indeed the Sages answered the answer — as the Ibn Ezra understands — that the Holy One, blessed be He, can say both. This is the Sages’ answer, as brought in the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah. The Gemara discusses whether a person can hear two voices at once. The Gemara says: no, it stands ‘zachor and shamor,’ ‘what the mouth cannot speak and what the ear cannot hear’ (Rosh Hashanah 27). That is, the Holy One, blessed be He, can say two things at once. The Holy One, blessed be He, indeed said at the same moment truly ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’ (Mechilta Yitro). And if people could not hear this — indeed so, and therefore in the Torah, when we hear, the thing stands separately, once ‘zachor’ and once ‘shamor,’ because we cannot do both at once. It is impossible that there should stand in the Torah the word ‘zachor shamor’ at once truly. And even a person cannot hear. Two people, one says ‘zachor’ and one says ‘shamor,’ we do not hear either of them; unless it is beloved, perhaps one can hear one of them, but both certainly one cannot hear. And thus it comes out apparently in the peshat in Megillah, that therefore ‘two voices are not heard’ (Megillah 21), as the Gemara learns: two voices we do not hear, for we hear only one of them.

The Holy One, blessed be He, can both hear and speak. For the Holy One, blessed be He, there is not this problem; for people there is the problem. This is the answer to the difficulty, the difficulty of the contradiction: which did the Holy One, blessed be He, say, a positive commandment or a negative commandment? He said both. And therefore Moshe Rabbeinu always said this, and always said this.

What Stood on the Tablets?

The Ramban asks: and what stood on the tablets? Did there stand on the tablets a positive commandment or a negative commandment? The Ramban says, according to what I learn in the Ramban, it is possible that both stood. Indeed so, both stood on the tablets.

Thus the Ramban says here in Parashat Yitro, and asks a difficulty: if the Holy One, blessed be He, also said ‘shamor’ — and all the other changes the Holy One, blessed be He, said, those that stand in Yitro — if the Holy One, blessed be He, also said ‘shamor,’ why did it not stand on the tablets? And he says, and at first he thought perhaps that in Va’etchanan stands the text that was on the second tablets, and there indeed ‘shamor’ stood; he sees that this is one side. But afterward he says, that his intention is that perhaps on one tablet ‘zachor’ stood, and ‘shamor’ was Torah she’be’al peh; ‘shamor’ did not stand on the tablets. ‘Shamor’ Moshe Rabbeinu said orally to Israel, that the Holy One, blessed be He, also said ‘shamor.’ He knew. How did he know? I do not know. Perhaps a prophet can also somehow hear both at once? I do not know how he could hear, but people could not hear. He told us that the Holy One, blessed be He, also says ‘shamor,’ and this he said, and perhaps even wrote the second time, but essentially on the tablets only ‘zachor’ stood.

In any case, this is what the Ramban understands, and all the other things indeed not. This is the difference: here there is a difference of positive and negative commandments. This is the subject of zachor and shamor, not as the Ibn Ezra thinks. That is, not that they asked a difficulty about the change — change does not disturb, as the Ibn Ezra himself says — but a change of meaning disturbs. When a second meaning stands, when there stands here a mitzvah that is a negative commandment, one must reconcile. This is the Ramban’s dispute with the Ibn Ezra regarding the subject of zachor and shamor.

The Source of the Midrash and the List of One Utterance

Now, as I already mentioned in the previous shiur (as we explained in the previous shiur and this is not its place), and with this we will arrive at the Ramban’s secret — the Gemara quotes here essentially the Mechilta. The Mechilta is from the Tannaim, always earlier than the Gemara. The Gemara quotes here the Mechilta. The same thing also stands in the Sifrei, in the midrash of the Tannaim, and even there such a version of the Sifrei or the like, the same thing stands, and also in Va’etchanan, and so here in Parashat Ki Teitzei, in this week’s parasha, in the Sifrei that same derasha is brought, and always similar derashot, and it stands thus: ‘both were said in one utterance’ (Mechilta).

In the Sifrei or in the Mechilta there is a list of things that the Holy One, blessed be He, said in one utterance. One is ‘zachor and shamor,’ which we already learned. Two stands in Shabbat: ‘its desecrator shall surely be put to death’ (Shemot 31), and it also stands ‘and on the Shabbat day two lambs’ (Bamidbar 28), which means that one must offer on Shabbat. Three: ‘the nakedness of your brother’s wife you shall not uncover’ (Vayikra 18), and it stands ‘her brother-in-law shall come upon her’ (Devarim 25). Four: ‘every daughter who inherits an inheritance’ (Bamidbar 36), and afterward it stands ‘and no inheritance shall transfer from tribe to tribe’ (Bamidbar 36), that is, for a daughter there is a different law.

The Contradiction Is the Original Subject of the Midrash

It comes out that the midrash, the original midrash that the Gemara learns from it simply — for one of the things standing here is ‘zachor and shamor’ — but the original midrash intended here to say that there are many things that contradict each other. We see clearly at least from the Ramban, that apparently the main matter of zachor and shamor is indeed that there is a certain contradiction between them, and not simply that different language stands. This is the subject of the midrash.

And also the Gemara’s subject, when the Gemara speaks in ‘two voices are not heard,’ its subject is simply whether it is possible to hear two things, and there is no difference whether it is a contradiction or not. But the subject of the original midrash was that there is a contradiction between ‘zachor’ and ‘shamor.’ Or, and perhaps the midrash also intended to say, that the contradiction of zachor and shamor is the contradiction of ‘and from the positive you hear the negative,’ that ‘and on the Shabbat day two lambs.’ That is, because the midrash understood that ‘shamor’ means not to do work, and ‘zachor’ means to remember — perhaps like to sanctify the Shabbat in a positive way in certain things, for example that they should offer musaf for Shabbat — this is a contradiction: how is it possible to offer musaf Shabbat if this is desecration of Shabbat? And about this the answer that ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance,’ that a person cannot say, but the Holy One, blessed be He, can say, ‘God spoke one thing, two things I heard’ (Tehillim 62), that the Holy One, blessed be He, can say two things at once.

The Innovation: Contradiction in One Utterance

In other words, we understand that there stands here in the midrash a thing of glory: not only that the Holy One, blessed be He, can say — this is not such a great innovation, for even two people can say two things at once. One person cannot, but two people can; one person cannot hear, but two people can hear. No, this is a new thing: the Holy One, blessed be He, can say two things that are a contradiction at once. This is already an entirely different understanding.

Understood, a contradiction — and we will come to the entire question whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make logical contradictions, a contradiction in the matter. If we take it absolutely, this is not truly a contradiction. There is here an exception, not absolute, which is in the category of an exception in the service. The same thing Shabbat in the Mikdash, there is in it an exception or overriding. In a general way a person would not hear thus, a person would think absolutely: either thus or thus. With the Holy One, blessed be He, it can be that both are at once.

The Ramban’s Secret: Zachor and Shamor, Tiferet and Malchut

This is the midrash according to derash, and I am certain that upon this midrash is built the next passage of the Ramban. For the Ramban says that Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah in his midrash explained a great secret regarding the subject of zachor and shamor.

The Attribute of Day and the Attribute of Night

And the Ramban does not truly quote the text, but explains that zachor and shamor are connected to the attribute of day and the attribute of night: remembering is by day, guarding at night. And therefore we say ‘Bo’i Kallah’ (Come, bride) on the night of Shabbat, for the bride — the night of Shabbat is called bride, the aspect of night, the aspect of shamor. That is, Knesset Yisrael called bride, like ‘bride’ in Shir HaShirim and in other places, or queen.

And the sanctification of the day is called Kiddush Rabbah according to peshat. Thus the Ramban learns about zachor and shamor in brief. Why Kiddush Rabbah? According to peshat, because this is the language of sagi nahor (euphemism), that it is a smaller kiddush, for at night is the main mitzvah of ‘remember the Shabbat day to sanctify it,’ for the day is only rabbinic. The Ramban says: no, for in truth it is greater. According to Kabbalah — and so also halachah — the sanctity of day is superior, it is the great sanctity. That is, the ‘zachor,’ the attribute of Tiferet, is the great one.

The Connection Between the Contradiction and the Two Attributes

And he explains, now the Ramban comes and says: and truth, do not think that what I said before, that the contradiction that the Sages speak about is not according to the opinion of the Ibn Ezra in language but in content, in positive commandments and negative commandments — that it has only a small connection with the midrash that Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah arranged, which says that these are the two attributes called Tiferet and Malchut. Rather in truth they are connected, because the midrash indeed intends the contradiction of positive and negative commandments.

Why? Because the attribute of ‘zachor,’ the attribute of Tiferet, is connected to positive commandments, and comes from the attribute of love, and it is the attribute of mercy, and Tiferet comes from Chesed, and it is the measure of the attribute of mercy. And why does it have a connection to positive commandments? The attribute of Tiferet makes a person who loves his master, who loves the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, has mercy on him, for there is here love and mercy.

And ‘shamor’ — there is in it negative commandments, and it is from the attribute of judgment, comes from the attribute of fear, that is, because the attribute of judgment, Malchut, draws from Gevurah. Why? Because one who guards from bad things with his master — its meaning is that he fears him.

Why Love Is Greater Than Fear

And the Ramban says, that therefore positive commandments are greater than negative commandments, just as love is greater than fear. Why? Because one who does and fulfills with his body, does things that his master loves, he is greater than one who only guards from doing evil to him, which is neutral.

That is, and it seems to me that this is the simple peshat: one only does not do evil — good, but even the good you are not doing. One does not truly love his fellow, but only does not do evil to him. Even a hater does specifically the evil; one who simply does not want to quarrel with you does not do what is hateful to you. One who truly loves you — perhaps there is in him a bit of fear, or a bit of fear that belongs to everyone, not to quarrel simply with someone, that he fears to quarrel with me — but one who truly does what you love, this is already love. He does, troubles himself, says with his body, troubles himself to do something that I love. This means that he loves me.

Positive Overrides Negative and the Punishment of Negative

And therefore the Ramban explains that positive overrides negative. This is the reason that positive overrides negative. Why? Because love is greater than fear.

The Ramban says, that therefore there is a greater punishment in negative commandments. Why? Because one who transgresses a negative commandment — and I will explain it — he is truly like a hater, goes against what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. One who does not do a positive commandment, good, he did not do the extra thing of love, and one cannot come to him with great claims. But one who did not fulfill a negative commandment, he indeed did something, in a positive way he did directly something that is hateful to the Holy One, blessed be He, and for this he receives a greater punishment. Thus far the words of the Ramban in Parashat Yitro.

What Do We Learn from the Ram

What Do We Learn from the Ramban

What do we understand? I see that there is more to expand on this, but we have now learned only the foundations of the subject, and we still need to return and expand and connect all the matters (and we will yet explain with God’s help and this is not its place). But what do we learn now from this passage of the Ramban?

What we learn — and it is very important to grasp this — returning to what we learn in the Torah: the Torah that we fulfill is positive commandments and negative commandments. Let us speak about Shabbat: we do not do work, but Shabbat is also made.

Shabbat: A Unity of Positive and Negative

Shabbat is an interesting thing, for the Gemara says: what is the practical difference that ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’? That even a woman — very interesting, this is that same attribute of shamor, and we see clearly that it is connected in the hint of Kabbalah — even a woman is obligated in kiddush Shabbat. Why? Because ‘whoever is in remembering is in guarding’ (Berachot 20). Because in Shabbat there is like a unity of positive and negative.

Shabbat — how do we make it? Through non-doing. It is true that one can do, there are certain things that we indeed do, in a positive way, a positive commandment to make kiddush. But even the kiddush — we sanctify and speak in it that on Shabbat we rest. This is not something we do, but like a doing of non-doing. But here positive and negative are joined together. One can speak about this in depth, how in Shabbat the resting itself is also something we do, but this is sufficient.

Why Women Are Obligated in Shamor

And therefore, women, who belong essentially to negative commandments — therefore a positive commandment only applies to a man, a male, a free person, who is obligated to fulfill the obligation, because he is a special level. But when this is a negative commandment, it is forbidden for everyone to do, except when the matter does not apply, like one who has authority and the like. The things that are hateful to the Holy One, blessed be He — it is forbidden even for a woman to do, and even for a servant, even for a Canaanite servant it is forbidden to do, because this is against Him. From this one receives a greater punishment, this is more severe. A positive commandment is a different thing.

In Practice: We Do Not Raise This Sufficiently

But what comes out — returning to what I ask to say — the first thing, in practice, in practice we do not raise this sufficiently. And it seems to me that we indeed live thus, but we do not recognize sufficiently in reality, in the light, and all the secrets are built upon the reality that the Ramban explains.

When we go in a regular way to cheder, we say: what is a Jew? A Jew must do 613 mitzvot. 613 mitzvot clearly: positive and negative, both the same thing, one must do 613 mitzvot, and there is no problem. But one must understand that this is not correct. The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded do not do — this is not the same as do. What is the difference? He commanded do, He commanded do not do, He commanded both? No, there is a great difference.

When we do — there are things that the Holy One, blessed be He, says: please, I love this, do this. And there are things that the Holy One, blessed be He, says: this I hate, this is dangerous, do not do this.

One Who Does Only from Fear

And in the most general way, one who does only from fear, in other words, one who is only in the aspect of negative commandments, who only fears that the Holy One, blessed be He, will not be angry with him — for him indeed there is no difference between positive commandments and negative commandments, both he feels the same thing, and he does not understand.

There is a rule, positive overrides negative. He will say: good, thus is the halachah, a decree of the verse. But one who understands the meaning — and it seems to me that already the very understanding of what we learned, understanding the difference, the first difference that one must understand among the mitzvot is the difference between positive commandments and negative commandments, a great difference — understands that he feels entirely differently, that this is an entirely different level, that it connects with the Holy One, blessed be He, in a different way. Not all mitzvot connect with the Holy One, blessed be He, in the same form.

In the most general way, a woman, shamor, they think that everything is the same thing. But a male knows that this is not so. Positive commandments are an entirely different type of thing.

To Do a Positive Commandment One Must Be Worthy

To do a positive commandment one must be worthy. As it stands in the Mishnah in Sukkah, that there are mitzvot that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want. It says: ‘as if this son of ours came and wrote to his master and poured a pitcher on his face’ (Sukkah 29a). What is the meaning? For I am doing a mitzvah! The Holy One, blessed be He, does not want your mitzvot.

There is no such thing that the Holy One, blessed be He, does evil to someone with a mitzvah — with a transgression, yes, because He does not want his negative commandment. For a negative commandment means that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want the thing to happen. But a positive commandment is a certain service. Every positive commandment is a certain connection, and as we see there in Sukkah, it is a certain service. We give something to the Holy One, blessed be He, we do something that the Holy One, blessed be He, loves.

Positive Commandments Come from Love

This is an entirely different thing. One can say that there is in this a certain concretization, we look as he says ‘one who loves his master,’ all these differences, but one must begin to feel the difference. Positive commandments are very different from negative commandments.

And in this, I say, therefore most of Kabbalah speaks from positive commandments. There are places, when Shabbat or Pesach arrives, ‘He made equal man and woman,’ where there is in them a unity between positive and negative, and then one can speak from negative commandments. But the main mitzvot that are spoken about according to Kabbalah are positive commandments. Why? Because this is truly a higher level, that comes from love. Negative commandments come from fear — an entirely different type of thing, two different types of things.

Summary: Zachor and Shamor in One Utterance

Until here we learned the introduction what is Torah, and what are the two Torahs and Mishneh Torah, and what are the two tablets, and what is the difference between positive and negative, that this is truly the meaning of ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance.’

This is what the midrash seeks to say: that even though these are two different things, nevertheless both first of all connect in Shabbat. Very important. Not simply that all positive commandments and negative commandments are the same thing, but they connect; in Shabbat they connect together.

In Shabbat We Arrive at the Holy One, Blessed Be He

But from here we also learn that with the Holy One, blessed be He, they connect together. In Shabbat we arrive at the Holy One, blessed be He. In Shabbat the Jew feels more with the Holy One, blessed be He.

That is, as we said, from the side of a person’s relationship to the Holy One, blessed be He, there is a difference — you do Him a favor, and you do not do something He does not love. But with the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, that is, the good that the Holy One, blessed be He, is, the truth that the Holy One, blessed be He, is, there is no true difference between the two things. This one must understand much better, and we have not understood it now.

And in Shabbat we arrive at this perspective. This is the secret of ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance.’

What is a Mitzvah — Zachor and Shamor in One Utterance

*Introduction to the Zohar, Pekudei Oraita, Parashat Ki Tavo 5786*

Rabbosai, we are learning our holy Torah. This shiur is the fourth, I believe, in our examination of the Introduction to the Zohar, on the verse ‘Pekudei Oraita, pekudei d’mara alma’ (Introduction to the Zohar) — the commandments of the Master of the World. And we are still standing in the introduction, for the introduction deals with a very fundamental matter, which is the question: What is a mitzvah? And this question, what is the meaning of mitzvah, it clarifies through the fundamental division of the types of mitzvos that exist, which are positive commandments and negative commandments. And as we said, that the understanding of anything is revealed through standing upon the main divisions within that subject, so is the way of the learner to stand well upon every sugya.

The Fundamental Division of the Mitzvos

Certainly there are many other divisions of the mitzvos besides positive and negative. There are different ways to divide the mitzvos: positive commandments that are time-bound, mitzvos that depend on time, mitzvos that depend on place, mitzvos that are specifically for certain people, mitzvos that are incumbent upon the community, mitzvos that are incumbent upon the individual, mitzvos that depend on the Land of Israel, mitzvos that apply always, and mitzvos that depend on a specific time. And also divisions of obligatory mitzvos and optional mitzvos. And there is also the severity of each mitzvah, especially in negative commandments, whether it carries a prohibition of a simple negative commandment, a prohibition with kares, a prohibition with lashes, or a prohibition with death penalty. Each one of these divisions raises, in truth, a general point in what a mitzvah is, and consequently to which category each particular mitzvah belongs. But the first division, the most general, which divides all the mitzvos into only two, is the division of positive commandments and negative commandments.

Why We Must Understand What a Mitzvah Is

And we must return and stand upon this: Why is it so important to understand what a mitzvah is. For to be a Jew means to be one who fulfills the mitzvos. So it is stated in the Ten Commandments, and as we spoke in the previous shiur about the Ten Commandments. For already in the first part it is said that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is ‘pokeid avon avos al banim’ (Exodus 20:5) — ‘to His enemies,’ and they are the enemies of Hashem, and this is none other than one who does not serve the Creator, one who worships idolatry or one who does not do what is incumbent upon him, and he is called an enemy of Hashem. And against them ‘and showing kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments’ (Exodus 20:6). The matter is quite clear: there are against the enemies, who are enemies of Hashem, primarily those who do not serve the Creator and do not follow Him, who receive the evil and the punishment that is stated there; and against them the love, and they are the keepers of His commandments. And it is possible that there are two things here, ‘to those who love Me and keep My commandments,’ and it is possible that they are one thing — those who love Him who are the keepers of His commandments. And according to what we learned from the Ramban, that love is a positive commandment, and ‘beware’ is from negative commandments which is fear, one can say that love is against those who do positive commandments, and keepers of His commandments against those who keep primarily the negative commandments. But in a general way, keepers of His commandments certainly goes on all the mitzvos.

And as we call ourselves Jews, a Jew is a keeper of mitzvos. Many times they say ‘shomer Torah u’mitzvos,’ for the Torah is the totality of the mitzvos, and learning the mitzvos is the Torah. So it is extremely important to understand what a mitzvah is in its totality. We are created as ones who do mitzvos, and this is the nature of the Jew — a type of person, a type of human being who does mitzvos and keeps mitzvos. And what is the nature of the mitzvah in general?

Different Ways of Understanding the Mitzvah

And from here we will jump to the way of the Zohar on the matter. There are very many ways. It is self-evident that most people think, nebech, that mitzvah means commandment, from the language of command, command — something that must be done; but this is not the essence of the matter for the Jew. As is known, the books of Chassidus say that mitzvah is from the language of tzavsa, and not from the language of command, but from the language of tzavsa alone. And certainly this is a derash, but it raises something deep, and it is certainly possible to bring it even into the language of the mitzvah and the command themselves. For one must understand what a command is. There were those who said, like Martin Buber I believe, that the Torah is not law but request — something that the Holy One, Blessed be He, requests from the Jews. These are all kinds of formulations in which one can speak about the matter.

The Way of the Zohar: Shamor and Zachor

But the Zohar teaches us its way, and since we are learning Zohar, we will jump to the way of the Zohar. And thus says the Zohar: The mitzvos are shamor and zachor. Shamor and zachor — these are the mitzvos, and they are both one, as it is said ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’ (Mechilta, Rashi Exodus 20:8), and as we learned last week, that we reached the point where we understand that this is not just a derash about why two different expressions were said in the Ten Commandments, and this is not just a derash explaining why the same expression was said twice, but this is a fundamental matter in the question of what are the types of mitzvos that exist.

And in a general way it is true about the entire Torah that it has zachor and shamor, and we learned that the Ramban explained that this is actually directed toward positive and negative commandments. And that positive and negative come from different places and go to different places, that they are a completely different essence, and yet both things called positive and negative join together. And the great principle called 613 mitzvos means that everything is one, the same God Himself, ‘all of them were given from one shepherd’ (Ecclesiastes 12:11) — there is unity in all 613 mitzvos, and as we spoke at the end of the previous shiur. And this unity comes on Shabbos, for about Shabbos it is said ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance,’ and therefore we light two candles and take two hadassim, in order to express the shamor and zachor that were said in one utterance. And this is the thing that we must clarify here well.

The Question on ‘U’shmartem Va’asitem’

And according to Kabbalah, the matter is thus. The first thing the Zohar says is this: It brings a verse in which it is said ‘u’shmartem mitzvosai va’asitem osam’ (Leviticus 22:31). And the Zohar says, for we just said that there are two types of mitzvos called zachor and shamor, and seemingly it would be more appropriate to say ‘u’shmartem mitzvosai u’zechartem osam.’ And in my opinion this is only a question of positioning, whose intention is to arrive at its answer, for he cannot write ‘u’zechartem mitzvosai,’ ‘u’shmartem u’zechartem’ — this is not acceptable to the mind. Rather his intention is to arouse that there is a double expression, for in the tablets we see that there is a double expression of zachor and shamor, zachor one time and shamor another time, which is an explanation of this. And seemingly the matter should indicate that same subject, or another side of that same subject, as we will need to speak a bit in depth about zachor and shamor. So they are like two sides, two types of mitzvos. And the Ramban said that they are the positive commandment of Shabbos and the negative commandment of Shabbos, and it turns out that positive and negative are in a general way.

And behold there is a verse in which it is said ‘u’shmartem va’asitem.’ And if so you will ask, why is it said ‘u’shmartem va’asitem’? And why is remembrance missing from it? For the doing — this is the doing, and it fits very well that the positive corresponds to the keeping, which is not doing but negative. But where is the remembrance? Why was remembrance not said? As if this is the assumption of the Zohar in its question — it assumes that seemingly it would be proper that there should be here corresponding to keeping and remembering, shamor and zachor. And why was zachor not said? And since the Zohar asks a question, even though seemingly this is a question that was made in order to arrive at the answer — and I don’t believe this is a real question. For there are two types of questions: there is a question that a person was truly troubled by something and found an answer and approach for it, and this is not the simple meaning of the question; and there are questions that the Zohar asks of this type, but here his intention is not for this, this is not a question of this type. Here he asks seemingly in order to arrive at showing the simple meaning in keeping and remembering. And he shows, and so he will show, that in this verse, and indeed in very many verses, it does not say keeping and remembering but keeping and doing.

Keeping and Doing Go Together

And since the Zohar noted this, a desire was aroused in me to check the matter. And I checked in the Torah, and it appears that it is said very many times in the Chumash the language of keeping — ‘u’shmartem va’asitem,’ ‘lishmor v’la’asos’ — and even in the book of Deuteronomy it is said many times ‘lishmor v’la’asos es kol haTorah’ or ‘es kol hamitzvah,’ and several similar expressions. Keeping and doing go together with great strength. And not only do they go together, but they are bound to each other to the point that it is said many times ‘u’shmartem la’asos,’ without end — I believe dozens of times such expressions were said. And one sees clearly, for it is impossible that it should be said the opposite: it is never said ‘la’asos shemirah,’ one does not ‘do’ keeping, keeping is not something that one does. Rather keeping simply means like to keep, as they say in Yiddish ‘to keep the Torah.’ And how does one keep the Torah? Through doing, and sometimes through not doing.

But the language is, as it is said once ‘motza sefasecha tishmor v’asisa’ (Deuteronomy 23:24), that you should keep to do. And like ‘and his father kept the matter’ (Genesis 37:11), that keeping here does not mean to guard something like a guard. And it is possible that even a guard himself is only one who is responsible that the thing should be done properly, that it should be kept and no damage should be caused to it and the like. But keeping here means like they say ‘to keep the Torah.’ The intention is not that you should stand as a guard on watch before the Torah, and the intention is not to guard the Torah. The intention, as they say in English ‘to keep’ the Torah, and in Yiddish ‘haltn,’ ‘kipn.’ The intention is to do. But there is here, and I seek to express something subtle that I don’t have the right words to express, but as it were there is here doing: doing means that one does. I do, I put on tefillin, I take a lulav, I blow a shofar, I do something. But keeping must come with it. That is, you are liable to forget to do it, and therefore you will remember to do it.

The Jew is a Shomer Torah — A Din in the Person

And in my opinion it is always good to learn from our regular language, from the way we speak about understanding the Torah. Sometimes it turns out that the matter is not appropriate, but if it is understood, it is sometimes good to use it, and it is always good to start from what we understand. We say that a Jew is a shomer haTorah, shomer Torah. And one must understand that the intention is not that the Jew never errs and never sins. One is not considered less, let’s say, one who stole, that he is not a God-fearing Jew, that he is not a shomer Torah — this is not true. Fortunate is the shomer Torah, a shomer Torah is a Jew who keeps the Torah. It is not said that he is one who does the Torah, and he is not called an ‘oseh Torah,’ and one does not say that Jews are osim Torah u’mitzvos — even though this is the essence, the keeping.

And even though to keep also means not to do transgressions. And what is more important, not to do transgressions or to do mitzvos? Both are important, but both together are called keeping. That is, a shomer Torah is a type of person who has like a concern, a kind of humanity, a kind of personality. He keeps the Torah, he is a shomer Torah. And does he actually do them, does he do every mitzvah? This is already their fulfillment. But this is the meaning of keeping. And therefore keeping is the general name. Keeping and doing, and even keeping precedes doing. Keeping precedes doing, and as we learn, this is the attribute of Malchus, that is, the personality, the ‘I’ that does the Torah, which is the Malchus of the person. And this is the first thing: first there must be keeping, that he is a keeper of the Torah.

The Remembrance: ‘Zachor Es Yom HaShabbos’ and ‘Zachor Amalek’

And it is interesting that I checked: about the same thing it is not possible to say ‘doing to keep,’ for this has no meaning, since keeping is the totality. And I also checked, and according to what I found, if one remembers another place, it is said ‘zachor es yom haShabbos l’kadsho’ (Exodus 20:8). And besides zachor es yom haShabbos l’kadsho there are other remembrances. It is said ‘zachor es asher asah lecha Amalek’ (Deuteronomy 25:17), but this is not ‘zachor la’asos.’ It does not say ‘zachor limchos,’ but it says zachor es asher asah Amalek, and following this there is a positive commandment ‘timcheh es zecher Amalek’ (Deuteronomy 25:19). But the remembrance does not go on the erasing. People think that the mitzvah of zachor — and it is possible that the Rambam learns this way — means that he should remember to do, but in truth two stages are separated there. ‘Zachor es asher asah lecha Amalek’ is very different from ‘zachor es yom haShabbos.’ ‘Zachor es yom haShabbos’ means remember to keep Shabbos, while ‘zachor es asher asah lecha Amalek’ means remember what Amalek did, and this will cause, or this is a separate mitzvah connected to the mitzvah of erasing Amalek, but this is not zachor to erase Amalek.

Once, once in the entire Torah that I know of, it is said that one must remember all the mitzvos — the language of remembrance on all the mitzvos. The Zohar asks here seemingly, and I said that the question is a bit puzzling, and it seems to me that the Zohar does not intend literally to ask a question, but he intends by this to raise his point. But in practice, once in the entire Torah it is said to remember all the mitzvos, and we say it twice or three times a day: ‘l’ma’an tizkeru va’asitem es kol mitzvosai’ (Numbers 15:40), ‘u’zechartem es kol mitzvos Hashem va’asitem osam’ (Numbers 15:39). Here is said the only time, in Parshas Tzitzis, that one must remember all the mitzvos of the Creator and do them.

And we already spoke in the talk on Parshas Shelach, or in one of the weeks close to Parshas Shelach, about the proof from Parshas Tzitzis, that this is the last mitzvah in that order of mitzvos, and there already another language is said, ‘v’lo sasuru’ (Numbers 15:39), that one must remember, and there there is like remembrance against forgetting (as we explained in the talk on Parshas Shelach about Parshas Tzitzis and this is not its place). But according to what we are speaking today, it is possible that there is here indeed another explanation a bit for remembrance. And we will just first introduce the explanation of the Zohar on remembrance, and afterwards we will already understand that Parshas Tzitzis is a special thing. And one sees this from the fact that we say it every day, also because of remembering the Exodus from Egypt, but also because of remembering all the mitzvos. And remembering all the mitzvos is perhaps a higher level, deeper, according to Kabbalah the level of sod of understanding all the mitzvos.

The Zohar’s Answer: Remembrance is Doing — Remembered and Done

The Zohar says thus: Why must remembrance be said, what is the remembrance, and what is the doing? The Zohar says, the remembrance is exactly the same thing as the doing. And this is very puzzling, for according to what we learn and what the world knows, it is always said remembrance and doing, ‘and these days are remembered and done’ (Esther 9:28). And the Gemara learns that there is remembrance — zachor that one reads it; the Gemara explains that remembrance is reading. And so the Gemara explains halachically ‘zachor es yom haShabbos l’kadsho’ — that he should speak about Shabbos, mention it. And as we always say, it means to mention and not to remember. This is a matter of speech. And doing is doing, doing in action, certainly.

The Zohar says, that here where doing is said, it means the same thing as remembrance. The remembrance that we speak of, ‘zachor es yom haShabbos,’ is doing. And what does this mean? The Zohar explains, and what do I mean to say? The Zohar says: ‘For whoever mentions something below, mentions and that secret is made above’ (Zohar) — that when a person mentions, mentions something here below, that thing is made above. That is, everyone understands that this is the foundation that the Zohar always says. The entire Torah, this is the simple meaning of the Zohar on the mitzvos. So here is the answer to the question: What is a mitzvah? What is a mitzvah according to Kabbalah? A mitzvah is something that is remembered and done. One mentions it here and it is done. That is, here this is not doing. Here indeed it is called the world of action, but this is from our point of view, for we think that here things are done. But the doing is very weak — what does one do here in waving a lulav? And one can say that when one mentions here a remembrance, when they remembered, we speak primarily of a mitzvah that is in remembrance, that is in speech. But the truth is, that relative to the upper worlds, relative to what is real, all our actions are only remembrances, they are only a remembrance. This is not the thing itself, but a remembrance of the thing. This is a sign, as they say, a shadow of the thing, an image of the thing, a picture of the thing, a remembrance, a mere remembrance.

The Mitzvah is a Remembrance of the Upper Worlds

And all the mitzvos are called remembrance. And why are they remembrance? Because therefore the Torah says almost always only remembrance, for the Torah speaks as it truly is. The Torah says that something is done, that it is done. And what is ‘done’? Remembered and done. A person remembers, for through the mitzvos he remembers. And what does he remember? For they say the principle, that all the things of this world are remembrances, signs, of upper matters, of real matters. That is, we see only examples of things, we see only the matter that exists here today and is clothed in one body that lives at one time and in one place and the like. But the thing reminds us — and the intention is not that it only reminds us, for this was the more rationalistic simple meaning, but it truly reminds, that is, it has the properties, it has the form, because it reminds us of the roots in it, of the reality upon which it is built. For example, that the mitzvah of tefillin reminds of the thing called ‘that the Holy One, Blessed be He, puts on tefillin’ (Berachos 6a), that is, the seal of truth, the seal of the existence of the Name, the unification of the Name and the Exodus from Egypt, all the passages of tefillin. Our tefillin are like a remembrance, like a telephone line through which arrives an echo, a voice from what the reality is. And since this is an echo, it means that it truly reminds.

And consequently, when you put on tefillin, you remember, and not only do you remember — for you this is remembrance, and in heaven, in the true reality, tefillin are made, real tefillin are made. Or when a Jew makes Shabbos, makes the zachor and shamor of Shabbos, the zachor and shamor is made which is the original zachor and shamor, the true zachor and shamor, it is then made after he does this. This is the explanation of the Zohar for remembrance, that is, for the mitzvah of zachor, positive commandments — and we will return to connect this to positive commandments, but it seems seemingly that this must be about all the mitzvos. And zachor is the explanation according to Kabbalah of all the mitzvos, that the mitzvos are things that everyone knows, ‘with an awakening from below there is an awakening above’ (Zohar). And we already spoke at length that there are two points in this, two explanations. There is that through what a person uses signs, he draws upon himself the drawing down of the light, of the abundance, of the reality that this is a remembrance to it.

And therefore the Mekubalim say that one must learn about everything the signs, one must learn the signs in the world, every object, and especially the objects of mitzvos — the siddur, the esrog, the Sefer Torah, the esrog, the lulav, the sukkah, the shofar — what is this, what does it indicate, and through this, when one does it with this intention, a remembrance is made. You remind of the thing, of the upper shofar, the great shofar, the true shofar that is awakened through the shofar. And in this there is like the passive way, that we say that since this is a vessel, that the remembrance is like a vessel, like the example is like a radio, like a telephone that catches the waves that exist in the world, so since it is built in a way that can catch them, it catches them. And there is also the active way. For previously there were only receivers, there was a radio that sends, the television sends signals from every side, and whoever has the tools has the sign, the remembrance. A telephone device, a television device, a radio — they are only a remembrance. They are not the voice, but a remembrance of the voice. They can receive the voice, and if one tunes them to the right frequency, they receive it.

Mutuality: Returning Light

And in this time, and I believe that technically it was always so, but in this time almost all the tools we have speak back. That is, not only can they receive, but they can also influence as it were. One cannot call this true influence, for the power of the entire system is placed in the upper. And I understand myself that when we say that they influence above, the intention is not that they can stand above the Holy One, Blessed be He, that they can stand above the upper worlds. For therefore they are called upper, because they are above us. But one can speak back.

And I saw something very beautiful that someone said this week, who spoke about a rabbi and student, or about other situations where there is like a certain hierarchy. In this time people are not comfortable with this. Everyone, as is known, wants to be a friend of everyone, wants to be a friend of the Rebbe, of the guide, of the rabbi — as long as it won’t be with the Holy One, Blessed be He, alone. He wants to be a friend, he doesn’t want the Holy One, Blessed be He, to stand above and he to speak with Him.

And whoever learns books of Chassidus, or the new Chassidic world in this time, finds this on every side. And he now said, that all of Kabbalah is built on this, that there are two ways: this is not a radio but a telephone. This is not something that one can only hear, but something that one can also speak with it back. He says, when the Rebbe gives a shiur, I want to be able to speak back. And certainly this is true, as it is said ‘and from my students more than all’ (Ta’anis 7a), and Judaism is built on question and answer, that every shiur, every learning must be with question and answer, for otherwise there is almost no law in it. And this is known, and in all the books of Chassidus the matter of ‘halo es’ is said — ‘what descended,’ that one must raise mayin nukvin, which is Elokim, and mayin duchrin. The thing goes in both directions. ‘From Hashem was this, it is wondrous in our eyes’ (Psalms 118:23) — as it were, as the Maggid of Mezritch says, the Holy One, Blessed be He, becomes ‘this,’ the aspect of female, from us. We arouse through our mitzvos, through our desires, through our Torah learning, through our love of friends, through what we do, we arouse as it were above.

And this that person explained very beautifully: that the world is a bit confused about what this indicates, for this does not yet say that it becomes equal. Like a ba’al teshuvah, did you think it becomes equal? It is not equal. And what is his intention? He says in English, there is here mutuality, that is, the thing goes in both directions. And certainly one can call this as it were, that there is a certain influence that goes back in both directions, returning light. There is something that the lower does to the upper as well.

The Connection Must Go in Both Directions

And the truth is that it must be so, for if not there is no connection, there is no real connection. When there are two people, a rabbi and student who speak, the rabbi must listen to the student, for if not there is no human connection. A human connection always goes in both directions. A woman and a man — they will say complete teachings that the man must be the giver and the woman must be the receiver for him. And very good, this is the basic structure. But it is clear, and everyone understands, that even in the most chauvinistic and patriarchal Torah you will find, it will also be said that the man must be pleasing to the woman, that he must listen to what she says, that he must ask her opinion on certain things, that he must receive from her as well — that what she says touches the matter.

And the Holy One, Blessed be He — one of the descriptions of the great God, that He is all that He is, He hears prayer, according to all opinions. Everyone agrees that it is permitted to say that the Holy One, Blessed be He, hears prayer. He listens, for if not I would be like a wild animal — you are a man, you are the giver, and therefore you don’t receive anything from her, there is no way back? Rather there is a way back. And the way back means, as they say, that it is possible that there will be as it were the aspect of ‘and from my students more than all.’ We are students of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and in a certain sense, the way in which the Holy One, Blessed be He, conducts Himself with us touches us more than Him, for ‘and from my students more than all.’ The female is ‘a woman of valor is the crown of her husband’ (Proverbs 12:4), and she influences many times more on the manner of conducting the matter with her. But that person explained that this does not say that all the hierarchy is missing. The intention is not that all, on the contrary, that same mutuality, as I say, that goes in both directions, the two-way communication, is built on the fact that essentially there is a father and son, man and woman, rabbi and student, chassid and rebbe — all types of existing connections function only with the hierarchy. And if they will nullify the entire thing, it also will not function. For how does the male receive, the abundance, how does the female listen? Since he is her husband and she is his wife. And a man and woman are something that stand in such a form, that from this side he listens to her in her being his wife, in our being children of the Holy One, Blessed be He, in our being His creations — from this power He listens to us. And even as it were it appears that we do more than He does. But one must not err and nullify all the hierarchy, for if then it does not exist, He is not the father and I am not the son, and there is nothing at all. A father and son are something of this type.

And that person explained to people who are rabbis — and in this time there are many people who are also fathers, also husbands, also rabbis, also guides of every type — that many times he forgets himself, and many times he spoke more than the rabbi’s will, for it is difficult to be one who stands at zero, and he lacks that he should restrain himself a bit, that he should not say all that he feels and not reveal everything. But a bit is necessary, for the thing must be in both directions. It is impossible that a person should be a rabbi and all that he says should be false. He must say, and he must also be able to be influenced by the student and receive from him. And if the student says a compliment to him, he receives it, as the Holy One, Blessed be He, Himself receives, hears prayer, hears our praise and thanksgiving. And what is the nature of this thing? He has no need for our praise and thanksgiving, but this is as it were the humanity. This is the conduct of the Name according to His sefiros, according to His attributes, that He receives from us, that He relates to us as groom and bride, as rabbi and student, as man and woman, as master and worker. As you wish to call it, so He is human.

The Foundation: Mutuality Without Nullifying the Hierarchy

But the thing occurs only in His being ‘I am with you and you are my superior.’ It does not occur through nullifying this. On the contrary, if they will nullify the very hierarchy, there will also not be this. For then, people say that they lose the fear — and not only do they lose the fear, but they lose the entire thing, they also lose the love, for the love is the love of man and woman. This is not love, but two people who are not married, there is nothing. So are the fundamental things. And from here there is also a practical difference for what was said above, that in every connection there is almost always a giver and receiver. And certainly the giver must be pleasing, and it must be mutual, that it cannot be one-sided. One-sided connections — this is the sitra achra, like rape. For one must not make ‘children of coercion,’ and even within marriage it is forbidden that there should be rape, it is forbidden to force women, it is forbidden to force students, even to do good things. One must teach them. And teaching has a part as it were in lower fear, in fear of punishment, but as long as the child understands that he is here under the authority, he receives willingly, ‘and His kingship they accepted upon themselves willingly’ (prayer text), he understands in a general way that so is proper, and through this sometimes with difficulty with the slave there is ‘he who spares the rod hates his son’ (Proverbs 13:24), that one forces him. But the thing itself certainly cannot be by force. But this does not negate that he is the master, that he is the leader. This is an important foundation that I saw this week, and I believe that it arranges the matters a bit.

The Mitzvah is a Picture of the World of Atzilus

And we will return to what we are learning here in the Zohar. We see that the mitzvos are things that are remembered and done, that they are called remembrance and doing. The remembrance — what we do is only a remembrance. And the remembrance arouses above, is done, makes a doing there, in the place of the true doing, in the place where something is truly done. And this is the explanation of the mitzvah, this is the explanation of the Zohar for the mitzvah. And one must understand this more deeply. What does it mean that this is the explanation of

The Mitzvah is a Picture of the World of Atzilus

And we will return to what we are learning here in the Zohar. We see that the mitzvos are things that are remembered and done, that they are called remembrance and doing. The remembrance — what we do is only a remembrance. And the remembrance arouses above, is done, makes a doing there, in the place of the true doing, in the place where something is truly done. And this is the explanation of the mitzvah, this is the explanation of the Zohar for the mitzvah. And one must understand this more deeply. What does it mean that this is the explanation of the mitzvah? The explanation is thus, in my opinion: What we call mitzvos are only the images of the Holy One, Blessed be He. Every mitzvah is a picture of how the Holy One, Blessed be He, appears. But again, not the Holy One, Blessed be He, Himself, as it were His hidden essence, which is not called at all, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, according to how He is revealed to the world, according to how He wants them to speak with Him and relate to Him. This is the meaning of mitzvah. A mitzvah is a picture of the world of Atzilus, of Tiferes and Malchus of Atzilus in a special way, the male and female as it were above, the Tiferes and Malchus, the two partzufim. This is the mitzvah.

And if so, in the most general way, all the mitzvos — and from here we will learn afterwards that the mitzvos are 248 limbs and 365 sinews. Of whom? Certainly a person rectifies the 248 limbs and 365 sinews of the person. But how does he rectify the 248 limbs and 365 sinews of the person, what is this? These are the 248 limbs and 365 sinews of the Shechinah with the Holy One, Blessed be He. This is the thing, this is 613 mitzvos. What is a mitzvah? When Chassidim of the world say, a mitzvah is how a Jew together with God. A mitzvah is God. This is the meaning of mitzvah, a holy mitzvah, a mitzvah about which one says ‘who sanctified us with His commandments’ (text of blessings), in Him, in His commandments, in what He does, not in what we do for Him, according to Kabbalah. ‘Who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us’ — He sanctified us in that we are in His commandments. The mitzvos that we do, they are in Him. This is the meaning of the mitzvah.

And what does this have to do with our mitzvos? These are the mitzvos as they are in the world of Atzilus. Our mitzvos are a remembrance of them. ‘He made a remembrance for His wonders, gracious and merciful is Hashem’ (Psalms 111:4). The Holy One, Blessed be He, made for the upper wonders that exist in the upper worlds, that exist in the real world, in truth — He made a remembrance here below. And why? Because He is gracious and merciful, because He has mercy, lowers Himself to us and makes a remembrance. Every thing in the world is a remembrance of an upper thing. And the mitzvos — one must ask why specifically the mitzvos, but the mitzvos are a better remembrance, they are things that were chosen to be the remembrance of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and His Shechinah. This is the meaning of the mitzvah.

Why Zachor is Said Only on Shabbos and Tzitzis

Now we will understand — I would say that I will reveal a secret — now we will understand why in the entire Torah zachor is not said except once or twice, literally once, and only on Shabbos. And since the matter does not come openly in the Torah, it was necessary to hide it a bit and wrote shamor, for it truly means shamor according to the simple meaning. This is the explanation, as the Ramban also admits at the end according to the simple meaning to Ibn Ezra that this is the explanation. And in the entire Torah the remembrance of the mitzvos is not said except in Parshas Tzitzis. And why? Because as we said, the Torah speaks from what is truly so. The Torah speaks according to the simple meaning.

And in other words, what do I mean? What is the difference between simple meaning and secret? I will tell you something interesting. According to the simple meaning there is only one world, and even according to the true secret there is only one world. According to the simple meaning — action, one does mitzvos in the body, Jews do mitzvos. This is the simple meaning. According to the secret — this is not considered, this does not exist. The entire world of action, from the point of view of the world of Atzilus, from the point of view of the real world — what exists? Only this exists.

How a True Mekubal Prays

And as we say in Kabbalah, how does a mekubal pray? The matter depends, for there are two levels of mekubalim. A simple person prays in a simple siddur: it says baruch — blessed, atah — You, Hashem — the Holy One, Blessed be He, Elokeinu — our God, our God, and so forth. A mekubal prays in a siddur according to Kabbalah, but a true mekubal prays in a simple siddur. In other words, but in his simple siddur. A mekubal prays in a double siddur, lechem mishneh. A mekubal prays in a siddur, and a mekubal that we know prays in a siddur that is written in it baruch — Keter, atah — Chochmah, Hashem — Tiferes, and whatever the intention will be. The siddur is essentially a strange siddur. The siddur is not a siddur of this world nor of the world of Atzilus. For in the world of Atzilus, when baruch is said in the letters beis, reish, vav, chaf, in the syllable that is heard baruch, in its meaning ‘blessed,’ the intention from the outset is the upper Keter that continues abundance to Chochmah Binah etc. This is the intention, and there is no need to add a translation.

Like one who speaks Yiddish: what does ‘yid’ mean in Yiddish? ‘Yid’ in Yiddish is a yid. ‘Yid’ in English is ‘Jew.’ And where is it said that yid is ‘Jew’? Only in a dictionary, in a translation layer between Yiddish and English. One who speaks only English says only ‘Jew,’ and he doesn’t have the piece at all. One who speaks only Yiddish says ‘yid.’ And one who speaks both languages needs a translation layer. Correct.

So the true mekubal, one who was a true mekubal, one who lived entirely in the world of Atzilus, would pray in a simple siddur. And therefore there were Chassidic rabbis who thought so, that it is not proper to pray in the siddur of the Arizal, for the siddur of the Arizal is translating, it is like a dictionary. It says about every word as the word appears here, for you need to think that baruch means blessed, and you grasp, but you don’t yet live completely that baruch means blessed, but blessed means something else and baruch means something else, everything means something else. So I give you a dictionary, a ladder, a sulam — true, when Rav Friedman called the siddur of the Rashash the dictionary siddur, the ladder siddur. That person from Gan Eden who wrote the commentary on Kabbalah called it ‘sulam,’ and I believe this is because of this. This is a sulam — a ladder from the explanation of ‘baruch’ in this world to the explanation of ‘baruch’ in the world to come, through truth.

All the Torah Has Two Explanations

So this is indeed the secret, this is the thing that is not usually said. Very interesting. And therefore the Ramban says that all the Torah has two explanations. From ‘Bereishis’ that all of Israel reads one can explain the world of action and one can explain the world of Atzilus, and one never needs to mention both of them. If you are here and learning the Torah, you learn ‘Bereishis’ — in the beginning, ‘bara Elokim’ — the Holy One, Blessed be He, created. And if you are in Gan Eden and learning, you also learn Bereishis — Keter, Chochmah, Keter, bara Elokim — Chochmah and Binah were made. And how does one say the explanation? Only to the schoolchildren. We who are schoolchildren of Kabbalah, of Chassidus, of the truth, of the truth of Torah — to us it is still necessary to say ‘Bereishis’ in Chochmah, and so forth.

And this is indeed the secret. For the matter does not come — ‘your soul yearned’: if you are not there, what are you speaking about it? And if you are there, you don’t need it. So, ‘your soul yearned,’ but what? This is the kindness. This is like the place where they tell you: I know that you are not there, and I know that you can get there, and I translate, I teach you the explanation. You are still a child, you don’t know what ‘Bereishis’ means. I say, Bereishis means such and such. And when you will be a father, you will no longer need the explanation. A father does not pray seemingly in a siddur with translation, most fathers, for he already knows and doesn’t even need to think — Bereishis means in the beginning. Bereishis means Bereishis, and not that it means something, but he doesn’t need a translator. Correct? A true mekubal does not have kavanos, a true mekubal says the words as they are, but he is already in the world of Atzilus. But a false mekubal — not a false mekubal, but a child, a student of the mekubalim, a student of Kabbalah — he needs both things.

Application of This to Zachor and Shamor

I will return to apply this to what we are speaking about now. If remembrance is the explanation when it is a mere remembrance — ‘zachor es yom haShabbos l’kadsho,’ Moshe Rabbeinu says, remember that there is something called Shabbos to sanctify it, this is a holy thing. Shabbos means Tiferes Malchus, the Holy One, Blessed be He, this is the explanation of Shabbos. ‘Leil Shabbos shamor’ — means the Shechinah; ‘zachor’ — means Ze’ir Anpin. And so, this is already the explanation that one learns in the world of Atzilus, that one learns in heaven, that the Ramban learned in the way of truth. But what do I tell you? Zachor, zachor! But where is the true Shabbos? Why must one remember Shabbos, why not make Shabbos? Because you are not there. And usually one does not say so. The same thing — ‘all My commandments you shall keep and do,’ do it, do the keeping part, do the doing part, do the entire thing. If you are in this world, this is its meaning; if you are in the world of Atzilus, this is its meaning.

Once, because Parshas Tzitzis is the passage that protrudes from the edge of the garment, protrudes from the end of the Torah of Parshas Shelach, according to what they learned that this is the end of the Torah, it protrudes and says: I know that you are not a shomer Torah, I know that you don’t yet have that quality of soul that you will understand, that you will be a type of person who cares about the Torah. But remember it. Or that the entire Torah has a true meaning, and the true meaning is the doing, doing above, doing that makes the upper unifications. But you who live in the world of action, who so you appear for now, I tell you zachor, this is remembrance.

There is Only One World — From the World to the World

And that once or twice one can call this remembrance — this is a secret. And secret does not mean that the secret is not said at all, for in the entire Torah the secret is said after the simple simple meaning. But that it should be said twice of this, this is very little, there is once or twice, and people wonder: why were the secrets of the Torah not hinted at in the Torah? For the secrets of the Torah are indeed found in the Torah. But a hint that two worlds exist, that there is also Torah and also secrets of the Torah, this is said only once. As the Gemara says in the Mishnah in Berachos: Previously they said ‘baruch Hashem Elokei Yisrael me’olam,’ from all the world, me’olam. When the heretics corrupted and said there is only one world, they established that one should say ‘min ha’olam v’ad ha’olam’ (Berachos 54a). And seemingly it is difficult from the side of physicality: what did we think, that there is one world? What is the big thing? Why must one wait until the heretics corrupted?

He explains thus: The truth is that there is only one world, there is one God and He made one world, there is only one world. The question is only which world He made. And it appears that there are two worlds, this world and the world to come, the world of Atzilus and the world of action, but this is only because we went mad to say that the two things are separate. For this is like one asks — and I ask this many times — how many tractates of Berachos are there? And if I don’t know how many, I will need to ask the printer, I will need to see at the end. How many Tanyas are there? At the end of the Tanya there is a list of ten thousand times that Tanya was printed. And are there ten thousand Tanyas? No, there is only one Tanya. If you look at the body, at the papers of Tanya, how are papers found on which tractate Berachos was printed many times — how many tractates of Berachos are there? There is only one. For from the side of the form, from the side of the idea. If you have such a crude and strange view, one will ask a question and say: For there are many tractates of Berachos. Then they will need to fix and say, no, from the Berachos to the Berachos there is only one, for the meaning is one. But this is not initially a question of fools.

So exactly, in truth there is only one world. Which world? The world of truth. And what does it mean that for every world exists? Certainly, for the world is a sign for it. For if one says, the remembrance of things and the thing itself are not two things. A picture of me and I are not two things, but pictures of me. And this is what it is. If one separates the picture from me and says: For there are pictures and there is you, I will need to fix and write on the picture an address, to say, no, this is a picture that is from me. Then one must say min ha’olam v’ad ha’olam. But this is not the regular situation. The regular situation is that there is only one, and the one is the correct one.

The Practical Difference of Zachor: A Mere Remembrance

And if so, we will already understand. We said that we must understand what is the meaning of ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance.’ They say that shamor is said as usual — and indeed usually it is said shamor and do. Shamor and do means that you have the quality of soul, you have a soul that cares about the mitzvos and does them. And why must zachor be written? According to what we are learning here, zachor is not lower — it is not lower, but it raises that the mitzvos are only a mere remembrance of the upper world, of what the mitzvos truly are. And this is only one week in the year, and why? Because one must mention that there is such a thing as Torah, that there is such a thing as the world of truth. But if this is Shabbos, if he already thinks from the true point of view, from the point of view of the idea — there is no need to mention. Zachor and shamor in one utterance, they are the same thing.

Positive and Negative: Which Mitzvos Make Unifications

And one can say another point, if one wants to connect to the matter of positive and negative, about which I don’t have clarity, but what I said now is clearer. One can connect to the matter of positive and negative approximately thus, I believe, and it is possible that this is the same thing. One must ask a question according to Kabbalah: which mitzvos make unifications? Very interesting, and I saw books of Chassidus that speak about this question. And I saw an interesting source for the question, that in Toldos he brings a question, I don’t remember in whose name, that someone asked a question, for it is known that every mitzvah is a unification, and the question touches every mitzvah that is a unification: what unification is the mitzvah of giving a get? For a get is the opposite of unification, it is separation. And how can one say that a get is a unification? It must be that there is a connection with the simple meaning, one cannot say just unification. What kind of unification is a get? For a get is one of the 613 mitzvos. So he brings a question, and his answer is approximately this, and we will try to explain it.

Or one can say, if possible, that a get is specifically a positive commandment, and this is a good question. But one can ask the same question about negative commandments in general. Everyone understands that there is an order of mekubalim for the mitzvah of Shabbos, for the mitzvah of shofar. What is the true meaning of shofar, what does one have in mind? This even one who is not a mekubal has a certain intention in this. But still I have not seen a mekubal — the truth is that only in Sha’arei Mitzvos there are a few kavanos that go in this way, very few — but I have not seen, not just a mekubal, and certainly not a Chassidic young man, who would seek to have in mind what are the kavanos of the mitzvah of niddah. And why don’t they teach this? All the young men, the chasan-rav teaches the young man the mitzvah of yichud certainly, the mitzvah of procreation, which is a great mitzvah, and the laws that they teach, the prohibition of niddah. And after all the proofs — I believe thousands of negative commandments exist, 365 negative commandments — I have not seen that they would teach, that they would speak about the mitzvah of yichud what intention there is in it. And certainly niddah is a great thing, and the mekubalim have many drashos about the blood of niddah, and something that the Arizal speaks about at length. But I have not seen that there should be like a gate of kavanos of negative commandments, of the mitzvah of niddah.

Or anything, what intention is not to eat non-kosher? What is there to have in mind? One does not have kavanos. There is a positive that comes from a negative, there is a positive commandment to eat kosher foods, but this is a negative that comes from a positive, when one eats kosher intentionally. I have not seen that the intention of eating is interesting — there is an intention of eating, there is an intention of the unification, that the body is nourished from the eating, and what is its inner aspect. But why are there no kavanos of not eating non-kosher? And certainly I saw, indeed, that someone made an order of kavanos of placing a strainer on the faucet, just joking. ‘One who is careful passed,’ as the Gemara says in Kiddushin, that if one comes to a negative commandment, he receives reward like one who does a mitzvah — so one must make a tikkun, one must make some intention about this.

The Unification of Negative Commandments: The Keeping, Not the Doing

And so, in the details of the matter one must investigate better. It is possible that there are indeed ways, and it probably depends on the matter, that there is a secret of zachor and shamor in one utterance. But if in general the matter does not exist, we do not do it, we do not usually do such things. And the answer is, and the answer of Toldos is approximately thus, that the unification of a get, and one can say that the unification of negative commandments in general, is the keeping in them, and not the doing. A unification is not made through doing a negative commandment. A negative commandment is on the list of three hundred sixty-five things that can ruin a unification. They are called kelippos, and this is the explanation of kelippos.

And it is very interesting, that the Rambam says that negative commandments — sometimes it is said in the Torah ‘lo,’ and the intention is not that one should not do something but that there is no need to do something. He calls this negation, different from warning. Warning is a negative commandment, but negation — for example, we will remember that it is said ‘and to the maiden you shall do nothing’ (Deuteronomy 22:26), this is not a negative commandment not to do something to the one who was raped, but only negation, that there is no need, that she is exempt, this is exemption and not a negative commandment.

True, but if we think more deeply, we will understand that all negative commandments are negation, that there is not. That a Jew is a type of thing that does not eat pig. And when does he not eat pig? Always not. This is a law in keeping, as I said before, that keeping is a type of person who does not eat pig. And when is he a type of person like this? Always.

And so, from here it comes out that when in general is there a matter of negative commandments? A true Jew, a Jew in a rectified state, would never have needed to remember negative commandments. For he is already a type of person who does not live in a world of negative commandments, does not live with the kelippos. And when in general is there to speak about negative commandments? When necessary, when they are already in separation, in a state where it is possible that he will sin, that it is possible that he will go with some kelipah, then one must tell him. And about this again ‘gracious and merciful is Hashem,’ and about this there is also ‘gracious and merciful is Hashem.’ That the Holy One, Blessed be He, remembered every type of kelipah that can be to a person, and wrote a special negative commandment for every type, in a general way, and the rabbis add more. For every existing negative commandment He attached a kelipah, attached a prohibition that they should not go to it.

But essentially, from our point of view it is possible that there is a state of negative commandments, and afterwards a state of positive commandments. From the point of view of the Holy One, Blessed be He, from the point of view of truth, this is the same thing. That is, what the good is good, this that it is not evil, these are not two laws, ‘turn from evil and do good’ (Psalms 34:15). In any case, according to truth they have no existence, it cannot be that there are two other things, for this is the same thing, turn from evil and do good, the good is not evil. And the evil also is not good, but the evil does not truly exist, but one who is stuck in the evil state — about him one must speak.

Zachor and Shamor in One Utterance: Positive and Negative as One

And so, shamor and zachor in one utterance means that according to the absolute truth one cannot speak about negative commandments separately from positive commandments. They are the same thing. Or one can say even as something deeper, that a negative commandment means not to do, and a positive commandment means yes to do. And with a person there are times when he yes does and times he does not do, because he is limited from many things that are lacking to him. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, is not limited. With the Holy One, Blessed be He, from His side, the non-doing is a decision like the yes-doing. It is not that it is difficult, that He must exert Himself more to do something than not to do something. Both are equally easy, as it were, if it is permitted to say a word like ‘easy.’ So there is no difference. And I believe that the root of that matter is the same thing that is said here. For if there is a negative commandment, this is only like the boundary of what it is. There is a certain tzimtzum, there is a boundary, every thing is what it is and is not something else. This is the negative commandment in it. But the negative commandment is not a thing in itself, but it is the boundary of the thing.

And therefore, the places where positive commandments and negative commandments unite, like Shabbos, like Pesach, which is ‘whoever is in remembrance is in keeping.’ The Master of the World says only — this is the practical difference of zachor and shamor were said in one utterance, and therefore women are obligated in Shabbos. For Shabbos, like that same thing that I say, keeping Shabbos — what does keeping Shabbos mean? It means not to do work. But it is very interesting that not doing work, as is known, with the rabbis and with matters of Kabbalah there is oneg Shabbos, there are things that one yes does on Shabbos, one prays and sings and eats meals. And all these are not things that are said in the Torah at all. In the Torah seemingly only the shamor is said, and almost according to halachah its essence is the shamor. Yes, there is a mitzvah to make kiddush and so forth, but not all the expansion, which is perhaps only from matters of Kabbalah, from rabbinic matters. But everyone understands that zachor and shamor were said in one utterance. A regular Jew who keeps Shabbos, a Chassidic Jew who keeps Shabbos, almost does not need to remember the 39 melachos. This one needs when a question arises, a problem, when he needs to do something, that he should know what is permitted and in what way it is permitted. But in truth, what does he do? He does keeping Shabbos, he sanctifies the Shabbos. These are not two things. As it were so with the Holy One, Blessed be He, the non-doing and the yes-doing, this that the good is good and is not evil — it is the same thing, there is no need to divide. The same thing with a Jew who keeps Shabbos, there is no need to divide the two things, what is good and what is not good. This is the same thing, the good also is not not-good, is not evil, the same thing.

The Foundation in the Month of Elul

And this is the nature of zachor and shamor, that all the mitzvos are positive and negative as one. And it is possible that even negative commandments — I don’t know if there is a time when one does them, except like coming to it, that the Arizal says that one who cuts hair should have in mind ‘do not round.’ But there is also like a matter, that a Jew cuts hair with peyos, and from here already an obligation is created. Interesting, one of the things in which a situation was created such that one makes peyos, even though it is only a negative commandment. It appears that the Jews understand that there is zachor and shamor in one utterance on many mitzvos indeed. And one can say, only because now is the month of Elul and we are trying to be good and not evil. This is the same thing, the wonderful investigations whether it is proper to engage more in turning from evil or more in doing good, more to be rid, as the Chiddushei HaRim spoke, whether it is proper to say more about sin or more ‘and You shall reign.’ The entire question is only when one stands in the middle of sin. But when one stands in the middle of Shabbos, in the middle of Yom Tov, or in the month of Elul that has holiness in it, illumination — this is the same thing, they were said in one utterance.

Gut Shabbos.

Zachor and Shamor in One Utterance – Wisdom and Not Labor

Today is erev Shabbos kodesh, parshas Nitzavim-Vayeilech, Shabbos Selichos. I would like to continue where we left off. I believe we finished in the recent shiurim understanding truly the introduction to the section of Pekudin in the Zohar, which is built on the verse ‘u’shmartem va’asisem’, for the Zohar embedded within it the topic of shamor and zachor.

The Three Topics We Will Expand Upon

I wish to expand somewhat on two matters. The first, on the last thing we discussed, that from the side of Elokus, from the side of comprehending Elokus, and when a Jew is at the level of Shabbos, then ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’. This is a comprehension that the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah brings regarding the blowing of the shofar, that because of it a person cannot hear two sounds simultaneously, and if two people blow, a person cannot hear both of them — except that on Rosh Hashanah there is a special law, that since it is something beloved, a person gives his mind to it, ‘yahiv da’atei v’yahiv libei’ and he hears. One must contemplate this and find in it a hint.

And the second matter, if we manage to reach it, is what the Zohar expounds that ‘va’asisem’ is zachor, because the remembrance creates action above. We spoke last week primarily about the point of why zachor is not always said, why action is generally said, and why specifically here, when they divide the remembrance from the action, this is a novelty — because it speaks from the perspective of man, for whom these are not the same reality. But in truth we must go deeper, for this is certainly one of the foundations of the Zohar, a very great foundation, the topic called ‘b’is’arusa d’lesata is’ar l’eila’. We must clarify what it truly means and what it means for us — two matters, and both need to be clarified for us clearly.

The Third Matter – Zachor and Shamor in the Continuation of the Drashos

And there is another third matter that I wish to speak about if I have time. The topic of zachor and shamor that the Zohar continues with in the drasha that follows, in the drasha of the first mitzvah, the positive commandment of knowing Hashem, and also in the mitzvah that follows, the second mitzvah of serving Hashem, and then afterward in the mitzvah of fearing Hashem, and in my opinion even in the mitzvah of remembering the Shabbos day. It’s possible to expand this matter to the topic of Yom HaZikaron, that Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaZikaron, and certainly it has relevance to the zachor we are dealing with. So we’ll see how many of these topics we can encompass.

And in this third matter, the Zohar connects the topic of zachor and shamor — as we discussed that it connects the positive commandments with the negative commandments — and it emerges that if zachor is the positive commandment, then the remembrance, in the language of the Zohar, has relevance to the 248 positive commandments, and shamor has relevance to the 365 negative commandments in time, and we must understand a person’s connection to time, and so forth.

And through this we would understand the topic of Rosh Hashanah, which is the beginning of the year. Even though the years we have are not always exactly three hundred sixty-five days, nevertheless the concept of a year is three hundred sixty-five days, and on Rosh Hashanah the entire year gathers together, and from them is formed a kind of remembrance — from all 365 days a remembrance is formed. This is seemingly the topic of Rosh Hashanah according to the drush as we hold by it.

The First Matter – Zachor and Shamor Were Said in One Utterance

Let us begin then with the first matter, and perhaps it is the most important of them, and it also relates to Rosh Hashanah, and it is the discussion to understand what is the meaning of ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’. This is the first of the three things I will speak about.

Positive and Negative Commandments Are One Thing by the Creator

We say that its meaning is that positive and negative commandments are one thing by the Creator, because by the Creator there is no toil between doing and not-doing, and therefore His ‘doing’ is so to speak the same rest that a person has in ‘not doing’. And likewise the rest itself is not because He is weary and tired, for does He need rest? Rather ‘He wrote rest for Himself’, so the Holy One Blessed be He ‘and He rested on the seventh day’ — not because He needs to rest, but on the contrary, because He wants to teach us to rest, as they said ‘He wrote rest for Himself’. And there are other explanations in this, like the saying ‘What was the world lacking? Rest’, that the Holy One Blessed be He created rest.

But in other words, in truth from the side of the Holy One Blessed be He, Shabbos and all the weekdays are equal. Rest and action simultaneously. But for us the matter changes, for us it divides, and when Shabbos comes then it is the time when we make rest without action. However, in truth even on Shabbos there is action, but a higher action. And the Shabbos action is of the type of action of ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’. This is the topic I wish to explain, and I wish to express it in the way of avodah, in a practical way, for there is found the way how a person begins to merit true comprehension of things, and from there I will begin to explain.

The Human Problem – The Day is Short and the Work is Great

In order to understand this, it’s better to first explain what is the meaning of work, what is the meaning of labor, and what is the meaning of rest. In other words, this is the solution to a human problem. And what is the human problem? The human problem is that one who knows what is incumbent upon him to do — and every person has very many things to do — one who is somewhat in the category of a person knows that ‘the day is short and the work is great’ (Avos 2). The time is short, and the work is great, there is much work in a day.

What does this mean? I wish to explain, what is the meaning of ‘the day is short and the work is great’? For a person cannot work more than the length of the day, so what is your complaint? Do according to the length of the day. But the meaning is not so, for the person has grasped what it means to be a person. He has grasped what is so to speak the task, what is the obligation, what is the purpose, what kind of perfection lies in being a person.

Examples of Great Work

One can say by way of example, a person who is a Jew, he must learn the Torah. The Torah is the wisdom given to Israel, the way of Torah, the way of instruction, the way of life. And to learn all the Torah takes a very long time. Let’s say it requires a hundred years to learn all the Torah. I don’t know, maybe that’s too much or too little, and when it’s not so — it’s not called Torah. But in any case it’s a very long thing. And less than this is impossible, for he won’t know, won’t be a person, won’t be a Jew, won’t be a Jewish human being.

Or a person who understands what is the rectification of character traits and clarification of character traits, that he must be a person, and most people at least are not born complete people, but they must do teshuvah, they must rectify themselves to be people. And this takes time, everything takes a person time to do. There is an astonishingly long time in it.

Or another task, another action that a person grasps is incumbent upon him to do — not just a nice thing, that the Rebbe asks of him and therefore he does it, for about that one can certainly say he is exempt, and ‘makes an accounting’. Rather a person who grasps what is incumbent upon him to do, and enters himself into a certain wisdom to understand it properly, will see that hundreds of years are needed to understand a wisdom properly. And the proof is that people have already been learning that wisdom for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and still haven’t reached its purpose. Still they don’t understand clearly how the world works, how the Torah works — about every small thing.

And likewise one can say the same thing about what are called physical things. A person wants to earn money, and not just — there are those who need money to make Shabbos, and have no difficulty learning ‘bread to eat and garment to wear’, for they don’t see a goal in the building they are building, that they are building a business and doing tikkun olam with it. But one who sees that his matter is to earn money, to build buildings, to sell things, to buy things, to accomplish something in the world — when he enters into each and every thing, and what is its meaning, and what is truly required to do the thing in perfection, to do it properly, he sees that this is an enormous enterprise. Perhaps thousands of people in thousands of years have already labored at this, and with all of them they barely reached something.

And so when a person contemplates this, each and every one — this one wants to engage in avodas Hashem, to do chassidic things, to establish yichudim, to do hisbodedus, to clarify certain beliefs, to live lofty concepts — the same thing itself he grasps: he begins for a minute, and it’s quite pleasant, but the thing grasps him properly, and he is required. As the tzaddikim tell such wondrous stories, that one sat three hundred years in a cave. Three hundred years? A person cannot sit three hundred years at once. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai sat twelve complete years in a cave, to learn the Torah, to reveal some of the secrets of the Torah. And do you have time to sit twelve years in a cave? For in those twelve years you must also marry a wife and have children. The thing is not relevant.

But this is what I’m saying: here there is work that a person sees is indeed his work, and he is not exempt from it, but it is incumbent upon him to do it. I don’t mean one who has no aspirations and no ideas and no perspectives on the nature of the world and the nature of man. But this one who indeed sees that he has things he must do, that he must know all the Torah, that he must merit that clarity that one merits from sitting thirteen years in a cave, that he must accomplish that tikkun olam that requires several hundred years for a machine to understand how the thing works. This is what is required of him. And then he has work, great work, very great work, great labor.

The Positive Side – What is the Potential

And this knowledge, one can also say it in a positive way: what is the potential? What can a person accomplish? And what he can — must he do? A person’s aspiration is sometimes to actualize, to bring to deed, all the powers lying within him, all the possibilities hidden in him. This is the perfection of everything. And when we see how much a person can accomplish, or when we hear stories about successful people, great people who accomplished so much, or who established entire systems — Avraham Avinu established all of Klal Yisrael, and to this very day they still speak and tell about that Avraham, this is an enormous thing. This is what a person can accomplish, the type of things a person can accomplish. And where are you holding? How much have you accomplished like Avraham Avinu? I’m not saying this by way of mussar, but to say: you see that there is work, there is great work.

The Other Side – Time Constrains

This then is the first side of that feeling that every person has. And on the other hand he sees that time constrains him, ‘the day is short’. I can at most do twenty-four hours each day, and in truth not even that, for eight of the hours I must sleep, and besides that I have other tasks I must do. In short, perhaps half an hour a day I can engage in this thing, in the work. Here a person enters, and this is the true work. That is, what is called work is only when it is great work. This is what I wish to say.

The Conflict – Lack of Peace of Mind

That is, a person lives in such a conflict, lives in such a lack of rest, in such a lack of perfection. And I’m not speaking of lack of rest in toil, whether he works and sweats or not. I’m speaking that he feels a very strong conflict, feels a lack of clarity, a lack of rest, a lack of peace of mind. He is not as he wants to be, he sees that there is work, and he would desire to work on the entire world at once, he would desire to accomplish the entire world, and meanwhile he can barely manage one day, barely one hour, barely one moment.

And even if he chose — for every person has such things that bring him to choose certain parts, let’s say within all the Torah. He says: there is nigleh, there is nistar, there is chassidus, there is kabbalah, there is Choshen Mishpat, there is Ohr HaChaim, and there are so many other things, and he cannot do everything. Good, he chooses, and his portion will be in this thing, his portion in Torah will be this portion. Very sad is the choice, tragic it is. And every choice a person makes, and says, good, this takes a whole life, takes seventy years. Let’s say, how many years can a person truly learn in his life, for example? Perhaps twenty, thirty years, I don’t know, at most. I give my thirty years of work to this topic, to this field. And then he will be, let’s say, the world’s expert in that field, will truly accomplish the work. Indeed a person accomplished something.

And even then, is there not something tragic in this? For very sad is the thing, because as much as you dedicate yourself to one thing, so you have taken yourself from the other things, so you have cut yourself off, so you have said that you will never do other things. That if one says he will be a great doctor, that he will engage in medicine, that he will know how to heal a person’s heart — automatically he won’t know how to heal a person’s brain. And isn’t this part of the work of medicine, and he wants it, for it’s part of what follows from what he understands that a doctor is one who understands how the human body works, and his responsibility so to speak, and his matter, to understand the entire body and heal it from all kinds of problems.

But in this itself there is endless great work. One can learn from every system, from every part, from every mechanism that exists in the human body, learn endlessly, and to this very day they still don’t understand everything, for there is still what to research, what to investigate, to try to discover.

Why a Person Must Choose

And whatever choice he chooses, let’s say he chooses, and a person must choose. For as we spoke at length in other shiurim (about the nature of the yetzer hara and this is not its place), one of the great evil inclinations that exists is that because a person sees that the work is great, and he is not obligated to any specific thing, he remains always open, for then he always dreams that he will do everything. But this very thing that a person cannot do everything — this is ‘the day is short’, this is ‘the days of our years are seventy years’ (Tehillim 90), a person doesn’t have infinite time, he must. If he wants to do anything at all, he must cut, must cut himself off from many other things and say: this is what I’m doing.

The Advice of the Baal Shem Tov – One Thought

And how does one find? This is the greatest question, indeed the greatest personal question that can be for a person in his life. Which thing must I give up? And then every single day. Even if a person can know in a general way, that he sees he is drawn to a certain thing, that he sees that Providence, whatever the situation may be, has led him to do a certain task — nevertheless, every day he has many choices, he can do more of this, and can do more of that, but he cannot do everything, it’s not possible. There will always be the work greater than the short day, forever, until we reach the language I will tell you.

That is, this is only philosophy, this is an internal thing. But externally, in practice, it will be necessary for it to be so, for he will be forced to come to my solution if he wants to merit some rest. And this is the matter: he will be forced, and every day a person rises, and the Baal Shem Tov said, and this is an enormous instruction to prepare with for the holy days and for every single day. The Baal Shem Tov said, one advice for avodas Hashem is that a person should have only one thought. And by one thought he means, so he begins, one thought each day. He rises in the morning, and thinks: what will I do today? One thing. And if afterward he does other things, they will all be included in that one thing. For thus the person is not confused, thus he doesn’t live in the world of tohu, which is the pleasure of Amalek, that every measure comes and tells him, perhaps you’ll do this, perhaps you’ll do that.

All Sins Come from Confusion of Mind

And the truth is that all sins, all confusions of mind, all the confusions that exist — from here they come. Why? Because when a person begins, sat to learn, let’s say, he decided: today I will learn tractate Bava Basra. And then comes to him, let’s say, the yetzer hara, and says: perhaps Bava Kamma? Good, he goes and learns Bava Kamma. This everyone already understands is a kind of aspect of ‘distinguishing between holy and holy’, for the difference between Bava Kamma and Bava Basra — both are still good things, both are still holy things. He is learning Torah and remembers that he must do chesed — both are mitzvos, both are good things. The question is only that each has its matter. And if one does everything, one does nothing. This is the problem because of which he must choose.

Why Not to Sin – The Kotzker’s Teaching

But in truth, even what a person sits to learn, and a thought comes to him, perhaps he’ll go a whole day idle, perhaps he’ll go transgress a sin, perhaps he’ll go gluttonize. Even gluttony has some place, it too is a thing. It’s possible there is no such task at all for a person to be the glutton, I’m not saying there is such a task. But the depth at the root of the thing, what brings him a thought that perhaps he’ll go gluttonize, that perhaps he’ll go do some foolishness, that perhaps he’ll waste time, that perhaps he’ll be idle — this too is possible only because he still left open some possibility that he’ll do other things.

And there is gluttony in the world, and it has some place, and there is such a kind of life in the world, there is such a task in the world, there is such a reality in the world. And as we see, the people who enter themselves into the thing have that same great work. There is ‘a lover of money will not be satisfied with money’ (Koheles 5), there is ‘a person doesn’t die with half his desire in his hand’ (Koheles Rabbah 1), and everything that one enters into, it too will be great work. There is in it a whole world, there is in it infinity, like the pleasure of Amalek, there is in it spreading and going, there is infinity in how much one can eat, how much one can understand and eat. And let’s not only say in the good part of it — indeed there is in it a truly good part — but even not in the good part, this itself is a whole world.

The Teaching of the Kotzker Rebbe

And in truth, as the Kotzker Rebbe said, and I have contemplated this recently, the Kotzker Rebbe said something very wise, an astonishingly wise thing. He said — and people don’t learn it properly — that he wants his chassidim not to sin, not because they don’t want to sin and not because they fear sin for any reason, but they won’t sin because they don’t have time.

People think, good, this is an interesting thing, that he says to engage so much in avodas Hashem, in learning and prayer, that no time will remain to sin. But what’s the difference? Either way they don’t sin. What is he trying to say? It seems to me that what he is trying to say is perhaps that depth that I’m saying here, that sin is a thing, there is such a thing, ‘as is the good so is the sinner’ (Koheles 9), before the Holy One Blessed be He there are good people and sinners, both have some matter in the world. If so, why shouldn’t a person sin? Only because he doesn’t have so much time. For if he had infinite time, he could sin and then return in teshuvah, and so repeat God forbid, for there will always come an end, there is always time, time for everything, ‘for everything there is a season’ (Koheles 3), he will have time for everything.

The True Answer – Because There is No Time

What is truly the true answer why a person shouldn’t sin? He says, it’s bad. But there is nothing that is absolutely bad, right? Bad means that it’s bad because it doesn’t fit here. But why is it truly bad to sin? One must remember, grasp, this is the true answer. And the true answer — and perhaps it’s not proper to say this, for people will think I’m saying there is a good reason to sin and it’s only the reason — but it seems to me that in the depth of the matter this is truly so.

The true reason, and this is a better answer: a person rises in the morning and says ‘what will I do today?’, and he grasps and makes a kind of accounting of the soul for all his life, and says ‘for what is my life? and what will it be?’ — he must grasp that all his life won’t suffice for this. This is what my life is, and I must dedicate all the time to this. Therefore I do only one thing.

And now, again, this I’m saying in a negative way, and one can say it in a positive way. Today I want to do only the one thing, what I’m going to do, and this will take all my time. Now the yetzer hara comes to him and says: ‘perhaps you’ll do another thing? Perhaps go for a walk, I don’t know what, go do something somewhere.’ He says to him: very good, you have a nice argument. There is such a thing, I don’t deny there is such a thing in the world. For there are those who deny, as we learned many times, one says ‘it’s impossible with pig’s unripe fruit’ — and he says a false thing, for it’s not impossible, there is pig’s unripe fruit in the world. And why do you argue with the Creator who created pig’s unripe fruit? Rather he says ‘it’s possible in your Torah’.

What does this mean? For our way it means: he says, very good, you’re right little righteous one, you yetzer hara, it’s a nice matter to do sins, a great matter. But I don’t have time. What does it mean I don’t have time? ‘The day is short’, I must do one thing. Do you agree that I’ll do one thing in a day? One thing today — can you establish for me that I’ll do? A person cannot do more than one thing. ‘The day is short’, if only one thing. If only I succeed in completing the one shiur I have today, if only. I cannot do more than one thing in a day. If so, the other thing, please let them divide it until time is found for it. And it won’t be found, for there is no time, ‘that he won’t have day and night’, there is no time.

The Holy One Blessed be He is Omnipotent, and Man is Not

The same thing itself is all of a person’s life. A person must grasp that what we cannot do sins is mostly because there is no time. For if he were ‘above time’ — the Holy One Blessed be He made you an order, good order, but He is ‘above time’, He can include everything, and He is omnipotent, and every day together. And man is not omnipotent, man is the complete opposite of omnipotent. Man is short, ‘short of spirit and full of anger’. Man is very small, and has little time, short of spirit, short of time, the time is short, the day is short, he has no time.

What then is the advice for this? He must. Again, the great principle, and especially in this time — and it was always so — is that if a person doesn’t decide, automatically he is scattered and dispersed. He does a thousand things every day, but not even one thing truly, for he begins everything and doesn’t finish it. This is the deficiency, this is the great mistake we are constantly fighting.

One Thing is the Answer to All Questions

But when a person does one thing, this is the answer to all questions. He doesn’t need to enter into investigation, he doesn’t need to enter into investigation whether to do the sins, whether there was good in it, whether there wasn’t good in it. I know that I already have the choice I must make today.

And it seems to me this is what he means, that he lowers there his being a Jew. For what people say, why do people get confused about this, he says: why must a person be good? He says, perhaps because the Torah forbade it. I’m a Jew, and a Jew doesn’t do. One asks: what does it mean, does a non-Jew not need to be good? A non-Jew must also be a person. On the contrary and on the contrary. But it seems to me that what he says is a very deep thing. He says, let’s say, there are seventy nations in the world, go know how many people. The Holy One Blessed be He made everything, everything has an accounting, ‘Hashem made everything for His purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil’ (Mishlei 16). The Holy One Blessed be He made all kinds of people, each for his matter. And I don’t even need to say ‘this for his matter’, that there is great work, there is infinite work in every type of part, and perhaps the clarification, the perfection of gluttony, it too is some matter, there is need for it in the world. And very good that there should be some nation, some type of non-Jew, some type of person, appointed to work all the kinds of gluttony in the world. So be it, I don’t know, it’s possible there is an argument here.

We are Jews – We are Limited

What we are Jews, meaning that we have choice, that the Holy One Blessed be He chose us and Israel chose the Holy One Blessed be He, ‘Yaakov He chose for Himself’ (Tehillim 135), and we don’t do certain things because we are Jews — this is a way of saying: I’m already limited, I’m already in a certain choice. A certain choice that I’m a Jew, and a Jew is from the people who are ‘do not commit adultery’, ‘do not murder’, ‘do not covet’ (Shemos 20). And Eisav says he is ‘do not murder’. You know what? Perhaps it’s needed that there be in the world a bit more ‘do not murder’? I don’t know. Perhaps there is such a need. And I don’t need to enter into investigation from the broadest perspective, that there is need for all things, for I’m already limited, I’m already a Torah person, I’m already a Jew who goes with the Torah.

What the Torah says isn’t everything? True. There cannot be everything there, for there are other people. And all the Torah wasn’t given to them — whether this is their fault, whether this is the fault of the Holy One Blessed be He, whether for some reason — again, not everything can enter at once, for whatever reason. But certainly there is something besides being a Jew. For one who thinks that the entire world is all Jews is nothing but a fool, for there are thousands of billions of people besides this. But I’m a Jew, and Jews are limited to do these things, for they need to do something. For if everyone were everything, no one would be anything.

The Basic Experience of a Person

It emerges then, we’ll move from matter to matter, that this is the experience, the basic experience of a person. He wants very many things. Anyone who is somewhat a person — and I’m not speaking of one who is nothing, just masses, who does every day what they tell him — but one who has some aspiration, who understands the perfection and the beauty of one thing, and then sees so also in another thing. And even after they must choose, and the main thing — and according to what I’m standing on — the very being of a person, the very being of an adult, to merit mochin d’gadlus, is to a very great extent to know that a person grasps and becomes reconciled with this. I’m a Jew, and a Jew does thus, or I am — and especially in Israel there are many tasks, this is not enough — I am thus, and what I am, and is it good to do other things? This is already the reason for the thing they said in the story-tales, this is a deed, and this is his deed. What shall I do? Can I be everything? I cannot be everything. I can be a person, can be one person, barely. I try to be that one person that I am, properly. This is the first thing.

The Sorrow in Limitation – In the Making of a Year

And with all this there is here a kind of sorrow, there is great sorrow in it. When born there was great sorrow, for the soul was previously in heaven. Or every year that begins — there is in it a kind of gevurah, a kind of tzimtzum. For before the year came to the world it was together with all the years, so to speak in heaven, where there are all the days, ‘long days’, Arich Anpin, above above is called length of days, this is the perspective of the Holy One Blessed be He. And we’re not speaking of this, that the attribute of mercy is connected to length of days (we already spoke of this, and this is not its place). This is the perspective of the Holy One Blessed be He.

But in the making of a year, that is when it becomes a year, when the year comes — and the year cries, the beginning of the year always cries. It says: why must I be 5787? I could have been all the years at once. When I was so to speak with ‘my mother’ in Binah, before where all the years emerge, all the years were together, everything was one, each was everything. And here it descends and they limit it, they tell it: be 5787, and not just 5787, but such a type of 5787, after all the choices that people made until then, that cause that there must be such a type of year or there won’t be such a type of year.

There is great pain in this, in other words great work, a kind of work that I call toil, great toil, great sorrow, ‘things in sorrow, and I earn my living in sorrow’. It says in the Gemara in Kiddushin that people earn their living in sorrow, the first sorrow, ‘by the sweat of your brow’ (Bereishis 3), the generality of Adam HaRishon. What does it mean that he earns his living in sorrow? What’s bad that a person needs to plow, I don’t know? Because he could have in that time done other things. For there are other things to do, but one cannot do everything.

A person also has livelihood, the same thing itself, each one seeks his livelihood, and the main thing is that a person should clarify what is his work, in what he is good, how he can earn money. Each has his matter, and he cannot do everything. And shall I do other businesses? For you can only do one business at once, or two, I don’t know how many people can do ten. He cannot do everything, for he is limited, he is flesh and blood, he is ‘the day is short’, he is ‘the work is great’. There are therefore orders in this.

The Order of the Week – Every Day a Limitation

This is an order of a whole week. The order of Sunday is not Monday, and Monday is not Tuesday. Every day that a new day comes there is in it a certain shortening. One literally feels that the day begins, and on one hand certainly very nice, a new day begins, ‘new every morning, great is Your faithfulness’ (Eichah 3). And on the other hand a great limitation is felt, that it’s only one day. And in one day one cannot do anything. One must do only one day at once, and one cannot do everything. And even when one does all that’s possible to do in one day, it’s not all the other days.

The Way Out – All of Them You Made in Wisdom

But there is a way to exit from this. And the way to exit from this, so it seems to me, is called ‘all of them You made in wisdom’. It says in the verse ‘How manifold are Your works, Hashem, all of them You made in wisdom’ (Tehillim 104). How many are Your works? The Holy One Blessed be He does very many works, a multitude of works, a multitude of things. There are very many, for the work is great, very many other things, this work and that work — the work of Sunday is not the work of Monday, the work of

this nation is not the work of another nation. But ‘all of them’, all this multitude together, in His wisdom. What does this mean? What does this mean? Action in wisdom.

Human Action Versus the Action of the Holy One Blessed be He

Let us begin a bit earlier and return to speak. There is a great difference between the action of people, which is action with tools, action with actual deeds literally, and the action of the Holy One Blessed be He. ‘All of them You made in wisdom’ — one of the interpretations of the verse is that the Holy One Blessed be He acts directly with wisdom. ‘For He spoke and it was, He commanded and it stood’ (Tehillim 33). Hashem’s actions are not from the actions that He needs — the Holy One Blessed be He doesn’t need a hammer to build a person. ‘He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?’ (Tehillim 94). The Holy One Blessed be He made an ear, will He hear with an ear? The Holy One Blessed be He made people’s eyes, and people can see only with eyes, but the Holy One Blessed be He sees without eyes. He sees as the thing is in itself, not through the tool, not through the medium of the eye.

And so all the other actions, the Holy One Blessed be He acts without hands, and directs the world without feet, and so forth. And even when we say such things, they are a parable, for these are clear things that everyone understands. It says in the verse ‘all of them You made in wisdom’. And the verse in parshas Bereishis expresses this in that the Holy One Blessed be He made the world with speech. And in the holy books it says that with speech means truly in thought. The Holy One Blessed be He doesn’t even need speech, for speech is only a parable, like a king. A king lives in rest, and he commands, ‘where the word of the king is, there is power’ (Koheles 8), he tells other people what to do and they listen to him. But the Holy One Blessed be He doesn’t tell anyone, doesn’t need to tell anyone what to do except by way of parable. And after there are already things, He tells the angels and so forth — but who made the angels? Directly.

Thought Like Action

The Holy One Blessed be He acts so to speak with His thought, and from here the halachah: ‘saying to the Most High is like giving to a common person’, that in matters of holiness thought is like action. Because thought, from the side of the Creator, from the side of holiness, has such value, can act like action. In order for something to be in action, that it should become holy, that it should be made, let’s say, to make a vessel in a certain way, a person needs to toil, to take a saw and cut, and so forth. But in order to make the thought in it, in order for a person to designate something as holy, truly only thought suffices. For a common person it doesn’t suffice, one needs to make a transfer, for in the mundane world they don’t see that it’s in the possession of another until they make a kinyan, until they move it. But in the true world, in the world of wisdom — for holiness is called the world of wisdom, the world of thought — what is thought already becomes.

And what is thought, in other words let’s say clearly thus: the Holy One Blessed be He when He thinks, so to speak — and thought too, for when we say thought we mean so to speak thought in the brain, in the intellect, and the Holy One Blessed be He thinks even without a brain, as the Rambam says ‘He and His knowledge are one’ (Rambam Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 2). The Holy One Blessed be He thinks, and when we say thought this is only a parable we’re saying. In any case, the Holy One Blessed be He thinks even without a brain, without intellect so to speak, and the intellect is He. But since from the side of the Holy One Blessed be He, from the side of the way that the Holy One Blessed be He makes the world — which is the true way that the world truly is, how it appears when the Holy One Blessed be He looks at us, how it truly is — thought is like action. The Holy One Blessed be He made the entire world with thought, with speech, with will, the same thing, without any action.

A Person Can Be Similar to His Creator

In that same way there is a person, that a person can be similar to his Creator. When a person thinks, when a person understands things from the side of thought, when a person acts from the side of thought, there too thought is like action. This is the novelty, the novelty of a person, the novelty of flesh and blood, a person who has his own mind. And a person’s mind can also — when he acts, when a person acts in deed, he indeed acts in deed, and the deed is outside his thoughts. But when he engages in the world of thought, when he acts from the side of wisdom, when he is wise.

The Wise Person Lives in the Aspect of Shabbos

A wise person is a type of person who is ‘a day that is entirely Shabbos’. For a wise person it’s always Shabbos. Why? Because a wise person acts in thought. So to speak, one can understand in the simplest way, that there is one whose work is to do the deeds of the world, and he must work, plow his 39 labors, which he does in deed. Certainly, this comes from some thought, he also has some plan in what he does, but his thought is separate from his deeds.

And then there is one whose work is that he is the wise person of the generation, the wise person of the world, he understands, he produces thoughts, the ideas of how to do things. Now, his ideas don’t act directly, for he is not a god, he is not the Holy One Blessed be He, he doesn’t act directly. But from his thoughts even deeds are made. One must remember, ‘action is included in thought but thought is not included in action’. When a person has clear thoughts, deeds are made from them. Either ‘strangers will stand and pasture your flocks’ (Yeshayah 61), that another is made who actualizes his thoughts, if he knows how to express his thoughts — and this is speech.

The Power of Speech

When a person — this is nature, an interesting nature of people, one must contemplate it — a person can do things also with speech. Anyone who has a certain power, this is what it means, more or less: when a person has power, when he has influence, when he is the Rebbe. The Rebbe is a type of person who does things with speech, he says and his students do. Why? Because he convinces them. He doesn’t even do this by forcing them, but he explains to them, teaches them what is correct, and they do it.

And the same thing itself is a person regarding his own body, regarding his own situation, regarding the parts of his soul that are not thought. When one begins from thought, the thing reaches the level of deed, according to the measure of the thought’s ability to communicate well — which is certainly a matter in itself, that a great separation was made between thought and deed, which is the sin of Adam HaRishon, who separated between thought and deed, etc. etc. But when a person is truly wise, his thought reaches to deed, either in the privacy of his soul, that the thing is done through his thought, or in his relationship to other people, that he speaks and it is done, and behold he acts so to speak like a god.

The Secret of Man – The Toil of Your Hands and Not the Toil of Your Mind

It emerges then, that when a person acts in thought, then he is like a person, and it seems to me this is the secret of man. One can speak of the simple thing: what is difficult for a person — we spoke at first about another level of a person who has difficulty that the deed is not all deeds, and immediately we’ll see that this too is fulfilled in my opinion — but even the first thing, what is difficult for a person? What is labor? What is toil? What is ‘the toil of your hands’? ‘The toil of your hands’ (Tehillim 128), and not the toil of your mind. For his head wants him to have his bread, but in order for bread to be made he must exert himself, sweat with his hands, ‘by the sweat of your brow’, his nose and his body need to sweat.

But if a person clarifies how to do things in thought, and understands that he has enough clarity that he can express it in thought, can bring it out in thought, he will see that suddenly he lives in rest, suddenly the thought is so to speak automatically. I don’t know if it’s truly by itself, for he is in a body, but it’s almost by itself. A person who has clarity in what he does, and understands his deed, has no toil in what he does. Why? Because his thought teaches his deed what to do. And the same thing itself teaches other people what to do. And this is part of his being the wise person.

Shabbos Thoughts Act

A wise person lives in the aspect of Shabbos. Now people think that this means he doesn’t do anything. But this is only what appears from our time, that our thoughts, the human thoughts of weekdays, don’t accomplish anything. But Shabbos thoughts certainly accomplish, true thoughts. When people think they’re doing teshuvah — it’s all in thought. Except that they say, this is as long as the thought is not correct, is not holy thought. And when it becomes holy thought, thought that is clear enough, true enough thought, divine thought, like the thought of the Creator — it acts.

And one can see this: those people who have clarity in what they do, whether in Judaism, whether in worldly matters, in matters of the world, whatever it may be — they don’t feel toil in what they do. It’s done by itself. And many times when a person sees that he is confused, has difficulty, lives in the aspect of a path, lives in the aspect of labor — the advice is not just that he should find another labor. Sometimes this is the advice, to find. But another advice is that he should do more thought, that he should delve more into thought, more, so to speak it appears as if he is turning away from his deed. One who doesn’t see ‘zachor and shamor in one utterance’, it appears to him as if he is turning away, as if he is abandoning the world of action. But no, he is not abandoning the world of action, but rather becomes clearer, and from this the deeds are done by themselves, are done — as they say, it’s called ‘flow’ in foreign language — they begin to be done by themselves, and he doesn’t feel that he is doing something.

The State of ‘Flow’ – Above Time

So to speak, and this is also the experience, as everyone knows, a whole enjoyable book was written about ‘the flow experience’, ‘the flow state’. When a person is in a flow state, time stops, suddenly he doesn’t grasp that time is passing. Why? Because ‘the day is short’ disappears from him, in his thought there is no little time and much time. Many times one can do very many things — in a normal state it would take him a very long time, whereas here it takes him very quickly, or conversely, he can do very many things, and doesn’t grasp that time is passing. He is so to speak above time, and to everyone he is still in this world, but his mind, his action, are already not working in time, and there is no ‘short day’ as he had before.

Blowing the Shofar – Wisdom and Not Labor

And this is the secret we spoke about several times on erev Rosh Hashanah regarding blowing the shofar, ‘wisdom and not labor’, ‘praiseworthy is the people who know the teruah’ (Tehillim 89), and not ‘who blow the teruah’. For blowing the shofar is not labor, but it is wisdom. People think it’s labor, because it appears that it’s difficult. The simple meaning of the Gemara there, ‘blowing the shofar is wisdom and not labor’ (Rosh Hashanah 29), it says: did you think it was labor? They make a great noise, it’s simple, it appears this is complete labor. But one who understands what they’re doing, understands that this is wisdom, that one must learn it. He waits, and it seems he’s not doing anything, but indeed he is doing something. Except that this is not labor, this is not weekday labor, but Shabbos labor. And this is specifically what one must do on Shabbos. Labor of this type is wisdom and not labor.

Rosh Hashanah That Falls on Shabbos – Remembrance of Teruah

And with this, it’s possible that the thing becomes in the aspect of remembrance. Everyone understands that we spoke about the matter of zachor and shamor. Everyone knows that the Gemara says that when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos it is in the aspect of ‘remembrance of teruah’ (Vayikra 23), and not ‘day of teruah’ (Bamidbar 29), meaning zachor without shamor, only the remembrance. And because of this, in truth, if we were at a true level, like in the Beis HaMikdash and in the place of the Beis Din — and Beis Din is the place of wisdom — then a deed would be made from this, the shofar would be blown, by itself so to speak, through the wisdom. But today when this is not so, we don’t have Beis Din, we don’t have wisdom that comes to the level of deed, we have only the wisdom. But we need to receive from the wisdom. It’s important that there be a day that engages entirely in the wisdom of the blowings, and not in the blowings themselves. This is the secret of Shabbos.

And people say, that in practice, as the Aruch LaNer says, that we see there are many troubles in years when Rosh Hashanah doesn’t fall on Shabbos, and this is because most people don’t do the wisdom, for we have no idea how to delve a whole day in wisdom, and the next day we blow the shofar much more easily on Sunday and the second day of Rosh Hashanah, or a supernal shofar is made by itself, a great shofar. And all this is the topic of wisdom that has no labor in it.

All Forms Are Connected – You Shall Lack Nothing in It

And the same thing itself — and I’ll finish with this — that difficulty that a person is limited, that it’s only one year, it’s only him, this is from the side of action. But from the side of the wisdom in the thing, this is a very interesting thing. For if one thinks from the side of wisdom, or as it’s sometimes called from the side of the form of the thing, then all forms truly include all forms. For when one contemplates one sees that this is so even in practice, but in wisdom the thing is even clearer: there is not one thing in the world that is not connected with all the other things in the world. In order for there to truly be a true form, let’s say, of a person, there must be in it the form of an animal, the form of a bird, the form of fish. And if a person truly understood one thing, he understands everything. I don’t mean that he understands everything from this — as a person is a small world, and I don’t mean that he can understand everything completely. But I do mean that nothing is lacking, ‘you shall lack nothing in it’ (Devarim 8), there is no deficiency in it. It is everything. And one can say, as we spoke about this in Sefiras HaOmer, that everything is from the side of the perspective of man, as it appears from the side of man, that there is deficiency. That is, the Holy One Blessed be He has everything from everything, and we have only everything from one thing.

The Aspect of Wisdom and the Aspect of Faith

But when a person lives in the aspect of wisdom, and one can say this in the way of faith, he knows that he is doing what is incumbent upon him, and this includes everything, for it is divine. Not that he himself does what is incumbent upon him, for he is a small, insignificant person, and can only do one thing. But rather because the supernal wisdom made him to do one thing. And the supernal wisdom is a general thing, the supernal wisdom, the Holy One Blessed be He knows the entire world. And therefore perhaps he, when he is in the aspect of body, looks from below, and sees that it’s only one year and it’s only one day — but this is truly all the days.

The Rectification – To Diminish in Action and Not to Add to It

And the way to do this is also to do fewer things, not by doing more things. This is the secret of the negative commandments, which correspond to the 365 days of the sun. That is, the rectification of the short time is to diminish in action and not to increase it, for as we learned that the reason not to do a sin is that there is no time. There are only three hundred sixty-five days in a year, no more. Where is there time to do a sin? There isn’t. Every day tells you: don’t do the sin, for you don’t have so much time. From this that a person doesn’t do many things.

When a person does one thing, and in the middle his mind is distracted, he wants to do another thing and another thing and another thing, he becomes lost. And then he doesn’t only become lost, but also suffers that he’s not doing the other things, because he didn’t enter properly into that one thing.

The Perfection of the One Thing

In a certain sense, the way not to feel the sorrow of the limitation of one thing is to do only that one thing even better. For then, when he does one thing in perfection — behold there is already here the word ‘in perfection’, that he does the perfection — he sees the omnipotence, the generality, the perfection that exists in that one thing, and in it is reflected the perfection of the entire world. Whether he knows this in perfection, or whether he knows this because he is wise and can see a bit how everything connects in it, or whether he doesn’t know this except in the way of faith — as the Tanya says, that wisdom is as it lies in faith — and says: I do the one thing not only because I can only do one thing, but I do the one thing because the Holy One Blessed be He made that each part should have its portion, ‘Hashem’s portion is His people’ (Devarim 32), the Holy One Blessed be He made this portion for me. Even though in such a portion lies everything. These are two ways how one can do this.

But this is the time of ‘zachor and shamor were said in one utterance’, and because of this one can return in teshuvah this way, one can do Torah that guards wisdom that has no labor in it. And I hope the thing is clear enough, and if not we’ll delve into it more with Hashem’s help.

The Attribute of Justice and the Attribute of Mercy, Love and Fear — Are They the Same Subject

Introduction: Erev Shabbat Bereishit and the Attribute of Justice

My teachers and rabbis, behold today is erev Shabbat Bereishit. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), and afterwards it is stated “on the day that Hashem God made earth and heaven” (Genesis 2:4). It is known to all what Rashi brings, that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to create the world with the attribute of justice, “it arose in thought to create it with the attribute of justice” (Rashi Genesis 1:1), and afterwards He joined with it the attribute of mercy.

Generally they teach us — and about this we spoke, perhaps, during Rosh Hashanah — that the attribute of justice is the attribute that we call the attribute of fear. That is, when the Holy One, blessed be He, conducts Himself with the attribute of justice, when He performs His actions in the way of justice, then because of this people are afraid, and a person is anxious and fearful. And in contrast, when the Holy One, blessed be He, conducts Himself with the attribute of mercy, people have more love.

And indeed the way of the Chassidic books is, that when the concept of the attribute of justice and the attribute of mercy comes before them, they translate it: from the side of the Holy One, blessed be He, the thing is called the attribute of justice and the attribute of mercy, or chesed and gevurah in the language of Kabbalah, and from our side these attributes are called love and fear. This is the common style in the books of Chassidut, to translate these concepts this way.

The Difficulty: Love and Fear Are Not the Same Subject as Justice and Mercy

But one must delve into the matter and raise a difficulty upon it. The connection between the two things is not entirely clear to me, and one must ask — perhaps the audience knows, perhaps someone ponders this — for the subject of justice and mercy is not the same subject as love and fear. For one must take to heart that there are many other levels and many other structures to the concepts of love and fear.

What does it mean at all, love versus fear? Everyone knows that there is higher love and lower love, higher fear and lower fear, which we call fear of exaltedness versus fear of punishment, and the like. But I think that in every way — in the usual way, let us say in the “default” way of understanding love and fear — love is a positive emotion. Love means that I consider the thing good. Love is a relationship to something that I regard as good.

Fear, generally means that I am afraid of something that is bad. And one cannot say fear toward the Holy One, blessed be He — that a person fears the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is bad — rather fear of bad consequences that occur, bad deeds. And from the deed itself comes fear of sin, and this is not fear of Heaven, for fear of Heaven is another matter. And perhaps that action, which the Holy One, blessed be He, might punish for, is called fear of punishment — and about this they have already spoken, and the matter is not clear, for the Holy One, blessed be He, does not punish. And in any case, fear is dread of something bad. This is its meaning. Love relates to what is good, and fear to what is bad.

The Ramban on Positive and Negative Commandments

As we have already learned, and here I come to speak, so regarding the subject of positive commandments and negative commandments, the Ramban explained that positive commandments relate to love. That is, I want the good, and what is good before the Master, before the King, namely what is truly good.

And many people are confused about this: they say “commandments,” and in their minds commandments mean that I must fulfill because I was commanded. And perhaps indeed a person is obligated to fulfill because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, but what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded is only a way to show that the thing is good. Whether the thing is good because He commanded, or it was already good before He commanded — I do not know. But according to all opinions, even when they say that a person does not understand and does only because it is a commandment, the simple meaning is that he knows: the Holy One, blessed be He, is the true reality, the Holy One, blessed be He, is the true knower of all creation, and He knows that these commandments are good. And this is what the Ramban calls the attribute of love.

And when the Ramban says that positive commandments are in the attribute of love, because one who loves the Master does what the Master loves — this is no different from one who would say that positive commandments are in the attribute of love because positive commandments mean that I do things that are good, that I regard as good, and fulfill them out of love. For positive commandments are a subject of doing good things, that a person loves what is good.

Love of God versus Love of the Commandment

And if we say, not so: the Ramban says that one must love the Holy One, blessed be He. The distinction between love of the Holy One, blessed be He — for they speak of love of God, and as is brought in the Rambam the language of love of the commandment — seems like a contradiction in this. But this is not a true contradiction. The distinction can only be in the question of whether we stand at the level that understands the mind of the Omnipresent, as it were, or we do not understand.

If we do not understand, then — where, they do not understand us — then perhaps the thing seems to us not good, and because we trust in the Holy One, blessed be He, we have faith, and we say that the Holy One, blessed be He, says that the thing is good, and therefore I love it because the Holy One, blessed be He, says it is good, and here the Holy One, blessed be He, enters. But when I understand myself, perhaps I love the thing itself, because I love it because it is good for me, I love the commandments because they are good.

And certainly perhaps even then it is true that there are more levels of benefit, more levels of goodness, that a person should love the commandments that are able to unite with the Holy One, blessed be He. Many times the Chassidim come with a claim against one who says so and ask: Do you love the world? Do you love the Holy One, blessed be He? Know, for the entire world is the work of Hashem, and there is no distinction in this. It is impossible to love a good thing in the world without loving within it the God who commanded them. And one can only speak of levels in this.

And this is what the Baal Shem Tov always teaches us, that when a person loves a created thing, he should make from it a kal vachomer to the Creator. This is like a mystery: there is a kal vachomer here, and it is within the thing itself, for the created thing is the vitality within it, the existence within it, the source of existence within it. But the intention of the Baal Shem Tov is — do not err, do not separate, do not love the thing, but stand in it at the higher level, because in every thing is truly found the true existence within it, and the source within it is the more true existence of every thing itself.

And in any case, and this he also knows, according to Chassidut perhaps the thing is called love — but not love of the commandment, but love of the Godliness in the commandment, the will of Hashem in the commandment. But whether this way or that way, all these are only levels within that same thing itself. Love means that I know the thing is good, and fear means that I fear something that is not good. This is the simple meaning, and I think the matter is settled, for therefore love is positive commandments and fear is negative commandments, and this is what the Ramban says. And what he says that it is love of the Master and fear of the Master, the matter does not contradict this; and not only does it not contradict, but these are the earlier levels that you seek to explain.

Mercy Is Not Chesed and Is Not Love

And if so, Yitzchak, I do not understand: what did they see to mix with this the attribute of justice and the attribute of mercy? Besides the fact that the attribute of mercy is not the same thing as the attribute of chesed and the attribute of love — as everyone knows. For mercy is tiferet, mercy is the third attribute. Mercy is already a certain decision, and compassion is already a certain decision that comes after the attribute of justice.

So they say according to Kabbalah, but I think that even the simple meaning is so: compassion means that I have compassion on someone, and even though — this is the meaning of the Midrash — and even though the thing is not due to him, nevertheless there is compassion. And what is the nature of compassion? We have spoken of this several times, that it is not something without knowledge, and it is not just an emotion, but there is intellect in it, and it is built — as the Maggid of Mezritch always explains — that the decision is built on a higher level, built on knowledge. It is not a mistake, and the simple meaning is not that without choice one must have compassion; rather it is correct to have compassion. And all this structure and framework of compassion are, that one must have compassion even though it is not according to this attribute of justice. And this is certainly not love at all.

The Attribute of Justice Is a Good Thing That Must Be Loved

One might say, that the attribute of justice, that original “arose in thought” of the attribute of justice, is what causes there to be the bad parts that one must separate from? Why? On the contrary, exactly the opposite, I do not understand. The attribute of justice shows how things should be. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the attribute of justice, and the attribute of justice does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is angry. It does not even say the attribute of anger. Although sometimes it is said that the Holy One, blessed be He, is angry, and this needs explanation, but the attribute of justice stated here is not the attribute of anger. The attribute of justice shows strictness — you can say strictness, or righteousness. Things must be as they should be. And this is the attribute of justice, and it is a good thing, and a person must love the attribute of justice.

The Holy One, blessed be He, Himself is said about Him “loves righteousness and justice” (based on Psalms 33:5). The Holy One, blessed be He, loves the attribute of justice, so that the attribute of justice is a good thing, and one must love it. And in other words, that same thing itself: just as the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself loves the attribute of justice — and this is a metaphor, for the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have love, but the intention is that the attribute of justice is good in His eyes — so that same thing, when a person encounters the attribute of justice of the Holy One, blessed be He, it should also be good in his eyes, and he must love the Holy One, blessed be He, for that goodness.

And here the front is formed: sometimes there is a person whom the attribute of justice strikes. The simple meaning is that the Holy One, blessed be He, said that this is good, that it is true that it is good for him that he should have a lack, that he should have punishment, and it pains him. But if it pains him, it is not the attribute of justice that pains him. On the contrary, the more a person understands that the thing is correct and that it is proper that it should come, he is happy. And therefore one blesses the blessing of “the true Judge,” and even for simple suffering one must bless with joy and accept it with joy. And the intention is not that the person desires this — he does not pray for this, and he would want it to be good for him, that he should have good things — but the attribute of justice from the side of the Holy One, blessed be He, shows that the thing is good for you.

The Attribute of Justice Is Not Punishment: The Blessing of Hagomel Lechayavim Tovot

We say the attribute of justice — but first of all, the attribute of justice is not punishment. And let us preface and clarify this. When one receives reward with the attribute of justice, when a person says Hatov VeHametiv, one does not say Hagomel Lechayavim Tovot. One should know that there is a blessing in which one says “Hagomel Lechayavim Tovot” (Berachot 54b), and this is said by the four who need to give thanks — those who go down to the sea and the like, those four mentioned in the psalm “Hodu” (Psalms 107) — they bless “Hagomel Lechayavim Tovot.”

And from here we see that I am not worthy of this, and even so the Holy One, blessed be He, gives good even to one who is liable. And what is the nature of this? It is simple, and as I saw this week explicitly — I do not remember where, and I say this to clarify — that it happened that a person was in trouble and was saved from it, and the trouble is the attribute of justice. The trouble itself shows that the person was liable, for to a person who is not liable, troubles do not come at all.

A person can be very happy, and certainly a person is happy that a miracle was done for him, that there was trouble and he was saved from it. But more than this a person should be happy when trouble does not come at all, and the thing shows that perhaps it is the attribute of justice, perhaps it is the attribute of mercy, perhaps it is the Holy One, blessed be He… And perhaps a person cannot always know if it is the attribute of justice or the attribute of mercy, but we assume, and one must assume, that all His deeds are with justice.

Question from the Audience: Why Do We Assume It Is with Justice When Something Bad Comes

I do not understand why when something bad comes we immediately assume it is with justice? For I understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, never gets angry. If so, one should not assume it is with justice, but should assume it is with chesed. Why should we not assume it is with justice? Presumably for the most part, most of the world is with justice. That is, I know that I am not worthy of this, we can understand something, a person has some comprehension.

Justice with Good Are Not a Contradiction

That is, I know that a person deserves to be punished for one transgression. I know, we can understand something, a person has some comprehension how much reward is proper for one transgression. When great punishment comes, they immediately say: I cannot imagine that he is wicked. Say to him: And from where do you know what punishment comes for one transgression? And so when great reward comes, when a person suddenly wins a lottery, I do not know, or he has tremendous success in his business and it amounts to more than he planned — presumably he should assume in the natural way that he did something good. And from where do you know? Does he have comprehension of the reward for saying one Amen, “there is one who increases”? What is bad about this?

It is true that there is a technical matter here: chesed can come more without merit, and even that thing can be. It is true that there are different ways that even justice comes without merit, for there are all those matters of… And in short, “there is no righteous person on earth who does good and does not sin” (based on Ecclesiastes 7:20) and there is no generation, and the general overcomes the particular, and all kinds of ways. The thing is not necessary, there is more, the thing is not necessary.

In any case the usual order, and this is what I seek to clarify — justice with good are not a contradiction; and not only are justice with good not a contradiction, but the justice itself is not bad. Justice with justice means that it is good that there should be the attribute of justice. For this purpose the attribute of justice was created, and one must love it. And when a person receives good things with justice, certainly he must love them. And sometimes when justice tells a person that it is good for him — yes, this is the meaning of justice — it is good for you that a bad thing should happen to you. You are not happy, the thing is bad, but it is good. And therefore he says a blessing, “Blessed are You Hashem” with joy, the true Judge: it is good for me, I am Yours, the thing costs me, pains me, but it is good for me.

Fear versus Hatred

And conversely, when it is not so — simply, often a person feels that the thing is not correct, not good, and then hatred is created. Yes, one must understand this reality: then he will call it fear, but essentially it is hatred, and then the person’s reaction becomes hatred, because it is not good for him. He will hate the thing, and will flee from that fear with hatred. Fear perhaps its reaction is hatred, and one must take to heart that when a person has an enemy, he fears him and also hates him.

And in contrast there is another thing in which there is fear without hatred. And one must understand when there is this and when there is that.

Summary: The Connection Is Not Clear

In any case, I do not see where the connection is, why the attribute of justice relates at all to the subject of fear. The attribute of justice relates exactly to the same degree also to the subject of love. And the attribute of justice one can say it is good thus, and that same thing one can say with the attribute of love. And the attribute of chesed is the more fundamental attribute, you can say, because the whole thing is for the sake of good, for the sake of chesed, “the world is built with chesed” (Psalms 89:3).

And certainly, what is the attribute of mercy if not the attribute of chesed? For the attribute of mercy is not the attribute of chesed. The attribute of chesed certainly precedes the attribute of justice, as everyone knows the order, and the attribute of mercy is that which comes after the attribute of justice. And the attribute of chesed is certainly good, without doubt. And on the other hand, even from the side of chesed there are things that one must fear, that it is proper to fear. And certainly not to fear because it is bad, but if one says that there is a fear that is more fear of honor, a certain submission that is generally called fear of exaltedness, the submission that a person has before something greater than him, as I said.

There is a person who fears an enemy, he fears and hates. And in contrast before a father or king standing beside him, he fears — fears in the sense that he knows the other is much stronger than him, knows that he must honor him, and if he transgresses he will be harmed, he will have troubles, including guarding his mouth, he will have troubles. But there is no hatred in him, on the contrary, there is appreciation, and he looks up to the greatness, and this is also called fear. And perhaps this is the usual fear — I do not know what is called fear of bad — perhaps this is the usual thing that is proper to call fear. And this can certainly come even from the attribute of chesed, and not only can it, but this is the usual thing. Yes, a person sees how great chesed is, how human chesed, chesed of flesh and blood, is small compared to the chesed of Hashem, compared to the chesed of all existence, and he will react with fear, with fear of exaltedness, with submission, and even with dread and awe.

And therefore I have no idea why the Chassidic books always say that chesed and justice are the same thing as love and fear. It seems to me that the thing is not connected at all. Perhaps about both there will be chesed, and about both there will be justice, and there is no connection at all between the two things. Not when you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, because He loves us, gives us love, and because He does not love us gives justice — even this is not true. And not when you say that when the Holy One, blessed be He, gives us with His attribute of chesed there should be love, and when He gives us punishment there should be fear. Both of these things seem to us not correct. Perhaps it is only according to derash — does the matter settle?

Whoever will resolve the difficulty for me, I will be very happy. It is a great difficulty. And I think that there is something here that one can learn from it, very strongly, and presumably there are deep secrets that one can learn from here, for I do not understand.

The Rambam’s Approach: From Love and From Fear

Now we will continue further. What I seek to arrive at, and what I want to speak another matter, is that we stood here in the middle of learning the Zohar, the introduction, the beginning of the “Pekudin,” which speaks of the fact that there are positive commandments and negative commandments relating to tiferet and to malchut, which are themselves called the attribute of love and the attribute of fear, the attribute of zachor and the attribute of shamor, day and night, and the like. In every single commandment there are these two things in detail, and in general there are positive commandments and negative commandments, that positive commandments relate to this one and negative commandments relate to this one.

And I seek to say another approach, that I noticed that it is proper to learn in this another approach. The approach was thus: all the time they learned the Zohar according to the Ramban, who learned in it about zachor and shamor. And I noticed that the Rambam has his own approach, that he explains that positive commandments relate to love and negative commandments relate to fear. And perhaps the matter settles better, and perhaps one needs to combine the two approaches. For at least regarding the subject we are now asking, it seems that the matter settles even better if we say the Rambam’s approach, and we will resolve with this somewhat the previous difficulty.

And we remember that the Rambam in Hilchot Teshuva, and in the commentary on the Mishnayot in Sanhedrin, and in many places — perhaps two more places, I do not know — explains the attribute for which our father Abraham was called “My beloved” (Isaiah 41:8). And the Rambam explains that “My beloved” means one who serves from love. And the thing is built on the language of the Sages in many places, that there is one who serves from love, and there is a distinction between one who serves the Omnipresent from love and one who serves from fear. And it is clear in the language of the Gemara in many places where they use this, that love and fear there are not, as they say, that he loved positive commandments more or feared negative commandments more. Rather from love and from fear mean here the same thing called in other places lishmah and shelo lishmah.

From Love: According to Knowledge, From Recognition of the Good

Meaning, from love namely one who has comprehension. Love is according to knowledge. Love means one who has comprehension, who understands. Like our father Abraham — and why is our father Abraham called the greatest of all, “Abraham My beloved”? Because our father Abraham did not have a teacher, and he did not have someone to tell him what to do. And he began, and the Holy One, blessed be He, did not tell him any commandment to do, and did not promise him reward or punishment except afterwards. And he served the Holy One, blessed be He, not in order to receive reward. And what is not in order to receive reward? From recognition of His goodness, from the recognition of what is good and what is correct, he did commandments and did what needs to be done. This is the meaning of from love.

From Fear: From Fear of Reward and Punishment

From fear means from fear of reward and punishment. Fear includes both reward and punishment, and the fear is not from punishment and the love from reward, as they say — the matter does not settle. Fear means when a person does not know, they rebuke him and tell him, “Thus you must do.” This is generally called fear, generally because of punishment, or because of reward and punishment, which is the same thing. Namely that I want it to be good for me and I do not want it to be bad for me, and he does from fear of punishment. This is the meaning of from fear.

The Rambam: Fear Depends on Negative Commandments

And behold the interesting thing, that the Rambam himself says even though the thing depends on positive commandments and on negative commandments. In the commentary on the Mishnayot in Avot, in the place where Antigonus of Socho said, he said thus: “Do not be like servants who serve the master in order to receive reward, but be like servants who serve the master not in order to receive reward” (Avot 1:3), and concludes the Mishnah “and let the fear of Heaven be upon you” (Avot 1:3).

And the Rambam asks, what is the connection of “and let the fear of Heaven be upon you” here? Did you think you would go from love? What is “do not remove”? “That you should not remove at once” means from love, do you think you are completely exempt from fear? The Rambam says, no, do not abandon fear. Still go, still there should be in you a certain fear. And why? Because fear is such an important thing.

And the Rambam brings a midrash or source, that we do not know it properly, and brings that it is said thus: “The lover will not delay a commandment, and the fearer will not transgress a transgression” (Rambam’s commentary on Mishnayot Avot 1:3). This language the Rambam brings. And so he says, this is its meaning: that you need both love not to delay commandments, and also fear not to do transgressions. And therefore he says, that fear is very important and especially for negative commandments.

The First Commandment to Man: Positive and Negative

Now one must understand the matter a bit better. I do not have a clear approach, I can say a certain explanation, a certain illumination in this. I seek to say a very interesting simple meaning that we learn in this week’s parsha, and one must take to heart in this. And I will first say the explanation, the illumination, that all that I say is only illuminations, to awaken the heart, to awaken the intellect, to awaken the spring.

It is known, the first commandment, “And Hashem God commanded the man” (Genesis 2:16), the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded Adam a commandment. And one should ask if it was a positive commandment or a negative commandment. Presumably everyone assumes it was a negative commandment, not to eat from the tree of knowledge. And in fact, one who looks at the verse sees that it is clearly built, that the language of the Scripture is clearly built on a manner of positive and negative. That is, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him “from every tree of the garden you may surely eat” (Genesis 2:16) — a positive commandment, “and from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden you shall not eat” (based on Genesis 3:3) — a negative commandment.

It turns out the explanation, that there is both a positive commandment and a negative commandment in the language of the command to the first man. Even though generally we learn that “from every tree of the garden you may surely eat” is permission, as they think that “six days you shall work” (Exodus 20:9) is permission — and even then the thing is not so clear, and perhaps it is “a negative that comes from a positive.” But the thing shows that there is an intention, at least to the language of the Scripture, there is an intention that one does not begin from the negative restriction, one does not begin from the restriction of fear, but begins from the positive commandment, from what one does in practice, and this doing is the limitation to what one does not do.

The Serpent and the Woman

And I further noticed, what does the serpent say? “And the serpent said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden” (Genesis 3:1). The serpent immediately opened with the negative, “You shall not eat from every tree of the garden.” And Chavah answers him — what does Chavah say? No, it was not said so. She immediately tells him no, the Holy One, blessed be He, said “from the fruit of the tree of the garden we may eat and from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God said, You shall not eat” (based on Genesis 3:2-3). And even though she already adds “and you shall not touch it,” it seems that she understood well that the serpent sought to begin from the negative commandment, and the woman says no, one must begin from the positive commandment, and after the positive commandment there is also a negative commandment.

The Wonder: Is It Possible to Do a Negative Commandment Lishmah

And we learn here that there is like a deficiency, that a person might want to do only positive commandments and forget the negative commandment relating to the attribute of fear. And we said that fear means shelo lishmah, that fear means reward and punishment. And this is truly a wonder.

A person can ask such a difficulty, and I think one must ask it: Is there such a thing that it is impossible to do a negative commandment lishmah? And a negative commandment must be shelo lishmah? That is, many times they say a simple thing — and I think one must stop getting used to saying these simple things — that one who goes only from love, namely who does because he has reason and desire in the thing, behold sometimes he has no reason, he has a great evil inclination, namely he has no reason, and this is called a negative commandment, a serpent comes to him and tells him, “there will be a negative commandment,” and then his great comprehension of love does not help him, and then only simple fear of punishment helps.

And this is another thing that is very common to say, books of mussar and Chassidic books love to say it, that they explain thus the Midrash, that the other Midrash shows like the words of Chovot HaLevavot, that you should be fearful, so that when you do the commandment you will do it from love.

Question on This Simple Meaning

And I must say that this is another thing I do not understand. I do not understand on what the thing is based. Is this the reality, that this is how the thing works? I do not know. I do not see that specifically people who have reason — and reason is only a word — one who has true comprehension of good, “good is Hashem” (Psalms 34:9), “taste and see that Hashem is good” (ibid.), that it is harder for him to overcome the evil inclination? It should be easier for him. And if you say, that at the time of the evil inclination he does not forget, that at the time of the evil inclination one does not forget the punishment — I do not know what difference the thing makes.

And what I can understand is a more fundamental thing, that there is such a type of person, perhaps many people who are not at the level, or who does not understand at all the goodness. If he understands the punishment, yes, fear of punishment. This is the meaning of fear of punishment. Fear of punishment was said for one who does not understand, like a father who tells his son, do not go to the street, I will give you a slap. The true reason not to go out to the street is not because of the slap, but the child does not understand this, and they tell him, fear the father’s slap. And so I said, come inside to learn, even though learning is better than that child. This I understand. But this way I do not understand.

And what does this have to do specifically with negative commandments? That same truth itself relates even to positive commandments. A positive commandment is also so: one who does not understand is not at the level of a positive commandment, is not at the level, and he also needs fear of punishment. And so if I understand, I stand in lishmah. Why specifically in negative commandments does fear relate more than in positive commandments? Besides what they will say that a negative commandment is generally in a place where there is temptation. I do not know, perhaps there is an evil inclination even not in negative commandments, but in negative commandments evil inclinations are common. All this thing I understand how the two things settle.

A Bold Innovation: In Truth There Is No Bad at All

But if we say a great innovation, and I think one can think such an innovation, based on what I hinted now in the portion of the tree of knowledge: that always, in truth, there is no such thing as bad. The tree of knowledge of good and bad told man that there is good and bad, and what did he think before? That there is no such thing as bad. For it is said “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and they expounded “good is death,” “good is bad.” There is no such thing as bad. And therefore, in truth, one who understands the world correctly, understands that the entire world the Holy One, blessed be He, made in His goodness, “in His great goodness… we shall not lack and we shall not lack… forever and ever,” “He is good and He does good… and He will do good.” The entire world is good.

If the World Were Rectified

And if the world were rectified, there would be no such thing as negative commandments, there would be no bad things. And if you ask, how could it be that before the sin there was already a negative commandment? The answer, that one should have understood that essentially it is a positive commandment, “from every tree of the garden you may surely eat.”

And there are such bold expositions that say, that if man had done now, fulfilled “from every tree of the garden you may surely eat,” there would no longer be a question from the tree of knowledge. And how could it be? For it is stated in the verse “and from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.” And one must understand, in what is that tree different? What is the distinction? Perhaps there is some logic in this: that when one fulfills the six days with desire properly, the Shabbat is automatically made, “and on the seventh day you shall rest” (Exodus 23:12), and this is not an obligation, and one does not need to fear, as the Chassidic books say — a person who lives a week properly

, automatically keeps Shabbat. Not that one needs to frighten “its desecrators shall be put to death” (Exodus 31:14), this is not a Shabbat of “its desecrators shall be put to death,” but a Shabbat of “and on the seventh day you shall rest,” from reason, from rest. But if you begin from negative commandments, then you always remain there.

The Resolution: Negative Commandments Relate to the Attribute of Fear

Perhaps what they say that negative commandments relate to the attribute of fear, its meaning is that in the depth of the matter, if the world were rectified, if the first man had not eaten from the tree of knowledge — it is understood that he should have eaten, and the thing would not have affected him. But when he understands correctly, that from the perspective of lishmah, from the perspective of love, which is truly a perspective like before the sin, the true perspective of the essence of the world, then in truth there is no prohibition of negative commandments. It is permitted to do, as it were, like in the future to come it will return to its permission and the like. There are no negative commandments, there are no bad things in the world.

And it turns out automatically, that one who would be attached entirely only to the attribute of love and to goodness, perhaps automatically he would not do negative commandments, but a reality of negative commandments, which is stated about a reality that does not exist, thus it would not be.

And why does the Rambam say, and brings that Midrash, the Rambam quotes, that for negative commandments one specifically needs the “and you shall guard,” the “shamor,” the fear of punishment, because there is no other reason? In truth, from the side of good it does not interfere, from the side of good negative commandments do not interfere. But from the side of fear of punishment, because fear of punishment says that the world, perhaps the entire world, is still at the level of shelo lishmah, and then one needs to do from fear of punishment.

A Person Should Not Say “I Cannot”: The Reality of Negative Commandments

And perhaps even regarding that side in the Rambam, in the matter of “a person should not say I cannot eat pig meat” (Sifra Kedoshim), perhaps there are certain negative commandments, and perhaps not everything is equal. For what we speak here of negative commandments, namely those that we do not understand, that are less understood. And perhaps there are negative commandments that it is forbidden to do them lishmah, because to do them lishmah means to say that it is true.

As I explain according to Chassidut, and perhaps it is also hinted in the Rambam, “a person should not say I cannot eat pig meat.” Why is it said “a person should not say I cannot eat pig meat”? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, also made pig meat, and in the future to come pig meat will be purified. One who says “I cannot,” he is speaking against the work of Hashem. In the work of creation it is said “and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1), and even about the pig. A person is not permitted to eat pig today, we cannot eat pig properly today, for whatever reason it may be, because of the fall, because of the sin, because of the descent — the fall of the world from its level. But it is forbidden to ignore the good that is truly in it, but it is forbidden to do it properly.

There are things that one must do each thing according to what it truly is. A commandment that is true, that comes because this is how the world is in its source, that is good, one must do it with joy, do it from love. But not to do a transgression, that the reason the thing is a transgression is only because the world fell, is only because there is an aspect of shelo lishmah in the world — this is a reality, that after the sin, in the world of action, it is forbidden to do from love. One must do it from fear. And why must one do it from fear? Because the true understanding says that this is not a thing, this is not a problem according to love, but a problem according to fear alone.

One Who Loves the King: The Logic of Fear from Love

And if so, one can also resolve this: that one who loves the king, he also does not abandon, does not go. Why does the Rambam say that one who loves the king does commandments that the king loves? One can say exactly this logic, that one who loves the king does not do things that the king does not love. And this is like fear from love, and even complete love.

And the resolution is no: because one who truly loves the king, understands that there are no things that the king does not love. The king loves everything. If so, thus he will conduct himself. And there in the place where he is in this world, in the place where fear of punishment is lacking in him, about this they say that one needs to add the attribute of fear, one needs to add even the attribute of justice. Not the attribute of justice itself, because we do not know if this is the attribute of justice, but the attribute of fear, fear of punishment.

This is what I can understand, but all these are things that one needs to delve into them greatly whether they are correct, and this is the matter for today’s lesson.