📋 Shiur Overview
Between the Straits: The Matter of Mourning the Destruction and the Exile of the Shechina
Introduction: Maintaining the Jewish Calendar Within a Busy Life
My dear brothers, today is erev Shabbos kodesh, parshas Pinchas, which is the first week of the days of bein hametzarim, the three weeks between the seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av. We are standing in the middle of studying the matter called midas hakedusha (the attribute of holiness), but we are obligated to also maintain the Jewish calendar, for the time of mourning has arrived, the time of remembering Yerushalayim and remembering the Beis Hamikdash.
And our entire way of life is built such that we should be organized in the order of the day, and particularly in a period of life when a person is very busy, it is extremely difficult to truly live all the orders of the calendar, to be sadder in bein hametzarim and happier in Adar. When a person is a yeshiva bachur and has no other occupation, he makes of it a complete state. But the moment he is occupied with practical life, indeed he does what is written in the Shulchan Aruch and what is written in the siddur, and everything is proper, except that it is difficult for him to be connected to it, to truly live the thing, that he should know and feel: behold, the seventeenth of Tammuz has arrived.
For naturally, when a person is busy, it becomes like this: there are several more matters to worry about, and this enters the list of things to worry about—to remember to fast on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and to ensure that he has the page by which he can conduct himself during the nine days, what is forbidden and what is permitted and the like.
The Shiur as a Place for Matters of the Heart
Therefore I wanted, since this shiur, as we have spoken many times, is intended especially to set aside time for matters of the heart, for matters of the soul—it is fitting that in this shiur we should at least engage with the matters at hand, “from time to time”—that this is the place where one should speak about these. And therefore, even though there are still matters that we must continue to clarify, nevertheless the time requires that we now dedicate time and study to the matters of these days. And certainly it is possible to connect the matters to each other.
The Beis Midrash of the Mekubalim in Tzfas
And what I wish to arouse is this: there is something very interesting here. Our shiur is built on Kabbalah, and there is a very interesting point in this. Anyone who examines and knows the later mekubalim, those we call our rabbis, our rabbis in Kabbalah—they are the beis midrash of Tzfas: the Ramak, the Arizal, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, Rabbi Chaim Vital, that entire group. For approximately one hundred years, and not all at once, but most of them knew each other, that entire group of Jewish mekubalim who dwelt mainly in Tzfas around the year 5300, approximately four hundred and fifty years ago, and they founded and established that form of Judaism upon which the Chassidus that followed is a commentary, and perhaps even other paths are commentaries upon it. The Sephardic mekubalim, the Sephardic Jews, the Chassidic Jews—everything is commentary on that beis midrash.
And the more one studies them, studies the words of the Ramak, the words of the Arizal, the words of Rabbi Chaim Vital and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, and even the Beis Yosef from the mouth of his maggid, the things are extraordinary in their flavor, extraordinary in their relevance and extraordinary in their depth. There is great study and great scholarship in the way they learn Kabbalah. They strive greatly to explain and clarify the matters, modern in a certain way, very relevant to our lives. Even though they lived four hundred years ago, and it is not the same world we live in, nevertheless in many ways the beginning of our world is that period, as everyone knows about the periods of the world. Then began what is called the modern world, and we are their students, and we learn their words.
The Emphasis on Mourning the Destruction Among the Mekubalim
And anyone who studies these sefarim sees a very strong emphasis on the matter and on the action and avodah of mourning the destruction. It is a very interesting thing, and it must be brought to mind, for there is in it deep learning and a great point in the matter. And as we learned in previous shiurim regarding the matter of kedusha, the topic of prishus (separation) and bodily pleasures, that sefarim such as Reishis Chochma—who was also a student of the Ramak, from that same beis midrash from which come the Chassidic sefarim and the entire path of which we are part—intensified the matters greatly in the way they expressed the matter (as we explained in previous shiurim about midas hakedusha and this is not its place).
So too in the matter of mourning the destruction, of longing for Yerushalayim, of yearning for the Beis Hamikdash, of the pain of the Shechina, of the matter of the exile of the Shechina—that beis midrash placed very great emphasis. And just as we seek to uproot the error, that people think Reishis Chochma was some kind of oppressed and pressured Jew, who wanted people not to enjoy their lives, and spoke about Gehinnom and about the prohibition to take pleasure in any pleasure and the like—and we say that this has no foundation at all, rather his entire desire was to express what is the meaning of light, of happiness, of taste and sweetness, of radiance of face, abundance, light and holiness, of those lives called kedusha—
So too and in exactly the same way in the matter of mourning the destruction, of the pain of the destruction, of tikkun chatzos, and of the other customs of mourning the destruction that they established and raised—they did not come to be pressured and tormented.
Chassidus as Commentary on the Beis Midrash
And behold, Chassidus, incidentally, we see the Chassidim seeking to interpret a commentary on a commentary: Chassidus is a commentary on that beis midrash, the beis midrash of the Baal Shem Tov and his students is a commentary on the beis midrash of the Ramak and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and the Arizal and their colleagues. And in Chassidus we see, and this is a large part of Chassidus, that they struggle somewhat with the matter of mourning the destruction, and we also see that they struggle with the matter of prishus and kedusha. Anyone who knows and examines the original Chassidic sefarim sees that this is one of the matters they struggle with.
And why do they struggle with it? Because an explanation is lacking, the one who errs lacks a way in which he can express and fulfill the matters. For Chassidus did not come primarily to say new chiddushei Torah, but primarily to express in actual practice, in deed, how one lives the matters. And therefore one must emphasize, one must change the emphasis, change the stress in certain ways, and explain the matters in other ways. For naturally, from studying the sefer, from looking at what is written in it, a person is liable to err and think that indeed it is fitting for him to be depressed, that there is value in being depressed during the three weeks. Therefore we see in Chassidic sefarim, as is known, that it is not fitting to be depressed, and that one still must serve Hashem Yisbarach with joy, and to be happy and good-hearted always, and the like. And one even must be lenient in certain halachos, among certain Chassidim, because one cannot be so tense.
But one must understand that this is a commentary. This is a commentary on the matter of mourning the destruction, and this is the correct commentary. For the truth is that anyone who learns Zohar, who learns the writings of the Arizal, the Ramak and Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, sees that this is not what they intended, that we should be depressed. They were not Litvaks—this is the truth—rather they were very Chassidic. But when one reads the thing in a sefer, one thinks it is written there that one should be tense and alienated. Therefore one needs the commentary of Chassidus to clarify for us that this is not what they intended.
The Zohar as a Living Sefer
But what did they intend? This is what I wish to arrive at. What did they intend, and why? Two questions I wish to ask. Why? Let me bring one proof, from which we see that the Arizal, the Ramak and all those Jews emphasized the matter greatly. For example, anyone who has ever opened the sefer of the Zohar on the Torah knows that the sefer of the Zohar is arranged according to the order of the parshiyos. And more or less every section of Zohar—usually at the beginning of the parsha, and sometimes even in the middle, but usually at the beginning—the Zohar opens with a picture, with a description of the way in which the chachamim, the chavraya d’Zohar, sit down to learn the parsha.
The Zohar Seeks to Be a Living Record
And how do I think one should learn the Zohar in general? That is, the Zohar very much seeks to be a living sefer, almost like the Gemara, and even the Gemara is less so in a certain way. That is, the Zohar does not simply seek to say: I am writing a sefer, a commentary on the Torah, to add more chiddushei Torah, more commentaries according to Kabbalah. Rather it seeks to be a record, a living thing. It seeks to be a living sefer, a living record, and not merely a record. It must be able to arouse, that they should be able to learn it with enthusiasm, that from it they should be able to see how Jews learn. How Jews learn what is called Torah lishmah, according to truth. And pnimiyus haTorah does not necessarily mean to learn the matter of Torah, for this too is truth, since many times it speaks simply about the plain meaning of Scripture. Not everything, not all the Zohar is the secrets of Torah—perhaps a secret is hidden in everything, but part of it is even simply peshat. Many times they learn Chumash there, and we see how they struggle to interpret the plain meaning of a verse, even peshat.
But in this the Zohar is almost unique among all Jewish sefarim, that it very much seeks to be a sefer that is not only a deed that was. First of all, indeed it is a deed that was, a deed with the sages of the Zohar who sat down to learn the parsha of the week each week. And not only that, but just as everyone knows, the purpose of such a sefer is that they should do like it. In other words, it is more like a cookbook, or a book of instructions for law, than a book that establishes a theory.
Parable: A Book About Love
There are sefarim—and as we say, we speak about love, love between a man and his wife, which is the greatest example that the Zohar used much—one could have a sefer that writes a theory of love, how one loves, how love begins, how it ends, and how to guard against all the obstacles to love, and the like. And there are such sefarim. And then there is a sefer that tells a deed that was, a novel, that tells a deed of a young man and a young woman who fell in love, and what they did, and the like. This is one way.
And there is a sefer that everyone understands: if a person wants to arouse himself, to ignite his love, and even to learn how to conduct oneself in the matter of love, how to begin to love—I think everyone would agree that to learn a sefer of theories and explanations, of philosophy of love, is not a less good way. Perhaps there are advantages in it, and this is an important matter in itself to understand, for the world runs on love, the continuation of the human species runs on this. One cannot nullify the matter, one must understand it, and undoubtedly enormous secrets are hidden in it. But if a person wants to do in practice, if he wants—he must read a novel, he must read the sefarim that tell the stories of one Jew who loved another Jew. And thus he sees how it is done, and sees there the fears, and what difficulties there were, and what obstacles one must overcome, and how one must appease, and how one must strengthen the love afterward when it falls, and so on and so forth—the one who knows can see there, and then can imitate and do like it. And this is what we learned last week, that every time a person has love between a man and his wife, and truly in every relationship, in every deed a person does, he does it fundamentally from the stories and deeds he read, that he added, that he received (as we spoke in the previous shiur and this is not its place).
A Sefer That Is Not Perfect
And there is an even better sefer, and perhaps this is the sefer, but a better version of that same sefer, that not only does it tell a deed—and one can say another thing, that within the deed it integrates, for it is understood that one who truly understands, who has learned the philosophy of the thing and the theory of it, can write a better novel, for he knows what the matters depend on, and can insert within the story more understanding, to tell the deed more correctly, and to express what truly needs to be expressed so that it fits the way the matters work. And not only that, he can make a sefer that when they read it, it almost causes the reader to get up and do it himself. There are tricks how to do this. One of the tricks is that the sefer should not be perfect. This is an interesting trick: that the sefer should not be perfect.
When one reads a sefer, there are—for example, sefarim such as the Akeidah, Akeidas Yitzchak, a perfect sefer. Every derasha there, every parsha has several derashos, and every derasha opens with questions, with verses, and then he builds and brings different approaches in the matter he seeks to learn, and plays until he arrives at the interpretation, and interprets according to it the verses and the parshiyos. Always perfect. Everything always fits perfectly. And this is a very good sefer for one who seeks derashos, seeks explanations in an intellectual way, seeks explanations on midrashim and on verses—a very good sefer. But this is not a sefer with which a person can ignite his fellow.
Chassidic Sefarim Are Not Perfect
And anyone who learns Chassidic sefarim, incidentally, sees that Chassidic sefarim are usually written in a very imperfect way. There is almost not one Chassidic sefer, or only a few, but there is almost not one Chassidic sefer written in the manner of complete derashos, where the entire derush fits, and one can repeat it like this, at the table at the father-in-law’s. Chassidic sefarim were not made for this, and especially the early sefarim, but even the later ones—almost most Chassidic sefarim are a record of the Rebbe’s words at the table. Even a sefer like Tiferes Shlomo, it is not that he sat down and wrote to explain something, but a sefer that was written to remind the Chassidim who were at the table what the Rebbe said that week. This is more or less the essence of the sefer. And naturally it is much less perfect, it does not bring sources, it does not open with a verse, it does not go to interpret the statements of Chazal, it brings everything incidentally as much as possible—because it is alive, because the Jew sat at the table and said the Torah, and now you can learn it.
And the true way to learn Chassidic sefarim is to be aroused, either from being able afterward to examine the Chumash himself to find its expansion and to see how the thing relates to him, or from imagining in his soul and picturing as if he is hearing the Rebbe’s Torah and receiving his word of Torah. This is a different way of learning, not learning like in iyun, like Minchas Chinuch, but Chassidic learning.
The Zohar Was Written to Arouse
And the Zohar was written one hundred percent in that same way, that people should learn and be aroused. Many times it opens with a question and does not finish the answer, or one says something, and the thing is made such that you will say: “Wait, what is the meaning? One could say thus, but one must continue thus”—and this is its desire.
The Arizal: Learning Zohar Through Inspiration
And therefore, one who learns the Arizal knows that the Arizal said many things from the Zohar that are not written in the Zohar. There is always some hint there. Many times, in the language of the Arizal, when Rabbi Chaim Vital brings in the name of the Arizal, it says they are hinted in the Zohar in this parsha—the secret, the topic—and one does not understand. The Gra said that in his opinion the Arizal learns Zohar through pilpul, not through peshat. I think this is not correct. The Arizal does not learn Zohar through pilpul. True, his way of learning was more full of pilpul than certain precisions—learn in the Ramak and in Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and you can see the way of learning how they learned Zohar, but this is the true peshat, this is iyun, that one must examine it. I think the Arizal hakadosh learned Zohar not only through peshat, but through inspiration. As the Arizal himself describes that he learned Zohar until Eliyahu Hanavi came to him and told him the interpretation.
In other words, the Arizal learned Zohar and was aroused, and thus it happened. And thus it happens, true, every sefer, every true sefer is made for this, but the Zohar was written in this manner. It is made to bring you to thought, it is not made to tell you everything. The Torah does not seek to tell you everything. There is a part where you must be the wise one who understands on his own. But it is made so that you should learn the verse—the Zohar brings the verse to the table, and brings the situation, in what situation you are learning the verse, and now you say: “Ah, if this is what you mean, the next step is thus.” And many times the Arizal simply tells you the next step, or three steps later, which the Zohar intended to say in its derush. And it is not written, but it is hinted, the Zohar aroused, simply.
The Secret of Rising at Chatzos in the Zohar
Now, therefore you will see that it opens the Zohar in almost every parsha with an introduction, that is, the Zohar tells a deed—almost always an explicit deed, but even when it is a derush, I think it is built on the deed—that opens: “Behold now the tzaddikim and chachamim sit down, they sit down to learn.” This is what they do, now they sit down to learn the parsha of the week. Perhaps every week—I do not know—one can imagine that the authors of the Zohar had an order: every Friday night they sit down to learn the parsha of the week, let us say, and they wrote the Zohar. They wrote it at the time of the deed, and afterward one brought it to writing, but the thing was precise.
The Periods of the Night
The beginning of the Zohar almost every week speaks of that same state, that same situation of sitting down to learn. And the order that the mekubalim, the chavraya d’Zohar, innovated, was to learn after midnight. Everyone knows that the best time to learn is after midnight. And it is true, it is built on the parable, as it is written in the Gemara, “In the third watch an infant nurses from his mother’s breast and a woman speaks with her husband” (Berachos 3a). The Zohar bases much on the foundation of the Gemara in Berachos, that there is a period in the night. At the beginning of the night they go to sleep, and the Zohar calls this “ta’am d’mosa,” the world becomes somewhat dead, the angel of death comes, the “one of sixty of death,” a closure is poured upon the world, and everyone goes to sleep. And this is what the Zohar calls the spreading of midas hadin, Gehinnom opens, all kinds of busi d’mesavusa, wild animals, all kinds of thieves begin to wander, all kinds of wicked ones, all kinds of kelipos. This is at the beginning of the night, this is the time to go to sleep.
But afterward—there are people who sleep the entire night and rise in the morning, and miss the entire thing. But afterward, if a person is a Jew—and once the thing was more possible, they went to sleep before it became night, and afterward, if a person was diligent, if he loved to learn, or in general, one who loved another person, he rises at midnight. And when I say “at midnight,” the intention is not precisely at the moment it becomes midnight—I think this is an error. The intention is late at night, or very early toward morning, and they rose then. There is research that says there was a custom to rise, everyone would rise then.
The Time of Love After Midnight
And they rise when they have already rested, the body is already calm, it has already digested the food eaten at the evening meal, and the world is already quiet. And then everyone goes with his love. The “woman speaks with her husband”—one who has a beloved, then this is the time he speaks with her, or writes her a poem, or meditates on her. This is the calmest time of the day, and a very good time to express things, to enter into things that all day they are occupied with. Now they go to pray about love, whereas all day they are occupied with work, occupied with the tasks of the night that must be done.
The entire day is the time of yirah, one can say usually, or at least at the beginning of the night, and here begins the time of love, begins a time like “Kol dodi dofek” (Shir Hashirim 5:2), and the Zohar regularly brings the verse “You who dwell in the gardens, friends are listening to your voice, let me hear it” (Shir Hashirim 8:13). In other words, at this time the tzaddikim, the people whose love—for everyone has something he loves, which is his love, they are his lights, the thing that attracts him most, for which he truly lives—rise.
One Who Fell in Love with Torah
And one who fell in love with Torah, who fell in love with the Shechina, this is his love. He rises at the best time, when it is cool, when a cool wind comes, that northern wind blows that is written in the Gemara about David’s harp (Berachos 3b), and begins to sing, begins to hear how the angels begin to sing, “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Iyov 38:7), and then he gathers with his friends, or alone, or with his friends virtually, or with his friends actually. And in the beis midrash gather the mekubalim, the inner sages, the lovers of Hashem, and learn Torah.
And almost every section of Zohar, almost every parsha of Zohar, opens with a section of derush—sometimes a few lines, sometimes at much greater length—about what is called in the sefarim the virtue of rising at chatzos. And again, this is another thing that is understood in a completely strange way incorrectly, for people think that you should rise at midnight, or that today there are chatzos kollelim for avreichim who do not have shalom bayis and seek to flee from the house at midnight, or that you must afflict yourself, truly not to sleep at night and to rise at midnight. No—the entire matter of rising at midnight to learn Torah then is built on this being the calmest time to arouse love, and one who loves Torah rises then, and then, says the Zohar, the gates of Gan Eden open, and the Zohar has a derush according to Kabbalah that then as it were the left hand of Tiferes begins to raise the Shechina, until in the morning there is truly a yichud at Shacharis, and this is the secret that the Zohar constantly begins to speak about.
The Innovation of the Later Mekubalim: Tikkun Chatzos
And behold, all this is the plain meaning of the Zohar. Now comes the Arizal—I think this is the Arizal, and perhaps one must examine the mekubalim before him whether they too learned thus, but if I am correct, certainly this is something from the later ones. In the Zohar nothing is written of the matters of mourning over the destruction, of tikkun chatzos, of crying—not one of these things is written. It is written that they rise and learn Torah. And certainly the later mekubalim say that one should learn Torah after midnight, that this is perhaps the essence, the essence of rising at midnight, the essence of rising at night, that the later a person sits down to learn, that then is the best time to learn the secrets of Torah.
The New Prayer of Tikkun Chatzos
But the later mekubalim added something very interesting here, and said, and everyone knows there is something called tikkun chatzos. Tikkun chatzos they established—I think not the Arizal, perhaps a bit before the Arizal, but the group of sages established a new prayer, a new order of prayer, called tikkun chatzos. And it is built mostly on verses from Tehillim, verses from Yeshayahu, verses from Eicha, verses from the prophets, and also there are a few piyutim of their own that they wrote, printed in siddurim of tikkun chatzos—songs, kinos, the song of yearning, the song of devekus, the song of lamentations—that the sages of Kabbalah wrote on the topic of the exile of the Shechina, on the pain of Israel, on the death of tzaddikim, and all kinds of troubles connected to the pain of exile. And they were accustomed to rise at midnight, and before the learning, beforehand, they cried a bit over the exile of the Shechina.
And Rabbi Chaim Vital, in the list of instructions that a Jew must do to be a mekubal, includes this in his instruction in the introduction to Eitz Chaim, that one must rise at midnight every night and cry over the destruction. And he also says an important thing, and from here we begin to see that the thing is not so simple: that this is a segulah for attainment. One who wants a segulah to be a mekubal, let him rise at midnight and cry over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash.
The Proof That the Mekubalim Innovated Something
Behold what I see: there is here proof that the sages of the later mekubalim innovated a strong emphasis on crying, on mourning over the destruction, which we see is not so in the plain meaning. The plain meaning is that rising at midnight is only a matter of talmud Torah. And they added to this a kind of prayer, a part of prayer, which is also built on the Gemara. For this is that same Gemara where it is written that Hakadosh Baruch Hu rises at night and roars “He will surely roar over His habitation” (Berachos 3a), Hakadosh Baruch Hu rises then and cries over the destruction and cries over the exile. And on this the thing is built, that they come to rise and cry at the time when it is written that Hakadosh Baruch Hu cries.
The Parable of the Widow
And this is certainly built—let us understand a bit, on what is the thing built? It is built on that same idea we said before, but the part of pain in it, and one must understand why. It is built on that same part, as it is written in Eicha “She weeps bitterly in the night” (Eicha 1:2), that the parable of Eicha is about a widow, and the two parables are the parable of the love of a man and his wife, and the parable of mourning the destruction is “She has become like a widow” (Eicha 1:1)—like a widow whose husband went, died or went—”she has become like a widow and not a widow, a widow whose husband went to an overseas country.”
And what does she do? Why does she cry at night? Because all day they are busy, all day there are things to do, one must worry about the matters of the day. Even a widow has work, she too has children, and she must worry about them. This is the Shechina, who all day worries about Israel in exile, and cannot cry over what she truly lacks.
Night comes—and why specifically at night? One can say, that usually she remembers how it was when “her husband was with her,” when he was here; this was the time she would be aroused, for this was the time of “a woman speaks with her husband.” And now she too rises at the time when they could well have been in seclusion, to calculate what passes over a person who truly loves her. But she sees that her husband is not here, as the holy Zohar describes this in the language of their pictures. He is not here. And naturally “she weeps bitterly in the night,” then come out her cry of woe, her weeping, her pain, her lamentations—this is the time of lamentation.
This rule is almost not seen in the Zohar, perhaps in Zohar Eicha the thing is hinted, but one almost does not find in the Zohar that one should use this time to cry. But the later mekubalim emphasized the thing and innovated the text of tikkun chatzos.
The New Prayers of the Mekubalim
Tikkun Chatzos as Personal Prayer
There is one more thing I wish to mention, that we all practice—tikkun chatzos. There are several prayers: as we know according to halacha, in tradition there are three prayers a day, Shacharis Mincha and Maariv. Avraham Avinu established Shacharis, Yitzchak established Mincha, Yaakov established Maariv. Thus did the Avos. But there are several more prayers that we practice—and who made them? As I say, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz. Another prayer, called tikkun chatzos. A personal prayer. This is not a prayer of individual and community, but a personal prayer. It is a liturgy, a certain order that they say, and on which days they say it, it enters into halachos—when they say tikkun Rachel, when tikkun Leah. This is a new enactment that they made.
And in bein hametzarim there is a custom, it too comes from those same mekubalim, to say tikkun chatzos also during the day, after midday, even midday, when it begins to be afternoon, when a spirit of destruction begins to descend upon the world, they use this to cry over the Shechina. This is one prayer they innovated. And not everyone does this—I do not know, a large part of our friends do not practice doing this.
Kabbalas Shabbos
But there is another prayer that the mekubalim innovated, very connected and very close to this, and it is the prayer called Kabbalas Shabbos, which every Jew does, and in almost all the dispersions of Israel the custom of Kabbalas Shabbos has spread. One cannot say they innovated it completely, for the custom of saying “Mizmor shir l’yom haShabbos” (Tehillim 92:1) before Maariv of Shabbos already existed long before, but they added to it. And it is written that the thing is built on the Gemara, they did not invent anything from their hearts, everything is built on the Gemara, but it is a bit as I said before: that when one learns the Gemara, one can be aroused from it to do something. It is not written in the Gemara that they should go out to the field and make Kabbalas Shabbos, it is written that there were Amoraim who practiced thus and thus. One examines in the Rambam, one examines in the Shulchan Aruch how he brings the customs, one seeks to receive inspiration from this, one seeks to see how one should conduct oneself on erev Shabbos. But the mekubalim made from this a deed, they said: they were aroused from this and made an order called Kabbalas Shabbos. And there too they used that same thing, they took verses from Tehillim, made their own song, the “Lecha Dodi” that Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz wrote then.
The Topic of Lecha Dodi: Receiving the Face of the Shechina
And what is spoken of in Lecha
The Topic of Lecha Dodi: Receiving the Face of the Shechina
And what is spoken of in Lecha Dodi? About that same topic. Placed within the topic of Shabbos, receiving Shabbos, that Shabbos indicates the Shechina, that we receive the face of the Shechina. And if we speak of receiving the face of the Shechina, you see here an interesting thing.
A question from the audience: Someone asked me, “Why does it enter into Lecha Dodi that they should cry over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash? I want to know according to peshat.”
I told him that if he is looking for an answer according to peshat, let him search until the end of all generations, for this is not according to peshat, but according to Kabbalah. And Kabbalah too is not Kabbalah in the sense that one must know technical distinctions here and the like, but Kabbalah in the sense of the picture, the picture of kedusha, the picture of the Beis Hamikdash, the picture of Judaism that the mekubalim have. And the picture they have is that there is something called the indwelling of the Shechina. A verse is written, the indwelling of the Shechina upon Israel. The Shechina—she is called Yerushalayim, she is called Shabbos, everything is the same thing. And since Shabbos is receiving the face of the Shechina, they insert “Lecha dodi likras kallah” (Lecha Dodi), and we are not in our fullness.
And just as they said, for in its source—incidentally, the Zohar too was written during the time of exile, but in its source—the correct way was simply that a person rises at night, rises for the day, and begins to learn Torah, to connect with the Shechina. But since we are not there, we cry a bit beforehand.
So too with Shabbos. For Shabbos is receiving the face of the Shechina. And since usually in the world the Shechina is not yet in her repair, the Shechina is still in the dust, one still must cry “Shake yourself from the dust, arise” (Lecha Dodi), we speak of this. And when Shabbos comes there is truly an elevation, they raise the Shechina a bit from the dust.
And this is another proof, another source, another example that we all practice, how the mekubalim inserted the topic of the exile of the Shechina and the topic of Yerushalayim in a very central way. It is not written so beforehand. This certainly one cannot say has a source. There is a source that they should make Kabbalas Shabbos, that they should go out to the field, perhaps it is written in the Gemara, yes. But certainly there is no source that they should receive in this the face of the Shechina, that they should cry a bit over the exile, that they should say “Sanctuary of the King, royal city, arise, go out from the midst of the upheaval” (Lecha Dodi). For this there is no source. The source is the attainment, the lights that the mekubalim had to live with the Shechina, to express and to raise the Shechina.
The Foundation: To Return the Shechina to the World
The State of the Shechina in Every Generation
And I think the explanation for this is very simple and very basic. At the time when Israel dwells on their land, and certainly at the time of the Beis Hamikdash, and perhaps even before and even after, in every period and in every generation, there is their way how they see the world, there is their existing culture. And the thing does not relate only to Jews, but to the entire world. And this thing itself is the state of the Shechina. The state of the Shechina is not only a few Jews dwelling in Williamsburg. The Shechina governs the entire world. And there are all kinds of ascents and descents. The Shechina is the part from which we speak, the way in which we can speak as it were from the Divinity, from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, which changes. Hakadosh Baruch Hu does not change, but the indwelling of the Shechina, the reception, the way in which people speak of Divinity, of kedusha, the way in which kedusha is perceived in the world—changes according to the state of the generations, according to the state of the souls, according to the state of the reincarnations, according to the state of history.
Periods of Kedusha and Periods of Destruction
There are periods in which the ethic of kedusha, the ethic of the Beis Hamikdash—mikdash, and this connects to my series on kedusha, as I already said in the first shiur (as we explained at the beginning of the series about midas hakedusha and this is not its place)—there are generations and periods in which the ethic of kedusha, whatever its meaning may be, which certainly means something called the indwelling of the Shechina, something relating to this that here dwells Hakadosh Baruch Hu, here Divinity dwells in the world. There is such a thing as prophecy, there is such a thing as Shechina, there is such a thing as kedusha. And then, the things one learns, one must learn them in Torah, one must answer various questions, one must justify many things, but the very thing that there is such a thing as kedusha, that there is such a thing as Shechina, is not in doubt, is not so much in question in the world.
And as the historians tell us—and one must always be precise about how true this is, for things are much more complicated, but let us speak in Jewish history, and certainly they say thus, but one must understand; incidentally, this is another thing I do not wish to enter into completely and I do not know if now is the time. But let us say as the historians like to say—until my Rishonim, for example, one does not see; one who learns in the writings of the Rishonim, there is no difference whether one learns Rambam, whether one learns Kuzari, whether one learns Zohar, one does not see that there is something that does not exist at all, that no one knows at all what kedusha means. One does not see such a problem. Incidentally, according to this one must say that the thing relates to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, but as I say, it is much more complicated than this, and one must speak of this separately.
But there are periods when they do not know at all what this is. They lose—at least the Jews in their way—they lose the entire way to say that there is something called kedusha, that there is something called “the sacred” in the foreign language, or Divinity. They do not know at all. The world becomes very—what we call chol (mundane). The opposite of kodesh is not tamei, one cannot say that the world becomes more tamei, but it becomes more chol, more everyday, more uninteresting, boring, occupied with business, with making money, with material things. But things of the soul, things of kedusha, and certainly in the Jewish way which has its own problems because Israel is in exile—they do not exist.
The Destruction of the Beis Hamikdash: The Departure of the Shechina
And in such a period, in such a situation in which we find ourselves, this is truly the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. We already have a word for this, a very ancient word: the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. The destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, or the exile of the Shechina, the departure of the Shechina. There is no Shechina in the world. Or the Shechina is with us in exile. But about this we will need to speak with Hashem’s help in the next shiur, to explain more the positive side of Shechina in exile (and we will explain more be’ezras Hashem in the next shiur). But indeed there is here truly a departure of the Shechina. There is no Shechina in the world.
And in such a state—true, one asked a question: but one does not see even in the midrashim and in the Gemaros that they should be occupied with this in a terrible way, that the thing should take such a place. I brought a proof from the Zohar, but even from the Gemara—one does not see that the topic of mourning the destruction should take such a place. As far as I know, the Amoraim—we did not hear that they cried every day over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. True, they mention it regularly in the prayers, I am not saying. This is a very basic thing in Judaism. Perhaps a third of Shemoneh Esrei speaks of the exile and of the redemption. It is a very basic thing. But this was enough.
Why Was It Not Enough for the Mekubalim
And why was it not enough for the mekubalim? Must one add “l’David”? What is wrong with saying “Yerushalayim Your city” three times a day? Why must one add? Because it began to be lacking. In prayer one says things, as the Rambam says, “all the needs of people.” All the regular things that people need, we speak of them in prayer. And it is understood that Jews in exile speak much of the exile, they ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu to redeem us and to help in all the ways that are lacking.
But there came a time when they do not know at all what is being spoken of. They lose the language completely, what is being spoken of. Says the Arizal, say the mekubalim: one must find a remedy for this, and one must return the Shechina to the world. This is fundamentally what must be done. As long as she is not here—when there will be a Beis Hamikdash, when they have already repaired everything, this is not a problem. But there are still many more steps before. And one must begin to speak a bit of the Shechina. One must make of this a reality, one must make her real to people.
The Secret of Crying: To Make the Shechina Real
Why Specifically Crying?
Now, there is an interesting thing here. There are positive ways and negative ways. Let us say that crying is the negative way. But one must hear that there is something very important in this. Why? Because people think that crying means simply sadness, simply a negative thing. But the truth is that in crying is hidden something much deeper. In other words: the positive works only as long as the thing is in your hand. And to say a lie, to say “Hakadosh Baruch Hu is with us” when one does not know at all what kedusha means, one does not know at all what Shechina means—this is not great wisdom.
Says the Arizal: you want now to live with the Shechina, certainly this is what you want to do. The problem is that you know very vaguely, you know a bit, you heard, you remember, but very vaguely to know at all what this is. There is one wonderful remedy. The wonderful remedy is to cry over it. And certainly in order to cry one must also know. The meaning of the thing is that you do know, except that you know that what is here, what is being spoken of here—you cannot even say what you lost, what you once had, even that you do not know. One cries over something one knows, but much is lacking from it. It is lacking in its completeness, it is not in its fullness. One must explain precisely what is lacking and in what way it is lacking, but much is lacking from it.
The Lack Reveals the Connection
And everyone knows that what pains a person, his lack, is a much greater proof—not only a proof, for now we speak of renewing the thing through this—but a much greater connection, to know what a person loves, who he is, what is reality for him: it is what he cannot live without, what pains him, what he cries over when it is not there, more than what he rejoices over when it does exist. This is a very interesting thing. One can say to a person, “Here is something tasty for you.” Well, who said it is free? Give two, why not? But when do we see that this is truly part of a person’s life, part of his world? When he goes and does not have it, or he has only a little and it breaks him, and he cries.
It comes out that when one cries over something—and when I say crying, I mean literally to cry, to find a way to arouse oneself, whether at midnight, it is not so difficult, after a shiur, after they spoke, it is not so difficult to arouse oneself over the lacks of the worlds, over the lacks of the Shechina, and to cry over it. One does what one does know, it is understood. And he says that crying over this will primarily make the thing real for him. For as long as one does not cry, as long as a person has—it is very tasty for him to dance by the Rebbe’s table, but he never cries when the thing is not there, or he never cries that the entire Rebbe’s table is only a taste in passing, a remembrance in passing of what should have been—that it should have been that the entire world should understand the Rebbe’s table, that it should have been that all the gentiles should come to see the Rebbe how he conducts a tish, that it should have been that they should not need to conduct a tish at all, that every Jew should make a tish himself, that it should have been so much better. And yet he knows that he is by the Rebbe’s table. He cries over this.
Whoever Mourns Over Yerushalayim Merits to See Its Joy
And in what he cries over this—here is the secret written in the Ramak, he says it, in Rabbi Chaim Vital, here is the secret of “Whoever mourns over Yerushalayim merits to see its joy” (Taanis 30b). That is, since we are in the fall of Yerushalayim, in order that there can be life, in order that there can be Jews, that we can establish our house of life, establish Jewish life built on the holy Shechina—our attributes need that we should have the Shechina, and we do not have her properly. And the first way, the beginning of the avodah, is that a person must cry a bit over the lack of the Shechina, to cry over all the pain.
This is a bit of a trick, for he says, “I do not have, if I do not have…”—yes, this is crying over what you do not have, this is the approach of the Baal HaTanya: that crying over what you do not have, to make of this a reality for you, in this we return the Shechina.
From Tikkun Chatzos to Kabbalas Shabbos
Therefore, when one cries here in tikkun chatzos over what one cries, then one cries almost completely only negatively. And afterward one cries in Kabbalas Shabbos, that from saying “Sanctuary of the King of kings,” then the Shechina is elevated, and they begin to be elevated already here: “Do not be ashamed and do not be humiliated,” “Why do you bow down and why do you moan,” “Right and left you shall spread out” (Lecha Dodi). And incidentally, on Yom Tov we do not skip over the sad part—I do not know why the customs were made thus, this is not understood.
We raise the Shechina in that we cry over her, and then one can make Shabbos. You cried that in the entire world there is no Shechina, and now you have Shechina? Why are you crying over her? Because you can make the Shechina real for you to a sufficient degree, that you can cry over how much she is not. And in this one can receive Shabbos, and in this one can return a bit of kedusha to the world, and in this an entire group of people is made for whom the Shechina is a thing, they cry over how much she is not, they rejoice over how much she does exist, and in this they begin to go and receive Shabbos of the week.
Gut Shabbos.
📝 Full Transcript
Between the Straits: The Topic of Mourning the Destruction and the Exile of the Shechina
Introduction: Maintaining the Jewish Calendar in a Busy Life
Dear brothers, today is erev Shabbos kodesh, parshas Pinchas. It’s the first week of the Three Weeks, the three weeks between the seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B’Av. We’re in the middle of learning the topic of kedusha (holiness), but there’s an obligation to maintain the Jewish calendar, that when the time of mourning comes, of remembering Yerushalayim, remembering the Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple).
The Difficulty of Living with the Calendar
Our way of life is set up so that we should have a seder hayom (daily order), especially in this period of life when one is very busy. It’s very difficult to truly live all the orders of the calendar, to be sadder during the Three Weeks and happier in Adar. When you’re a yeshiva bachur (student) and don’t have anything else to do, you make a situation out of it. But the moment you’re busy with life, you do what it says in Shulchan Aruch, what it says in the siddur—everything’s fine, but it’s hard to have a connection with it, to know, ah, the seventeenth of Tammuz has arrived. Normally it goes like this: okay, I need to take care of a few more things, it goes on the list—remember to fast on the seventeenth of Tammuz, make sure to check what you can taste during the Nine Days, what you’re not allowed to do and what you are allowed to do.
The Shiur as a Place for Matters of the Heart
And since this shiur is specially made to establish a time for devarim shebalev (matters of the heart), devarim shebaneshama (matters of the soul), it’s obligatory that in this shiur we should at least deal with the topics from time to time, the opposite of routine—that this is the place where we must speak about this. Even though we still have topics to clarify, the time obligates that we should dedicate the learning to the topics of these days. Of course, we can connect them.
The Beis Medrash of the Mekubalim in Tzfas
There’s an interesting thing. This shiur is built on Kabbalah. Whoever looks into the later mekubalim (kabbalists), whom we call our rebbes in Kabbalah, they are the beis medrash of Tzfas: the Ramak, the Arizal, Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, Rav Chaim Vital, the whole group. It’s about a hundred years; most of them knew each other, and they mainly lived in Tzfas in the year 5300, about four hundred and fifty years ago. They founded and established the kind of Yiddishkeit that later Chassidus is a commentary on, and perhaps other paths as well. Sefardic mekubalim, Sefardic Jews, Chassidic Jews—it’s all a commentary on this beis medrash.
The more one learns them—the words of the Ramak, the words of the Ari, Rav Chaim Vital, Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, even the Beis Yosef from his maggid—it’s strangely appealing, relevant and deep, with very much analysis and scholarship. They try very strongly to explain and clarify things, very modern and relevant to how we live. Even though they lived four hundred years ago, the beginning of our world is in that period—that’s when what we call the modern world began, and we are their students.
The Emphasis on Mourning the Destruction Among the Mekubalim
Anyone who learns in these sefarim sees a very strong emphasis on the topic and the service of mourning the destruction. There’s a deep learning, a great awareness in this topic. Just as we learned in previous shiurim regarding the topic of kedusha, the subject of prishus (separation), of physical pleasures, which sefarim like Reishis Chochma—a student of the Ramak—dealt with very strongly in how they brought out the topic. So too in the topic of mourning the destruction, of longing for Yerushalayim, of yearning for the Beis HaMikdash, of the pain of the Shechina, of the exile of the Shechina, this beis medrash placed a great emphasis.
And just as we want to uproot the error, that people think, unfortunately, that the Reishis Chochma was a repressed frum Jew who wanted people not to enjoy their lives—which we say is not the case at all, he simply wants to bring out what it means to be light, happy, pleasant, with a radiant face, abundance, light, kedusha, from the life that is called kedusha—so too the topic of mourning the destruction, of the pain of the destruction, of Tikkun Chatzos, and all the other customs of mourning the destruction, didn’t come in order to be repressed.
Chassidus as a Commentary on This Beis Medrash
Chassidus is a commentary on this beis medrash—the beis medrash of the Baal Shem Tov and his students is a commentary on the beis medrash of the Ramak, Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, the Arizal and their colleagues. In Chassidus you see that people struggle with the topic of mourning the destruction, just as they struggle with the topic of prishus and kedusha. Why? Because there’s a lack of interpretation, the one who errs lacks a certain way of how to bring it in, how to fulfill it. Chassidus didn’t come mainly to say new chiddushei Torah, but practically, actually, how one lives in these things. And for this one must change the emphasis, and explain it in other ways.
Since the nature of looking at a sefer is that one can err, thinking that one should be depressed, that it’s a matter of being depressed during the Three Weeks—therefore you see in Chassidic sefarim, as is known, that one shouldn’t be depressed, one must always serve Hashem with joy, be happy and joyful, and one must even be lenient in certain halachos, because one can’t be so drawn in.
But one must understand that this is a commentary on the topic of mourning the destruction, and it’s the correct commentary. Whoever learns Zohar, the writings of the Ari, the Ramak, Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, sees that they didn’t mean that one should be depressed. They weren’t Litvaks, they were very Chassidic. But when you read it in the book, you think you should be so drawn in and strange. You need to have the commentary of Chassidus that should clarify for us that it didn’t mean that.
The Zohar as a Living Sefer
But what does it mean, and why? Two questions. Let me say one proof that the Arizal, the Ramak, and all these Jews strongly emphasized this thing. Whoever has ever opened the Sefer HaZohar al HaTorah sees that it’s arranged according to the order of the parshiyos, and more or less every piece of Zohar—usually at the beginning of a parsha—begins with the image, with the description of how the Chavraya D’Zohar sit down to learn the parsha.
The Zohar Wants to Be a Living Record
The Zohar very much wants to be a living sefer, almost similar to the Gemara. It doesn’t just want to say, “I’m writing a commentary on the Torah, to add chiddushei Torah and commentaries according to Kabbalah,” but it wants to be a living record. It must be able to awaken, one must be able to learn it with enthusiasm, so that one should see how Jews learn Torah lishma (for its own sake) according to truth. Pnimiyus HaTorah (the inner dimension of Torah) doesn’t necessarily mean learning the secrets of the Torah; often they just discuss the simple meaning of a verse. Perhaps the secrets of the Torah lie in everything, but part of it is just plain pshat—you see how they struggle with the simple meaning of a verse.
The Zohar is unique among almost all Jewish sefarim, that it wants to be a sefer that isn’t just a story that happened. First of all, it is indeed a story of how the sages of the Zohar sat down to learn each week in the parsha, but the purpose is that you should do it. It’s more like a recipe book, or a book of instructions, not just a sefer that presents a theory.
A Parable: A Sefer About Love
We’re talking about love, love between husband and wife, which is the greatest example that the Zohar used. You can have a sefer that writes a theory of love—how people love each other, how love begins, how it ends, and how to guard against all obstacles. And there’s a sefer that tells a story that happened, a novel about a boy and a girl who fell in love and what they did.
To learn a sefer of theories, of explanations, philosophy of love, is no less a good way, perhaps there are advantages in it, because the world runs on love, the continuation of humanity runs on this, tremendous secrets lie in this. But if someone wants to actually do it, wants to learn how one conducts oneself in this subject, he must read a novel, the books that tell the stories of one Jew who fell in love with another. There he sees the fears, what kind of difficulties there are, which obstacles one must overcome, how one must appease, how one must strengthen the love later when it falls—and then one can replicate it. This is what we learned last week, that every relationship, every kind of thing a person does, he does essentially with the stories and tales that he has read and received.
A Sefer That Isn’t Perfect
And there’s an even better version of this sefer. Not only does it tell a story, but someone who has learned the philosophy and theory of it can write a better novel, because he knows what things depend on. He can bring in, within the story, more understanding, tell the story more correctly, and bring out what one must truly bring out so that it should align with how it works. And even more—he can make a sefer that when one reads it, it will almost make the person get up and do it himself. One of the tricks of how to do this is that the sefer shouldn’t be perfect.
When you read a sefer like the Akeidas Yitzchak—a perfect sefer, every parsha has several drashos, every drasha begins with questions on the verses, then he builds up and brings different approaches in the topic, plays with a commentary, and explains the verses and parshiyos. Everything always fits perfectly. This is a very good sefer for whoever wants to seek drashos, logical explanations on midrashim and verses—but it’s not a sefer that can ignite a person.
Chassidic Sefarim Aren’t Perfect
Whoever learns Chassidic sefarim sees that they are generally written in a very imperfect manner. Almost no Chassidic sefer is written in the form of complete drashos, that the whole drasha fits and one can repeat it sitting at the table at the father-in-law’s. Most Chassidic sefarim are a record of what the Rebbe spoke at the tisch (table). Even a sefer like Tiferes Shlomo isn’t that he sat down to explain something, but it’s written to remind the Chassidim who were at the tisch what the Rebbe said that week. Consequently it’s much less perfect—he doesn’t bring sources, doesn’t begin with the verse, doesn’t go to explain the statements of Chazal, he brings everything in passing, because it’s alive.
The true way of learning Chassidic sefarim is to lift oneself up—either through looking into the Chumash itself to find his own expansion and see how it’s relevant to him, or he imagines himself hearing the Rebbe’s Torah and receiving his word of Torah. It’s a different way of learning, not like analytical study, like Minchas Chinuch, but a Chassidic learning.
The Zohar Is Written to Awaken
The Zohar is written one hundred percent in this way. Often it begins a question and doesn’t finish the answer, or someone says something and it’s made so that you should say, “Wait, one could say this, but one must go further like this.” And that’s what it wants.
The Arizal: Learning Zohar Through Divine Inspiration
Whoever learns the Arizal knows that the Arizal said many things from the Zohar that aren’t in the Zohar; there’s always some hint. Often, when Rav Chaim Vital brings the Arizal, it says that it’s hinted in the Zohar in this parsha—the secret, the topic—and one doesn’t understand. The Vilna Gaon said that he thinks the Arizal learns Zohar through pilpul (dialectics), not through pshat. I think that’s not correct. It’s true that his way of learning was more full of pilpul from certain inferences—in the Ramak and Rav Shlomo Alkabetz you can see the way of learning how they learned Zohar, with analysis—but I think that the Ari HaKadosh learned Zohar not just through pshat, but through divine inspiration. Just as the Arizal himself describes that he learned Zohar until Eliyahu HaNavi came to him and told him the meaning.
In other words, the Arizal learned Zohar and was awakened. It’s made to make you think, not to say everything. The Torah doesn’t want to tell you everything; there’s a part where one must be “the wise one who understands from his own knowledge.” The Zohar brings up the verse on the table, and brings out in what situation you’re learning this verse, and now you say, “Ah, if that’s what you mean, the next step is this.” And often the Arizal simply tells you the next step or three steps later that the Zohar meant with its drasha. It’s not stated, but it’s hinted—the Zohar awakened.
The Secret of Rising at Chatzos in the Zohar
The Arizal opens on the Zohar in almost every parsha in the introduction. It tells a story in the Zohar, sometimes explicitly, and even when it’s a drasha it’s built on the story: “Now the tzaddikim and sages sit down to learn the parsha of the week.” One can imagine that those who authored the Zohar had an order, every Friday night they sat down to learn the parsha of the week, and they wrote the Zohar during the actual event.
The Periods of the Night
The order that the Chavraya D’Zohar innovated was to learn after chatzos (midnight) at night. It’s built on the Gemara, “In the third watch, a baby nurses from his mother’s breast and a woman converses with her husband” (Berachos 3a). There’s a period of the night: early night, one goes to sleep. The Zohar calls this “taste and taste of death,” the world becomes a bit dead, the Angel of Death comes, “after one tastes death,” a closure is placed on the world. This is a time of midas hadin (divine judgment), Gehinnom opens up, all kinds of wild beasts, thieves, wicked people and kelippos (husks) begin to turn. This is early night, the time when one goes to sleep.
The Time of Love After Chatzos
There are people who sleep the whole night and miss the whole thing. But if you’re a Jew, and sometimes this was more possible—one went to sleep before it became night—and if you were a masmid (diligent student), or in general whoever loved another person, he got up at chatzos. “At chatzos” doesn’t necessarily mean the exact moment it becomes chatzos, but late at night or very early in the morning. There’s research that it was a custom that everyone used to get up then.
One gets up when one has already rested, the body is already calm, it has already digested the supper, and the world is quiet. Then everyone goes with his love. The “woman converses with her husband”—whoever has a beloved, then is the time when he speaks with her, writes her a poem, thinks of her. This is the quietest time of the day, a very good time to enter into things that the whole day one is busy with. The whole day is the time of yirah (fear)—one is busy with work, with the weekday things one must do—and here begins the time of love, as it says “The voice of my beloved knocks” (Shir HaShirim 5:2), and the Zohar regularly brings “You who dwell in the gardens, friends listen to your voice, let me hear it” (Shir HaShirim 8:13). At this time everyone has his thing that he loves, his lights, what attracts him most, what he lives for. The example of this is always the love of husband and wife like Shir HaShirim.
The One Who Fell in Love with Torah
Someone who fell in love with Torah, with the Shechina, gets up at the best time when it’s cool, when there comes such a north wind blowing that it says in the Gemara about David’s harp (Berachos 3b), and he begins to sing, he hears how the angels begin to sing, “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Iyov 38:7). Then he gathers together with his friends—virtually or actually—and in the beis medrash the mekubalim, the lovers of Hashem, come together and learn Torah.
Almost every piece of Zohar begins with a bit of drasha, sometimes a few lines, sometimes more at length, about the virtue of rising at chatzos. This is another thing that is strangely misinterpreted. People think that you’ll get up at chatzos like a chatzos kollel for the young men who don’t have shalom bayis (domestic peace) and want to run away from home, or that you must afflict yourself and not sleep at night. No, the whole thing of getting up at chatzos to learn Torah is built on this because this is the quietest time to make a love, and whoever loves Torah gets up then. Then, says the Zohar, the gates of Gan Eden open, and he has a drasha according to Kabbalah that then the left hand of Tiferes begins to lift up the Shechina, until in the morning there is actually a yichud (unification) at shacharis.
The Innovation of the Later Mekubalim: Tikkun Chatzos
This is All the Simple Meaning of the Zohar
This is all the simple meaning (peshat) of the Zohar. Now comes the Arizal — perhaps one needs to check with the earlier kabbalists — but if I’m correct, this is certainly something from the later authorities (acharonim). In the Zohar there is nothing about mourning over the destruction (churban), about Tikkun Chatzot, about weeping. It says that one rises and learns Torah. Certainly the later kabbalists also say that one should learn Torah after midnight, that is the essence of rising at night, because the later it is, the better the time to learn the secrets of the Torah (sodot haTorah).
The New Prayer of Tikkun Chatzot
But the later kabbalists added a very interesting thing — a new prayer, a new order of prayer, which is called Tikkun Chatzot. It was established perhaps a little before the Arizal, by the group of sages. It is built mostly on verses from Psalms, Isaiah, Lamentations, the Prophets, and has some of its own liturgical poems (piyutim) that they wrote — songs, lamentations, the Song of Longing, the Song of Cleaving, the Song of Lamentations — on the theme of the exile of the Shechinah, the suffering of Israel, the death of the righteous, and all sorts of troubles from the pain of exile. They conducted themselves that one rises at midnight, and before one learned, one wept a little about the exile of the Shechinah.
Rabbi Chaim Vital, in his guidance in the introduction to Etz Chaim, siman 279, includes that one must rise at midnight every night and weep over the destruction. And he says an important thing — this is not so simple — that this is a segulah (spiritual remedy) for attainment (hasagah): whoever wants a segulah to become a kabbalist, should rise at midnight and weep over the destruction of the Temple.
The Proof That the Kabbalists Innovated Something
This is proof that the later kabbalistic sages innovated a strong emphasis on weeping, on mourning over the destruction, which we see is not so in the simple meaning. Simply speaking, rising at midnight is only a matter of Torah study (talmud Torah). They added a section of prayer which is also built on the Gemara: it’s the same Gemara that says that the Holy One, blessed be He, rises at night and roars like a lion over His dwelling (Berachot 3a), He rises then and weeps over the destruction and the exile. So one comes to rise and weep at the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, weeps.
The Parable of the Widow
It is built on the same idea as before, only the part of suffering in it. As it says in Lamentations, “She weeps bitterly in the night” (Lamentations 1:2) — the parable of Lamentations is about a widow; both parables are the parable of the love of husband and wife. The parable of mourning the destruction is “She has become like a widow” (Lamentations 1:1), like a widow whose husband has gone away, “like a widow but not a widow,” a widow whose husband has gone to an overseas country.
Why does she weep at night? Because all day one is busy, one must take care. The widow also has a job and children. This is the Shechinah who all day takes care of the Jews in exile, she cannot weep over what she truly lacks. Night comes: she remembers when her husband would be with her, when this would be the time when she becomes intimate, the time when a wife speaks with her husband. Now she also rises at the time when one can be in solitude (hitbodedut), and she sees that her husband is not there, as the holy Zohar describes in its imagery. Consequently, “she weeps bitterly in the night” — then her cry of woe comes out, her weeping, her lamentations. This is the time of lamentation.
This principle is hardly seen in the Zohar; perhaps in Zohar Lamentations it is hinted at, but one doesn’t find that the time should be used for weeping. The later kabbalists emphasized this thing and innovated the text of Tikkun Chatzot.
The New Prayers of the Kabbalists
Tikkun Chatzot as a Personal Prayer
According to halachah there are three prayers a day: Abraham our father established Shacharit, Isaac Minchah, Jacob Maariv. But there are a few more prayers that we conduct — who made them? Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz. Tikkun Chatzot is a personal prayer, not an individual and communal one. It’s a liturgy, a certain order, and on which days one says Tikkun Rachel and Tikkun Leah goes according to the laws. This is a new enactment. In the Three Weeks (Bein HaMetzarim) there is a custom, from the same kabbalists, to say Tikkun Chatzot also during the day after midday, when it begins to become more in the spirit of destruction in the world. A large part of our friends don’t conduct themselves to do this.
Kabbalat Shabbat
There is another prayer that the kabbalists innovated, very connected and similar: Kabbalat Shabbat, which every Jew does, in almost all Jewish communities. One cannot say that they completely innovated it — the custom of saying “A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath Day” (Psalms 92:1) before Maariv on Shabbat already existed much earlier, and it’s built on the Gemara; they didn’t think of anything on their own. But as I said, from learning the Gemara one can be aroused to do. It doesn’t say in the Gemara that one should go out to the field and make Kabbalat Shabbat, only that there were Amoraim who conducted themselves this way, and one looks in the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch how one should conduct oneself on Erev Shabbat. The kabbalists were aroused by this and made an order called Kabbalat Shabbat. There too they took verses from Psalms and made their own poetry, the “Lecha Dodi” that Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz wrote.
The Theme of Lecha Dodi: Receiving the Face of the Shechinah
What is discussed in Lecha Dodi? The same theme, incorporated into the theme of Shabbat, receiving Shabbat, where Shabbat indicates the Shechinah, that one is receiving the face of the Shechinah.
Question from the audience: Someone asked me, “What does it have to do with Lecha Dodi that one should weep over the destruction of the Temple? I want to know according to the simple meaning.”
I told him that if he’s looking for an answer according to the simple meaning, he’ll search until the end of all generations, because this is not according to the simple meaning, but according to Kabbalah. Kabbalah not in the sense that one needs to know technical distinctions, but Kabbalah in the sense of the image — the image of holiness, of the Temple, of Judaism that the kabbalists have. The image they have is that there is something called the dwelling of the Shechinah (hashraʾat haShechinah). The Shechinah means Jerusalem, means Shabbat, it’s all the same thing. Since Shabbat is receiving the face of the Shechinah, one brings in “Come my beloved to greet the bride” (Lecha Dodi), and we are not completely there.
Just as with the Zohar: originally the right way would have been simply that one rises during the day to learn Torah, to connect with the Shechinah. But since we are not there, one weeps a little first. The same thing with Shabbat: Shabbat is receiving the face of the Shechinah, but since the Shechinah is still in the dust, one still needs to weep “Shake off the dust, arise” (Lecha Dodi), one speaks about this. When Shabbat comes there is a certain drumbeat, one lifts up the Shechinah a bit from the dust.
This is another proof and example that we all conduct, how the kabbalists brought in the theme of the exile of the Shechinah and Jerusalem very centrally. There is no source that one should receive the face of the Shechinah with this, that one should weep a little over the exile, that one should say “Sanctuary of the King, royal city, arise and go forth from the upheaval” (Lecha Dodi). The source is the perception, the lights that the kabbalists had to live with the Shechinah and to bring it out.
The Foundation: Bringing Back the Shechinah to the World
The State of the Shechinah in Every Generation
The explanation for this is very simple. When Israel dwells on their land, certainly in the time of the Temple, and in every generation, there is its way of how one sees the world, its culture that exists. It has to do not only with the Jews, but with the entire world. That itself is the state of the Shechinah — not just a few Jews who live in Williamsburg, but the entire world carries the Shechinah. There are all kinds of ascents and descents. The Shechinah is the part that we speak of, the way in which one can, so to speak, speak about the Godliness — that it changes. The Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t change, but the dwelling of the Shechinah, the way in which people speak of Godliness, of holiness, how holiness is grasped in the world, changes according to the state of the generations, the state of souls, the state of reincarnations, the state of history.
Periods of Holiness and Periods of Destruction
There are generations and periods when the concept of holiness, the concept of the Temple — this connects to my series on holiness — which certainly means a dwelling of the Shechinah, that here the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells, here Godliness dwells in the world. There is such a thing as prophecy, Shechinah, holiness. The things that one learns in Torah, one needs to answer various questions, justify many things, but the essential thing that there is such a thing as holiness and Shechinah is not in doubt, not so strongly doubted in the world.
Whoever learns in the writings of the early authorities (Rishonim) — no difference whether he learns Rambam, Kuzari, or Zohar — doesn’t see that there is a thing that no one knows at all what holiness means. By the way, according to that one must say that it has to do with the destruction of the Temple, but it’s much more complicated, and one needs to speak about this further.
But there are periods when one doesn’t know at all what this is. One loses the entire way of saying that there is such a thing called holiness, “the sacred,” Godliness. The world becomes very mundane (chol). The opposite of holy (kodesh) is not impure (tamei) — one cannot say that the world has become more impure, rather it becomes more mundane, more weekday-like, not interesting, boring, busy with business, with making money, with materialistic things. But matters of the soul, matters of holiness, and certainly in the Jewish way which has its own problems because Jews are in exile, there isn’t.
The Destruction of the Temple: The Departure of the Shechinah
The kind of situation that one finds oneself in, this is called the destruction of the Temple truly. We already have a very old word for this: the destruction of the Temple, the exile of the Shechinah, the departure of the Shechinah (histalkut haShechinah). There is no Shechinah in the world, or the Shechinah is with us in exile. In the next lecture, with God’s help, we will explain more the positive of the Shechinah in exile. But there is truly a departure of the Shechinah here.
In such a state it’s true that one doesn’t see even in the Midrashim and Gemaras that they should be terribly busy, that the theme of mourning the destruction should occupy such a place. I brought a proof from the Zohar, but even from the Gemara one doesn’t see that it should occupy such a place. It’s mentioned constantly in the prayers — perhaps a third of the Shemoneh Esrei speaks about the exile and the redemption, it’s a very basic thing — but it was enough.
Why For the Kabbalists It’s Not Enough
Why for the kabbalists is it not enough? One needs to add “L’David”? What was wrong with saying “Jerusalem Your city” three times a day? Because it began to be lacking. In prayer one says, as the Rambam says, “all the needs of people,” all the normal things that people need. The Jews in exile speak a lot about the exile, ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to redeem us.
But there came a time when we don’t know at all what we’re talking about, we lose the language entirely. Say the kabbalists: we need to find a solution, we need to bring back the Shechinah to the world. When there will be a Temple, when we have already fixed everything, that’s not a problem. But we’re counting many steps earlier, and we need to begin to speak about the Shechinah, make it a reality, real for people.
The Secret of Weeping: Making the Shechinah Real
Why Specifically Weeping?
There are positive ways and negative ways. Weeping is the negative way, but it’s a very important thing. People think that weeping is only sad, only negative, but in weeping there is a deeper thing. Positive only works as long as one has it. To say “the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us” when one doesn’t know at all what holiness and Shechinah mean, is not a great wisdom.
Says the Arizal: you want now to live with the Shechinah, but the problem is that it’s very fuzzy to know at all what this means — you’ve heard, you remember, but it’s very fuzzy. There is one wonderful solution: to weep over it. To weep one also needs to know — one knows yes, but it’s very lacking in completeness. One weeps over something that one knows but that is very lacking, that one can’t even say what one has lost.
The Lack Shows the Connection
Everyone knows that what disturbs a person about his lack is much greater proof — and here we’re saying that one innovates the thing through this — a greater connection to know what a person loves, what is a reality for him: what he cannot live without, what disturbs him, what he weeps when it’s not there. One can say to a person, “I’ll give you something delicious” — well, give two, why not? But when does one see that this is truly a part of a person’s life? When it goes away and he doesn’t have it, or has only a little of it and it disturbs him, and he weeps.
It comes out that when one weeps over something — and weeping means here literally weeping, arousing oneself, whether at midnight, it’s not so hard, over the lacks of the worlds, over the lacks of the Shechinah — one does what one knows yes, and weeping over this will make the thing real for oneself the most. As long as one doesn’t weep — a person finds it very pleasant to dance at the Rebbe’s table, but he never weeps when it’s not there, and never weeps over the fact that the entire Rebbe’s table is only a taste, only a remembrance, of what it should have been. It should have been that the entire world should understand the Rebbe’s table, that all non-Jews should come see the Rebbe, that one shouldn’t need to conduct a table, but every Jew should make a table himself — it should have been so much better. Yet he knows yes that one is at the Rebbe’s table. Weep over this.
Whoever Mourns Over Jerusalem Merits to See Its Joy
With the fact that he weeps over this, here is the secret that is written in the Ramak and in Rabbi Chaim Vital, the secret of “Whoever mourns over Jerusalem merits to see its joy” (Taanit 30b). Since we are in the down of Jerusalem, so that it can live, so that we can have proper intention (kavanah) in our house of life which is built on the holy Shechinah, we need to have the Shechinah, and we don’t have it properly. The beginning of the service is that one needs to weep out a little over the lack of the Shechinah. He says, “If I don’t have…” — it’s weeping over what you don’t have, this is the Baal HaTanya’s approach: weeping over what you don’t have, making it a reality for yourself, and with this bringing back the Shechinah.
From Tikkun Chatzot to Kabbalat Shabbat
Therefore one weeps at Tikkun Chatzot almost entirely only negatively. Afterwards, at Kabbalat Shabbat, from saying “Sanctuary of the King of Kings,” the Shechinah rises, and one already rises here: “Do not be ashamed and do not be humiliated,” “Why are you downcast and why do you moan,” “Right and left you shall spread forth” (Lecha Dodi). On Yom Tov one doesn’t skip the sad part, I don’t know why it became the custom, it doesn’t work.
One lifts up the Shechinah with the fact that one weeps over it, and then one can make Shabbat. You wept over the fact that in the entire world there is no Shechinah — now by you there is the Shechinah? Why do you weep over it? Because you can make the Shechinah real enough for yourself, that you can weep over how much it isn’t. With this one can receive Shabbat, return a bit of holiness to the world, and with this becomes a whole group of people for whom the Shechinah is a thing — they weep over how much it isn’t there and rejoice over how much it is there — and with this one receives Shabbat for the week.
Good Shabbos.