This understanding will then bring him to a fiery, impassioned feeling of fear and love for Hashem, the nature of fire being “hot and dry.” However, the type of love of Hashem mentioned above (like silver) cannot be attained without the aspect of “water,” which is “cold and wet.”
When one reflects on the greatness of Hashem during Pesukei Dezimra, this can be done with seven different types of contemplation. This reflection produces a fiery feeling for Hashem. The nature of fire is “hot and dry,” as the heat takes away the moisture and causes things to break apart (like a burnt log, which turns into separate pieces of ash). The opposite is true of water, which is “cold and wet,” causing things to stick together (like flour and water sticking together to make a dough). These two tendencies are expressed in different aspects of the intellect, and these different aspects of the intellect determine the resultant character of our feelings.
Bina-Logic likes to take an idea and dissect it, to take it apart and see how each aspect is different. When a person thinks in detail about the greatness of Hashem as it is expressed in each specific creation, he becomes awestruck. This produces two feelings: An awe at the feeling of being in the presence of the great Hashem who is creating me presently, and a fiery excitement and desire to leave the limitations of the world and connect to Hashem, Who is so great.
Chochma-Imagination/Insight likes to put things together and see the entire picture. The G-dly soul sees the truth of Hashem’s Oneness in the subconscious level of Chochma, and, because it is essentially connected to Hashem, it constantly wants to reconnect with Hashem in a stronger way. This is called “love like water,” since water represents connection and enjoyment. This corresponds to the way that the Divine soul reconnects to Hashem by revealing the natural love and fear of Hashem.
These two types of fear and love, like gold/fire or like silver/water, are represented in two models of fear and love:
- When someone goes to greet a great Tzadik (or a real king), he is first overwhelmed with a great feeling of awe and timidity in the presence of such an exalted person. The more he gains awe and respect for him, the more he also develops a love and desire to have a connection with him. His love is the result of his awe and respect. This is like the way we come to fear and love Hashem as our Creator and King: The more we reflect on His greatness in the creation of the world and of ourselves, the more we come to have an awe and respect for Him. Together with that awe, we also develop a love and yearning to connect to such an awesome Creator. This is fear and love like fire, since fire is characterized by the nullification of the original form of something. So too, this love changes our perspective on the world and enables us to see how it is really nullified to Hashem.
- A son has a natural love for his father and wants to build up and maintain that connection. Included in that love is a fear; the fear of separation from his father, and the fear of harming his connection. Similarly, the Divine soul has a natural connection to Hashem, and therefore has an essential love for connecting with Hashem. This love also includes a fear of separation from Hashem by going against His will. This is love like water, since water causes things to unify. So too this love of Hashem is about becoming reunited with Hashem to be like one entity, as it were.
Chapter 2
The third stage of the process: The verse says, “including its base and its flower designs it was all from one piece of gold.” Its ‘base’ included the feet at the bottom, and its ‘flowers’ were the flower designs at the top of the Menorah. Yet, the entire thing from top to bottom was equally called as one entity, ‘the Menorah.’
This signifies that all the Jewish People, whether the great Tzadikim - who are called “flowers” because their Torah study and prayers “fly up” to Heaven (the word for flower and for flying has the same letters) through their love and fear of Hashem, which are like spiritual wings for the Torah and prayer, as explained in the Zohar - together with the simple Jews who are called “the base” of the Menorah, are in truth all together one, single “Menorah.”
However, this connection between all Jews is only revealed when they are “pure gold,” without impurities, like the verse (in Shemos 25:36) mentions after saying that it must be “one solid piece,” it adds that it must be “pure gold.”
When gold has another type of material mixed in with, it changes its appearance to green. So too, when a person sins, it changes a person’s appearance, like we find that “a sign that someone committed a certain sin is that his skin contracts a certain disease and turns a greenish color.” Therefore, one must “turn from bad” completely to remain part of the pure gold Menorah.
To help a person do this, he should remind himself every morning that he believes that he is created every morning as new, and that this day the world was just created as new, as we say in the daily prayer, “He renews in His goodness every day, constantly, the work of creation,” and that the world was literally created today, as something from nothing. This individual was also just created today, like Adam, the first man, on the day he was created.
When he thinks about this, he will certainly have awe of Hashem and be embarrassed to rebel against Hashem, who is watching him, and he will not have such a desire for the world, which has no intrinsic existence.
Besides reminding ourselves of our belief and understanding of Hashem’s constant creation of us, we can also see with our eyes that Hashem re-creates the world everyday: At the beginning of the night, there is darkness and afterwards, in the morning, the sun comes out to provide light.
This is the meaning of (Tehilim 145:2), “Every day I will bless you.” The fact that I see that You take away the light of day every night and take away darkness in place of light every morning, with this I recognize to bless You.
A person shouldn’t think that it’s impossible to separate himself from bad things and physical desires because he is so rooted in the unholy things; regarding this, we say in the prayers, “It is true that You, Hashem, our G-d, have redeemed us from Egypt.”
Egypt is described in a verse (Bereishis 42:9) as “The land of shame,” representing someone whose thoughts are caught up in inappropriate desires, and these unholy desires encompass him, to the point that he feels that he cannot remove his attention from them. This is the idea of limitations (the word for Egypt also meaning limitations) that he feels unable to escape from unless Hashem will help him.
This is expressed in the verse (Yeshaya 3:12), regarding men who say to Hashem, “Women have ruled over us,” in our thoughts. And this means not only thoughts of our own wives, but also other thoughts, so they ask, “Hashem, Please help us!”
Then Hashem takes this person out of this ‘constriction.’ Since, from where did it come to a Jew the thoughts that cause this type of ‘limitation?’ The Jewish people are called children of Hashem, and their nature is to fulfill the Will of their Father in Heaven, so how did they get this unholy desire in the first place?!
But this was also caused by Hashem, since He gave us a Yetzer Hara-Evil Inclination, (like it says, (Micha 4:6) “That I (Hashem) have caused them to have bad”), just like the original exile to Egypt was caused by Hashem, that “Hashem caused a series of events to happen until he brought them to Egypt.”
Therefore, it is written (Yirmiya 2:21): “And I planted you as my vine, all of them are children of truth.”
Meaning, that even if, G-d forbid, someone falls into unholy desires, represented by the vowel שורק- three dots going down (the word שורק is the same letters as the word for, vine- שורק), meaning that he goes crooked into unholy desires, nonetheless, the verse still confirms about every Jew that, “all of them are children of truth,” and he can change that crookedness around and make it into a “treasure” and show how we are the “treasured people from among all the nations” represented by the vowel סגול-treasure.
The vowel סגול, (which means treasure), is the same three dots as the שורק, but instead of descending three times, they are arranged to descend and then ascend again. This pattern of descent followed by ascent is a representation of the way a soul descends into a body in this world, and then, following the completion of its mission, ascends to return to its place Above with an even deeper connection to Hashem. This deeper connection to Hashem is the result of having revealed the inner powers of the soul in the lower world, revealing how this soul is a member of the treasured people.
This is what happened in Egypt: Hashem told the Jewish People (Bereishis 46:4), “I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will bring you up, to also go up higher than where you started.”
“I- Me, Myself- will go down with you,” meaning that Hashem Himself puts the soul into a body with these desires and temptations, “And I will bring you up,” meaning that “Hashem helps him” to overcome his Yetzer Hara, “And will also bring you up higher,” means that even the Yetzer Hara who is called “also” will also go up, in addition to the G-dly soul going up out of limitations. Thus, he returns higher than where he started, since he also has an elevated animal soul/Yetzer Hara with him.
This is the meaning of “It is true that you redeemed us from Egypt-limitations.” The fact that we were redeemed is because every Jew is essentially true to Hashem (“It is true,” refers to every Jew), since “they are all children of truth,” as explained above, every Jew has a Divine soul of Truth.
Therefore, the prayer continues, “From Egypt-limitations You have redeemed us, Hashem our G-d,” meaning that the redemption consists of Hashem becoming our G-d. (When our relationship with Hashem is not personal and direct, we are at risk of becoming subservient to the Yetzer Hara, who relates to us very personally. However, when Hashem is our personal G-d, then we cannot serve the Yetzer Hara, because we are already serving Hashem. Thus, our personal redemption from the limitations of the Yetzer Hara is the result of our efforts to relate to Hashem personally and directly, so that Hashem is our G-d).
As it continues to explain, “From the place of slavery”- meaning slaves to physical desires- “He redeemed us.”
How did this redemption happen? As the prayer continues, “All their firstborns (of Egypt) You killed.” In the physical world, the child who “first opens the womb” of his mother is called the firstborn. So too, in the person’s soul, the intellect, which is the first and highest expression of the soul, is called the “firstborn,” as it says, (Tehilim 111:10) “Wisdom is the first.”
This then is the meaning of “All their ‘firstborns,’” - meaning all the intellect of Egypt-limitations, that each person decides what he wants based on his own understanding - “You ‘killed,’”- meaning that You help us lose our level of egotistic desires, thereby ‘killing’ the ego the drives those desires.
The prayer continues, “But, Your firstborn Yisroel” - who is totally Divine and holy, and reflects upon the greatness of the Infinite Hashem during prayer -which is called a “bed” in the holy Zohar, as it describes prayer in four stages: “A bed, a chair, a Menorah, and a table,” and as prayer is described as “arranging his bed with gold.”
The prayer continues, “You have redeemed,” meaning that You help him to pray consistently, not just whenever he happens to have time, which is sporadic because he is distracted by other things preventing him from prayer, which is still the idea of spiritual Exile (lack of proper prayer and Divine awareness).
Redemption means that he is free from feeling subjugated to his mundane work so that it doesn’t stop him from proper prayer. Without proper prayer, it is impossible to “turn from the bad.”
Therefore, they (the Men of the Great Assembly) established to say the confession prayer every day during (the end of the) prayer service.
Before prayer, when a person will reflect on his lowly state - that he is still in limitations of his Yetzer Hara - and he will further reflect upon the greatness of the Infinite Hashem, then he will undoubtedly regret the unholiness that he became attached to, and, during prayer (during Tachanun, after Shemona Esrai), he will confess to Hashem his feelings of wanting to pull away from worldly desires, and Hashem will help him.
Then, he will be part of the “One Menorah of pure gold” so that, from the simplest of Jews to the greatest Tzadikim, it will be visible that it is all one Menorah.
The fourth stage of the process: However, the main thing needed for there to be true unity between Jewish people is that one person should not see the bad in his friend.
How does he do this? He should know and reflect upon the following: Above, in the spiritual level of the Menorah, the source of the Jewish souls in Malchus of Atzilus, all the souls exist as “one solid piece.” At that level, a person on a high soul level can be expressed in a low soul level, and a person on a low soul level can be expressed in a person with a high soul level. For example, sometimes, a person who usually does good things did something bad, and the bad thing that he did became expressed in a person who usually does bad, dragging him down even lower.
