Third Reading: When Is Despair a Positive Thing?
Order of the Aliyot
As we have discussed a number of times in the past, the seven Aliyot, or readings, into which each parashah in the Torah is divided correspond to the seven emotive faculties, from loving-kindness (chessed) to kingdom (malchut). Thus, the third reading corresponds to the sefirah of beauty (tiferet), which can also be understood as “aggrandizement” (הִתְפָּאֲרוּת), which in Hebrew is an inflected form of beauty (תִּפְאֶרֶת).
We are commanded to divide the Land of Israel among all the Jews, each head of a family receiving a plot of land that will be handed down and divided among the family members and their offspring in perpetuity. Though this plot of land can be sold by its inheritors, it is actually rented out for a number of years until the next Jubilee Year when the parcel of land returns to its inheritor-owners, as the Torah states, “the land must not be sold in perpetuity.”
In the third reading, the Torah discusses the return of land to its original inheritor-owners in the Jubilee Year. Kabbalistically, the Jubilee year is strongly tied with the sefirah of understanding (binah), as both are related to the number 50.
Awareness that, “the land is Mine,” i.e., belongs to God, sets us on a different level of consciousness, both personally and in our relationships with others. As Rashi says, “Your shall not begrudge it, for it is not yours.” Instead, one should constantly live with the feeling that one is a sojourner and a resident in this world. Living with this consciousness is the remedy required to combat the need to feel we have solidified our place in this world.
This is the positive form of despair that is required to rectify the negative sense of self-aggrandizement that accompanies our success or search for success. When one minimizes his own honor and self-worth and maximizes the honor of God, one has rectified the sefirah of beauty and has used aggrandizement in the proper way.
Turning again to Kabbalah, we can say that returning land to its inheritor-owner in the Jubilee Year connects the sefirah of understanding (binah), the Mother Principle, with the sefirah of beauty (tiferet), or Ze’er Anpin. This is known in the Zohar as, “the foundation of the Mother extends and ends in Ze’er Anpin” (דֹיְסו אִמָּא ֵםּמִסְתַּי בְּתִפְאֶרֶת זְעֵיר אַנְפִּין).
(from a class given on 23 Adar 5767)
