Joining the Higher and Lower Realms
The Holy One, blessed be He, created a beautiful world: a radiant sun, a smiling sky, and creations filled with grace and wisdom. Our Sages revealed that G-d created this world because He desired that human beings build for Him a dwelling place below.
The Midrash states:5 “Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, He desired to have a dwelling place in the lower realms.”
That dwelling place is built by joining the lower world with the upper world.
The Gemara (Menachot 29b) teaches that when it arose in His will to create His world, He took two letters from His great Name — the letters Yud and Hei — and with them He created the world.
This is the meaning of the verse: “Trust in G-d forever, for with Ya-h, G-d formed the worlds” (Yeshayah 26:4). With the Name Yud-Hei, Hashem created and formed His world. With the Yud of the Name Yud-Hei, He created the World to Come; with the Hei, He created this world.
The difference between these two worlds is obvious. The World to Come is refined and spiritual, while this world is physical and coarse.
By nature, these two worlds cannot be joined and made one. Yet this is precisely what Hashem willed: He entrusted man with the task of joining this world to the World to Come.
As the holy Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, the Bach, writes (Orach Chaim 47):
“His intention is that we engage in Torah so that our souls would become bound to the essence, spirituality, and holiness of the source from which the Torah emerges. If the Jewish people study Torah with this intention, they become a chariot and a sanctuary for His blessed Shechinah. The Shechinah itself would then be within them, and they would be the sanctuary of Hashem, and within them the Shechinah would have established its dwelling. The entire earth would then shine with His glory. And through this, the heavenly retinue would be joined with the earthly retinue, and the Mishkan would become one.”
In other words, the purpose of Creation is to create a bond and union between the heavenly retinue, called the World to Come, and the earthly retinue, which is this world.
Unity Through the Name Yud-Hei
Since these two worlds were created through the Name Yud-Hei, their union is also brought about through the Name Yud-Hei.
As the Olelot Ephraim writes (maamar 382, Parashat Pinchas):
The Name Yud-Hei is the name of peace, for this world was created with the Hei, and the World to Come was created with the Yud (Menachot 29b). These two worlds are opposites, and the Name Yud-Hei joins them together, for the power of the Name Yud-Hei is to unite opposites.
The Name Yud-Hei is revealed through the bond between husband and wife. When a man and woman marry in accordance with the law of Moshe and Yisrael and live a life of Torah and mitzvot, they become a point of light, and within their home the Name Yud-Hei is revealed.
As the holy Gemara (Sotah 17a) teaches: Rabbi Akiva expounded, “If husband and wife merit, the Shechinah rests between them; if they do not merit, fire consumes them.”
Rashi explains: “‘The Shechinah rests between them’ — He divided His Name, the Name Yud-Hei, and placed it between them: the Yud in ish, man, and the Hei in ishah, woman.”
In other words, within the soul of the man, the Holy One, blessed be He, implanted the letter Yud of His Name, Yud-Hei. Within the soul of the woman, He implanted the letter Hei.
When they marry and live together with love and harmony, according to the Shulchan Aruch, the Yud within the man joins with the Hei within the woman, and the holy Name Yud-Hei is revealed and shines in that home. In this way, a place is formed for the indwelling of the Shechinah.6
For this reason, once the path for the joining of the worlds had been prepared, the Holy One, blessed be He, created man upon earth.
5. Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16.
6. Rabbi Avraham Tzvi Kluger writes in Yisrael Bechirei (vol. 1, p. 221) that the desire for the holiness of the Jewish home is implanted within every Jewish man and woman. Their G-dly souls yearn to become a dwelling place for the Shechinah and to reveal the hidden sanctity of the home — the mystery of the Shechinah resting between husband and wife.
