A year passed, the Flood ended, and Noah and his sons emerged from the ark, and from them the world was rebuilt anew. The millennia continued to roll by until our modern era arrived – and once again a time of the Flood began.
No, we are not referring to boiling torrents of water or the floodgates of heaven pouring down. We mean a spiritual flood – streets inundated with permissiveness and debauchery, with heresy and abomination; rampant violence; a world where casting off all moral restraint has become a banner of pride…
The Ba’al Shem Tov revealed that hidden in the words said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and your entire household” (Genesis 7:1), lies the mystery of escaping this spiritual Flood of our modern era.
He explained it as follows:17
When the soul was Above, in the upper worlds, it was bound to the Source of Life – G-d, blessed be He. From the moment it descended below and became clothed in a body, disturbances and confusions began to beset it. After all, it is the way of the world that a person must worry about life’s necessities – earning a living for his household and providing for all their needs.
Worries of livelihood can preoccupy a person greatly – sometimes to the point of causing a person to drown in the materiality of this world, as we all too often observe. One day’s troubles lead to the next; day after day, hour after hour, deal after deal, matter after matter – until a person forgets life’s purpose and loses his spiritual world.
What then is the advice to avoid drowning in worldly matters, to not forget about G-dliness?
To “Come into the teivah” – to enter into the words (teivot) of the prayers! Every word a person utters from his mouth causes a tremendous rectification in the upper worlds. Every word, every syllable of Torah study is a great merit. Thus, when a Jew stands to pray, he must put his entire body, heart, and mind into the words of the prayer.
When a person prays or studies Torah, the malicious “waters” arise against him and seek to drown him in alien thoughts and ulterior motives. The only way to be saved from them is to invest all of one’s thought into the words of Torah and prayer. By doing so, one can hide within the words and utterances, and be saved from the malicious waters.
Clinging to the words of prayer and to the letters of Torah is the surest path to success in the highest spiritual realms. When one habituates himself to pure and proper thoughts—when intention and speech are aligned—then even his actions are charged with deep joy. His prayers make a powerful impression above; his Torah brings great delight. Such a person can uphold an entire world. And this is devekut—cleaving to G-d.
Devekut is the master key that opens all locks. Attaching oneself to the letters of Torah and prayer – this is within every person’s reach. Every Jew, even the simplest, can attain devekut and the highest spiritual levels. The only question is whether a person is earnestly willing to put in his best efforts…18
Danny (our protagonist at the beginning of our discussion) lifted his eyes from the Mesilot pamphlet, a furrow of confusion lining his brow.
I don’t quite understand… In the beginning it was explained that it is impossible to entirely eliminate the evil inclination. However, now it was just explained that by learning Torah, one “enters the ark” and is saved from the evil inclination, attaining all the highest levels.
If so, if one who enters the ark attains such lofty levels – presumably he has eliminated his evil inclination…
Danny was confused, but he diverted his eyes back to the text and kept on reading…
Wellsprings of Wisdom
17. Tzava’at HaRivash §75: “‘A skylight (tzohar) you shall make for the ark…’ (Genesis 6:16) – meaning that the word (teivah) a person speaks in Torah and prayer should glow (matzhir, related to tzohar).
For in every letter there are worlds and souls and Divinity; they ascend and bind themselves one to another and to Divinity. Then afterward, the letters themselves join together to form a word. Then they further unite in true unity with the Divine. A person must include his soul in each of these phases, and then all the worlds become united as one and rise upward, creating immense joy and delight beyond measure… And how can one do this? – ‘Come into the ark (teivah)’ (Genesis 7:1), meaning with your entire self – all your body, all your strength… [enter into the word].”
Rabbi David Solomon Eibenschutz adds in Arvei Nachal (Parashat Noach, 4th discourse): “‘Teivah’ hints that when a person is praying or learning the ‘words’ of Torah, the malicious waters (i.e. alien thoughts and distractions) seek to drown him… The way to survive is to place all of one’s concentration inside the words. Through that, one hides within the words and utterances from the malicious waters….”
18. Rabbi Yoram once explained (Betzur Yarum, vol. 8, p. 261) that Torah transforms a person only when he learns with genuine depth—engaging his mind fully, reviewing a sugya carefully, and taking joy in genuine understanding of it. When one studies the Gemara together with the Rishonim and Acharonim, the words of the sages come alive, as if each sefer is speaking directly to him.
The Arizal would toil over the Gemara until he sweated, explaining that the back-and-forth of questions and answers breaks the kelipot that surround a person. But when someone drifts from topic to topic, opening an article here and a story there, his learning cannot take root; Torah enters only through focused effort.
The Ba’al HaTanya describes the clear path to comprehension: first chochmah, the knowledge received from teachers; then binah, deepening that knowledge through one’s own understanding; only afterward can a person merit da’at, the Divine gift of unification and internalization of the subject at hand.
Human effort must come first, just as Moshe ascended the mountain before G-d called to him, and just as the Jewish people needed to attain the merit of the two “bloods” of Mitzvah on their own part before the redemption and exodus from Egypt.
Every Torah scholar must pass through these three stages—absorbing, understanding, and then expressing the material to others.
Speaking Torah, thinking Torah, and thoroughly clarifying a sugya refine the soul, weaken the yetzer hara, and protect the mind. When one fills his inner space with Torah, foreign thoughts have nowhere to settle, for—as the Rambam writes—sinful thoughts take hold only in a mind empty of wisdom.