“Make the Ark an opening”
Prayer Sweetens Judgment
The Ba’al Shem Tov presented a question: “How can it be that through prayer a decree is transformed from negative to positive? How can there possibly be a change of will Above? Even more so when one is praying on behalf of another.”
The answer given is that prayer sweetens the judgments from Above at their source. Actually, if we read carefully, we will find that there are three different methods for sweetening judgments.
The first explanation is brought by the Ba’al Shem Tov in the name of his teacher (Achiyah of Shiloh). It states that “prayer sweetens the judgment at its source by connecting the judgment as it appears in the sefirah of kingdom with its source in the sefirah of understanding, and there [in understanding], he is a different person, etc.”
The Ba’al Shem Tov provided a second explanation, elucidating that “the judgment is composed of letters. The messenger can take the letters and permute their order, creating a different word.” The example he cites is from the verse, “you shall make an opening for the ark.” The letters of the word for “calamity” (הָרָצ) can be permuted to spell “opening” (רַהֹצ) or “will” (הָצָר), indicating that the problem can be transformed into an opportunity or into a new Divine will. This explanation, utilizing the notion of permuting the letters is the most famous and well known of the three answers given by the Ba’al Shem Tov. It also serves as a background for the other two, which also involve permutations.
A third answer provided by the Ba’al Shem Tov is that “one should find the root of loving-kindness within the judgment/accusation; then the judgment is sweetened at its root and is truly transformed into loving-kindness.”
Let us explain what this means. The world is based on the six emotive sefirot—from loving-kindness through foundation—that correspond with the Six Days of Creation. Everything in Creation is a mixture of these sefirot as they are measured and cut by the seventh sefirah of kingdom. Everything that is decreed regarding the way the world is governed is also a cut and measure from the six emotive sefirot. Prayer allows us to rise above the Divine emotive sefirot and enter their source in the three intellectual sefirot and to extend a new mixture into the world. It is appropriate therefore to explain the Ba’al Shem Tov’s three answers as they correspond to the three intellectual sefirot: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.
Elevating Kingdom to Understanding
Clearly, sweetening the judgments in their source, in the sefirah of understanding, corresponds to that sefirah. Connecting kingdom with understanding during prayer is one of the cornerstones of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s method.
He associated it with the verse, “Who is it that rises from the wilderness” (הַמִּדְבָּר מִן לָהֹע אתֹז מִי). The word for “wilderness” (מִדְבָּר) can be alternately pronounced as “speaker” (מְדַבֵּר), meaning that while speaking in prayer, one should unify kingdom—represented by the word “is it” (אתֹז)—with understanding—represented by “who” (מִי), or in much simpler terms, one should unite one’s intent and thought (understanding) with one’s speech (kingdom).
In the context of sweetening harsh judgments, this represents a unification between the reality we are experiencing (kingdom), which at the moment seems to be harsh and negative, with the Divine intent (understanding) that certainly all is good. Focusing on the Divine intent behind all that we experience helps us to accept things joyfully, including the harsh aspects of reality. These negative aspects are treated as concealed Divine goodness which can eventually be transformed through the aforementioned type of permutation. The joy that catalyzes this type of transformation is what brings out the sweetness in reality.
The sefirah of understanding is always associated with teshuvah and thus, elevating kingdom and uniting it with understanding is a form of teshuvah, specifically the higher type of teshuvah that comes about due to joy; this is the type of teshuvah that is above the feelings of bitterness and anxiety associated with lower teshuvah. Turning to God through prayer while still experiencing a calamity is itself teshuvah, especially when it is accompanied by the contemplation that the calamity is not arbitrary but serves a Divine purpose of directing us to improve ourselves.
Higher teshuvah of this type is able to transform sins performed on purpose into merits. It reveals that just as the harsh judgments instigated by God and affecting our reality there is a hidden intent, so too in our iniquities there was a misguided intent to seek God or to turn to Him, even if it was out of anger. There was a true attempt to connect with Him. When rising from kingdom to understanding we discover that at that level “one is a different person.” Just as the individual can do this by praying for himself, so too a friend can pray for us and reveal the same principle: that despite our external behavior, our inner intent was good. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was famous for doing this for others.
The act of permuting the letters in a word can be likened to shifting from the state in which we are locked in our transgressions and God is committed to harshly judging us with what sounds like superficially harsh sounding speech lacking empathy, to a conversation that is full of goodwill, with a softer and sweeter tone. It is as if the letters in the words spoken initially permute and all of reality seems sweeter.
The explanation of the Baal Shem Tov himself, that one should find loving-kindness (chessed) in judgment, is related to the sefirah of knowledge (da’at) which includes both loving-kindnesses (chassadim) and aspects of might (gevurot), inter-included with one another. When contemplating this, judgment becomes a force that creates an infinite number of vessels needed in order to receive and hold the infinite light. This is the secret of the words, “He sustains life with loving-kindness” (מְכַלְכֵּל חַיִּים בְּחֶסֶד) included in the second blessing of the Amidah, which is a blessing about judgment (i.e., the formation of vessels to hold the loving-kindness).
Unlike understanding which hovers above reality, the role of knowledge (the posterior brain) is to penetrate reality itself and to find in it the point of loving-kindness included in the judgment. One example of this is the famous sage, Nachum Ish Gamzu, who knew how to see even within a reality of judgment a point of light that reveals that “this too is for the best” (זוּ גַּם לְטוֹבָה), thereby transforming all of reality into revealed goodness.
When the inner point of loving-kindness is revealed, it spreads, like sweet water, to sweeten the entire judgment. The spread of the point of loving-kindness within the judgment reminds us of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s famous teaching that when we find even a single point of goodness in another person, if we deeply contemplate that point of good, it expands and transforms the individual’s entire reality. Moreover, when we pray for another, finding the good point in them allows for a full transformation of the judgment into compassion.
Let us say a word about how changing the permutation of a word (or reality) changes it itself. Every permutation includes both dimensions of judgment and compassion. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi explains that the first letter in the permutation is dominant. When we identify a seemingly negligible element of loving-kindness or compassion within the reality of judgment and focus on it, we bring it to the foreground and place it first, thus changing the order of the permutation and its meaning.
One could say that the very act of turning in prayer to God constitutes a revelation of compassion within the judgment: Even though I find myself in distress, I turn from there to God, and a window of compassion is already opened within my harsh reality. Prayer switches the tone of our interaction with God. Simply by speaking with the Almighty and being certain that He is present and listening in His mercy, brings us to discover points of light and goodness within reality, and once more, when we focus on these, they come to dominate the permutation, changing it, and the entire reality it signifies becomes sweeter.
At times the order may be reversed: for a person to be able to pray and arouse compassion upon himself, he needs to first focus on reality on identify within it a “crack” or “glimmer” of God’s revealed compassion. Feeling God’s compassionate Presence in reality then opens a path for prayer, which in turn expands the crack even further. This order is related to us in many stories of tzaddikim who before seeking salvation through prayer first made an effort to show that the situation is not as desperate as it initially seemed and that there was hope even in reality as it was. Then the tzaddik would proceed to pray and give his blessing for a complete salvation.
The power to alter the permutation relates to the sefirah of wisdom (chochmah), following the beautiful Torah idiom, “a crucible for wisdom.” The experience of wisdom is one of self-nullification, and when one nullifies oneself to the Divine nothingness that animates everything—“wisdom emerges out of nothingness” which is equivalent to “wisdom enlivens its possessor”—then all the definitions of reality dissolve, allowing the permutation to be changed. This self-nullification is what fueled the stories of miracles related in the Talmud. A prayer, whose essence is attachment to the Divine nothingness, with complete self-nullification, reveals the Divine vitality and willpower found in everything, allowing it to be changed. Regarding this it is said, “It is a time of calamity for Jacob, but he will be saved from it” (עֵת צָרָה הִיא לְיַעֲקֹב וּמִמֶּנָּה יִוָּשֵׁעַ) from within the calamity (הָרָצ) itself, through the wisdom of the permutations and reaching a state of nullification, one merits finding an illuminated opening (רַהֹצ).
Rebbe Yisrael of Ruzhin whose yahrzeit, the 3rd of Cheshvan, is always close to the reading of Parashat Noach, emphasized that this was the Ba’al Shem Tov’s unique ability. This is how he explained the words of Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, The word of HaShem was in the hands of the Ba’al Shem Tov. He would decree and it would come to pass. There was none like him before and none like him will rise after him.
Apparently, there were disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov who also performed miracles, in heaven and on earth. So, what was so special about the Ba’al Shem Tov? The Ruzhiner further explained that all tzaddikim knew how to annul decrees that were a punishment for a sin or another matter, but only the Ba’al Shem Tov knew how to permute the letters sustaining misfortunes that were due to a person’s poor mazal (destiny) that he was born with. In such cases, the letters sustaining the mazal and the person’s very existence could not be annulled. They had to be permuted. Indeed, it was the Ba’al Shem Tov who taught that “Nothingness is the mazal of Israel” (מַזָּל אַיִן לְיִשְׂרָאֵל). This nothingness is the Ba’al Shem Tov’s ability to return to the Divine nothingness within the essence of the mazal of every person and change it.
The calamity is associated with Jacob, who represents a state of constricted consciousness. His name Jacob was given to him when “his hand was holding the heel of Esau,” figuratively representing states in which the individual is immersed in confrontation and struggle. On the other hand, the power to transform the struggle and calamity is associated with Jacob’s higher name, Israel—also the Ba’al Shem Tov’s given name—which indicates a state of mind of expanded consciousness that turn the calamity into victory and salvation.
To summarize, we have seen three methods of transforming the calamity (הָרָצ) into an illuminated opening (רַהֹצ):
- Understanding (binah): elevating kingdom to understanding
- Wisdom (chochmah): changing the permutation
- Knowledge (da’at): finding loving-kindness in the judgment
(Excerpted from a lecture given on the 30th of Tishrei, 5781)
