You Can’t Know Me
And so we begin now on our endeavor to know Hashem by means of His name, ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡. ‘I will be what I will be’ means, first of all, that you won’t know Me. You want to know My name, My description? The first thing to know is that you’ll never know Me in this world. ‘I shall be what I shall be’ means “Make no error; don't make any mistake about it – you’ll never discover Me while you're in this world. You’ll keep searching and understanding more and more but ‘I will be what I will be’.” A man in his life will never discover the truth of Hashem.
And the reason is because just like a stone cannot tune in to airwaves that are being transmitted from a radio station – a stone doesn't have any apparatus to catch the sounds moving through the air. And even if it did, it doesn't have any ears; ears are even more complicated than the radio apparatus.
So for a stone to hear the radio, it’s impossible. And that’s how much it’s impossible for a person who lives in the flesh to have any concept of Hakadosh Baruch Hu that approaches reality. ‡ֹליָחָו םָ„ָ‡ָה יƒנַ‡¿רƒי – You cannot see Me while you’re alive (Shemos 33:20). After you die then it’s a different story but as long as you’re enclosed in the batei chomer, in the house of clay – that’s the body – it’s impossible for man to tune in to the truth of Hashem.
So the first thing is, ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ – whatever I'll tell you about Myself you should know it will be impossible to fully understand. That's the first peirush: ‘I shall be whatever I shall be.’
Keep Trying
Now, it doesn’t mean that man should desist from searching for knowledge of Hashem. On the contrary, this first peirush of the name is a summons to continue forever coming closer and closer to Hashem by learning more and more about Him. ‘I will be what I will be’ declares that no matter how great is one’s wisdom, he has never completed the task of searching for more understanding of the ways of Hashem and His attributes. He must keep understanding until his last breath. ר∆ ̃≈ח ין≈‡ ֹו ָּ̇לֻ„¿‚ƒל¿ו – Even though there’s no searching out the end of His greatness (Tehillim 145:3), הָּנ∆ר¿ּפַסֲ‡ָך¿ ָּ̇לֻ„ּו – but still I’ll continue to speak about Your greatness as much as I can (ibid. 6).
Like it says,רֹמ¿‚ƒל הָכ‡ָל¿ּמַהָיך∆לָﬠ ‡ֹל – it’s not your duty to learn the whole Torah, ל≈טָּבƒל יןƒרֹחו ן∆ּב הָּ ַ̇‡ ‡ֹל¿ו הָּנ∆ּמƒמ – but you cannot excuse yourself (Avos 2:16). You can't say, “Well, since I can't learn the whole Torah, I won't bother to know Shas.” No! You have to bother as much as you can. And so, even though you'll never know the truth about Hashem, but as much as you can you have to endeavor all your life to know. Exactly how, that’s a separate subject; it’s not our subject now. It’s a lifetime of study, a lifetime of understanding, ל≈טָּבƒל יןƒרֹחו ן∆ּב הָּ ַ̇‡ ‡ֹל¿ו הָּנ∆ּמƒמ.
And so ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ means, keep at it! Because that will be your greatness; it’ll be your migdal oz, your tower of strength. In this world you’ll find your greatness in that name and then after you leave this place all of that understanding you worked to achieve – all of ‘I will be what I will be’ – will be understood by you in ways that you can’t even imagine now. Because in the Next World you’ll get the apparatus and tools to understand fully.
Dummies at the U.N.
It's like coming to the U.N., lehavdil. I once went to the U.N. many years ago, when I was a young man. I wasted some time and I sat down in the visitors’ gallery. Now, I didn't know any Russian or French but they had there earphones that you can dial in to any language you want. You understand English? Dial English and all their words will come into your ears in English. The Chinaman is talking Chinese, but you hear it in English. You want to hear it in French? Press the French button. Russian? Press the Russian button.
But it only works if you have the earphones. If you have the earphones, you can understand what's going on. Without them you sit there like a dummy.
Olam Haba is the same thing. You need earphones to enjoy Olam Haba. יםƒב¿ׁ ֹ̆יו יםƒ ̃יƒּ„ַˆ ם∆יה≈ׁ ̆‡ָר¿ּב ם∆יה≈ ֹ̇רו¿טַﬠ¿ו – The righteous sit in the Next World and they’re wearing crowns on their heads, הָינƒכ¿ּׁ ַ̆ה יוƒּזƒמ יםƒנ¡ה∆נ¿ו – and they are delighting in the splendor of the Shechinah (Brachos 17a). You need a crown on your head to appreciate Olam Haba.
And what’s the crown, says the Rambam? יƒפ¿לּנוָּ ̃∆ׁ ̆ ַ̇ﬠַּ„ַה – According to the daas you acquired in this world, that’s your crown in Olam Haba. In the U.N. they furnish earphones but in the Next World you have to bring your own earphones along. And you get it by practicing up studying Hashem, thinking about Him, in this world. The earphones are whatever daas you acquired in this world; that’s the fortress of His name where you can find your protection. ‘I will be’ means ‘Keep seeking Me because it’s never ending. And the more you do, the more you’ll have forever.’
Unlock the Secret of Existence
Now we come to another peirush in ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡. It’s connected; it’s a complementary peirush. If the charge of ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ is to seek Hashem and to understand Him, kiv’yachol, then the second pshat in that name is one of the keys for unlocking the secret for how we seek Him. Because ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ means that the first thing to think about as you make your way through this world is that wherever you look, you’re looking at Him.
I’ll explain that. “You want to know about Me?” Hashem says. “You want to study Me? The first thing to know is that the world came into existence and remains in existence because of My command: Yehi– It should be. And therefore the whole universe is ehe-yeh asher ehe-yeh. Existence is only what I want it to be.”
And so if you’re going to understand anything about Hashem, you first have to know that the whole existence is Him; there’s no being in the world except Him. He is the One Who creates being; He creates existence. He creates reality by willing it into existence.
The Only Truth
And that means that nothing in the universe has true existence at all. No matter how real the world seems to us, it's only a form of persuasion; it’s an illusion that Hakadosh Baruch Hu planned for His purposes.
That's what the Rambam says at the beginning of Yad Hachazakah. There's only One true thing: Hashem Elokim emes, says the navi (Yirmiyahu 10:10). So the Rambam says it means that ֹוּ„ַב¿ל ‡ּהו ̇∆מ¡‡ – He Alone is true, ֹו ָּ̇ ̇ƒמֲ‡ַּכ ̇∆מ¡‡ ר≈חַ‡¿ל ין≈‡¿ו – and nothing else is true like He is (Yesodei HaTorah 4:1). יƒה∆ּיַו רַמָ‡ ‡ּהו יƒּכ – Hashem said ‘Let it be’, and it came into existence (Tehillim 33:9) means that whatever is in the world is only because Hashem’s word is upholding it. If He wishes He could withdraw His word and the whole universe would fall back not into tohu vavohu – it would fall back into ayin. Ayin means nothing at all!
Nuclear Power
Now, it could be it’s not so easy for us to understand that but the truth is that even if a person went to college and had his mind corrupted by the educators, what do they teach him there? They teach him that at the beginning you didn't have any animals, you didn't have any plants; at the beginning there were just atoms.
And even atoms, they say, were the result of a great deal of development. An atom is a very organized and complicated matter; it’s more complicated than a computer. So they have to say that at the beginning there were no atoms. What was there? So they say that at the beginning there was some kind of energy.
And so you see that they are modeh, they have to admit that there was something even before atoms, before matter. And then, by some queer accident, the energy became organized into certain energy particles that revolved around a nucleus in a certain organized way and that made an atom.
They Just Don’t Understand
“Somehow, in ways we do not yet understand,” they say, “the energy started bumping into each other and finally it got tired of this disorderly conduct and they became organized together, made a union, and they became now an atom.”
So why do we have to listen to these dreamers who are manufacturing accidents from nothing? They don’t understand but we do because the Torah tells us the truth. It was ayin, it was nothing, until יƒה¿י יםƒ ֹ̃ל¡‡ ר∆מ‡ֹּיַו , until Elokim said ‘Yehi’ (Bereishis 1:3,6,14).
Now Elokim is alef lamed, ל-‡, which means energy. Kel means power, energy. He’s not energy of course; He’s more than energy. But He’s the source of energy. And when He said, ‘Let there be energy’, immediately – without any long period of time – energy became organized in atoms and in molecules; and by His word they became sky and planets and stars and earth and plants and animals. It didn't take long because Hakadosh Baruch Hu is able to make it out of nothing; He’s able to organize it into various forms because it’s His word and that’s all. He said ‘Let it be,’ and everything came into existence immediately by His command.
And therefore the whole universe is ה-∆י¿ה∆‡, I shall be, ה-∆י¿ה∆‡ ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡, what I shall be. It means ‘Existence shall be whatever I say it shall be. Because it’s My word that makes it be.’
Raining Cats and Dogs
That's why the rain that is falling today from the clouds, a year from now it will be something else; it will be grass and fruit and animals. In twenty years it will be transformed into men and women walking on the streets. What are men and women after all? They're 80% rain that came down once from the skies. That's the truth. All of us came down once in the rain. The rain became food that we ate and that water is in us today; so 80% of us came from the skies. And the other 20%? It came in ways that are even more wonderful – it came from the air. We are water and air. A tiny fraction comes from the soil.
That's plain chemistry. There are no secrets about that. The whole scientific world agrees that we come from sunshine, air, carbon dioxide and
