Expressing Our Innermost Desire in This World
Through this crucial yesod in avodas Hashem, we can better understand the avodah of these exalted days. For the avodah of the Yamim Noraim is to reveal what a Yid truly is, what his true ratzon is, and to reveal the truth that everything is HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and anything else is false. The yetzer hara that seeks to delude us into thinking that there are other truths must be defeated from the inside out.
The sefarim haKedoshim teach us that on Rosh Hashanah we begin with the avodah of תקיעת שופר which is pnimiyus, a blast that expresses our innermost desire to be close to the Ribbono shel Olam—however, this cry and desire remain concealed in the heart. As the days go by, our avodah is to bring this yearning into the open, little by little, until on Sukkos we work entirely in This World—for to do battle with the nations of the world, we must speak their language. We must battle not just on the inside, but to act with even the inanimate objects in the world—even gashmiyus objects, and we show that even gashmiyus can be used in the service of ruchniyus. This is the primary mode of battle with the klipah of the nations of the world.
The Klipah of Confusion
The Nefesh HaChaim explains, and it is brought in numerous chassidishe sefarim as well, that even before the sin of the Eitz HaDa’as there was a choice between good and evil, but the situation was different. It was as if an outside force were to come to the person and try to persuade him to do bad things—but he himself is not connected to the bad. What changed after the cheit was that the desires for bad come from within the person—he himself is drawn to negative things. This is a far more difficult challenge, since the person himself wants the negative acts. This is what changed after the cheit: the draw toward evil became part of the pnimiyus of the person.
But we must know that this isn’t our true desire. Part of the klipah is that we’re confused: we don’t know what comes from us and what is the outer pull to the negative. There is a pnimiyus that draws us to learning Torah, to davening, and to helping others, but there is another side that pulls us in the opposite direction.
