Milah is Constant Connection to Hashem
Let’s talk about those first three years of a person’s life.
The Chasid Yaabetz writes that when a person is born, since he is a Jew and Hashem places in him a pure neshamah, he is automatically bonded to kedushah and has a portion in Olam Haba. If he would die as a baby, chas v’shalom, he would go straight to Olam Haba, since Olam Haba is the place of connection to Hashem, and he is fundamentally attached to Hashem.
Hashem breathed into him a pure neshamah, and Chazal say that “When one breathes out, he is breathing out something from his very self.” The source of this child’s life force is in the inner realms of kedushah, so he is intrinsically connected to Hashem and automatically has a portion in Olam Haba.
If so, why did Chazal say that a child has a portion in Olam Haba only from the time that he starts to answer amein?
Because that is talking about a higher level of Olam Haba, which the child attains due to his deeds. But even without any good deeds at all, he is fundamentally bonded to kedushah. And not because he is incapable of sinning, due to his lack of mental capacity. The reason he is free of sin is because of the great kedushah within him, he has a Jewish neshamah. He is totally perfected. He is a tzaddik gamur.
Even if his parents are resha’im gemurim, right now he is a tzaddik gamur and we must desecrate Shabbos for him if he is endangered. Since he is in a state of perfection, he has no need for Torah and mitzvos. This is why he has no connection Torah and mitzvos until he grows older.
Despite all this, there is one mitzvah that he does have a connection to, and that is bris milah. So let’s talk about this very unique mitzvah of bris milah.
David said שבע ביום הללתיך – “I praised You seven times a day.” But when he entered the bathhouse and found himself unclothed, he said, “Woe to me, for I am ‘unclothed’ of mitzvos [at this time, since I cannot engage in Torah study].” Then he noticed that he has a bris milah, and he began composing a praise to Hashem over it, as it says למנצח על השמינית – “To the musician, regarding the [mitzvah performed on the day of the] eighth.”
When a baby is born, he is bonded to kedushah due to the very fact that he is a Jew. This is why milah is the only mitzvah fitting to this age. It ties the person so strongly to kedushah that wherever he is and whatever the situation, even if he is in the bathhouse, even if he is eating or sleeping, he always bears the seal of Hakadosh Baruch Hu on himself.
Hashem has many ways to bestow chesed on people. There is the chesed of great wealth, which not very many people attain. And there is the chesed of parnassah, of having enough to subsist. Most people have this. Yet, there are poor people who don’t have the bare minimum, and there are those who even die of starvation.
Another chesed of Hashem is air. This is something everyone gets to benefit from, tzaddikim and resha’im alike. Hashem’s chesed is so great that there is almost no way for a person not to have air to breathe. Nevertheless, it is still possible for a person to die due to lack of air.
The greatest chesed of all is that called makom, “place.” Everyone has place, has room. There is no one at all who doesn’t have place. Even resha’im in Gehinom have a place to be. This is the peak of chesed that we can conceive of, and it is granted to all beings, without exception. There is no one without a place in which he exists.
There are also mitzvos like this. There are mitzvos that are so wonderful that they are part of a person’s very life and are inseparable from him, and one of them is the mitzvah of milah. A Jew who was fortunate enough that they once did with him the mitzvah of bris milah will be connected to Hashem forever. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do.
Even if he chas v’shalom desecrates Shabbos, even if he eats on Yom Kippur, the Name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is still on him. It is like the chesed of place. It is something you have by virtue of the fact that you exist.
There is another mitzvah that resembles bris milah, and that is the mitzvah of Shabbos. On Shabbos kodesh, a Jew doesn’t need to do anything. Nothing needs to come from him. The seventh day of the week has been designated as Shabbos from the time of the Six Days of Creation, and a person observes it without having to go and do anything at all. And when he keeps Shabbos, Shabbos sanctifies his very being, just like it sanctifies all other creatures. (Even Gehinom observes Shabbos.)
Yom Tov is not like this. Its kedushah depends on us. The Jewish people renders Yom Tov holy. [In former times, the Sanhedrin would determine the date of the Yamim Tovim based on the sighting of the new moon, and they set the calendar that we follow to this day.] If the Jewish people would not sanctify Yom Tov, it would not be Yom Tov.
There are no other mitzvos like this. Only Shabbos and bris milah.
This is the first stage in a person’s life. In this stage, his very soul is attached to kedushah.
Coming of Age
The second stage in a person’s life is when he reaches the age of chinuch, of education. At this age, he enters the lowliness of this world to some extent, and begins to have some relationship to negativity and impurity. He still has no connection to aveiros. “The breath coming out of his mouth is untainted by sin.” But he can bring a lot of harmful influences into himself. He can get in the habit of desecrating Shabbos, he can develop the trait of anger, he can even learn to kill, chas v’shalom.
So at this stage he needs Torah and mitzvos, and “His father teaches him Torah.” But since he is unable to commit a sin, he also has no obligation to fulfill mitzvos. He only does them for the sake of chinuch, education.
When a person reaches the age of thirteen (for a boy), now he is living in this world, and in order to protect him, he needs the Torah Hakedoshah to clean him up and refine him, to urge him to serve Hashem. He needs to work hard, day and night, in order to remove from himself all the tumah and bring kedushah into himself.
At this age, mitzvah observance is incumbent on him. He does mitzvos as an obligation. But still, due to the bond to kedushah that he has from the day of his birth, he is exempt from kareis. Heaven will not take away his life and his soul will not be cut off, because he still has a strong tie to kedushah.
That was the third stage. The fourth stage begins when he reaches the age of twenty. Now he is deep into the life of this world, and he needs to stand on his own two feet. Therefore, he is now liable for death at the hands of Heaven.
The fifth stage, for those who merit it, is essentially a return to the first state. It entails total attachment to kedushah. This fits with the general rule that “the end is contained within the beginning.”
A person’s goal in life is to return to his beginning point, to the kedushah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu granted him in the very beginning, when He breathed his neshamah into him. The Rambam expressed this idea when he wrote as follows about a person who dedicates himself to Torah learning :
And not just the tribe of Levi, but every single individual in the world whose spirit moved him... and he conducts himself with straightness, as G-d made him... he acquires supreme sanctity.”
In other words, such a person returns to the “straightness” that was his in the first years of life, and then “he acquires supreme sanctity.”
This is a person’s life goal. This is what he aspires to his whole life: to get back to where he started. It is our desire to leave the world in the state we were in when we came here. However, there is one difference. At the end of a person’s life, when he goes back to that total attachment to kedushah, it is coming from his own avodah, his own work.
Even at this stage, there is such a thing as losing one’s life, there is such a thing as death. And it is the harshest death of all. It is the worst of all fates. As it says in Sefer Mesilas Yesharim, “There is no evil greater than that of a lack in perfection and of being far from Hashem.”
This is the worst death of all.
Levels of Soul
These five stages of life correspond to the five levels of soul we mentioned before: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah.
In the first stage of life, a person is totally bound to kedushah and is inseparable from it. This is the level of yechidah, in which a person is totally connected to Hashem and there is nothing else at all. Hashem is yachid for him.
אתה אחד ושמך אחד – “You are One and Your Name is One.” The truth of this is self-evident, but here is the amazing thing :
ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד בארץ – “And who is like Your people Yisrael, one nation in the world.” The Jewish nation, too, has this type of kedushah. They are one, they are only tzaddikim, there is nothing else. There is no other side to the coin. As it says, ועמך כולם צדיקים לעולם ירשו ארץ – “Your people are all tzaddikim; they will inherit the earth forever.”
It is inherent to a person’s soul that he is attached to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and this is felt mainly at the time he is born. He is holy; he is pure. A baby is a tzaddik. Besides the fact that he doesn’t speak lashon hara, because he doesn’t know how to speak, he is fundamentally alienated from speaking lashon hara because of the great kedushah inside him.
The second stage of life, from the age of three to thirteen, corresponds to the level of soul called chayah. At this age, a person could do a lot of aveiros, but he still is not culpable. Beis din will not put him to death. So this has the aspect of chayah, because he is alive, he is chai, and not dead. He is perforce alive.
The third stage of life, from thirteen to twenty, corresponds to the level of soul called neshamah. Because at this age, a person is still attached to kedushah. He might commit sins, and if he does, he is culpable for them. But Heaven will not put him to death. His soul will not be cut off because he is still attached to kedushah. His neshamah is his.
The fourth stage in life, from the age of twenty on, corresponds to the level of soul known as ruach, “spirit.” There is a spirit of purity and there is a spirit of impurity, and it is up to a person to choose which kind of ruach he will have. He is no longer inseparably and inherently bound to kedushah, to the Source of life, like he was in earlier stages. Thus he is now liable for death at the hands of Heaven.
The fifth stage of life, in which a person goes back to being a tzaddik, to being holy and pious and pure, corresponds to the level of soul called nefesh. The nefesh is the lowly part of a person. It is physically oriented and is responsible for eating, drinking and other physical functions.
An animal, too, has a nefesh, as it says: ומכה נפש בהמה ישלמנה – “He who strikes the soul of an animal shall pay for it.” However, the nefesh of a person comes from Heaven, from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, while the nefesh of an animal comes from the earth. But in the end, a nefesh is a nefesh.
It is possible for the lowly part of a person to never become bound up with kedushah. It might never see the light. There are a lot of people who lived out their whole lives, and the nefesh, the lowly part of them that eats and drinks, never became attached to kedushah.
A person’s goal is to connect his nefesh with the other parts of his soul, so that also the nefesh will be completely holy. And someone who does this has rectified himself completely. He has attained total sheleimus. As it says in Sefer Mesilas Yesharim:
Torah scholars who are holy in their ways and in all their deeds are truly like the Mikdash and like the Mizbeach, because the Shechinah rests upon them like it rested upon the Mikdash itself. Someone who draws close to them is like being brought on the Mizbeach, and filling their throats [with drink] is like filling the cups that were on the Mizbeach, in which wine libations were poured.
