Wednesday, January 26, 2011

In the first rendition of the עשרת הדברות (Ten Commandments) the last few commandments are stated with no connective words between them: לא תגנוב לא תרצח, Do not steal, Do not murder. In the second rendition, there is the extra letter ו (meaning and) inserted connecting between the words לא תגנב ולא תרצח. Do not steal and do not murder. What is the reason for this distinction?
The Bais Yaakov of Ishbitz explains that this is because the first set were given by directly by God. As a result when God said "Do not steal," these words permeated the entirety of creation. When he next said "Do not murder," those words permeated the entirety of creation. How can it be that each set of words permeated all? Shouldn't it have to be one or the other? This is one of the paradoxes of God which we cannot comprehend, how things that appear to us to be distinct and separate are within Him united and One. But separation is for our world, in God's dimension separation doesn't exist.

This is why the first set of tablets could not possibly last. They were written from God's perspective, not man's. As humans, we lacked the ability to connect to the full concept of unity. The tablets had to be destroyed and a new set made, by man, in which these disparate (from a human perspective) concepts could be strung together and connected, as symbolized by the letter ו, so that each one had its proper time and place.

This would seem to be similar to the Kabbalistic concept of the breaking of the vessels. This concept teaches that at Creation God tried to pour the spiritual power of the Ten Sefirot into vessels to contain them. But it was too much for them, and they broke. It is now the remit of man to collect what spilled out and to repair the broken vessels. These were not Godly errors on the way to creating a world or giving the Torah, but this is an intentional pattern repeated, as we see here, throughout history. And this is true not only on a global and national scale, but also for individuals as well. The Sages teach us that in utero a child is taught all of the Torah; when he is born, he forgets it all. Why bother teaching it to him if he will forget?

The answer is that God instills within the world all of the potential goodness that can possibly exist. He places it there within our reach and gives us the innate intuitive knowledge that we can achieve it. But He will not give it to us. We must take it for ourselves and find the place for every aspect of it. This is because within God there are no divisions; all is One. Only man can divide and by doing so arrange, and conquer.
The Kabbalists explain that this is the goal of all Talmudic study. As simply stated so much of Tanach and the Mishnah seems to be a hodgepodge of half statements and contradictions. We need to order it all to make sense of it, to understand where and how each and every Halacha of the Torah is appropriately applied.
God can't and won't do this for. It is up to man to create the balance.

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