Relating to & Understanding HKB”H

One of the things that the Rambam gives in Sefer Hamitzvot, which guides him in identifying and enumerating the Taryag Mitzvot, is that we don't count a Tzivui Hakolal, meaning that each of the 613 Mitzvot are separate and distinct Mitzvot, but if you have something which encompasses all Mitzvot, or you have something which is the overarching goal of all Mitzvot, so then you can't list that as a separate Mitzva, it isn't something which is separate and distinct. So for instance the Rambam says that he thinks that the Bahag erred in counting Kedoshim Tihyu as a Mitzva because all of Mitzvot are oriented and geared towards that goal of Kedoshim Tihyu. It highlights a very fundamental fact that every Mitzva is obviously an absolute in and of itself, but Mitzvot are also an absolute means to an end. And one way to describe what that ultimate end is, or at least part of what that ultimate end is, is that the Mitzvot are intended to help us develop a personal relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Right, in the Braisa of Pinchas Ben Yair, so everything is geared that a person should reach Ruach HaKodesh, should reach Nevuah. Ruach HaKodesh, Nevuah is the ultimate personal encounter and experience of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The goal of Devekut highlights the same. In the Elokai Netzor that we say at the end of Shemoneh Esrei, so it comes from the Gemara in Berachot in the second perek, the Gemara tells us the different Tefillot which the different Amoraim used to append to the end of the Shemoneh Esrei. So some have the girsa that the phrase is אחרי מצותיך תרדף נפשי. But there's another girsa which says Uv'mitzvotasecha Tirdof Nafshi, not אחרי מצותיך תרדף נפשי but Uv'mitzvotasecha Tirdof Nafshi. So what's אחרי מצותיך תרדף נפשי? That my soul should pursue your Mitzvot. So the idiom is lirdof acharei, that my soul should pursue your Mitzvot. So the Mitzvot are the object of pursuit. If you have the girsa Uv'mitzvotasecha Tirdof Nafshi, so the object of pursuit isn't identified with the beis. When you have the idiom of lirdof be, so it's like the pasuk that we said in the Haggadah, תרדף באף ותשמידם מתחת שמי ה'. So tirdof be, so the beis is the instrument of pursuit, it's not the object of pursuit. So Uv'mitzvotasecha Tirdof Nafshi, so l'chora what that girsa means, again it's not that the girsot disagree, they're just expressing different ideas, but what that girsa expresses is this idea: Uv'mitzvotasecha Tirdof Nafshi, that the object is obvious and therefore unstated, that with your Mitzvot, through your Mitzvot, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, my soul should pursue You, should pursue kirvas Elokim. When the ger comes to Shammai and then to Hillel and wants to learn כל התורה כולה על רגל אחת, so Hillel paraphrases for him. So how does V'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, how does that encompass Kol Hatorah Kula? So Rashi says because the pasuk in Mishlei says רעך ורע אביך אל תעזב or something is the lashon hapasuk that you shouldn't abandon your friend and the friend of your father. And that reiacha refers to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

לא הביט און ביעקב ולא ראה עמל בישראל כי ה' א-לוהיו עמו ותרועת מלך בו.

So we think of that the pasuk means truat melech bo lashon tkiyah truah. But Rashi al HaTorah has a pshat of truat melech bo means lashon reiut. That לא הביט און ביעקב ולא ראה עמל בישראל that Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't, as it were, he overlooks iniquity amongst when he looks at us. Why? כי ה' א-לוהיו עמו ותרועת מלך בו. So unquestionably Yahadut is concerned that a person should not just have an ol Torah and an ol mitzvos in the sense of complying, but that a person should have a, a person should feel and realize the reiacha v'rei avicha. And it's not only on that very high sublime level of dveykus or ruach hakodesh or nevuah, but on lower levels as well that there should be a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, not only again compliance. Yitachen that that's an approach to the famous question discussed from the Ibn Ezra and Yehuda Halevi and on. אנוכי ה' א-לוהיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים. That Hakadosh Baruch Hu's calling card doesn't say אשר בראתי שמים וארץ but says אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים. So yitachen that one answer is the following. Barasi shamayim va'aretz can be construed as an impersonal act. אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים means Hakadosh Baruch Hu says that I'm intimately involved as it were in your life. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to introduce himself that way because since avodas Hashem is supposed to, again, add up to, to facilitate in a personal kesher with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, for that reason Hakadosh Baruch Hu's claim as it were on our avodah is that that personal relationship will be bilateral. It's also true. So this... This is one I think Rav Schwab in his shiurim on siddur quotes a very beautiful he'arah from רב שמשון רפאל הירש on the piyut of Adon Olam. So he says if you say Adon Olam and you think about it, there's something absolutely remarkable. So

אדון עולם אשר מלך בטרם כל יציר נברא לעת נעשה בחפצו כל אזי מלך שמו נקרא ואחרי ככלות הכל לבדו ימלוך נורא והוא היה והוא הווה והוא יהיה בתפארה.

So what is this a description of? Hakadosh Baruch Hu's absolute independence, Hakadosh Baruch Hu's transcendence. בטרם כל יציר נברא, acharei kichlos hakol. And then what happens? And then we switch to והוא קלי וחי גואלי וצור חבלי בעת צרה. Mamash a remarkable observation from רב שמשון רפאל הירש. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu, his transcendence, his absoluteness notwithstanding, hu hu keli, he's my personal God, vechai go'ali, he's my personal redeemer. He's there for me in my eis tzara. And that's the introduction to tefillah, that's the introduction to tefillah. What's more, on the level of talking about midos of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so we describe אהבה רבה אהבתנו ואהבת עולם בית ישראל עמך אהבת. We describe Hakadosh Baruch Hu's love for us collectively, individually. Again, we're doing so on the level of midos, which the Rambam and others all stress is we're not presuming to describe or attribute midos to Hakadosh Baruch Hu himself, but rather to describe his actions and his interaction in the world. Hashem Echad means that you can't ascribe midos because then that contradicts the absolute achdus. But we can and are supposed to speak of midos in the sense of describing Hakadosh Baruch Hu's actions and interaction in the world. And on that level also, the personal relationship that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has with us, which invites our reciprocity, is clearly emphasized. Again, it's crucial to bear in mind that we are not again describing or defining Hakadosh Baruch Hu himself, לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה, but we are describing and we're allowed to and we're tzu mitzvah to describe his actions, his interactions in the world and to translate those into descriptions of midos. There is, however, something which the Torah absolutely does not countenance in this or any other context, and that is in our attempt again, not only to be shomer Torah mitzvos but through Torah mitzvos to relate to, to connect with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We're not supposed to humanize Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is not a super duper great person. I think the Meshech Chochma writes in one place that the emes is that our belief, he says, really is for a nation of philosophers. The correct belief in Hakadosh Baruch Hu, meaning not succumbing to this temptation that, well, it's a lot easier to relate if I just sort of lower, rachmana litzlan, the Ribbono Shel Olam to our level, so then it's a lot easier to understand or feel that I'm relating, that I'm connecting. And he says no, בני אברהם יצחק ויעקב have that capacity to believe without lowering Hakadosh Baruch Hu and looking to humanize him. And people meanwhile, but sometimes things are said which are just mamash beyond, beyond the pale. I'll give just one example, but people should recognize: one's not allowed to say that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world because he was lonely, and that's why the world exists. It's egregiously wrong, again, all sincerity recognized and notwithstanding, it's egregiously wrong on at least two fronts. First of all, again, it's doing exactly that: it's lowering Hakadosh Baruch Hu, making him into a super super person, as though Hakadosh Baruch Hu, rachmana litzlan, is lacking something. Second of all, by definition, a person can't entertain the question of why Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world, because to discuss that, a person has to try to understand Hakadosh Baruch Hu outside of the world, and whatever understanding we have of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is only within the world. So by definition, that's beyond the frontiers of human understanding and human thought. But again, there's a natural temptation to humanize Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but it's antithetical to our conception and our tradition of Hakadosh Baruch Hu and of what emuna means. Again, we can describe and we do describe Hakadosh Baruch Hu's actions and interaction within the world, and we do describe that again in terms of those actional attributes that we're allowed to do, it's a mitzvah to do, but never ever to try to make it easy for ourselves by lowering Hakadosh Baruch Hu. into the into the realm of of of of being a person. Yitachen that it's related, I obviously don't know for a fact, but be'chlal there is a certain katnus hamochin and obviously with a lehavdil, lehavdil, lehavdil, because one can't equate the distortion of lowering Hakadosh Baruch Hu to any other distortion. So obviously with the lehavdil, elef alfei havdalos, but yitachen it's the same type of looking to lower things to our level instead of trying to elevate ourselves to understand all the what one hears too much of, the psychological analyses of the Avos, of figures in Tanach. Ai, but doesn't the Torah tell us, doesn't the Torah tell us there was a sibling rivalry between Yosef and his brothers? So isn't that the way to understand the pesukim, to see it through a lens of sibling rivalry? משל למה הדבר דומה. Yeah, takeh it's a pasuk. But משל למה הדבר דומה. Say you're learning Pesachim. Okay. You're stuck on a shvere Tosafos. Okay. So you go over to a fourth grader and you show him the shvere Tosafos and you ask him for a pshat. And he looks this way, he looks that way, he looks this way. He says: I don't know pshat. Fine. Get on a plane and you go to Eretz Yisrael and you take a sherut to Bnei Brak and you go ask Rav Chaim Kanievsky and you ask him a pshat in the Tosafos. And he tells you: I don't know pshat. So takeh, said the same words, right? So it means the same thing? Same words, mamash verbatim, he tells you, he tells you he doesn't know pshat. So it means the same thing? No. Presumably what the fourth grader is telling you is he's not sure whether you hold it this way, you hold it that way, he doesn't know what, he doesn't know how to translate the words. And Rav Chaim Kanievsky is telling you: Yeah, there's a Tosefta over here and there's a Yerushalmi over there, so how could Tosafos say this given that Tosefta, given this Yerushalmi? So he tells you: I don't know pshat either. Yeah. So the Torah says Vayekane'u vo echav. But it's like, but to say that therefore what the Chumash is describing is a sibling rivalry and to pull the psychology textbooks off the shelf and and to use that to learn pshat in Chumash is to lower Rav Chaim Kanievsky to the level of the fourth grader who also doesn't know pshat in a Tosafos. So the same way, not just the same way, right? A קל וחומר בן בנו של קל וחומר, the way we all recognize how ludicrous that is and that's not, that's not the simple pshat. It's not that someone who tells you that his 'I don't know' means something different, they're not being מוציא מקרא מידי פשוטו. They're telling you the pshutam shel devarim. But again, it's the same tendency to lower everything to our level instead of trying to elevate ourselves to understand, again obviously, Rachmana litzlan, not to, not to equate any person, even the Avos HaKedoshim and the Ribbono Shel Olam, Rachmana litzlan. But the same... same way instead of trying to strive and understand someone something on a higher level, so everything gets lowered to our level. And then the same thing's done with Gedolei Yisrael as well. The same, the same, that same tendency that in order that we should relate, that that we lower it to our level. And be-khlal, just as one final comment, one should definitely definitely know, learn and know to the best of one's ability and understand ikarei ha-Yahadut, Rambam's yud-gimmel ikkarim. I think the Rambam writes in Iggeret Techiyat HaMeitim, he says the reason he lists the ikkarim, he says how can it be that a person's going to be able to be noseh ve-nothen in chametz be-mashehu and not know whether the Ribono Shel Olam is a ba'al goof or not a ba'al goof? Ha-yitakhen? Avaddah everyone should know and understand again ikkarim to the best of his ability. But the limmud, the process of learning, isn't the same as with others. There's no room for speculation. There's no room for taking on one's own shoulders to be mechadesh an understanding in ikkarim. The level of achrayus. Again a person is not supposed to have a cavalier attitude about fa-enfering a Tosafos kashya on Rashi either. It's not that a person is supposed to do that glibly rachmana litzlan. But in talking about ikkarim, a person has to be very very careful again not to be imposing his own havanah, not to be looking to be mechadesh. They recount that, giving as an example within one of the yud-gimmel ikkarim, but itakhen that it's that part of that message is relevant to all the yud-gimmel ikkarim, that the Reb Velvel was very very adamant that the twelfth of the ikkarim of bi'as ha-Mashiach eventually, but that Mashiach can come and that therefore a person should be awaiting Mashiach today. So they asked Reb Velvel, but how can you say that? Chazal give us simanim as to what the generation is going to look like when Mashiach comes. So what happens if a person looks around and doesn't see any of the simanim? So how can you say that you have to believe Mashiach is going to come? Then I understand. But that you have to believe Mashiach can come today? You don't have to believe that he absolutely will come today. No, the same way he didn't come yesterday, he may not come today, but you have to believe that he can come today and therefore you have to be metzapeh l'biasso. Therefore you have to long for him to come today. So they asked Reb Velvel, but how do you reconcile that if the simanim are not there? So he answered, well, when Mashiach comes, he'll faren for the kashas. So mistama he meant that more than just as a cute answer, but mistama what he meant is that in this chelek of Torah, if you would have asked him about a shvere Rambam in hilchos nizkei mamon, so he wouldn't have said, well, techiyas hameisim will come, the Rambam will faren for how it shtims with the Gemara in Bava Kamma. No, he's going to stay up all night and maybe come up with a chiddush to faren for the Rambam. But that in this chelek of Torah, there's a different way of dealing. And it highlights again the care and precision that one has to have in inyonei emunah. You know, משל למה הדבר דומה. Say a person wants to see how check his sense of balance and see how he can walk. Let's say you take a wire and you put it six inches off the ground and you're going to try to balance yourself on the wire. Okay, shkoiach. Or you can do the same thing and it can be a hundred feet off the ground without a safety net underneath. So the higher up one is, the more catastrophic a mistake is, rachmana litzlan. And the lower down one is, okay, a mistake is never to be dismissed lightly, kala'ahar yad. But at the end of the day, there's a difference between a mistake about whether to say Tachanun on Pesach Sheni or not and about ikkarei emunah. The wires on which one is positioning oneself are situated, located in different places and it's very important that we should know, we should understand ikkarim and certainly this time of year, erev Pesach, zecher litzias Mitzrayim, the aseres hadibros begins with anochi Hashem elokecha, it's certainly a time for such a limud. But again, with tremendous kovid rosh and the ability again to understand what's been explained to us as accurately and faithfully as possible.