Kedushat Levi

The first thing G’d embarked on when creating the material universe was to create heaven and earth.” It is an axiom, general principle, that G’d created the entire universe, and having done so, never withdraws from the universe for even a single moment, This axiom is true both of what He created in the heavens and what He created in the material, three-dimensional part of the universe. We pay tribute to this in our daily prayers when we say יוצר אור ובורא חושך, “He creates and fashions (present tense) light, and He creates darkness.” When speaking of any accomplishments of G’d’s creatures however, we speak of them in the past tense, i.e. יצר כסא, “he shaped a chair,” or עשה מזרון, “he made a mattress.” G’d’s creative activity is never completed, as the Torah testified in Genesis 2,3 אשר ברא אלוקים לעשות, “which the Lord has created in order to complete it.” This means that G’d is part of every creature He ever created, and once man realizes that he is nothing without G’d Who has created him and Who provides him with all the strength and creative stimuli that he possesses, he will be able to relate to Hashem as an ongoing creative Force in His universe. This is reflected every morning when we get up and we refer to G’d with the words אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה, “Who has fashioned man with חכמה,” the word חכמה meaning the opposite of אין, “nothing.” It is appropriate therefore that in that prayer we refer to the creation of man in the past tense, as opposed to the line we quoted earlier, seeing that we refer to something or somebody who already exists, i.e. יש. This explains why the Ari z’al, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, said that when we refer to G’d as ה’ מלך, usually translated as “Hashem is King,” the reference is to the אין, “nothing,” i.e. G’d at any given moment gives us life, -by not withdrawing it from us.- The implied meaning of the expression is that man is “nothing” unless he continues to exist as part of G’d’s creative activity. The so-called אין, “nothing,” in terms of metaphysical beings, rules supreme in the regions beyond those that are part of the physical universe, the one that we conveniently refer to as “nature.” This so-called אין, is not really a “nothing,” in terms of the universe, its “nothingness” is such only vis a vis the physical part of the universe; in the celestial regions this “אין” rules supreme. Although יש and אין are popularly perceived as absolute opposites, not having anything in common, this perception is built on a fallacy; the linkage between יש and אין are the mitzvot, Torah commandments, performed by the Jewish people. The commandments are performed in the section of the universe known as יש, as a result of which close contact is maintained between the aforementioned two domains of the universe. Ezekiel 1:14 refers to the “mitzvot” in their capacity as providing the link between the terrestrial and the celestial part of the universe with the words והחיות רצוא ושוב, “and the chayot ran to and fro”. According to the Zohar II 288, the mitzvot and the Torah respectively, are viewed as related to one another like the “hidden” is related to the “revealed,” both being part of the same whole. Torah and mitzvot provide the link between these two domains, so that each domain is not completely divorced from the other. This concept is contained in the letters of the word מצוה when we divide it up into מצ and וה. The letters מצ when we read the alphabet backwards, starting with the letter ת are equivalent to the letters יה, symbolising the totally abstract Divinity, whereas the letters וה symbolize the hidden parts of the universe, יש. The first half of the word מצוה being read with the two letters used in reverse order of the aleph bet, alludes to the “hidden” part of the universe, the domain exclusive to Divine, abstract forces. Let us explain something about what precisely is “hidden” and what is “revealed,” when it comes to the מצוה, “Torah commandment.” When we perform a מצוה, we cause G’d to become pleased with having created man, the choicest of His creatures. When we comply with requests made to us by a fellow human being, we can immediately gauge whether he is pleased by our actions or not, either by his face indicating this, or by words of approval, something that is not the case when we comply with G’d’s requests from us. Since He is invisible, and does not speak to us as He did to Moses, “mouth to mouth”, we have no way of knowing if our efforts to please Him have been successful. When we try to perform deeds that are for our (immediate) personal benefit, we are able to determine if our efforts have succeeded. This then is the “hidden” element present whenever we perform any of G’d’s commandments, מצות. This is what the Torah had in mind when it wrote (Deuteronomy 29,28) הנסתרות לה’ אלוקינו, “the hidden aspects of mitzvah performance are reserved for the Lord our G’d;” on the other hand, והנגלות לנו ולבנינו עד עולם, “the benefits which the performance of the Torah confers upon us will be revealed forever.” This is also the meaning of the words בראשית ברא אלוקים, (addressed to us) “at the beginning of G’d’s creative activity G’d created the יש, a physical domain of the universe.” Through His creating יש, i.e. ראשית, a beginning, the creation of heaven and earth came into being, for prior to that there was only the אין, the abstract universe. This is the meaning of Targum Yerushalmi who renders this verse as ‘בראשית בחוכמא ברא ה’, “at the beginning G’d created by means of using intelligence found in the domain of the abstract regions.” חכמה, as we pointed out earlier, is a quality inherent in the terrestrial domain.