The Previous Rebbe explains that fearing is a function of feeling close to G-d. He is everywhere watching over you and interacting with you on every level. Love is a feeling of distance, a lust for something that is not within reach.
The preparation for the giving of the Torah is that kind of desire for something that we don't yet possess, and yearn for. The Torah is essentially a tool of love - the fire of his religion was given from His right hand. The right identifies the side of lovingkindness. The Previous Rebbe also explains that Torah is intended to give us a divine perspective on the world - to enable us to view the world through G-d's eyes, through His Wisdom. The Torah outlines the aspects of the world that are closer or farther from G-d- it's a kind of map. But essentially, if it is from G-d's love that the Torah was given, as Chassidus explains that the events occurring at Mt. Sinai were to act out G-d love for the Jewish people; in essence, the Torah is an expression of G-d's yearning for us. While it paints for us a picture of the world, an island distanced from the Divine Light, it also expresses the Giver's desire that we should return to him and not fall to the wiles of physicality.
This is the idea of a love like water reflecting the face. What is driving the King to come down to the lowest point and bring us with him to his Inner Chamber, where we are one with him. It is his yearning to be reunited with the children that left him for the only faraway place that exists in Creation - this world. The soul coming down to this world awakens the divine yearning for its return, and when the Jew feels that yearning, he/she responds in kind.
The uniting of the physical and the spiritual, "I came to my garden, my sister, my bride". The ideal fuses with the material. Can idealism truly drive the material reality - isn't that what communism and fascism and all the other ism's that have aged and withered over time. In fact, Torah also seems like it applies more to a religious ritualistic reality today rather than a vibrant, physical one. Chassidus comes to explain to us that even in this cynical generation there is a place for idealism. Brotherly love (Fraternity), Liberty (of the mind), Equality (or oneness) still exist in this world. They are not a dying breed - in fact, they are the columns, the foundation, upon which the world rests.
But they have not yet reconciled completely, the physical and spiritual. We are the matchmakers between them - Lecha Dodi, likras Kallah - we lead the physical world down the aisle, to meet its Maker, to reunite with its Source. We come down to the physical to remind it that there are higher origins to its existence and along the way we mustn't lose our idealism for it is the guiding light for us to return with our physical loot in hand.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment