Bilvavi Part 8 - 02 Emunah Is Our Essence

1.

The first thing we must know before we process is that the innermost point of everything is the perspective of achdus\unity, that we must realize how the ultimate purpose in Creation is to unify everything. [The ultimate level of unity will be achieved when Hashem’s oneness is revealed onto the world with the coming of Moshiach]. We have begun to explain this in the previous chapter.

There are five layers in our soul, but the innermost point of our soul is what expresses our longing to reveal Hashem’s oneness in the world. The innermost point of our soul is essentially what we need to use in order to reveal the unity onto the world.

2.

Our innermost point of the soul is all about unity. It unifies all the parts of our soul together. Just as it is written, “Wisdom sustains its owner”, that Torah sustains us, so does our innermost point of the soul keep the soul together and unified. What exactly does our innermost point serve to reveal?

3.

Our innermost point of the soul serves to reveal the unity contained in the wisdom of the Torah. There are two aspects to the Torah – the wisdom of the Torah, and the achdus which unifies all of the Torah’s wisdom.

The Baal Shem Tov really came to reveal this essential point – that Torah is not just chochmah\wisdom. Torah is all about achdus\unity, and therefore it’s possible that a person only knows of the chochmah of Torah, but he doesn’t have the achdus of the Torah’s wisdom.

That is essentially what the Baal Shem Tov came to reveal.

4.

The Torah of exile is defined as having the chochmah of Torah without the achdus of the Torah. The Torah of the redemption will reveal the achdus of all the chochmah in the Torah.

It is written, “A new Torah will come forth from Me” (Yeshayahu 51:4). What “new Torah” will the redemption reveal? Moshiach will reveal how all of Torah is all one piece. Nowadays, we see Torah as different words, but Moshiach will somehow show us that all of the Torah is really one word! Moshiach will come and shine the light of achdus contained in the Torah. He will show us how all the Torah’s wisdom is really unified.

There are levels to achdus\unity. There is partial unity, and there is all-inclusive unity. In today’s times, we can only attain a partial degree of unity. But the complete unity, the kind of unity that is all-inclusive, will be revealed when Moshiach comes; he will reveal to us how all of the Torah is one.

5.

In the future, the “new Torah” will be revealed. Yet, there is a level even deeper than this future revelation: a point that is unchanging. The new Torah of the future is a kind of renewal, and while it will be a very profound renewal, there is something even deeper than renewal: our unchanging existence.

Renewal is within the realm of movement, while Hashem’s unchanging reality is above movement. The revelation of our innermost point of the soul, which will be revealed in the future, will essentially reveal to us the non-changing existence of Hashem, and this is the ultimate revelation of the new Torah that will come forth.

6.

Everything that exists within the universe and within time takes place as well in our own soul. Thus, when we discuss Moshiach here, we are not speaking of the physical Moshiach who will come to the world, but Moshiach in our soul. We are speaking of how to reveal our own personal Moshiach of our soul. Although the general Moshiach for the masses has not yet come, the sefarim hakedoshim revealed that one’s private Moshiach can come when he reveals the depths of his soul – when he reveals the innermost point of the soul.

7.

These words are very subtle and deep. It can change our whole perspective on Avodas Hashem. It is the basis of everything we need to know, and all other facts that we know are essentially stemming from the point we are describing, because this is the root of everything. We must understand that the concept we are describing here is the key to everything. Any other words which Hashem allows us to say here can only be a result of this root concept.

8.

The word Beraishis, “In the beginning”, can also mean “beis raishis” - that there are “two beginnings.” There are two beginnings to Creation – one is the wisdom of the Torah, and the other beginning is the higher kind of beginning, the unity contained in the Torah’s wisdom. As we are in exile right now, the most we can attain is the wisdom of the Torah, but the unity of the Torah’s wisdom is concealed from us. It is hidden in the Torah, and this is essentially known as the ohr haganuz, the “hidden light”.

Yet, there was even deeper kind of light than the ohr haganuz, for there was an original light that existed before Creation, before the ohr haganuz. This original light is essentially available to us through the innermost point of our soul; it is a place in us that is above all thought, and it isn’t reached through any intellectual abilities. Our mind contains the abilities of chochmah, binah and daas, but the innermost point of the soul is above our mind.

The innermost point of the soul is essentially our power of emunah in the Creator!

9.

The first of the Ten Commandments is, “I am Hashem, your G-d.” This was the first mitzvah given to us - the mitzvah to have emunah (belief in G-d). Emunah is non-debatable. When Hashem said “I am your G-d”, this connotes that because He is our G-d, we cannot fathom Him with all our thoughts.

Emunah has become so ingrained in our conscious ever since we heard Hashem tell us at Har Sinai, “I am Hashem your G-d.” It is a deeply rooted matter in us, and it is way above our mind.

When we look at the situation in the world today, we can see that many people grapple with the subject of emunah. People are using their power of bechirah (free will) to choose not to believe in Hashem. This is due to the fact that we live in this current 6,000 year era, in which emunah isn’t so revealed.

It appears to us as if we have two options – to believe in Hashem, or to debate about Hashem and doubt our belief in Him. This is exactly the power of our free will; our free will tells us that we have a choice, to have emunah or not to have emunah. But in the era of Moshiach, it will be “Days in which you will say, ‘I have no desire” (Koheles 12:1). There will be no more bechirah\free will in the future, because everyone will see how clear the truth is. Emunah will be more than just ingrained in us – it will come from our essence.

It is written, “For I am Who I am” (Devorim 32:39). In other words, the true “I” of a person is the “I” of the Creator! What this means for us is that Emunah is essentially what we can know about the Creator. The highest perception we can have of Him is our very belief in Him. The possuk is saying that the essence of a person – our very “I” – is emunah!! It is not that “I” have to get myself to believe, (as the expression “Ani Maamin” implies…) but rather, my very “I” is, in essence, to have emunah in Hashem.

10.

We must understand the subtlety of these words.

What is a person’s true self? Are we what we do? Are we what say? Are what we think? We are none of these; we are our emunah. Our emunah is who we are!!

It’s not that “I” have to believe in Hashem; rather, my true self is defined by emunah – I am my emunah that I have in the Creator.

11.

Let us explain more what we mean.

The Ten Commandments are parallel to the ten root forces of the soul, with the mitzvah of “I am Hashem your G-d” representing our highest soul faculty. Emunah thus represents our highest, innermost point of our soul.

Therefore, when Hashem said “I am Hashem your G-d” to us at Har Sinai, our innermost point of the soul was essentially becoming revealed. We received the Torah – which is rooted in the Ten Commandments – through first revealing the ability to accept truths, and this is our power of emunah. Since Hashem said “I am Hashem your G-d”, the tool to reveal Hashem is to reveal our own “I”.

The soul has five names. Our essence, our very “I”, is our innermost point of our soul, and this is the power we can use to reveal Hashem is the Yachid (One) of the universe.

How can a person become a tool to revealing how Hashem is the Yachid of the world? Through emunah! This is what we stand for.

We are not referring to an intellectual kind of emunah, but emunah that comes from our heart.

We don’t realize what our true “I” is only due to the exile, which conceals the truth from us. We think that we have to find our “I” and acquire it; we think we have to acquire emunah. This attitude, though, makes us feel as if our existence is separate from that of the Creator.

13.

There is an old argument if emunah is counted as one of the 613 mitzvos. Some say that emunah isn’t counted as one of the 613, because without emunah, the 613 mitzvos don’t even start. All of the other 612 mitzvos can only exist after there is emunah, so it can’t be one of the 613.

The depth behind this is that emunah isn’t a mitzvah - it’s reality!

The argument if emunah should be listed as one of the 613 mitzvos is only about if we need to bring ourselves to a situation in which he reveal Him (or not). But no one argues about the fact that emunah is our essence, because the concept of emunah is not up for debate. There cannot be an argument about who we are; thus, since we are in essence emunah, there is no argument about this.

To illustrate what we mean, there is an argument in the Rishonim about how to love Hashem, but no one is of the opinion that there is a commandment to love Hashem, because you can’t be commanded to love Hashem. Loving Hashem is a matter of the heart, and heart matters cannot be commanded. This helps us understand why emunah can’t be listed as one of the 613 mitzvos. Emunah can’t be a mitzvah, because it is our very existence; there can’t be an argument about what our existence is! It’s non-debatable.

Of course, there is a very big debate about how exactly we can reveal our emunah, but the concept itself of emunah cannot be a debate.

14.

These words need to become deeply absorbed.

What’s the difference if the understanding is that “I” have to get myself to have emunah, or if I am emunah by my very definition? It is a very fundamental difference, and it affects how we will relate to Hashem.

If a person thinks that he has a mitzvah to gain emunah in Hashem, or, if he thinks that he needs to connect himself to emunah – whichever way you want to say it – then he is basically saying that his existence is apart from the Creator, and he understands that his avodah is to take his “I” and connect it with the Creator. He understands that that is done through “having” emunah, and included this of course is Torah and mitzvos.

But there is a different attitude one can have, a higher perspective: That my existence is already integrated with Hashem. A person can think to himself that even if he doesn’t know what this entails, it simply means that he doesn’t know himself, but it is still the reality.

This is the true way to view reality. When the Torah was given, Emunah became ingrained in our hearts. What does this mean? If emunah is our essence, why did it have to become ingrained in us? The way to understand this is that it’s only a borrowed terminology to say that emunah became “ingrained” in us, because we simply have no other way of conveying it. Still, we can ask: Why did our Sages have to use this borrowed terminology to explain it?

It is because at the time the Torah was given, Moshiach has not come yet, and therefore, at that time, the kind of perspective we are describing was not yet revealed (that our very “I” is emunah). The giving of the Torah revealed to us the Torah, which connects us to Hashem; Torah is called the bris (covenant) we have with Hashem, but what did it reveal? It revealed that our “I” becomes connected to Hashem through emunah. This is the implication of bris, because a bris means that our connection with Hashem will never be broken, and the Torah symbolized this bris.

Moshiach will reveal the higher attitude – that our very “I” is emunah. This is a deeper reason why our connection with Hashem will never be broken – it is because our very self is integrated with Hashem.

15.

The following results from the concept we are describing.

The simple attitude to have is that we need to connect our “I” to Hashem, and this implies that we need to “create” a bond with Him; that before the Torah was not yet given, emunah had not yet been ingrained into our hearts, and only after the giving of the Torah did emunah become ingrained in us.

But in the future, a higher perspective will be revealed. We will realize how “we were like dreamers” (Tehillim 126:1), and we will see that we didn’t have the true attitude during this current 6,000 year era. It will be revealed that all along, we were always connected with Hashem, and we that simply never knew it!

The attitude of the future is not that we have to connect ourselves with Hashem and form a relationship with Him; it is rather that we need to become aware of the reality of which we are all a part of.

In either mentality – current or future – we always have an avodah. It is only a difference in order. Before Moshiach comes – our current era – the thinking is that we need to create a relationship with Hashem, and therefore we understand that we have to become close to Him. We feel like we are starting a relationship with Him from scratch.

But after Moshiach comes, we will realize that being close to Hashem isn’t coming up with anything new, but rather, that we are revealing reality as it is. This is essentially the “new Torah” that will be revealed in the future; it is only “new” according to our current understanding, but in the future, it won’t be new. We will realize that our connection with Hashem was there all along, just that we didn’t know about it.

In the future we will express, “We were like dreamers.” Even wicked people will be included in the Redemption (except for souls who come from the Erev Rav). Why? It is because all the wicked sinners will realize that they were never “far” from Hashem even though they had sinned; that they, too, are close to Hashem, just as much as the righteous are. What then will the difference between a righteous person and a wicked person, if we are all close to Hashem anyway? The only difference will be that the righteous merited to feel the closeness with Hashem, while the wicked people didn’t feel the closeness. But they, too, were always close to Hashem – they just didn’t realize it during this current exile.

The Sages revealed, “There is no place that is empty from Him.” Not only is this true regarding the world, that there is no place in the world in which Hashem cannot be found, but in our own soul as well, there is no place that is too far from Hashem. It is really impossible to be disconnected from Hashem!

What, then, is our avodah, if we are anyways always close to Hashem??

Our avodah is to realize the truth! We don’t have to create a relationship with Hashem, because there is no such thing as not being close to Hashem! The only issue is how much one knows of this closeness or not.

16.

Whenever the Sages or the sefarim hakedoshim are describing to us a certain concept, we must realize that this was only so that this was to help us have some comprehension of the concept. The true meaning of any concept we learn about really goes much further than in the way we are comprehending it.

For example, we know that we must become close to Hashem, but this implies to us that we can either be close to Him or far from Him. However, the truthful perspective is that this is only how we feel. We feel that it’s possible to be far from Hashem. In reality, it’s not possible to be far from Hashem!

Awareness to this perspective can change our avodah drastically.

If the attitude is simply that our sins cause us to become separated from Hashem – as the possuk seems to imply, “Their sins have separated them” (Yeshayahu 59:2) – then a person thinks, “I have to try and get close to Hashem.” He thinks that he has to “form” a relationship with Hashem.

But the inner attitude to have is that since Hashem is everywhere, we cannot ever be separated from Him, even if we have sins. As it is written, “And you stand here with Me” (Devorim 5:28). The inner approach is that we must realize that Hashem is everywhere, and He is hidden in every place possible. Our entire avodah is to recognize this simple fact.

The Baal Shem Tov revealed that everything in Creation contains a G-dly spark. The understanding of this is that everything is a part of Hashem, and therefore, it is impossible to ever become separated from Him. We are utterly unified with Him, and it is simply that we are unaware of this.

The innermost point of our soul, our true self, recognizes this and is aware of this. Our true self, deep down, is aware that we are a part of Hashem, with no “garments” whatsoever getting in the way.

With Hashem’s help, we should merit to explain the avodah we have begun to describe.