Seven days with the Chernobyler Maggid

Rashi's comment is on Bereishit (Genesis) 28:10: the Torah could have written only "Yaakov went to Charan." "Aspect" translates bechinah, a side or quality of a thing. Here it is the holiness and life of Be'er Sheva, which Yaakov had drawn onto the place. The tzaddik, he says, is called "all," the one who takes hold of both heaven and earth. He ties himself to every level of the earth and to the place where he stands, so that when he rises, they rise with him. He connects this to a saying in the Gemara (the Talmud, Berachot 8a), taught in the name of Ulla: since the day the Temple was destroyed, Hashem (God) has in His world only the four cubits (the small space around a person) of halacha (Jewish law). The place a tzaddik is bound to, he says, becomes like a sanctuary (mikdash). Then he reads the next verse, "he met the place," the same way: wherever Yaakov went, he met the place that was already his.

This is how he explains Rashi on Bereishit 28:13, which comes from the Gemara (Chullin 91b): when Hashem promised Yaakov "the land on which you lie," He folded the whole Land of Israel under him. The stones that Yaakov put at his head are, he says, the letters of the first place. Elsewhere in this chapter he notes that Sefer Yetzirah (an early book of Kabbalah, the hidden teachings of the Torah) calls letters "stones." With them, he says, night shines like day.

Rashi's comment is on Bereishit (Genesis) 28:11, and comes from the Gemara (the Talmud, Chullin 91b), where a baraita (an early teaching) adds that all the stones were swallowed into one. The count of twelve is Rabbi Yehudah's in the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 68:11); others there count three, or two. The Me'or Einayim hears in "stones" the verse "the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel" (Bereishit 49:24). "These and those are the words of the living God" is what a voice from Heaven said about the schools of Shammai and Hillel (Eruvin 13b).

The Gemara there goes on to ask: if both are the words of the living God, why does the halacha (Jewish law) follow the school of Hillel? Because they were agreeable and forbearing, and taught the school of Shammai's words along with their own, and even put Shammai's first. The Me'or Einayim does not quote that part. Today's move is taken from it.

He reads the next verses (Bereishit 28:18-19) the same way. Yaakov rose in the "morning," which he reads as the light of the higher da'at at its source, took the stone, and stood it up as a pillar, in one stance. He poured oil on its head: light flowing from the source onto every side of the da'at, "all of them equally for good, to be counted as the words of the living God." He named the place Beit El, the house of God, which the Me'or Einayim links to the phrase chesed El, "the kindness of God": at the source there is only kindness, without the dispute that appears below. All of this, he says, Yaakov set in order for the generations to come, "so that they would have a paved road to go up the mountain of Hashem."

Without that trace, he says, the tzaddik would be left below once the holiness had gone. The saying about the Western Wall is Rav Acha's, in the Midrash (the Sages' teachings on the Torah, Shemot Rabbah 2:2). The verse is Mishlei (Proverbs) 24:16. "All this," he adds, "is about a tzaddik." Behind it is a rule he states as well known: as a person stirs himself below, so he is answered from above.

This is a second reading of the saying from Sunday's teaching, that a tzaddik's leaving a place makes a mark, which Rashi (the classic commentator) brings on Bereishit (Genesis) 28:10. Here he quotes it as a saying of the Sages. The "place" is the level the tzaddik stood on, and the mark, roshem, is the trace that level leaves in him.

These paragraphs go on to a second teaching, about how a person should understand suffering (Vayetzei 22 to 26). It needs more care than a short page can give, and we have left it out.

He ties this to the Gemara (Berachot 12a): whoever did not say emet veyatziv ("true and firm") in the morning and emet ve'emunah ("true and faithful") at night has not fulfilled his obligation. These are the blessings said after the Shema (the daily declaration of Hashem's oneness), morning and evening. The Gemara brings a verse for this: "to tell Your kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the nights" (Tehillim, Psalms, 92:3). The Me'or Einayim reads it this way: morning is the level of the tzaddik (a righteous person), who is bound to Hashem's kindness. Night is when a person has no understanding of his own. A person who has faith, he says, can come to a great level even without understanding of his own.

Faith, he continues, can bring a person to teshuvah (return to God), until his heart is clear enough for the Creator to rest in it, as it says, "They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell within them" (Shemot, Exodus, 25:8). That, he says, is why Israel was chosen: to become a chariot and a throne for His glory, as the Sages say of the Avot (the forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov) in the Midrash (the Sages' teachings on the Torah, Bereishit Rabbah 47:6). First "turn from evil," leaving it with a whole heart, and then "do good" (Tehillim 34:15), which he reads as making a place for the Good, the Creator, to rest.

The teaching about Chabakuk is in Makkot 24a, on Chabakuk 2:4. "They believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant" is Shemot 14:31. The verse about teachers is Tehillim 119:99. "From all my teachers I grew wise" is how Ben Zoma reads it in the Mishnah (the first written code of the Oral Torah), in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 4:1: "Who is wise? One who learns from every person." Others, such as Ibn Ezra (a classic commentator of about 900 years ago), read it as "more than all my teachers." The Me'or Einayim cites only the verse. The Mishnah is our addition.

"Aspect" translates bechinah, a side or quality of a thing. "Clothed in" is his way of saying that one thing is present inside another. The verses are Malachi 3:23-24. He gives an example from learning. When a person struggles over something, one point enters the mind before the understanding comes, like a piece of news. That point, he says, is the aspect of Eliyahu. Then comes "the earth will be filled with knowledge" (Yeshayahu, Isaiah, 11:9): the mind widens and fills with life. Rashi's comment on Bereishit (Genesis) 29:1 comes from the Midrash (the Sages' teachings on the Torah, Bereishit Rabbah 70:8).

The reason, he says, is that the soul senses the aspect of Eliyahu and wants to bring it in, even though people do not feel this themselves.

By "feet" he means the lower half of a person, where, he says, the pull of evil and of the physical begins. He brings a Gemara (the Talmud, Sanhedrin 39a) in which a man the Me'or Einayim calls a heretic tells the sage Ameimar that a person's upper half belongs to one power and his lower half to another. The truth, the Me'or Einayim says, is that a person is one, made by one God, and was made this way so that there would be free choice. The work is to lift the "feet" and join them to the rest. He reads Malachi's "He will turn the heart of fathers to sons" this way: the upper half and the lower become one, as it says, "In all your ways know Him" (Mishlei, Proverbs, 3:6).

And "it became easy (kal) to walk": the letters of kal have the number value 130, and he says there are 130 combinations of the letters of Eliyahu's name that come to help a person walk on to a higher level.

The verse is Chaggai 2:8. "Truth is the seal of the Holy One" is Rabbi Chanina's saying in the Gemara (the Talmud, Shabbat 55a). He adds the promise of the Sages that "one who comes to purify is helped" (Yoma 38b): the person who brings truth into a deal is helped from above to lift what is hidden in it. He also quotes the Gemara (Pesachim 119a) on the words "all the substance at their feet" (Devarim, Deuteronomy, 11:6): Rabbi Elazar says, "this is a person's money, which stands him on his feet."

The words before this are the surprising ones: serving Hashem in business is, "in this respect," a greater service than that of one who is occupied with Torah, since there is more delight above when holy life is brought up from a low place. Then he sets the limit quoted here. He adds that serving Hashem in business is itself Torah, since Torah is in every thing, and that without learning Torah a person would never come to this at all. He ends the point in the words of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 7:18: take hold of this, and do not let go of that.

Sulam, spelled with a vav, and mamon both add up to 136. The Me'or Einayim cites "the books" for this. It appears in the Ba'al HaTurim (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, about 700 years ago, whose short Torah commentary is known for number values) on Bereishit (Genesis) 28:12, which adds that the ladder also equals oni (poverty), "for this one He lowers and this one He raises." Yaakov took "from the stones of the place," which the Me'or Einayim reads as the element of earth, from which silver and gold come, and set them "at his head," at their highest source.

He ties this to Yaakov's fight with the angel (Bereishit 32:25-33). Yaakov fought, he says, for his children in every generation. The angel could not overcome him, and touched the hollow of his thigh, which the Me'or Einayim reads as the "feet," money, the place where the sitra achra found a hold. So "the children of Israel do not eat the gid hanasheh (the sinew of the thigh)": he reads nasheh as forgetting, and the verse as a warning not to make a living from money that comes by way of the yetzer hara. This reading sits on top of the plain mitzvah (commandment), which stands as it is.

The Me'or Einayim quotes this from the Midrash Tanchuma, with Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta as the sage who is asked. In his telling it is not said who asked. In our editions of the Tanchuma the story appears twice, and a noblewoman asks. In Vayishlach 10, with the proof from Yaakov, the sage is Rabbi Yosi ben Chalafta. In Matot 6 he is printed as Rabbi Shmuel bar Chalafta, and in the parallel in Bamidbar Rabbah 22:8 he is Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta. The answer is the same: He makes ladders, raising this one and lowering that one. Chana said it in her prayer: "Hashem makes poor and makes rich, He brings low and also lifts up" (Shmuel I, I Samuel, 2:7). The Tanchuma's proof is Yaakov. He left home with only his staff and slept on stones; had he owned a pillow, he would have used it. In Lavan's house "the man grew exceedingly rich" (Bereishit, Genesis, 30:43), through his father's blessing, "the blessing of Avraham" (Bereishit 28:4), of whom it says, "Hashem blessed Avraham with everything" (Bereishit 24:1).

The verses say that heaven and earth were completed and that Hashem rested from all His work (Bereishit 2:1-3). The classic commentators explain the word la'asot, "to do," in several ways. "Creation is not yet finished" is the Me'or Einayim's own reading of it, which he quotes from another teaching of his.

The Me'or Einayim begins this teaching from Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 66:1, "The heavens are My throne and the earth is My footstool": Hashem handed Israel the task of repairing the "footstool," the lowest things, by drawing the holy sparks out of them.

This is his reading of "Yaakov came whole" (Bereishit 33:18), on which Rav says in the Gemara (the Talmud, Shabbat 33b): whole in his body, whole in his money, whole in his Torah. (The Me'or Einayim quotes only body and Torah; his explanation adds money.) And of the verse before it, "Yaakov traveled to Sukkot": a sukkah, the hut of the festival of Sukkot, means leaving the fixed home for a temporary one. A person, he says, should not make this world the main thing, but a temporary home, and should use it for the sake of the World to Come, drawing Hashem's presence into every thing in this world.