Chapter 42: The Moshe Within: Making G‑d Real

What was said above about the lower fear sheds light on the Gemara’s remark about the verse “And now, Israel, what is it that G‑d your G‑d requests of you? Just that you fear G‑d your G‑d” (Devarim 10:12). The Gemara wonders: “Is fear such a minor matter?” and replies: “Indeed, for Moshe it is a minor matter,” and so forth (Berachos 33b).

On its face the reply is puzzling, since the verse says “requests of you” [that is, of every Jew, not of Moshe]. Here is the explanation. Each and every soul of the House of Israel carries within it something of Moshe Rabbeinu, peace be upon him. He is one of the “seven shepherds” through whom life and G‑dliness flow to all the souls of Israel, which is why they bear the title “shepherds”. Moshe Rabbeinu, peace be upon him, contains all seven and is named “the faithful shepherd”. In other words, he is the channel of daas (knowledge) to all Israel, enabling them to know G‑d, each one according to what his soul can grasp and its root on high, and according to how it is nourished from the root of Moshe Rabbeinu’s soul, peace be upon him. That root lies in the higher daas of the ten sefiros of Atzilus, which are united with their blessed Emanator; for He and His knowledge are one, and “He is the knowledge…” [in the Rambam’s words].

Beyond this, in each generation sparks from the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu, peace be upon him, descend and take on the body and soul of that generation’s sages, “the eyes of the community”, so as to impart knowledge to the people: that they come to know how great G‑d is and serve Him with heart and soul. Serving with the heart hinges on daas, as Scripture says, “Know the G‑d of your father, and serve Him with a complete heart and an eager soul” (Divrei Hayamim I 28:9). And of the time to come Scripture says, “A man will no more teach his fellow … ‘Know G‑d’, for every one of them will know Me…” (Yirmeyahu 31:33).

Yet daas is not chiefly a matter of knowing, of people being aware of G‑d’s greatness because writers and books tell them of it. What matters most is sinking the mind deep into G‑d’s greatness and fixing the thought on G‑d with all the force and resolve of heart and mind, until his thought is tied to G‑d with a firm, powerful tie, the way it is tied to some physical object that his own physical eyes are looking at and that he is thinking hard about. For daas, as is known, carries the sense of union, as in “And Adam knew (yada) Chavah…” (Bereishis 4:1).

Every soul of the House of Israel possesses this capacity, this ability to attach its daas to G‑d, since it is nourished from Moshe Rabbeinu’s soul, peace be upon him. But because the soul has been vested in a body, it must labor hard and powerfully, two kinds of labor. First, labor of the body: crushing and humbling the body so that it will not obscure the soul’s light, in line with the Zohar cited earlier: “A body that the soul’s light does not penetrate must be crushed.” That is accomplished with thoughts of teshuvah from the bottom of the heart, as was explained there.

Second, labor of the soul: not to find the effort too burdensome, but to make its thought work, delving and reflecting on G‑d’s greatness for a long, uninterrupted span of time. How long that span must be differs from soul to soul. One soul is fine by nature: the moment it reflects on G‑d’s greatness, fear and awe of G‑d arrive immediately. So the Shulchan Aruch writes (Orach Chaim, section 1): “When a man takes to heart that the great King, the King over all kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, Whose glory fills all the earth, is standing over him and watching what he does, fear will come over him immediately…”

Another soul is base by nature and by birth, coming from where it was quarried in the lower grades of the ten sefiros of Asiyah. Such a soul can discover G‑dliness through contemplation only with strain and exertion, all the more so if the sins of youth have sullied it, for sins create a separation, and so forth [as Sefer Chassidim states, section 35].

Still, with strain and exertion, when his thought works hard, forcefully, laboring greatly and concentrating intensely, sinking into G‑d’s greatness for a lengthy time, the lower fear spoken of above will certainly come to him at least. As the Sages put it: “[If a person tells you,] ‘I toiled and I found,’ you may believe him” (Megillah 6b). Scripture too says: “If you look for it as for silver and hunt for it as for buried treasure, then you will grasp the fear of G‑d” (Mishlei 2:4–5). Think of someone hunting for a buried treasure or riches sunk deep in the ground, who keeps digging without tiring; just so one must dig with unflagging effort to bring to light the treasure of the fear of Heaven. It lies buried and concealed in the understanding of every Jewish heart, beyond the reach of time. This is the natural, concealed fear spoken of earlier.

But for it to come into action, as “fear of sin”, that is, to turn away from evil in deed, speech and thought, one must bring it out from the hidden understanding of the heart, where it is above time, and place it in actual thought in the brain. He must immerse his thought in it for a long time, until its effect comes out from potential into actual: to turn away from evil and do good in thought, speech and action, because of G‑d, who looks and sees, listens and hears, understands all his deeds and searches his kidneys and heart. As the Sages said: “Reflect on three things … an Eye that sees and an Ear that hears…” (Avos 2:1).

And although He has no bodily form, on the contrary: everything is revealed and known to Him far more than through physical sight or hearing. It is like, for example, a person who knows and feels within himself everything that happens to each of his 248 limbs, such as cold and heat. He feels the heat even in his toenails, for example, when he is burned by fire. So too their very being, and everything done to them, he knows and feels in his brain.

In a similar way, as an example, the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything that happens to all created beings, higher and lower, because they all receive their flow of life from Him, as it is written, “For everything is from You” (Divrei Hayamim I 29:14). This is what we say, “And no creature is hidden from You” [in the Musaf of Rosh Hashanah]. And as the Rambam said [and the masters of the Kabbalah agreed with him, as Rabbi Moshe Cordovero writes in the Pardes], “By knowing Himself, as it were, He knows all created things, which exist from the truth of His existence…”

But this example is only to quiet the ear. In truth the example is not like the thing compared at all. For the human soul, even the rational soul and the G‑dly soul, is affected by what happens to the body and its pain, because it is actually clothed in the life-giving soul, which is clothed in the body itself.

But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not, G‑d forbid, affected by the world and its changes, nor by the world itself, for they cause no change in Him, G‑d forbid. To make this well understood by the mind, the masters of the truth [the Kabbalists] have already written at length in their books. But all Israel are “believers, children of believers,” without any human intellectual inquiry at all, and they say, “You were the same before the world was created…” [and You are the same since it was created], as explained above in chapter 20.

Therefore every single Jew, whoever he may be, when he reflects for a long while each day on how the Holy One, blessed be He, is truly present above and below, truly fills the heavens and the earth, and “the whole earth is full of His glory”, truly; and He looks and sees and searches his kidneys and heart and all his actions and words, and counts all his steps: then fear will be set in his heart all day long. And when he thinks of this again, even with a light thought, at any time or moment, he will turn away from evil and do good, in thought, speech and action, so as not to rebel, G‑d forbid, before the eyes of His glory, which fills the whole world. This is like the words of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai to his students, quoted above.

And this is what the verse says: “Only to fear the L‑rd your G‑d, to walk in all His ways” (Devarim 10:12). For this is the fear that leads to keeping His commandments, through turning away from evil and doing good. This is the lower fear mentioned above. As it applies to “Moshe”, meaning the quality of daas that is in every G‑dly soul of Israel, it is a small thing, as explained above. [For daas is what joins the hidden understanding of the heart with what is actually revealed in thought, as is known to students of the Kabbalah.]

Beyond this, one should remember that with a king of flesh and blood, the main fear of him is of his inner self and life, not of his body. For when he is asleep, there is no fear of him. And his inner self and life certainly cannot be seen with physical eyes, only with the mind’s eye: by seeing with physical eyes his body and his garments, one knows that his life is clothed in them. If so, he should truly fear G‑d in the same way when he looks with his physical eyes at the heavens and the earth and all their hosts, in which the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is clothed, giving them life.

Note: It can also be seen with the eye that they are nullified to His light, blessed be He, in that they “bow down” every day toward the west when they set. As the Sages said on the verse “And the hosts of the heavens bow down to You” (Nechemiah 9:6): the Shechinah is in the west, so their going westward each day is like a bowing and a self-nullification. And even one who has never seen the king and does not recognize him at all, when he enters the king’s court and sees many honored ministers bowing down before one man, fear and dread fall on him.

And although this clothing is through many garments, with a king of flesh and blood there is no difference at all in the fear of him, whether he is unclothed, or wearing one garment, or many.

But the main thing is habit: to train one’s mind and thought constantly, so that it is always fixed in his heart and mind that everything he sees with his eyes, the heavens and the earth and all that fills them, are the outer garments of the King, the Holy One, blessed be He. In this way he will always remember their inner part and their life. This is also included in the word emunah (faith), which means training, something a person trains himself in, like a craftsman (uman) who trains his hands, and so on.

And one should also constantly remember the Sages’ words about “accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”, which corresponds to “You shall surely set a king over yourself” (Devarim 17:15), as explained elsewhere, and so on. For the Holy One, blessed be He, leaves aside the higher and lower beings and makes His Kingship rest uniquely upon us, and so on, and we accept it, and so on. This is the meaning of bowing in the Shemoneh Esrei, after accepting the Kingdom of Heaven in words in the Shema: one accepts it again in actual deed, in action, and so on, as explained elsewhere.