Chapter 46: As Water Reflects a Face: The King Who Came Down to Us

One more straight path lies open to everyone, fitting every soul alike, and the thing is “exceedingly close”: to rouse and set alight the love that lies planted and concealed in his heart, until it blazes with its full brightness like a flaming fire, out in the open in his heart and mind. Then he will hand his soul over to G‑d, and with it his body and all he owns, with his whole heart, his whole soul and all his strength, from the innermost heart and in complete sincerity. This applies above all while saying the Shema and the blessings around it, as we will see.

Here is how: let him reflect on the verse “As in water face mirrors face, so does one person’s heart mirror another’s” (Mishlei 27:19). Just as the exact shape and look of the face a person turns toward the water is returned to him from the water, so too with the heart of someone who loves another loyally. His love wakes a love for him in his friend’s heart in turn, until they are devoted friends, each loving the other, and all the more so once the friend sees how he is loved.

This is how every human being is made, even when the two are on the same footing. How much more when a vast and powerful king reveals his deep and fierce love for a common man, scorned, the lowliest of people, a disgraced figure sprawled on a dunghill. The king descends from his seat of honor, all his ministers with him, picks the man up, lifts him off the dunghill, and leads him into the royal palace, into an inner room within an inner room, where no servant or minister ever goes. There he joins with him in real union and nearness, embracing and kissing him, spirit bonding with spirit, with his whole heart and soul. Surely a love twice and many times over will rise on its own in the heart of this plain, lowly man toward the king himself, a genuine bonding of soul, from heart and soul and from the innermost heart, without limit. Even a heart of stone would certainly dissolve into water, and his soul would spill out like water, in a true kelos hanefesh (the soul’s yearning to the point of expiring) out of love for the king.

Every detail of this picture, and the whole of it, and far more, many times over without end, our G‑d has done for us. His greatness is boundless. He fills every world and encircles every world. We know from the holy Zohar and from the Arizal how many heichalos (“chambers”) and worlds there are, past counting, and in each world and each heichal countless myriads of angels without end. The Gemara puts it this way (Chagigah 13b): one verse asks, “Can His troops be counted?” (Iyov 25:3), while another says, “Thousands upon thousands minister to Him, myriads upon myriads attend Him” (Daniel 7:10). The answer: “thousands upon thousands” is the size of a single troop, but His troops cannot be counted. And before Him all of them count as literally nothing, their very being cancelled, the way a single word is cancelled next to the essence of the soul that speaks it, while that word was still inside its thought or its heart’s wish and longing, as was explained at length earlier (chapters 20–21).

Every one of them asks, “Where does His glory dwell?” and they reply, “His glory fills all the earth” (Yeshayahu 6:3), meaning His people Israel. The Holy One, blessed be He, passed over the beings above and below and picked none of them except Israel, His people. He took them out of Egypt, “the nakedness of the land” (Bereishis 42:9), a place of filth and defilement, “not by means of an angel nor a saraf…, but the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory” (Haggadah) descended there, as the verse says, “I have descended to rescue them…” (Shemos 3:8). All this to draw them near to Him in real closeness and union, a genuine bonding of soul: at the level of “kisses”, mouth to mouth, which is saying the word of G‑d, that is halachah; and spirit joined to spirit, which is grasping the Torah and knowing His will and wisdom, all of which are truly one [with Him]. And at the level of “embrace” too: doing the active mitzvos with the 248 limbs, since the 248 commandments are the King’s 248 “limbs”, as said above (chapter 23). Broadly they fall into three groups, right, left and middle, namely chesed (kindness), din (judgment) and rachamim (mercy), matching the right arm, the left arm and the torso, and so forth.

This is what we say in the blessing: “Who has kiddeshanu with His mitzvos”, just as a man betroths (mekadesh) a woman so that she becomes wholly one with him, as the verse says, “He will cling to his wife and the two become a single flesh” (Bereishis 2:24). In just this way, and beyond all measure more, the G‑dly soul occupied with Torah and mitzvos, along with the vital soul and the garments described above, is united with the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He.

That is why Shlomo HaMelech, in Shir HaShirim, compares this union to the union of bride and groom, with attachment, longing and desire, with embrace and kiss.

The same words, “Who has kiddeshanu with His mitzvos”, also mean that He lifted us to His own supreme holiness, blessed be He, that of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His very glory and self. Kedushah means being set apart: the Holy One, blessed be He, stands apart from the worlds. This is the level of “encircling all worlds”, which cannot be enclothed within them.

For when the soul is united with the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, and absorbed into it, it stands at the very level of the holiness of Ein Sof Himself, since it is joined and absorbed in Him and the two are truly one. That is the sense of the verse “Be holy to Me, for I, G‑d, am holy; I set you apart from the peoples to belong to Me” (Vayikra 20:26). Another verse says, “Carry out all My mitzvos and be holy to your G‑d. I am G‑d your G‑d…” (Bamidbar 15:40–41). The meaning: by keeping the mitzvos I become your G‑d, just as He is called “the G‑d of Avraham, the G‑d of Yitzchak…”, because the Avos were a merkavah (“chariot”) for Him, nullified and absorbed in His light.

So it is with every Jewish soul at the time it is busy with Torah and mitzvos. That is why our Sages, of blessed memory, required us to rise and stand before anyone busy with a mitzvah, even if he is a boor and an ignorant man (Kiddushin 33a). It is because of G‑d, Who dwells and clothes Himself in his soul at that time. Only his soul does not feel it, because of the screen of the bodily matter that has not been refined, which darkens the eyes of the soul from seeing G‑dly visions, as the Avos and others like them did, who “saw their world in their lifetime”.

So Asaf said with ruach hakodesh, speaking in the name of all Israel in exile: “I was brutish and without understanding; I was like cattle before You. But I am ever with You” (Tehillim 73:22–23). That is: although I am like an animal while I am with You, at the very moment of union, and I neither know nor sense in my soul this union, which ought to fill it first with fear and trembling and then with great love and delight, or like flames of fire, as happens to tzaddikim whose physical nature has been refined (for daas, as is known, is the soul’s feeling, and it contains chesed and gevurah), still “I am ever with You”. The body’s physicality does not block the soul from being united with the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, who fills all worlds, as the verse says, “Even darkness is not dark to You” (Tehillim 139:12).

With this we can understand the severity of the punishment for doing forbidden work on Shabbos and for chametz on Pesach, which is equal for every soul. For even in the soul of a boor and a complete ignoramus the light of the holiness of Shabbos and Yom Tov shines, and his soul is judged with kares (“cutting off”) or stoning for desecrating this holiness.

Even the tiniest crumb of chametz, or moving muktzeh (something not to be handled on Shabbos), mars the holiness resting on his soul exactly as it would mar that of a tzaddik’s soul, for all of us share one Torah.

Note: The verse says “cattle” in the plural to hint that in His presence, blessed be He, even daas elyon (“supernal knowledge”), which contains chesed and gevurah, is like cattle and mere physical handiwork next to the light of Ein Sof, as the verse says, “In wisdom You fashioned them all” (Tehillim 104:24). This is called behemah rabbah (“the great beast”), as explained elsewhere. It is the Name Ban, whose numerical value equals behemah (“beast”), which precedes Atzilus.