THROWING US BACK TO WHERE WE'VE NEVER BEEN

What does a tzaddik do for those who are connected to him? One of the very important things is that he helps us come back to Hashem, even when we are incapable of doing so ourselves..

In Torah 35 Rabbeinu says that "teshuvah entails returning the thing to where it was taken from". This source is Chochmah (Wisdom) with which Hashem created the world. Practically, this means that a person who has merited returning to that lofty level lives with constant awareness of Hashem, and this awareness dictates everything they do or don't do.

Rabbeinu goes on to say that this is the aspect of zarka (one of the musical notes used when reading the Torah; literally it means "to throw"). What this means that a person needs to be "thrown" back to the level of Chochmah because, more often than not, they are incapable of getting there by themselves, even if they want to. This is where the tzaddik comes in. He takes his followers, if only they are willing, and brings them back to the level of Supernal Wisdom and pure connection to Hashem.

Without the tzaddik, of course, we can regret whatever we've done wrong and resolve never to do that again. (Although there is no guarantee that we won't slip when the initial enthusiasm wears off.) Yet teshuvah means "return". Only the tzaddik can take us back to the level where forgetting Hashem and sinning would be simply inconceivable.

NOTE: This post has been inspired be the little book that contains explanations of the first 35 Torahs of "Likutei Moharan". Although it doesn't give any information about the author, one of my Breslov friends told me that it had been written by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchok Kletzky, a student of Rav Kivak. I sincerely recommend this book to everyone who can read Hebrew.

https://umanshalom.co.il/tag/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A5-%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WELL-GROUNDED VS. FLOATING AND DROWNING

The famous Jerusalem tzaddik Rabbi Arye Levin once said (I'm quoting from memory, so this just the idea that caught my attention and not his exact words), "When good and righteous people dream, their visions can reach Heavens but they are still firmly planted on the ground, like the ladder seen by Yaakov Avinu. Yet when evil people dream, their dreams are neither above nor below, neither reaching high nor rooted in reality; when Pharaoh had his dream, he saw himself standing at the edge of a river - neither here nor there." When I started writing for the Nanach blog, one of the conditions was that I wasn't allowed to mention any "contemporary Rabbis", which obviously included my teachers in Breslov. At first it was fun, "Hey, I have so many ideas of my own that I can write tons of posts without ever mentioning anybody else!" I saw it as an interesting challenge, and I wanted to prove that I could do this. Yet, after a while, I started to get a nagg...
Read more

"AND KNOW..."

  I was reading a Hebrew book on Halacha today and came upon the phrase ודע ("and know"). And I couldn't help thinking, "How fortunate we are!" When this phrase appears in any other book except for "Likutei Moharan", what follows is just information, however important or even vital it might be. But when Rabbeinu uses this phrase, we can be sure that he is now going to convey a revelation straight from the Olam HaAtzilus.
Read more

FROM "TEIKU" TO "TIKKUN"

My closest friend used to learn the Talmud in her youth. Then she came to the conclusion that Hashem wanted something very different from her, so she got married and had quite a few children. Yet, of course, she's continued to be a very deep person, so we often exchange deep and profound ideas. Recently she shared something very interesting. In the Talmud, the discussion sometimes ends with the word "תיקו" (" teiku "), which means that no answer has been found to that particular question. So my friend said that this "תיקו" is "תיקון" (" tikkun " - "correction") without the letter ""ן" (" nun "). Since we were discussing not the Talmud but our personal lives. she said that whenever a person feels stuck in " teiku ", being unable to find any answers to their life dilemmas, all they need to do is find that missing " nun ", and then they'll be able to turn " teiku " in...
Read more