Derech Hashem Part7 The Relationship of Attachment to G-d (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

okay yesterday uh we were left with one loose end we have two explanations why there is free will and struggle and success and failure a reward and punishment why do we go through all of that why didn't the creator put us in the world to come straight and give us all the good that he wanted to give us one explanation which you find very widely including lutsato in the in the das unknowns is nohm of the suffer the bread of shame you didn't earn it you feel like you're being degraded belittled has no self-esteem that means that the the enjoyment will be accompanied by a pain or a lack it'll be substandard because rojo wants to do the best possible good so he gives us a prelude of earning it so that the quality of what we get eventually will be the highest quality that explanation was was subject to the objection create us in such a way that we won't feel belittled we won't need to earn it just create us without that emotion and then you don't have to avoid it because it isn't there and you could skip this whole section of history the other explanation which as far as i know is found only here in the way of god chapter 2 is that god wants to give the maximum good he is the maximum good so part of giving it is to create a creature that could be as much like himself as possible share qualities that god himself has the more qualities of god you have the better off you are the more good you have and one key quality that god has is independence so free will enables us to be partly independent other qualities that god has are moral and spiritual qualities and those only are capable for for a creature that has free will somebody who doesn't have free will is not good not kind not just or unjust not virtuous or vicious so by giving us free will because rojo makes it possible for us to be like him being like it means embodying that much of his good as we can which is the best thing for us and it also as we said but didn't yet explain it also enables us to attach ourselves to him and benefit from his infinite good the infinite good that we can't possess because it's infinite we are finite and that's why free will and acting on our own and earning it is crucial because it's the only way to get the ultimate good that god wants to give so those were two different explanations and since the first one was subject to an objection the second one is very important because it's not subject to that objection the question then is how do the two explanations fit together since himself does use both explanations in two different books but he does use both of them the best i can do is to explain it this way once you take on board the explanation he gives here in chapter 2 of the way of god if you ask yourself what is the soul's self-perception how does the soul look at itself how did the soul see itself see its essence see it's its project in this world if the soul knows everything that i just told you then the soul knows when it earns something it's becoming godlike and by becoming god-like it's acquiring for itself the greatest possible good just like we said yesterday about abraham when he is receiving god's presence a vision of god and then he sees the three strangers and he breaks off receiving god's presence to show hospitality to the strangers and the rabbinic tradition learns from this greater is hospitality than receiving the divine presence and i told you that lester asks the question okay we see what he did and we could deduce from what he did that one is bigger than the other how did he know and radessa says because if you are looking for the closest possible relationship with god when the relationship is he's giving you you're receiving you're unlike god he's giving and you're receiving when you go out to do hospitality he's a giver he's giving and you're giving then you like god you're more securely more profoundly attached to god when you're giving to the strangers than you are when you're receiving his presence so if this is telling us it's it's not apples and oranges apples and apples it's greater uh security and completeness of your connection to god and that's because he's doing what god is doing and that can only be done with with free will the rain does not become very close to god because it enables our plants to grow and enables us to live that's a benefit that comes through god's manipulating it not from it and therefore it it gets no credit for that so um the the soul knows all of this now imagine matt you have the soul and knows that this is its goal this is its greatest possible success to do something to earn to do something to create to use its own decision-making process and its own powers to create something good and now you give the soul something for nothing if you take that in emotionally how would the soul respond to such an event emotionally you're shooting me in the foot you're crippling me my whole success is in doing it for myself and that way i'm doing what god does you're giving it to me so then it's it you're crippling you're not helping me you're crippling me i'll give you an example this is a story that's told about the garden of vilna as everyone knows you have a good inclination evil inclination that you conflict often at what you should do and there are temptations and so on and so on great people also have an evil inclination it's just that you can't tempt them with things that tempt us i'm sitting and learning and i get thirsty i think boy coke that's what i need i need a coke trouble is the only coke that's available is that the corn is stored so it takes me ten minutes to get there to get the coke ten minutes to get back i'm gonna lose a half hour of learning yeah but i'm thirsty i'm thirsty so i struggle either i got the car guys don't get the coke now you take the gun the villain was sitting and learning and say hey gone coke how about a coke he can't hear you coke are you kidding i'm learning so you can't tempt it that way but you're contempt the temptation that's on record is an angel came to him and said i will give you an injection of torah i will inject torah into your mind and your heart just injection that's a temptation for him because his whole life is learning more torah understanding more torah knowing more torah he said no because the only torah that's worth having is torah that i learned for myself this is precisely this sentiment to turn down something that's precious to you not something that's an avoidable and unnecessary physical thing which you you despise in certain ways anyway no he's living his whole life to get more torah but he's living his whole life to get more torah not to have more torah and if he could have more without getting it he doesn't want it because he knows that's the process of getting it that makes it into something godly makes him into something godly because he's doing it for himself so to speak so if if if something's presented to the soul without it's earning it the soul says you're ruining me this is the sense of it's awful now i don't know whether the word embarrassment is the exact same right word emotionally but you can feel the the negativity in the soul the rejection and the soul uh the sense of being undone the sense of being not treated in terms of what i really am like i explained the other day you know you give somebody a handout i just happened to be a couple of times in my life a few days ago somebody came to the door we have people asking for charity come to the door every day um and he had a piece of paper in his hand using a piece of paper is a rabbinical certification that he you know that he's that he's genuine and uh so i said wait a moment and i went and got a coin and i came and he said no no no my wife runs a medical uh lending service she has i don't know 500 medicines and people come and borrow them and take them back and this was like the prescription for the for the medicine so he i could he i could feel him looking looking at me i treated him like a beggar i didn't treat him badly i went to get money for him but his attitude is i'm not begging i'm not begging i'm not asking for help i need this medicine i'll return it next week that's all so there's there's this sense of being misrepresented as someone who's got his hand out and can't make for himself that sense of of the soul is is this uh feeling of rejection feeling of of being undone feeling of not being treated in the way that's good for me or gets my right identity by handing me something for nothing that's the the what the other explanation is pointing out just that there's an emotional reaction and the emotional reaction is accurate it's real it's not like being afraid of the dark because being treated as something which can't and won't do for itself is to say you're treating the soul of a human being like a squirrel sorry that's a it's a tragedy for the soul that's the best i can do to justify the the insight that that that explanation uh provides but because it's subject to the objection that issue creates without that feeling the real explanation to why we have free will i think is here and not there now that's my own speculation but uh i mean we needed that too to close the door on on the question now the other part of it is where he says that this process of becoming close becoming similar to god in itself is a process of attaching to god and by that problem attaching to god you get a access so to speak to his infinite goodness you'll be able to benefit from his infinite goodness now here i want to report to you something that i heard from my oldest son who's taught me a great deal i quoted to you what the hiroshami says about this he who eats that which is not his own is embarrassed to look the giver in the face if you tell the story of embarrassment why does the yochana use the phrase look him in the face why does he do that okay it's poetry poetry just means he feels embarrassed our sources do are poetical from i'd say quite often but if you look at it from the point of view of the kabbalah there's something very deep going on here there are different types of relationship in the kabbalah between two people or two to various principles of action there are different types of relationship face-to-face relationship is ideal face to face when you have a face-to-face meeting and he in hebrew you have an interesting way to put it they say it's a meeting by our behalf with four eyes you are two and his two what's going on in face-to-face meeting face-to-face means you're sitting as equals each one will give and receive there'll be a give and take of ideas there's a certain commonality a certain sharing a certain partnership in a face-to-face meeting which you don't have in other types of relationship in the kabbalah in order to have a face-to-face relationship there has to be some equality between the two sides if the two sides are very different from one another we don't call it a face-to-face relationship now how could there be a face-to-face relationship between the creator and a creature what kind of commonality could you possibly have between the creator and a creature that would justify such a relationship i'll give you a contrast a contrast to compare it with one of the philosophers said let's say you have a pet dog how do your life and his life interact or overlap let's say this is your life it's a circle and this is his life it's a circle how are the two circles related he says they're related because they overlap at one point point has no dimensions remember no size the point is just the position this one is here and this one is here and they interact intersect in one point all the rest of your life is here and all the rest of his life is here right when you feed the dog what does the dog think you're doing he thinks you're giving him food why to know just it's nice that he does it does he love me is he training me is he going to slaughter me tomorrow he has no idea there's no clue what's going on in the human being's life and what and how that affects his life it's the the intersection and by the way you and me probably understands very little about the dog also certainly the inner what's the inner uh experience of the dog the human being has very little experience of very little information about i don't know if you've ever heard of oliver sachs he was a great neuro neurologist and he treated people with all sorts of injuries his wonderful books one jew from london and he talked about a doctor who got a blow to the head which temporarily for several months released his sense of smell meaning the sense of smell is really there we don't use it because we devote a lot of the brain to the eyes and the ears but this somehow released it and he could smell other things like dogs do he said he sat in his clinic and he could tell who was in the waiting room he could tell how they felt he could tell whether they're in pain or not just by by the the aromas that he smelled from the from the from the people right so he got an experience of what it's like to be a dog the rest of us we hear the words but we don't have any any way of living living that experience so this is the relationship between your experience and the experience of the dog is this it it intersects at only one only one point is the the gap is junk is gigantic right here we talk about the creator and a creature the gap is infinite now how could you imagine a face-to-face relationship between the creator and a creature what could they hypothetically have in common so the answer is what we've been saying from this chapter created a creature and created a world in such a way that the creature can really have something like divine characteristics it really can be similar so we said this with respect to independence god's independence is absolute universal and necessary our independence is partial and limited and contingent because we could lose it but this is independence and this is independence they're both independent it's just that god says more profound and more and and and more far-reaching than ours but they're both independent giving you me you can give also god gives only gives gives in the most profound way right human beings have egos and have self-centered desires and so forth and so on but also have generous impulses generous decisions so god gives and we also give much less but we do give this is giving this is giving god treats us with justice human beings are also capable of justice so you look at it all of a sudden they do seem to be commonalities if there are commonalities then you could have this face-to-face relationship now the midrash in shirashi in the song of songs takes this a step further now i don't remember what i told you this i didn't tell you this because i'm teaching several places and i often don't remember what i say one place the other the midrash says like this the song of songs is a love song really between god and the jewish people the king is god and the his beloved is the jewish people at one point the king says of his beloved zos tamasi this one is my pure one tam in hebrew means pure this one is my pure one the misra says don't read tamasi read to omasi my twin if you know what's going on you think to yourself what the creator is saying that some creature is his twin excuse me how could the creator and the creature be the twins the differences between them are infinite so and if you in case you didn't get it the midrash goes on to say i'm not bigger than she is and she's not bigger than i am what for the creator and very often when the rabbinic tradition says something like that it means in some respect it doesn't mean globally in some respect and the again in that other safer that i was talking about das says here's the respect god created a world like we said yesterday and left it incomplete and invited us to join him in completing it and when it becomes complete it will become complete because of both of us we both will have played a role in making complete not equal roles no his is 99.99 and i was at 0.01 but still still we played a role okay so if we can have some divine characteristics and we can play a role in perfecting the world then there is commonality between us and god that's what feeds a face-to-face relationship with god because we can look at each other and see similar similarities that enable us to have a real relationship a relationship of give and take okay so now that's how we get into the relationship what is the result of the relationship the result of it is the thing that he said at the beginning of the chapter that the idea of vegas is to enable us to benefit from god's infinite goodness which we can't possess there are things which you can't possess but you can benefit from um i told you about picasso's helper i did so he benefits from picasso's artistic genius because his own art improves by being in interacting with with picasso he becomes a better artist so he's benefiting from it he doesn't possess all of picasso's talent but being in contact with picasso's talent means that he gets that benefit borochu guides us to develop ourselves spiritually in the greatest possible way that requires us to be willing to follow it requires us to be attentive it requires us to care about it if we focus ourselves on him then he responds to us by guiding us inspiring us sending us inspirations that means influencing us in various ways and then we benefit from his infinite good that that's the good that's steering our development so the the vegas gives us these two benefits number one that we possess uh good that we that our own characteristics number two we benefit from his good that's the goal of creation that is the goal of creation that can only happen through free will questions up to here okay we're okay fine now we're still in chapter two he uses a phraseology here um he uses the phraseology of being described by god's greatness think of the words that you might use to apply to god and you say by taking on god-like characteristics by being attached to him the words that are used to be described god's greatness could apply to us as well i i think he's i think he's making a very profound point here it's just a matter of vocabulary i shouldn't say just it's a matter of vocabulary there is a word in hebrew that we use several times in the prayers a phrase least in literal hebrew words like this shiva is praise list is what's called a reflexive so the shabbai would mean to praise oneself and then you see the second means in your praise so the phrase is saying when i praise god i'm praising myself hmm how does that work why would praising god be praising myself i'll give you an analogy i think this works actually one of the commentators really says it let's suppose that you go to a cocktail party there are strangers there and you hear somebody talking about france and he's talking about the greatness of france the spirit of the people the artistic and scientific scientific uh accomplishments the way that democracy works the civil um charity organizations is going on and on about about france how great francis it sounds to you like a little odd you're like why is he doing that she has somebody tell me something who is that this fellow who's going on and on about france they say he's the prime minister of france oh now i understand because if france is a great country then he being prime minister is a great prime minister it's not the same as being prime minister of patagonia that you would hide from people patagonia really go home you know who needs you no he's the prime minister of france and when he praises france he's really praying and i said really but he's also praising himself because the greatness of france means that his being prime minister makes him a great person and if that sounds directly artificial i think we have a direct echo of this in jewish life you will hear two yeshiva students debating who's rush yeshiva whose head scholar in yeshiva is superior mine knows more but mine's smarter and so on debating back and forth who's superior what are they really doing they're really doing is saying my reshashiva is bigger and i'm his student so i'm better than you are the others saying no my russia she was bigger i'm his students are better than you are the real upshot is not about the scholars but about themselves but the greatness of the scholar rubs off on them because they're students of that scholar so i think that's what's going on here if if if as as the verse says we god says you are my witnesses we are god's witnesses in the world then the greatness of god applies to us also because we're his witnesses we're his agents we're carrying out his projects in the world that makes us great so when we praise god if we identify ourselves as his agents in the world by praising god we're also praising ourselves this is the great one whom we follow whom we serve whom we whom we represent and i think that's what's built into the word here in in in the hebrew in that you are described by his greatness when you attach yourself to him this is uh from the point of view of how you experience it i think it's important an important observation okay so now he sums up the first section of this chapter with the kinds of words but the result is that the purpose in in the creation was to to create some someone who will benefit from god's goodness in the way that it is possible for a creature to benefit which is a story that we that we told you okay then he says what we've talked about it has been done through free will now so when we use our free will what do we use it on what are we doing well we are trying to acquire various perfections like justice like mercy like generosity like faithfulness like truthfulness and so on and so on these are all divine characteristics and we're trying to to create to acquire them for ourselves there are many of them and each one could be worked on in with different ways they apply to different circumstances and that means in our world free will is usually a choice between let's say two actions a and b if i choose a i will thereby build some perfection for myself if i choose be i will either fail to build or i might weaken and damage some perfection that i have so that free will decisions are decision between good and evil and by making those decisions i build these various perfections in myself now he asks these perfections are perfections for a finite creature and somehow acquiring these perfections has to lead us into a relationship with god how exactly does that work so he gives a very interesting metaphor here he says it's like the relationship between the roots of a tree and the branches of a tree imagine a person who grabs a branch of a tree is he connected to the root well yeah because the root's connected to the trunk and the trunk is connected to the branch if he yanks the branch you will be observing the root you would see a tenth of an inch motion because it's all one item of course a rune is not a trunk and a trunk is not a branch they are different they have different qualities roots absorb and transplant plants and branches produce leaves and petals and sometimes fruit but they're all connected and in fact the branch lives because of the root cut off the roots the branch will die so in a similar sense the finite perfections that we have are all offshoots of god's one single absolute perfection so that when we acquire one of these limited human style finite perfections we are being attached to god it's not just being similar or maybe this is what the similarity achieves it achieves a real attachment now it's not a direct attachment you're not touching the root it's a mediated attachment but it's all one reality and since it's all in reality you really are in touch with that that ultimate reality um at this point i've i've given you a metaphor but it's not easy to understand how you cash in what if in our reality is the is the experience of that being connected but one way that it's described is he doesn't say but for example let's say for tanya says it and so certain capitalists say as far as say it works like this let's say i do a mitzvah what exactly is going on god said you've charity god said make kirishan i said eat matzah god said um learn torah so he said it it's his will now i hear that i'm dedicated to doing what he wants what he commands me to do so i do the action if somebody's looking at this going on what does he see he sees me put my hand in my pocket take money out and give it to the person asking for charity he sees the motion of my body but he doesn't see where it's coming from it doesn't see where it's coming from might be coming from various different places but let's suppose he sees me making kiddos on friday night where's that coming from charity could be given by by an atheist it could be given by someone who has all sorts of selfish uh he says well let's see he's got that book in his hand on the cover says prayer book prayers probably he's religious good guess anyway um and i see that at the top of the page it says friday nights it says in the torah that you should say these words i wonder what the torah is or whatever it must be very important because it says nato should do it he's doing it i see his body his action embodying god's will that's where it's coming from if god's word will weren't in him he wouldn't do it so the human being becomes what's called a level a receptacle for god's will which then is the moving force that sets the action in motion of course he has to choose to do it but without god's will he would never do it and since he's set himself to do what god wants then given he set himself that way it's god's command that gives forth in this action he gets credit for it because he's he's committed to do it but without god's will it wouldn't happen so here's a real connection god's will is an aspect of his divinity and it's playing a direct role in this action that the person does that's a real connection god's will is a reality and this person is living out that reality now living out that reality means that the action that he does is really an ideal action and that's why it affects him and elevates him and enables him to to grow spiritually from the action let me give you another analogy this has happened it just happened now with a an airplane crash two people up in an airplane a pilot and a passenger and the pilot has a sudden heart attack he slumps over the wheel he's not flying anymore another guy's a passenger he does not fly he doesn't know anything about it but the radio was on to the tower and the passenger yells help i'm gonna die the pilot just died and the tower they say we'll talk you down we'll tell you what to do and we'll tell you how to land the plane i know all this happened but this little thing happened just now just just so he's out okay put your foot on the lever behold you below your right foot and take the the widget up stay up there and pull it down and then you know spin the wheel to the right and he's following me do you think he's going to be really committed to follow the instructions i think so because he's at her death he's going to be very very plugged in now when he makes the safe landing how did that happen so the answer is because the guy in the tower talked him down that's how he landed you say the guy in the tower wasn't pulling the the widget turning the wheel that's true that's true but it's his words that enabled him to pull pull the widget and turn the wheel to the land so the person becomes an instrument carrying out the instructions from the tower that's a real connection and it's because he does that that he's alive this time the plane hit the ground and ended up upside down but uh what guy walked out with scratches and he was the passenger who did not fly a plane i don't know when they talked him down or he figured out himself but this other case happened many many years ago where they just talked them down and he managed so you commit yourself like that to guys look what is my life worth anyhow what am i doing that's important or of any significance if i'm not connected to you forget it might as well be a squirrel so at that point is you you become a housing an embodiment for god's will that's a real connection and that real connection can benefit you endlessly because you have the direction of an infinite good with infinite knowledge and understanding and infinite care that's guiding you to uh to become the best that you can become that's a little bit of what's going on here are we together so far like one more point for today um the word mitzvah in hebrew literally means commandment sometimes you find it translated good deed that doesn't get it and the crucial point about it is this i'm quoting that what he says here in this chapter [Music] we said god gives you free will and let's say between a and b if you do a that will strengthen your you're acquiring a certain perfection if you do b it may not it won't strengthen it may damage the acquiring of a perfection you're choosing between perfection and and and loss of perfection so there are two things here it says number one why are you going after perfection says if you are a noble person you realize that some things are more worthwhile than others sometimes they're more exalted than others and you exercise yourself in the direction in the better direction not here here you go after perfection because god wants you to be perfect it's got to be an act of expressing god's will not your will the nobility is wonderful because it means you appreciate what you're doing but it can't be the reason for what you're doing and secondly um this is a temptation that many of us have and this temptation has founded other groups which associate themselves the jewish tradition but not the way we do who says this is the way to achieve perfection i think i have a better way well i think some of the ways that are that are recommended here aren't positive really negative i'm i agree i should become as perfect as i can and i'm working on it you know according to my own understanding life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as each one understands it the pursuit of perfection as each one understands it that's not the jewish message the jewish message is that only the creator knows the way in which you can achieve perfection you don't know it he's built the world in such a way that the connections are subtle they're intricate and certainly you can't have a global view and even if you look at a piece you may be you may misunderstand it that's why you give us a set of rules the mitzvah that you do is a commandment commandment means as my president robertson taught me it means there's a relationship we're talking about being related to god if he commands and i respond he has me in mind he's not commanding the wind he's not publicizing a command either do it or not he has each one of us in mind god is saying to me here's what i'm telling you to do because this is the best possible thing for you this will lead you to the perfections of which you're capable not other things it's a little bit like going to medical school the curriculum's laid out you don't like organic chemistry go drive a bus you want to become a doctor learn a guy in chemistry you don't see why too bad you want to get an md does you have to learn along with the other things with some of which you don't understand and be an intern which isn't nearly as bad as it used to be they tell you because they're graduated they have experience and they know from from their own experience what doctors need to prepare them to be successful in helping people and helping their health so they tell you what you need to do and you but wanting to be a doctor put yourself under their care so that you will actually graduate into a doctor so the same thing is true here you put yourself under god's care and that enables you to graduate in terms of your spiritual development to the greatest possible extent this will do it only because god commanded to do it he put into this action this the consequences of creating of creating creating perfection and i think that maybe we're subject to a little bit of distortion because sometimes we think we can see it then we think well if i don't see it then it's not really there but that's not correct i'll just give you one example let's suppose that somebody borrows money from you you sign a a a a contract he's got to pay it by may 1st and may first times he doesn't pay and you investigate and yeah he just doesn't have it he doesn't have it now it's may 16th you're walking down the street and you see about a block away that guy who borrowed the money from you he's walking towards you on the same side of the street you know what cross the street don't meet him you might embarrass him don't meet him cross the street i think that's exquisite that's exquisite he's not paying the debt yeah but don't embarrass him so they say oh that act that that law promotes perfection well you bet you could see it right on the surface then you may have the false impression well either i see it or i don't if i don't it's not there that's not right either that's not right either so if you uh you have to be thankful for the times you do understand and not to make your understanding a precondition for doing what the creator tells you it will actually create lead to your perfection