They Say Our Actions Don’t Really Matter To Him, But Kabbalists Teach… - Rabbi Yehoshua Simons

The title of this video basically is the significance of man to Hashem. For his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. Yeshayahu 558. An analogy is given to help us understand. It goes like this. A father is playing with his son, his young little infant son. The father pretends to enjoy the game that they're playing, whether it's horse tea or tea or whatever it is. He's doing this so that he can bond with the child. But let's face it, it's pretend. The father can't actually lose sight of the fact that he doesn't care about silly games. He can't lose sight of the fact or forget that he's a sophisticated adult who has more sophisticated pleasures and interests. So too, they say with Hashem, mitzvah are the game and we are the child. He doesn't really see any significance in any of this, right? He's infinite and therefore to him we are even less than ants, not to mention a child and the game is less important to him than playing horsey is to a flesh and blood father with his son. Therefore, the emotional arousal that the Torah describes Hashem experiencing when he interacts with us can't be real. It's only from our point of view, it's only an act for our sake. Is this analogy correct? No, not at all. It's terrible. It's blasphemy to say this analogy. Excuse me for even saying so. I hope people didn't click away before the end. I hope they come back. So, what's wrong about it? Well, let's start with mitzvot. Are mitzvot significant to him? According to the onimra mitzvot the mitzvot are from him himself. Now in kabala we have a term for hashem which translates as infinite i.e it literally means without end. Now the Rabbi Rashad points out in Yam Rashashana in Sam that it's a misnomer. It doesn't really mean infinite. It would be wrong to describe Hashem as infinite. What it means is without any limit whatsoever. We cannot limit him at all. We cannot box him in any way. Even calling him infinite is limiting him. is a description and a description is a limitation. He's got the power of finitude as well. Saying he hasn't got it is again another limit on him. So anaf you're supposed to understand that phrase to mean hashem himself beyond all limit and definition beyond all description even negative descriptions as permakabet. Now, according to this source, this is who the mitzvot are relevant to on this level. It's not even worth calling it a level. We're talking about him himself. The mitzvot originate clap him. The mitzvot are not a game to him, nor are they contrived for our physical existence. They are his ultimate choice. He chooses mitzvot and goodness and rejects averat and evil in the in the most magnificent form of free choice and rejection deriving from nothing other than himself anov see dra muscul minan jakoshrin tapes lamemed from the reb Maharash who explains hashem's free choice to cut to the chase to say it in brief basically when it comes to hashem yes Good and evil are equal to him. Neither pull him in either direction. Neither cause an arousal in him. Therefore, when he chooses good, now you have to think about this deeply, really deeply. When he chooses good and rejects evil, that means he's only basing that choice on his very self, not the good and not the evil, on himself. Which means that this is the absolute most authentic, deep and true choice imaginable. Even we do not have the ability to choose on that level without our godly soul which is a little piece of him because we are limited by our intellect and the choices we have to make. We are pulled in directions and therefore it cannot be truly said that we choose freely and from our essence like him. So the mitzvah are not a game nor are they in any way beneath him. They are important to him on his highest level so to speak his true self as sophisticated as he truly is. Obviously we still have the problem of the mitzvah applied to a physical world. Now I discussed that in the other video but the physical world may be a creation but the mitzvot come from before the world. So they're being applied to the world or you could say the world was made with them in mind. They preceded the world. So they are still real. One more thing I want to add that's extremely important is the statement of David where he says I have not seen a limit to your mitzvot. Therefore it's really important to know and this brought up many times inut that saying the mitzvah are from hashem on his highest level where there are no limits is itself not a limit because the mitzvot are unlimited too. Think about that we can get into that into another video. Feel free to ask questions as always. Now the next point are we significant to him? Well according to many places in for example Bashikim and Alf and many other places. We are even more significant to him than the mitzvot. We are his innermost choice and delight and no words can truly capture how truly essential we are to him. It's a bit like a marriage. He always like the mitzvot. They were always relevant to him, right? They are from his essence. We are like a spouse, somebody that he quote unquote met and fell in love with and therefore decided to give the mitzvot to us as a way to connect to him. because he sees us as so precious to him beyond even the mitzvah themselves. Right? When I give you my most precious thing, what am I telling you? I'm telling you that you are at least as precious as that. In fact, you are more precious than that. Now, myim specifically does deal with the problems of the atmporal nature of Hashem. He's beyond time. So, you can go and look there. But these sources paint basically a picture of Hashem consulting the Sadikim before anything existed. He looked not at the highest heavens or the angels or anything like that but at the very picture of Jews as they would one day serve him on earth. Their future Torah mitzvot and self-refinement rose in his thought his very first thought giving him inner delight. And it is that delight itself that became the orain soft and the very blueprint and motivation for creation. With whom did he consult? With the souls of the righteous as it says in the puk. In other words, the world was brought into being because of the divine pleasure in the human averoda that would unfold within it. In other words, the world was brought into being because Hashem saw us. He knew that he could marry us. in a free will relationship, a romantic relationship and the divine pleasure of our serving him as well as his serving us by creating us and providing for all our needs for him is the blueprint of creation. It is the purpose of creation. It is the meaning that he takes in creation. You could say he never wanted to get married till he met us. And that's a good mush. So therefore, can it really be said that we're like little toddlers to him? So the mushel of the father and the son does have some logic to it. How do we apply what we know now to the mushel and to understanding it the way the rebum have explained? It's not what you think. It's true. We are absolutely nothing compared to him. However, as puts it, His thoughts are not our thoughts. My thoughts are not creative. They can't create anything. My desire doesn't produce any results. That's why I can't pretend. That's why I can't truly roleplay in a game. That's why it's silly for us to roleplay in games. His thoughts do create reality just as powerfully in his omnipotence as anything we can imagine. He doesn't contrive anything. Everything is authentic and real to him. Especially because we're talking about a world that has his to mitzvot in it. His thoughts, his desire produces a reality. And because his thoughts and his desire come from his very essence and being. It's not contrived. It's not pretend. It's not a game. He's not like the father in the mushel making a pretend game. He's inviting us into his sophisticated reality of Torah and mitzvot so he can have a relationship with us as close as we can possibly be and making us to him more than significant and and therefore it's not even contrived that we're significant to him. He doesn't have any difficulty finding significance in us or our mitzvot. He is an off. He has no limitations. And therefore, we cannot and should not draw these analogies. We should listen to what he says in the Torah. On every single page, he tells us how important we are to him and how serious the mitzvah are to him. How vital and essential. In fact, the phrase we are nothing to him on the level of doesn't mean what we think it means. It means he is so intimately close to us. He doesn't even see us as separate from himself. That's what nothing means on that level. Understand? I welcome any thoughts and questions in the comments and I will do my best to reply and I will be making many more videos on this topic. So stay tuned. Subscribe if you haven't and Fire.