Where is Life's “Undo” Function?

To the Esteemed Chief Rabbi of Suburban Guadalajara,

I've messed up. Real bad. People hate me. With good reason. I hate myself. Worse, I feel G-d must be just as peeved with me.

Tell me, O Secret Sage of All Hidden Functions, Highest Hacker of Divine Systems and Enlightened Master of Cosmic Loopholes -- if you were creating a world, wouldn't you build in an undo function on life's keyboard? Please, reveal to your farblundgent, befuddled disciple: Where on earth is the undo function?

Dr. N. Domuch

Dear Doc,

For undos, you have to talk with the Author. Only the One who wrote the program can edit and recompile the code.

Now, as a seemingly insignificant artifact of the Divine Code, you may be apprehensive about approaching the Author Himself. After all, when did you ever hear of sprites talking back to their scripter?

Well, I've said it many times1 and let me repeat: The Master of the Universe not only talks to Himself, He talks to figments of His holy imagination. Not only that, those figments of His holy imagination talk back to Him. And He listens.

I've got the most poignant example. Cold, hard evidence. Explicit, first hand testimony.

The background:

1) G-d tells the Jews, "Don't do idols."

2) Jews do idol. Specifically, a golden calf. Holy cow.

3) G-d tells Moses his people are up for extermination, while dropping a hint that basically says, "try to stop Me."

In case you didn't realize how unfathomable this story is already, hold on for Moses' response:

"Please forgive them. If you don't forgive them, erase me from Your book that You have written."2

Chew on those words a minute: "Your book that You have written." Who wrote what book?

Must be talking about the Five Books of Moses, right? Except Moses doesn't consider it his book. After all, he doesn't begin -- as other prophets do -- "On such and such a day, G-d spoke to me and said, "In the beginning, it was I that created the heavens and the earth…" Moses writes about himself in third person -- How this child was born, got his name, grew up. Moses doesn't write, "G-d spoke to me." He writes, "G-d spoke to Moses" -- like he was talking about someone else.

Moses, explains Rabbi Moses ben Nachman ("Nachmanides," 1194-1270) in his preface to his commentary on the Torah, writes "like a scribe copying from an ancient scroll," discovering there his entire life history along with all the relevant history of the world. That's how transparent Moses was -- he was able to just receive, without mixing any sense of self into the reception. No self. Just scribe.

But what's the "ancient scroll"? So Nachmanides explains that this is the script "written in black fire on white fire" that preceded Creation, contains all its secrets and brings each event into being through a string of letters which are really super-cosmic articulations. Moses tapped into that code piece by piece and wrote it down as he saw it manifesting in our world before his eyes.

Who wrote that script? And now we get to a real mystery. Because G-d also appears in third person: "In the beginning G-d created…" "And G-d spoke to Moses, saying…" So it's not Moses speaking, not G-d, it's…

Well, Nachmanides says, it's the voice of a third party.

Who is the third party? Writes the Tzemach Tzedek (Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, 1789-1866), this is The Essence. The Essence that has no name.3

"G-d," "Master of the Universe," "the Eternal," all the names that are used in those Five Books -- these are not The Essence. They all imply a duality: He is this and not that. There is a Master, there is a universe. There is G-d, there is Moses. There is the Eternal, there is the temporal. He, not She. All those dualities are only relevant when there is a story. And that's exactly what they are: G-d as S/He/It has written Her/Him/Itself into the story as a character with a name.

But the Essence, as the Zohar puts it, "cannot be written in any name or letter or even in the point at the tip of a letter. "4 We can't even say S/He Is or Is Not -- because even is-ness implies some sort of duality. The Essence originated the idea of being and not being -- and with that, all other dualities -- and stands beyond both.

The Essence is The Author -- The Author even of Authoring. Like we say, "The King of kings of kings."

The best we can say is just, "You." Okay, even that implies, "You -- and not me." But we'll go along with "You", because it's the best we have.

"Erase me from Your book that You have written."

Meaning as follows: Until now, Moses was speaking as a character in the book speaking with another character in the same story -- namely G-d. G-d, not as the author, but as He has written Himself into the story. Now Moses gets out of the book. Because by the book, things don't look too good. So Moses escalates his case to The Author. The Third Party. The You. And he says, "As a key player in this drama, I don't like the way it's playing out. If You're planning to go ahead with this, I'm demanding You do a "find and delete" on every instance of "Moses" in Your book."

Checkmate. Can't have Five Books of Moses without the Moses. (Can't have "speak to the Children of Israel" without the Children of Israel, either. But that's another story.) G-d offers a compromise settlement. Storyline takes a new twist.

Along the way, Moses has performed perhaps his greatest accomplishment: He has brought the Author of the story into his book. And when the Author is there, the book is no longer an imagined story. The story, all its characters and the universe this all occurs in -- all become super-real. Non-fiction.

So you too, you do the same. Want to change your future? Change your past? Rewrite your character, your role in the story? Want to jump out of being just a fantasy and become a real partner with the Author of All Realities?

No problem. Moses already paved the way. You just say -- to the Essence, the Author -- you say, "I want to speak with You."

Then you continue, "Okay, I messed up. And I'm getting all I deserve by the book (i.e. Your Torah). But You -- the real You, beyond the book -- You and I, we know each other. So how about we make a deal: I'll play my game real different from now on and You'll rewrite the storyline to fit."

And guess what? The Author of All Realities has a "find and replace" function in His Divine Document Processor. And it searches up, as well.5