Beyond Punishment & Repair
At first, there was punishment.
There were prophets who warned the people—for there is no punishment without warning.
There were people who understood what they were doing and did it anyways—for there is no punishment without conscious intent.
And so, up to and including the destruction of the First Temple, there was punishment.
But then came a time when there were no prophets to provide due warning. And rare was the man who had the power of mind to intentionally sin. The suffering that occurred then, since the time of the Second Temple, cannot be called punishment. Instead it is called “tikun”—healing, repair. Souls of past generations returned to this world to be repaired by standing firm despite great challenge and tribulation.
Then came the master of the hidden wisdom, the great Ari. According to his disciples, with his teachings he repaired all the souls of Israel.
It follows, writes the Mitteler Rebbe, that the sufferings of the Jewish people since the Holy Ari, of blessed memory, are neither punishment nor repair. If so, what are they?
We do not know.
One thing we do know: We know that we are witnessing something beyond our ability at present to understand.
But simply because the human mind cannot know a thing, does that mean this thing cannot exist? Because we cannot give a reason, is there then no reason?
Or perhaps it simply means that we should be a little more humble, since we are not the ones who made this world. We must wait, and when all the drama is done, then we will know with the knowledge of the Author Himself.
Only then, once we leave behind forever these dark clouds, will we fathom and truly see that all the darkness was truly a profound form of light.
Inner Exile
It is not so much that we need to be taken out of exile.
It is that we must take the exile out of ourselves.
What is exile? It is the belief that there is some place outside of G‑d.
And that in that place, there are forces stronger than G‑d.
And those forces will not allow you to do what your soul came here to do.
Fear no thing, no force, no being other than G‑d. Do that which you must do as though nothing stands in your way.
Then you will have taken yourself out of exile. And G‑d will complete the job.
The Lost Ark
In Solomon’s Temple, there were two places reserved for the Holy Ark:
One in the Chamber of the Holy of Holies,
and one hidden deep beneath that chamber.
There are two places to find G‑d’s presence in all its glory.
One is in the most holy of chambers, beyond the place of light and heavenly incense. There G‑d Himself could be found by the most perfect of mortals on the most sublime day of the year.
Today, we cannot enter that place. But there is another place, beyond catacombs and convoluted mazes, deep within the bowels of the earth—and yet always accessible to those who will make the journey.
There, those whose faces are charred with the ashes of failure, their hands bloody from scraping through dirt and stone, their clothes torn from falling again and again, and their hearts ripped by bitter tears—there, in that subterranean darkness, they are blinded by the light of the hidden things of G‑d . . .
. . . until that Presence will shine for all of us, forever.
Fearless
Rashi explains that Jacob was pained that he had to leave the promised land and descend to Egypt. And yet, G‑d does not address the pain. Instead, He tells him not to fear.
“G‑d said to Jacob: Do not fear descending to Egypt…” (Genesis 46:3)
Apparently, unlike the fear, the discomfort needed to remain.
The same is true for us.
The pain is real. The fear is not.
The pain is real, because we are not in our true place. Nothing is in its true place. It is called exile. Exile of the soul.
The fear is not real—there is nothing to fear. Because no matter where we are, G‑d is there with us. For He is everywhere.
The only thing we have to fear is that we may no longer feel the pain. That we may imagine that this is our place after all.
For it is that pain of knowing we are in the wrong place that lifts us higher, beyond this place.
Treasure Island
Our souls are in exile within our bodies. Our people is in exile within a foreign world.
And so there are two things we must know:
That this is not our place.
And that hidden treasure lies buried here; for G‑d dwells in darkness.
If we remember only that this is not our place, we may remain strong, we may even shine in the darkness. But what profit will there be from our exile?
And if we remember only that treasure lies here, we will begin to believe that this is our place, and if so, of what use is the treasure?
Pity on the Cosmos
It is not just you alone in exile. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the generations of their children, as well all the heavenly host—in fact, the entire creation—all is unfulfilled, in exile and imprisoned.
Even the Creator Himself locks Himself into prison along with His creation.
At every turn, light awaits you to release it from its prison. And with it, the entire world.
Heritage
The history of the Jewish people is not just one of rise and fall. It is a process, a purification, a sieve of many filters, a smelting furnace that refines the raw ore again and again until only the purest gold remains.
That is why today we are able to do a mitzvah today in a world so foreign to mitzvahs; to fill our lives with that which filled our great-grandparents’ and raise children that way; to go against the stream of the culture around us and be the Jew inherent within.
It is not with our own power, or with our own minds. It is with a hidden memory, an indestructible force that survived as our heritage.
All Here Now
As long as we search for G‑d by abandoning the world He has made, we can never truly find Him.
As long as we believe there is a place to escape, we cannot be liberated.
The ultimate liberation will be when we open our eyes to see that everything is here, now.
Caring Beyond Reason
Behind intolerance hides the most primal sense of ego, a clandestine belief that “I and my kind are the only thing that should be.”
People may give reasons for their intolerance, but the reasons are secondary. They despise others for the space they consume. Stripped to the bone, it is senseless hatred without reason.
It is the core of all evil. It is what holds the human soul in exile from the garden.
And its only cure is in unbridled acts of kindness, in opening your heart to the other guy regardless of how different and distant the other guy may be.
Caring beyond reason.
Revolution
If you were there
and the forces of destruction
were about to destroy Jerusalem
and you had the power to do something about it,
would you sit and mourn and cry?
Or would you turn the world on its head to change history?
So what is stopping you?
Turn over the whole world now!
All in One
Naturally, we think of the Jewish people as a conglomerate of many Jews. But the Baal Shem Tov saw the Jewish people as a single, indivisible whole.
Think of a geometrical point. A point is indivisible, but not because it is too hard, too big, or too small to cut up. A point simply has no area to be divided. That’s what makes it a point.
And yet, from a point you can extend infinite lines radiating in infinite dimensions.
In a somewhat similar way, but far beyond, all Jews are one Jew. Which means that in any one Jew, you will find all of us—just from a different angle.
So that whatever happens to any one of us instantaneously happens to the entire Jewish people. Not by some ripple effect or resonance. But because any one sample of the whole is the whole and the whole is one.
And so, the Baal Shem Tov taught, when the light of any one Jewish soul breaks free, the entire nation is redeemed along with it.
And accordingly, the Rebbe wrote, the ultimate exodus of our entire people is also a personal, intimate liberation for every Jew.
Constructive Demolition
In Torah, we mirror on earth that which G‑d performs on every plane of reality.
If so, since the Torah prohibits dislocating even a single stone of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, how could it be that G‑d brought the entire structure to ruins?
For it would certainly be absurd to imagine that the Assyrians or the Romans had the power to set fire to G‑d’s house.
It must be that this was not an act of destruction. Rather, it was the initial phase of a much greater construction, one that would be eternally indestructible.
And for that to occur, the Temple had to be temporarily leveled to its foundations and G‑d’s people had to be scattered to the furthest reaches of human habitation.
Why? Because as long as there is any place in this world that considers itself outside the realm of holiness, there remains a place for the destruction of G‑d’s Temple.
But in our exile, we meet face to face all that considers itself foreign to the divine. We grasp its reins, extract its poison, and channel its power.
This third and ultimate Temple, then, will be built of the outside turned inward, of darkness taught to shine, of the other converted to the One, of the most sinister enemy transformed to a faithful ally.
No opposition will remain in the universe. And so it will last forever.
Then we will see that in truth, there was never any destruction. There was only rebuilding, growth, and eternal, deep love.
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