God is in the Other

Translated by Netzach Sapir

The Zohar, which literally means “glow” or “radiance,” is named for the inner layer of reality, the layer in which, according to Kabbalah, God can be found. One of the Zohar’s most significant  messages for humanity is that the Divine can be found in life itself: in our selves, in our relationships and in all people. As opposed to other mystical paths which demand that a person disconnect from the world in order to arrive at a transcendent “true reality”, the Zohar offers a path to God which connects the earthly experience with the heavenly one.

The journey to God, according to the Zohar, traverses through human relationships: from the intimate relationship between a woman and a man to the relationship a person conducts with his community. Much of the Zohar is written as a conversation between friends studying, traveling, living their lives, and through all this, interacting with the Torah. The monastic concept, in which a person isolates himself from the world in order to connect with God, is foreign to the Zohar and to Judaism in general.

Broken Vessels, Broken People

Parshat Vayera concludes with the story of the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak (Isaac). The Torah does not explain why God found it necessary to test Avraham (Abraham). Both the Zohar and the Midrash explain what provoked God to test His trusted servant. A contemplation of the difference between the explanations of the Zohar and the Midrash demonstrate the unique and wonderful message of Kabbalah. Both of the interpretations see the Akeidah – which ultimately brought Avraham closer to Hashem – as a response to Avraham’s having withheld something from God, damaging the relationship between them. In response God requests from Avraham the ultimate sacrifice – his only son. Let us briefly examine the sources to see what they hold Avraham’s sin to be and what he withheld from God.

The Midrash, which is cited by Rashi, writes as follows:

“After these things” – Some of the sages say that it was after the Satan spoke, for he accused Avraham before God: “In all the feasting that Avraham made, he didn’t sacrifice to you a single bull or ram.” He [God] replied, “All that he did, he did only for his son. Yet were I to tell him, ‘sacrifice him to me,’ he would not hold back.” (Rashi on Bereshit 22:1).

According to the Midrash, Avraham celebrated the day that Yitzchak was weaned yet throughout the festivities he didn’t offer any sacrifice in thanks to God. Avraham’s sin lay in his ingratitude to the Creator. The Satan takes advantage of this mistake to call Avraham’s dedication into question, and in response, God tests Avraham with the Akeidah.

The Zohar explains Avraham’s sin differently:

Rebbe Shimon opened and said: Anyone who is happy during the holidays and does not give a part to the Holy One, the Evil Eye of the Satan hates him and prosecutes him and drives him out of the world… [How does one give a] part to the Holy One? By cheering the less fortunate ones as much as he can. For in these days, God comes down to the world to visit his broken vessels, and he sees them and sees that they have nothing with which to rejoice, and he cries for them, and he ascends heavenward to destroy the world. [The angels] who dwell on high come before Him and say, ‘Master of all worlds, merciful and compassionate you are called, have mercy on your children.’ He says to them, ‘I have not fashioned the world except out of kindness, as it is written, ‘a world of kindness he will build’ (Tehillim 89:3), and the world exists on it.’ (Introduction to the Zohar 10b).

Later, the Zohar tells that the Satan arrived at Avraham’s party disguised as a poor beggar. No one paid any attention to him, and so he ascended back to heaven and accused Avraham before God: “Master of all worlds, you said: ‘Avraham who loved Me’ (Isaiah 41:8), but here he makes a feast and gives nothing to you and nothing to the poor.” Avraham’s sin is not only against God, it also against society: he failed to consider the poor. Unlike the Midrash, which focuses only on the direct dialogue between Avraham and God, the Zohar describes the wider human picture, a picture through which the infinite God is revealed.

The concept of the “broken vessels,” which was mentioned in Parshat Noach, has a different connotation here. The breaking of the vessels is the cause of the imperfect nature of reality. Before the vessels were broken, they received a constant flow of direct light from God, and reality was a perfectly balanced harmony. But something went wrong in the cosmic creation process and the vessels exploded, sending shards of light all over the world (thereby infusing the entire world with veiled divinity.) Our purpose in the world is to fix the broken vessels, reveal the hidden sparks and elevate them.

The Zohar makes a startling statement: The broken vessels are not an abstract concept but rather humans themselves – each of us contains a divine spark, and thus a broken person is one of God's broken vessels.  In this light, giving to the other is not only a mitzvah “ben adam lechavero,” between a person and his fellow, but is really giving to God. The mortal realm, with all its shortcomings, is part of the Godly realm. For Avraham to be considered a lover of God, he must show himself to be a lover of humans, especially the “others,” the beggars and the broken.

The social interpretation of the broken vessels received further development in the writings of one of the great kabbalists of the 20th century, Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag. He was of the opinion that the breaking of the vessels was expressed by the great damage caused by an unequal distribution of wealth, a reality which destroys the world – rich and poor alike. In 1958, David Ben Gurion wrote to Rabbi Tzvi Brandwein, a close student of Rabbi Ashlag: “He [Rabbi Ashlag] asked me many times if, after the establishment of the state, we would establish a communist regime.” Ultimately, after seeing what happened in the Soviet Union, Rabbi Ashlag became disillusioned with the communist dream, and ceased to believe that the vision of the distribution of wealth could be carried out though politics.[1]

Wealth and Joy

Our passage in the Zohar demands of a person not only to give money to poor people, as would be convenient to think, but also to make them happy. The Zohar’s definition of social justice does not end at the economic level, it extends to a more general human awareness. As Douglas Adams puts it in the opening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"Most of the people living on [planet Earth] were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, pg 1)

This can also be seen from the Satan’s story about dressing up as a beggar and finding that no one paid any attention to him. His complaint was not only because of the food that was withheld from him but even more so because of the feeling of being ignored and excluded. The Talmud Bavli states that one who comforts a poor man with kind words is greater than one who gives him money (Bava Batra 9b).  

Unfortunately, all the modern-day debates about social justice, even those motivated by the best of intentions, tend to restrict themselves to questions of finances and budgets, and conclude with the established collective sigh of dismay at the plight of the poor. The value of happiness is not included in the economic equation, and there, I think, lies one of the main shortcomings of the communist movement: It is not enough to distribute wealth among the people, we must find a way to distribute happiness as well. There are millionaires and billionaires who are sad, lost people, broken vessels that need healing.

A proper approach to social consideration must take into account how all human resources – physical and spiritual – can be made accessible to society. Spiritual resources include closeness between people, acceptance of the strange or different, happiness, responsibility, giving to others and spiritual pursuit. 

The key to happiness is not found in heaven. We must not forget that the responsibility for this world lies with us. The verse, “A world of kindness he shall build,” (Tehillim 89:3) is usually interpreted as a request to God that He build the world in kindness, but the Zohar here places the responsibility for building a world of kindness on humanity. The existence of the world depends on us, on the kindness and compassion with which we treat one another.

The Godly reality, the Zohar constantly reminds us, depends on ourselves.