Batya Ayala Darmonlives with her husband and daughter in Eli and recently started a long-term transcription project of Likutei Moharan on Wikisource.
“The wicked receive their ruach from… the impure ruach Se’Arah (storm wind)" (Likutei Moharan 8:3).
In a world that is guided by G-d, and by good, and meant for the purpose of creation, it is hard to understand how the divine Creator permits the wicked to derive strength and then use that strength to do irreversible harm.
Likutei Moharan, the work by Rebbe Nachman of Breslev, quoting from the Prophets and from Psalms as well as the Zohar, explains that the wicked channel their life force from mighty, impure forces that they are then able to expand outwards for a brief time, following which they, themselves, are left spent and destroyed.
The need for free choice demands a world where the reward for good and bad remains blurred. The need for a measure of earthy justice, sometimes requires that punishment is meted out, in order to re-equilibriate the world, if it has gone too far from its essential mission. This means a very real, if fleeting, power has been given to evil to overtake creation for a brief moment.
The wicked “[blow] away [their] opponents (Psalm 10:4-5). The term “blow” is used to express this siphoning of poisonous energy, as though through the breath of life released by the loathsome individual. But the Zohar reassures us: “One must realize that [the wicked man] has no permanence at all, and in the end is spent and disappears; his body and soul left wasted (cf. Tikkuney Zohar #18)
How is it that the nation of Israel has, throughout its history, been the subject of such an extensive succession of horrendous acts of violence and perversion? This, too, is explained in Likutei Moharan (15:7). Rebbe Nachman lets us know that the nation of Israel is receptive to harsh judgments in the world because it has the elevated ability to overcome, transform and transcend darkness through tapping into divine wisdom, and this creates a rectification for the world. Here, the Rebbe refers to Psalms and to Isaiah “His statutes and His judgments to Israel” (Psalms 147:19). The chosen nation is assaulted “soarah,” by the se’arah (storm wind).
These divine truths are recognized unconsciously by every member of the Jewish nation, and expressed in even the most unexpected circumstances. As such, Eden Golan is entering the Eurovision contest, hardly a stage for holy expression of divine mysticism, with a song named “Hurricane.” What is a hurricane, if not a “storm wind?” Any fool realizes the song refers to the massacre at the Nova Festival.
How is it that mass murder by armed barbarian thugs is called a “hurricane?” Perhaps because unconsciously the writers of the song intuitively know that pure evil unleases itself in the world with the force and energy of a storm wind.
But just as we can recognize the divine hand of creation in the pain, we can recognize it in the promise of redemption. The full quote by Rebbe Nachman of Isaiah (54:11) with the term “soarah,” reads:
O poor assaulted one, who was not consoled, behold I will set your stones with almandine gems, and I will lay your foundations with sapphires.
עניה סערה לא נחמה הנה אנכי מרביץ בפוך אבניך ויסדתיך בספירים.
The time is coming near when the nation of Israel is to be set with almandine gems and its foundations laid with sapphires. Every Jew is attached to this truth, wherever he may be and however he may express it.