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An adaptation by Yitzchok Wagshul of a discourse in Likutei Torah .
There is a passage in the book of Proverbs in which the Torah
itself is the speaker, and anthropomorphically describes itself as having
pre-existed the entire created universe. After such statements as "When [G-d]
established the heavens, I was there; when He drew a circle over the surface of
the deep", the Torah goes on to say, "I was with Him as a nursling, and I was
His delight every day, playing before Him at all times; playing with the world,
His earth, and my delights were with the sons of man." (Proverbs 8:30-31) These
statements are not merely poetic; they contain profound mystical references to
the essential quality of the Torah, the bestowal of which we celebrate on the
holiday of Shavuot.
The Torah's being described as a "nursling" ("amon" in
Hebrew) is reminiscent of Moses' statement to G-d in which Moses has just been
told by G-d that the Jews would miraculously be supplied with meat in the
desert, and Moses "complains", as it were, that he is not equipped to be the
instrument of that event: "[Who am I,] Moses says to G-d, that You should say to
me, 'Carry it [the Jewish nation] in your bosom as a nursing person [in Hebrew,
"omen"] carries a suckling child' ... from where am I [to get] meat?"
(Num.11:12-13)
[As explained elsewhere in Likutei Torah, Moses' soul
derived from an extremely sublime spiritual level. His soul was so exalted that
Moses - who had just spent 40 days and nights atop Mount Sinai in such a
rarified state of holiness that he was sustained entirely by spirituality and
had no need of physical food - felt he could not relate to such a mundane thing
as meat. He was at a loss to understand how he could provide it to the ordinary
people.  | | " At first, a child is almost exclusively a creature of emotion...." | | |
Similarly, Moses had told G-d that he was unfit to deliver G-d's
message of deliverance to the Jews in Egypt because he suffered from a speech
impediment. Chassidic philosophy explains that Moses' concern was that his own
lofty soul would be unable to bridge the gap with the ordinary Jews, so that
G-d's message would not be successfully transmitted. G-d's response was that He
would assist Moses in "getting the message across"; Moses should do his part in
speaking to the Jews, and G-d would see to it that the spiritual "gap" was
bridged. Thus, instead of ordinary, physical nourishment, Moses is associated
with the Manna which miraculously descended from heaven in his merit (see
Taanit 9a; Zohar III 156a). This was spiritual nourishment and something
that Moses could relate to.]
Here, the references to nursing an infant likewise signify
something deeper than simple literary imagery. A newborn infant is not fully
developed; a baby has a lot of growing up yet to do. At first, a child is almost
exclusively a creature of emotion, feeling pleasure, fear, etc. but unable to
think about or understand what it experiences. Even its emotions need time to
blossom and develop all the nuance of which they are capable. (For example, a
child does not experience "bittersweet" or poignant feelings - just wild joy or
raging anger.) | | " ...so does nursing represent and engender the spiritual development and growth of the soul's emotional attributes...." | | |
While it is true that in modern times, many infants are not
nursed at all, this natural practice symbolizes a certain spiritual growth. As
actual milk promotes growth of a child's limbs, so does nursing represent and
engender the spiritual development and growth of the soul's emotional
attributes. Over the period of nursing, the infant's emotions mature and
develop. However, it is not until significantly later that the child's intellect
emerges, which is why a newborn, although able to produce sound (and sometimes
plenty of that!) is not capable of intelligent speech. This later stage of
development is mystically associated with the child's weaning and introduction
to solid food, specifically bread, as the Talmud teaches, "A child does not know
to call 'Father!' or 'Mother!' until it has tasted the taste of grain" (Berachot
40a, in support of the proposition that the Tree of Knowledge, which introduced
an intellectual awareness to Adam and Eve, was actually wheat).
All the above can be brought to bear upon our topic.
Kabbalistically, the three major Jewish holidays of Passover, Shavuot and Succot
all have a role to play in the creation of Jewish souls. On the seventh day of
Passover, new souls are "born", as it were, in the sense that they emerge from
the lofty spiritual realm of Atzilut, which is inseparable from G-d
Himself, into the relatively "lower" realm of Beriya, where they are
considered separate entities. However, these "newborn" souls are not yet fully
developed. As explained elsewhere, a Jewish soul possesses ten spiritual
attributes, seven of which parallel the emotional attributes of a person and
three of which, intellectual attributes.
The newborn soul, like a newborn infant, still needs time before
its emotional faculties are fully grown; this applies particularly to the
so-called "animal soul", which is the source of a person's natural inclinations.
These too, and not only one's spiritual tendencies, need to be developed into
vehicles for the service of G-d. Each of the seven emotional attributes, when
"mature", is a composite of all seven (making 49 emotional components of the
soul in all), and for these "nuances" to come out, the soul must undergo a
period of spiritual "nursing". This refers to the 44 days of the Omer
period between the seventh day of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot.
The Omer period, the time in which the Jews count the
days from the Exodus from Egypt until the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai,
begins on the second night of Passover and contains 49 days in total. These
correspond to the 49 emotional attributes of the soul. However, the first five
days of this counting (i.e. the first five days of the count), from the second
until the seventh day of Passover, represent the mystical five attributes of
kindness (the five cheseds, the first five emotional attributes within
the compound attribute of chesed, or kindness, itself) which engender the
growth of the rest of the attributes. These first five are identified with the
realm of Atzilut, leaving only 44 which develop after "birth". | | " The mitzvah of counting the Omer...serves the mystical function of nursing the Jewish souls...." | | |
The mitzvah of counting the Omer, then, serves the
mystical function of "nursing" the Jewish souls, developing their core emotional
attributes to maturity. However, nursing is not an end in itself; it leads to
weaning and the ability to assimilate solid food. This is symbolized by bread,
and, just as "the taste of grain" introduces a new level of intellectual
capacity to a toddler, it is the spiritual "bread" which the souls receive after
nursing that brings out their intellectual attributes. This "bread" is the Torah
itself, which is called "food" for the soul (see Talmud Chagiga
14a; Bereishit Rabba 43:7), and about which it is written, "Come, eat of
My bread." (Proverbs 9:5)
The holiday of Shavuot, when the Torah was given to the Jews,
thus mystically corresponds to the "weaning" of the newborn souls. That is why
on Shavuot we are commanded to offer up a sacrifice consisting chiefly of two
loaves of bread (Lev. 23:17): one representing the Written Torah (the Bible) and
the other representing the Oral Torah (the entire corpus of Jewish knowledge,
including the Mishna and Talmud, which reveals the latent meaning of the
Biblical verses). This level is granted to us by G-d in response to the Jews'
having nullified themselves in deference to Him during reflection on the
Shema prayer, which is why the verse says that the two loaves are to be
brought "from your dwellings" (in Hebrew, "mimoshvoteichem"), which can
also mean, "from your sitting", since the Shema is properly recited while
sitting. | | " Moses...felt inadequate to this latter task of introducing the Jewish people to the solid food of the Torah...." | | |
"Nursing" can be understood in the sense that it is a
preparatory stage leading to eventual weaning onto bread. Moses, in his
humility, felt inadequate to this latter task of introducing the Jewish people
to the "solid food" of the Torah, which is what he meant by the protest, "[Who
am I] that You should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom as a nursing person
carries a suckling child' ... from where am I [to get] meat?"
Now, it must be understood that G-d Himself is absolutely
transcendent and unknowable. Any relation to Him that we have is a gift from
G-d, which He bestowed upon us through the vehicle of the Torah: by
"compressing", as it were, Himself into the Torah, we are enabled to grasp G-d
Himself through our grasp of the Torah. The Torah itself is the vessel, the
conduit, which contains and transmits this G-dliness to us. This is why,
although Moses modestly felt he was unable to bring G-dliness all the way down
to our level (that of "bread"), the Torah itself does describe itself as
performing this function, as it says, "I was with Him as a nursling."
That verse goes on to say, "I was His delight every day." This
refers to the joy and pleasure which come only after intellectual comprehension.
Not only is the Torah a "nursling" which brings out the intellectual level of
the Jewish soul, it continues on to reveal the even deeper aspect of Delight.
Copyright 2001 Yitzchok D. Wagshul / www.likuteitorah.com
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