Perceptions, Parashas Nitzavim-Vayailech, Issue #2065 - By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
WITH THE YEAR since October 7 coming to an end soon and the dark events of that day still very fresh in our minds, I am going to (hesitatingly) share something I came across last Shabbos, b”H. I don’t know how much, if any, comfort it will provide, especially for those directly affected by the horror. But it is an important idea to know moving forward.
The idea is part of some research I am doing these days into a very central concept in Kabbalah, and life in general. The Kabbalistic term for this process that basically directs all of history from behind the scenes is Aliyas M”N, or the elevation of M”N. But people generally refer to it as the elevation of holy sparks.
Very long story very short, sparks are spiritual individual packages of Divine light. God’s light, at its source, is infinite and indivisible. But for the sake of Creation and so man can be involved in history, God allowed His light to become finite amounts of infinite light that we can elevate through our prayers and mitzvos.
As I have mentioned many times before, history is like an upside-down hourglass. The sparks, unlike the grains in an hourglass, are in the lower chamber, that is, our world. It is our opportunity to elevate them to the upper chamber, Heaven, and when the last spark has been elevated to its proper place above, Moshiach comes.
So, the correct answer to the question, “When will Moshiach finally come?” is, “When the last spark is out of the Klipos.” When will that be in history? The answer to that question depends on our progress in spark elevation.
What are the Klipos? Pure evil. We see lots of physical people doing lots of evil things, but they’re really just the front men. The Klipos inspire evil, promote it, and even make it easy to do. They work in tandem with the Sitra Achra and a person’s yetzer hara to make people spiritually stumble. They have to because it’s their job, what they were created to do. Without their input into history, man would not have free will at all.
But just as we need holy sparks to live and do good things, they need the same sparks to survive and do evil things, making life a spiritual tug-of-war between good and evil. The bad news is that this, in the meantime, has led to a lot of destruction of good. The good news is that it eventually leads to the destruction of all evil.
This is because even though evil seems to triumph from time to time, it can never interfere with God’s master plan for Creation. He makes sure of that. It can sure look as if they have, but if we could see history from God’s perspective, we would see that they never have, and never will. It’s just that sometimes we fall so far behind in our spark redemption program that it has to happen through alternative means to make up for lost time. That’s when life can get brutal.
This is how the Arizal explained what happens when we fail to keep the world straight, sins increase, and evil gets stronger:
“Corresponding to the elevation of M”N of the Malchus (holy sparks), he said [in the Zohar] their bodies will be given over to the “Other Malchus.” This means that through the actual suffering of their body to elevate M”N from the Malchus they are given over and sink into the Klipos called the “Other Malchus” corresponding to the Malchus d’Kedushah. Since their bodies are given over to the evil Malchus of the Klipos, they are able to gather souls from the Klipos called M”N that are there, and elevate them to the holy Malchus, as explained on the verse, “a time that a man ruled over [another] man for his [own] harm” (Koheles 8:9). It is also explained at the beginning of Sabba of Mishpatim. The Sitra Achra is Adam Bliya’al who rules over Adam of Kedushah, kidnapping souls from him. But this is [in the end] “for his [own] harm” of Adam Bliya’al, like [what happened regarding] the Aron [that] the Pelishtim [stole].
It’s similar to when an enemy takes captives, only to find out that those captives end up being the means to free other captives who could not have escaped on their own. When the Pelishtim (Philistines) captured the Holy Ark, they thought it was a great victory over the Jewish people. In the end, the Ark caused them so much trouble that they returned it on their own, and with gifts. Hitler, ysv”z murdered six million plus Jews, but he also freed those soul sparks from this world. That probably led to our return to Eretz Yisroel shortly after as part of the final redemption and eventual destruction of all evil.
The best way to elevate sparks and rectify Creation is to learn enough Torah and perform enough mitzvos with the requisite amount of self-sacrifice. If we don’t, then sin increases in the world, and sparks get lost among the Klipos. If, God forbid, that happens, then just as we have to physically go among the Klipos (Gaza) to free kidnapped people, we have to spiritually go among the Klipos to free “kidnapped” souls.
As the Arizal, based upon the Zohar explains, that is why the Ten Martyrs we mention in the Mussaf of Yom Kippur died as they did. Being given over to the Romans and suffering at their hands was tantamount to being sunken into the Klipos. But by dying Al Kiddush Hashem, they not only elevated their own souls but so many others sparks trapped in the Klipos at the time, saving Creation from destruction until this very day.
But given what has happened since their time, it seems that additional sacrifices have been necessary to make up for what the generation itself has not. Unlike the Ten Martyrs, they may not always have understood why they had to go through what they did, but it still had a similar impact. They suffered, the families mourned their terrible losses, but the celebrations of the enemy are empty. Unwittingly, they expedited their own demise.
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Thirtysix.org
Rabbi Pinchas Winston
Shabbat Shalom
