Letters of Light. Kalonymus Kalman Epstein
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single letter. And if that is so, there is nothing in the world that does not have a part in some letter or vowel-point of the Torah (which in itself, on a more sublime level, is a manifestation of the Divine). And as every letter or vowel-point is a part of the Ineffable Name, all the plants and trees naturally seek to ascend to their Root.
The writings of the Ar’i refer to such combinations of letters as “an act of striking,” specifically striking one letter with another and joining one letter together with another. And it is in this light that we can grasp that each blade of grass has an angel from above who strikes it and tells it to grow, meaning that the angel illuminates the combination belonging to that specific blade of grass. Every single blade of grass has its own combination of letters by means of which it has a portion in the blessed Ineffable Name.
And how do they awaken to ascend to their Root? They awaken by means of the tzaddik (holy man) who studies Torah purely for its own sake to unite the blessed Holy One with the Sh’khinah (acting to unify the world of the s’firot which underlies and permeates all existence) and who attaches himself to the letters of the Torah and to the combinations of names and connects with the ʾEin sof (the infinite state of the Divine). In this way, such a person provides divine energy (ḥiyyut) and awakening to all created things, whether they be inert or plants or (zoological) living beings or humans (literally, having the gift of speech and language) to the end that they all long to ascend to their divine Root. For in the combinations and permutations of their names, all these have some part of the letters of the Torah.
And by means of the tzaddik’s awakening the lower world, he attaches himself to the holy patriarchs and draws down lovingkindness upon the community of Israel (Knesset Yisraʾel). [The image of “feminine waters” conveys an awakening initiated by action of the lower world which effects what is above.] In this light, Rashi explained the verse, “When no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted . . . and there was no man to till the soil” (Gen 2:5), in that these grew when a human emerged and prayed for the vegetation of the field. Everything depends upon the prayer of the tzaddik, and in particular upon his acts of unification (yiḥuddim) . . . .
From this we come to the explanation of the verse, “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation . . .’” (Gen 1:11), meaning that the tzaddik will unite the lower worlds with the higher worlds. And via the tzaddik’s awakening, he is able to awaken the feminine waters (the lower worlds) and unify the worlds through bringing all created things to long to ascend to their Root . . . .
Comment: Like the earlier Hayyim ben-Attar, author of ʾOr ha-ḥayyim, also Kalonymus Kalman Epstein sensed in all of nature, including even inert nature, a longing for the divine Root of all existence. Everything created has within it a longing to ascend to its higher, divine Root and, furthermore, that longing which is, in turn, awakened by the longing of the tzaddik (holy man), serves to unite all the realms of being. This homily expresses a remarkable poetic intuition and opens for the reader an essential aspect of how the master and preacher, a city-dweller who nevertheless lived with a sense of cosmic longing, experienced the natural world.
He explained the source of such cosmic longing in the sense that everything that exists, even every blade of grass, shares in the Torah—which he grasped as much more than a conglomeration of words. And he went on to connect his sublime sense of the nature of being to what was for him the highest human ideal. A tzaddik, means literally, a “righteous person,” though the word came to suggest more essentially a holy man, and the same term, tzaddik, came to signify, more particularly, the holy man who served as the leader and center of a Hasidic community and who embodied its spiritual ethos. Here, the role of the tzaddik is defined as one of awakening such longing not only in one’s human associates but in all the cosmos. One might overhear in this conception an echo and reflection of sensitivities associated with European romanticism.
A glimpse into the homilist’s own consciousness is revealed in his interpreting the glistening which he experienced in the plant-world as a sign of connection with Divinity, a connection explained in that the letters of the Torah are stamped on each particular plant or blade of grass. Not only is each such specimen in the world of vegetation a living sign of the Divine, but he viewed each such specimen as a unique living sign of the Divine. The master’s sense of the uniqueness of each person, emphasized in various ways in this collection of homilies, is grounded in this broader vision of being which recognizes the uniqueness even of every single botanical specimen.
While the Kraków sage more often presented his interpretations within the framework of basic concepts of Lurianic Kabbalah, this homily might signify that his particular spiritual temperament is closer to that of Moses Cordovoro (the Rama”k) in granting greater importance to immanence and the experiential, a legacy of still earlier “ecstatic kabbalah.”24
Two Modes of Torah-study25
“God created the great sea monsters and all the living creatures of every kind that creep . . .” (Gen 1:21).
The word t’ninim (sea monsters, a plural word) is derived from t’nina, which means “study” and thus indicates that God created different types of study. For there are two ways of study: one is the way of life and of the good, namely study of Torah for its own sake (torah lishmah), while the second is study not for its own purpose (torah shelo lishmah), but for an evil purpose, God forbid. Both types of students can become great in Torah in their own way, though the one engages in Torah for its true, legitimate purpose, to experience the divine sweetness, while the other chooses an evil path, as his motivation derives from his quest for position and material benefit and uses Torah “as a spade with which to dig.”26 “The one no less than the other was God’s doing . . .” (Eccl 7:14).
And this is alluded in what our Sages relayed in their saying that the Creator chilled the male, meaning the one who studies Torah for its own purpose; this is associated with the male and is necessitated to an extent lest one would cease to exist in the face of the enormous delight in his engaging in Torah-study for its own sake, leaving him no possibility of existence. [The sexist overtones typify the attitudes largely prevalent in the preacher’s environment and in much of prior tradition. The male is described here as driven by such an all-powerful love of Torah-study that he could easily die in the course of pursuing that love.] And God killed the female, connoting the person who studies not for the sake of the Torah itself, killing and weakening that person’s strength lest the world be destroyed as a consequence of his mode of study.27 [In the talmudic agada, which refers to the danger of the sea monsters’ mating, as with their boundless appetite their offspring could consume the entire world, the male is castrated and chilled and preserved to serve as a feast for the righteous in the World-to-Come.]
And the text concludes, “and all the living creatures of every kind that creep . . . and all the winged birds of every kind” (Gen 1:21), referring to the young ones—and there are many of them—who only limitedly study Torah for its own sake, each one according to the person’s own aspect and level. For “Torah-learning for its own sake” assumes many faces, just as there are also many varieties of “Torah-learning not for its own sake.” And fortunate is the person who chooses the good, thereby coming to experience the pleasantness of God.
Comment: In a society with few intellectual outlets other than the study of sacred text and the discourse relating to it, the issue at the center of this homily becomes very real. Does one’s mental endeavor, in such a situation, respect the nature of the subject of his study?
While the concepts of torah lishmah and torah shelo lishmah (studying out of sincere motivations or out of self-centered pragmatic motivations such as position, prestige, or reputation) are found already in talmudic literature (conveying that whereas torah shelo lishmah is a death-potion, torah lishmah is a potion for life),28 the contrast between those two modes bore a special and more particular relevance in