Some days you just can’t open a regular Artscroll siddur without falling down a deep rabbit hole of theological controversy.
You’d figure that the siddur is the very poster child of consensus and ancient tradition. But you’d be wrong. There are, in fact, some odd expressions of extreme beliefs that many recite daily without giving it a second thought. Today’s example is the “l’shem yichud” attached to sefiras haomer (and to putting on tefilin). Artscroll even printed those in their Ashkenaz editions.
What’s the big deal about l’shem yichud? Well there is that famous Noda B’yehuda (חי”ד סי’ צג) who wasn’t at all shy about sharing his general feelings on the subject. But his forceful criticisms were largely focused on the chutzpa of later generations who felt that the mitzva observance of our ancestors - who simply made berachos and then did the mitzvos - was somehow incomplete. He did hint to something darker, but didn’t elaborate.
Let’s take a look at the text and try to figure out what it means:
לְשֵׁם יִחוּד קֻדְשָׁא בְּרִיךְ הוּא וּשְׁכִינְתֵּיהּ בִּדְחִילוּ וּרְחִימוּ לְיַחֵד שֵׁם י"ה בְּו"ה בְּיִחוּדָא שְׁלִים בְּשֵׁם כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל
Which roughly translates as:
“In the name of the unity of the Holy One, blessed be He and His presence in fear and compassion to unify the name “Havaya” [i.e., the four-letter name] in its complete unity in the name of all Israel”
What’s this “unity” business? I know I’m grossly oversimplifying this, but I think it’s useful to say that the big-picture goal is to acknowledge that all of the physical creation is subsumed within God’s infiniteness. That’s a radical idea which arguably wipes out the first four of Rambam’s 13 principles. But I digress.
The larger question is: “why just this name (Havaya)?” Isn’t there only one God? What’s the point focusing on one name over all the others? Aren’t they all ways of describing the one God?
I believe that the most likely explanation follows the plain meaning of the words when understood in the context of their authors’ ideological context. In other words, when kabbalists refer to Havaya, or elokim, or Kah, or other names of God, they’re thinking about very different things. Take this passage from the Zohar (פרשת בשלח דף ע”ב) as an example:
אמר רבי אבא, מאי דכתיב “היש יהו”ה בקרבנו אם אין”, וכי טפשין הוו ישראל דלא ידעי מלה דא, והא חמו שכינתא קמייהו, וענני כבוד עלייהו דסחרן לון, ואינון אמרו היש יהו”ה בקרבנו אם אין, גוברין דחמו זיו יקרא דמלכיהון על ימא, ותנינן ראתה שפחה על הים מה שלא ראה יחזקאל, אינון אשתכחו טפשין ואמרו היש יהו”ה בקרבנו אם אין. אלא הכי קאמר רבי שמעון, בעו למנדע בין עתיקא סתימאה דכל סתימין דאקרי אין, ובין זעיר אנפין דאקרי יהו”ה, ועל דא לא כתיב היש יהו”ה בקרבנו אם לא, כמה דכתיב הילך בתורתי אם לא, אלא היש יהו”ה בקרבנו אם אין, אי הכי אמאי אתענשו, אלא על דעבידו פרודא, ועבידו בנסיונא, דכתיב ועל נסותם את יהו”ה, אמרו ישראל אי האי נשאל בגוונא חד, ואי האי נשאל בגוונא אחרא, ועל דא מיד “ויבא עמלק”
"Rabbi Aba said: why does it write (Shemos 17:7) 'Is God in our midst or not?' Were the Jews such fools that they didn’t know this? Did they not see the Shechina before them, and did the clouds of glory not cover them? How could they say 'Is God in our midst or not?' Men who saw the precious shine of their King on the sea, and (about whom) it’s taught that a slave girl saw on the sea things that Yechezkel didn’t see; could they have been such fools to say 'Is God in our midst or not?'
"Rather, this is what Rabbi Shimon said: they wanted to understand (the difference) between the Ancient One, hidden from all that’s hidden, which is called “Ayn,” and between Zeyr Anpin which is called God. And for that (reason), it doesn’t write “Is God in our midst or not (אם לא) – as it writes (Shemos 17:4) 'Will they follow in My Torah or not', but 'Is God in our midst or (is) Ayn (in our midst)'…"
“God” (Havaya), according to this formulation, refers only to the partzuf ain sof - who, according to kabbalistic thought, only came into existence during the process of creation and did NOT predate it! It is, the school of the Ari teaches, to this partzuf that we must direct all prayers. In their worldview, there’s simply no point davening to what Jews have always understood to be God.
In that context, prefacing your Omer count (or any other mitzva) with a shem yichud involves a deeply troubling theological declaration. You’re effectively saying that God can be divided into parts, that we are only to address a part which came into existence during creation (and not the eternal God), and that the eternal God isn’t even aware of our actions or prayers.
I’m certainly not the first to notice this problem. In fact, individuals have tried to rationalize that particular Zohar (including Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe in the second volume of hisעלי שור - Parshas Pinchas). But the interpretations I’ve seen don’t fit the Zohar’s words. And, in any case, the Ari and his immediate followers certainly took the Zohar at face value.
Even Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner (ספר נפש החיים שער ב פרק ב), in the context of prayer, wrote:
כי עצמות א”ס ב”ה סתים מכל סתימין ואין לכנותו ח”ו בשום שם כלל אפילו בשם הוי”ה ב”ה ואפי’ בקוצו של יו”ד דבי’ … וז”ש האריז”ל בלשונו הקד’ הובא בהקדמת פע”ח. שכל הכנויים והשמות הם שמו’ העצמו’ המתפשטים בספירות וע”ש
For Atzmus Ain Sof (“the Essence of God without end”) is hidden from all secrets and there’s no way to describe Him in any way, even with the Name “Havaya”…And this the Arizal wrote in his holy language – brought in the introduction to Pri Eitz Chaim – that all descriptions and names are (really just) names of the essence that has spread among the sefiros.
The delicious irony to all this is the awkward fact that it’s Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai himself (in Sanhedrin 63a) who’s most associated with the Torah prohibition of imagining God in any kind of partnership with other forces:
אמר לו ר"ש בן יוחאי והלא כל המשתף שם שמים ודבר אחר נעקר מן העולם שנאמר בלתי לה' לבדו
This is a great post. Actually a lot of your posts are touching on issues I have struggled with for decades 😂
ReplyDeleteThank you a lot for all the posts on that matter. If you could put together citations from the Zohar and the Ari that prove that the Kabbalists indeed pray to created "things". All this actually remind me of the greek mythology where Zeus (I think) created the world but, having no interest to rule it by himself, he rather created smaller gods and let them do the busyness.
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, and acknowledging that the Rabbi likely knows more Torah than I will be able to learn in an entire lifetime, my understanding of the Zohar quoted and its implications is slightly different, and puts it well within the bounds of traditional Jewish Hashkafa.
ReplyDeleteThe reference in this Zohar to “Ayn” is not to Ein Sof, but rather to Atik Yomin, which is just another “Partzuf” like Zeir Anpin, but on a “higher” level.
In this way, the people are asking which “name/perceptive understanding/concept of G-d” is “in their midst.”
The reason Rabbi Aba sees a problem with the question is because of the semiotic weirdness that goes on when you stop to think about it.
The people all knew that G-d (the Simple Existing Existence Who is One and All and Everywhere and for Whom Silence is Praise, per the Rambam) was in their midst. To even ask that question would be ridiculous.
But they have to refer to “Him” somehow. And G-d is necessarily relating to them in some way. They were asking, which method of relating to G-d are we dealing with here.
It would be like your kid got straight A’s on his report card the same day they accidentally broke your living room window with a baseball. You come home and enter the kitchen and the kid looks up at you and gauges “which version of Dad” is this. Is it Angry Dad? Is it Proud Dad? Is it Silly Dad? And depending on which version of Dad is facing the kid, that’s how the kid determines how to address you (eyes to the floor “yes sir” vs “eye contact and enthusiastic ‘hey papa!’”).
I believe this is what this Zohar is getting at.
It also makes the Lshem Yichud palatable, even for the staunchest rationalists, because it’s just joining “names” of G-d, but never joining “parts of G-d.” The things being unified are our own (necessarily flawed) perceptions of G-d, with the goal being the perceptual realization that G-d is a simple unity and does NOT have parts, multiple attributes, etc…the unification is happening from our end…and the things being unified are our own conceptualizations of G-d that we grok though different names (ok) or different attributes (way less ok, unless we understand them as ‘actions’ per the Rambam).
Of course, there’s a possibility I’m wrong about this, and I’m anachronistically assuming a certain level of metaphysical nuance that a bunch of Spaniards in the Middle Ages lacked. And if that’s the case, then yeah, a lot of the Zohar seems super weird.
But I think we can give the authors of these texts and ideas the benefit of the doubt that they weren’t just spouting heretical gobbledygook for no apparent reason. Because there IS a way—without being overly apologetic—to interpret their ideas through the lens of a complex-yet-consistent ontology and epistemology.
I always love your posts Rabbi Clinton (and those of the rest of the crew at KotzkBlog) Please keep them coming!
Thanks for these thoughts. Your reading of the Zohar is certainly reasonable and it could be useful in a strategic sense in much the same way as R' Shlomo Wolbe's reading (in the "עמלק" chapter of the second volume of his עלי שור). But I don't think that's how the Ari and his students understood it, and I also don't think it's the most likely reading of the Zohar text itself. After all, the Zohar does seem to refer to two separate entities that are *identified* (דאקרי) by different names. That doesn't sound like two versions of a relationship.
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