Musar על סוכה 90:5

Rebeccah concluded that there was no point in living a life that was measured by the yardstick of the undiluted מדת הדין, seeing that hardly anyone could survive if he were to be measured by that attribute alone. This is why she said: קצ-תי בחיי, i.e. what good is my life under such circumstances! (Genesis 27,46) Unless some relief is found for the rest of the world's population this is the end of meaningful life. She referred to the tribe of חת, a Canaanite tribe whose daughters Esau had married. Seeing that the Canaanites were cursed already and that Esau himself was an outgrowth of the סטרא אחרא, she considered the combination as lethal, bound to lead to the oblivion of their offspring. Because of such considerations, the name that should by rights have been קצחי was changed to יצחק, to introduce the element of joy into their lives. The immediate cause for this was Isaac giving tithes which resulted in G–d blessing his efforts, as related in 26,12. It is strange that when Malachi 3,10 describes the blessing that results from tithing, he uses the expression of ארובות השמים, "the windows of heaven." Since the Torah uses the same expression at the onset of the deluge in Genesis 7,11, we wonder why the prophet would use an expression to symbolize blessing when that same expression had symbolized a curse on mankind in its prior usage in the Bible.

Those who ask this question do not really display much wisdom. The very quality that enabled Isaac to be judged by the attribute of Justice is what secures Israel's eventual lofty status, its joining the ranks of בני עליון, superior beings. First we must examine the meaning of the מדרשים, Bereshit Rabbah 12,15 et al., which report G–d as having wanted to create a universe that would be administered solely by the attribute of Justice. These Midrashim report that when G–d realized that such a universe could not endure for long, He co-opted the attribute of Mercy. I have dealt with this problem at length on page 14 of this volume, where I also explained that one must not conceive of G–d as having "changed His mind," having abandoned a previous plan, seeing לא בן אדם ויתנחם, "He is not human that He should have regrets" (Numbers 23,9). All that happened to G–d's original plan is that instead of the yardstick of the attribute of Justice being applied universally, it is applied only to בני עליה, the truly righteous. To them G–d applies the most stringent yardstick. It is the application to them of the undiluted attribute of Justice which stamps them as superior creatures, בני עליה. They are but few in numbers. G–d applies a mixture of the attributes of Justice and Mercy to the vast majority of people. In the future under discussion, however, when everybody will qualify as a member of that formerly select group, everybody will be judged by the undiluted attribute of Justice and will prevail even under such scrutiny. It is impossible for people nowadays to qualify for such a status until after their bodies, i.e. the raw-material their bodies are made of, have undergone a process of refinement such as the experience of exile and other afflictions. The more of such suffering the Jewish people experiences, the greater the evidence that G–d has decided to become very exacting with us in order to prepare us for that idyllic state. When viewed under this perspective, we understand that the application of the attribute of Justice is really an expression of the greatest love, חסד, of G–d for the Jewish people.

We have discussed earlier the elevated level of those Jews we described as בני עליה, towards whom G–d's planning was directed in the first instance, and whose rank is higher even than that of the תורה במקומה. The position of the תורה הקדומה, however, is on an even higher level than the souls of most Israelites. There is a discussion in Chagigah 12 between the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel as to whether heaven was created before earth or vice versa. The former argued that heaven was created first, citing scriptural proof, whereas the latter argued that earth was created first, also citing proof from the scriptures. The third view held by a group of unnamed scholars maintained that both heaven and earth were created simultaneously. This group of scholars also supported their view with quotations from the Bible. Each group of scholars were correct in their views.

Concerning man we are told in Kohelet 6,6, ואלו חיה אלף שנים פעמים, "if he had lived a thousand years twice, etc." The wording we would have expected would have been: "if he had lived two thousand years, etc." Why this peculiar wording? There are three levels at which life is lived, i.e. מעשה, דבור, מחשבה, and man has been equipped with נפש, רוח, נשמה, which can be termed as עשיה, יצירה, בריאה, to enable him to live his life at these various levels, as we know from the Zohar and the book Reyshit Chochmah, both of which explain this at length. The spiritual aspect of מעשה, deed, is related to נפש, whereas the spiritual aspect of דבור=study, is related to רוח, i.e. the world of יצירה. Finally, the spiritual aspect of מחשבה relates to the spheres of בריאה and נשמה, something still further removed from anything physical, tangible. The latter, i.e. the נשמה is destined to return to its origin under the כסא of G–d, whence it had been taken prior to entering a human body. A select few can reach the sphere of מחשבה דמחשבה, the region of נפש, רוח, נשמה of the עולם האצילות.