LM 26.1 — Retzitza · תורה כ״ו

Be'ezrat Hashem, we are going to be learning Torah כ״ו, לשון Rabbeinu זכרונו לברכה, which we've explained before. It's a relatively short Torah, although it is שייך to the next Torah, so the Biur HaLikutei explains that these Torot could be learned together, should be learned together, although we are going to split them up in our שיעורים. While it's short, I think we're going to bring up several points, at least for reflection, to maybe uncover a hint of what's alluded to in this Torah. Every Torah has so much over there. As far as the timing of when this was given, Rabbi' Alter brings in the note that this was in the printed, in the כתב יד of Rabbeinu, although we don't know exactly when it was said.

However, it is part of this series of Torot between the Savi d'Bei Atnuna and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya going through some very very difficult to understand questions and answers that really do speak to a lot of the secrets of of creation, of avodah, and so on. Because the Torah is relatively short, I think we can actually do things a little bit in different order. I'm going to read through the Torah first, and then we're going to go back and unpack it, so at least we can kind of map it out. So, to read through it relatively quickly: The Torah starts out with the conversation brought from the Gemara in בכורות, רציצא דמיית בביעתו, if you have a chick that dies in its shell, היכא נפיק רוחא?

Where does the רוח, where does the life force of the chick exit the shell, it's a closed environment? ואמר להו, and רבי יהושע בן חנניה responds: בהיכא דעל, it goes out where it came in. Rashi explains, רציצא דמיית, אפרוח שמת בתוך קליפתו, an אפרוח, a chick that dies in its shell. רציצא, so again, I'm just going to read the words, and then we're going to go back and unpack it. רציצא זה אפרוח, a רציצא is a chick, זה בחינת צדיק, that is a reference, it relates to a צדיק, בחינת יפרח בימיו צדיק. יפרח is lashon of אפרוח.

The pasuk in Tehillim קפיטל ע״ב: May the tzadikim greatly increase. ששאלו אותו, the Savi d'Bei Atnuna asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya: הצדיק שממית את עצמו, the tzadik that kills himself, as it were, מוסר את נפשו בצלותיה ובעותיה, this is a לשון from אונקלוס. בצלותיה ובעותיה, בעי, if in the Gemara language, can mean need, want, or ask. בעי, a lot of times the Gemara will introduce: בעי רב somebody. בעי is לשון of asking, of requesting. In the Gemara a person is called a מבעה. In the Gemara Bava Kama, a person is a seeker. ובעותיה is a לשון of tefillah.

צלותא ובעותא is לשונות of tefillah. So, when a tzaddik kills himself, he's moser nefesh through תפילה, באיזה מן המקומות מן התפילה צריך לו למסור את נפשו ביותר? Now a person, a person should be moser nefesh for all of tefillah, but is there one aspect of tefillah that we could focus on where the tzaddik, and we'll see why we're talking about a tzaddik in a second, should be מוסר his nefesh specifically? והשיב להם, this is by the way just to, just to point out, I think that this is worthy of of thinking about. Ideally we should we all want every single tefillah from start to finish to be totally, to be totally knocking it out of the park.

And over here, now there's different ways of addressing tefillah. Tefillah certainly has different components which could require different energies, but the way that it's framed, it says if almost as if even the tzaddik, the person who who he's not he's already holding, he's at the peak of the mountain, should a tzaddik focus or is there a need to focus with the assumption that he's not going to be having at the same level all the time. Right? Mesirut nefesh, it's like interval training, right? A person who's going to be moser nefesh to to gather that level of intent, and that that approach should be moser nefesh in one place more than others.

Now again, there's really two ways of learning it because you could say be moser nefesh during one part of tefillah because you can't have that level of intensity, that level of emotion or that mesirut nefesh, that level of commitment all the time, so at least do it during these parts. Or do you say, "No, there's different aspects of tefillah, a person has a lot of things to do, you know, as part of their marital relationship, some of it might be throwing out the garbage, some of it might be relating in an interpersonal way." The level of intent, certainly one should say be more present while you're relating interpersonal way because that's what's appropriate for that part of the avodah, rather than taking out the garbage, which is task-based.

It doesn't really make a difference, it's a nice thing also if a person has a high level of kavanah that I'm doing an avodah, I'm doing what somebody else needs, I'm making them happy, but there's obviously a different level of intent that's just necessarily part of the task. But be that as it may, this is the question: a tzaddik that was going to be ממית עצמו for tefillah, which parts of תפילה צריך למסור את נפשו ביותר? Which ones should he do it exceedingly? There is some level of mesirut nefesh no matter what a person is doing.

והשיב להם, היכא דעל, wherever it entered. What does it mean that the ruach of the chick leaves the egg wherever it entered? היינו אך שיש לו להעלות ניצוצי הקדושה, wherever, I'm just going to read this literally, he has to elevate the ניצוצי הקדושה, the sparks of kedushah, we'll translate it, היינו אך שנכנסים בו מחשבות זרות. This is wherever מחשבות זרות, external thoughts enter, so he has to elevate them, צריך להעלותם. Limsor nafsho, that is where this tzaddik is going to be moser nefesh. Now I'm going to read Rav Chaim Kramer's note. We're going to peel back this onion a little bit as we try to get to as deep as we can go in this lesson, in this Torah.

Rav Chaim Kramer brings the Savvei Devei Atuna, the wise men asked, "When a chick dies in its shell," and he explains this in line with how we integrate it, a tzaddik who is moser nefesh by putting his great energy into his tefillot, where should he put the greatest effort? Rabbi Yehoshua responds, "Through where it enters, that's where the ruach goes out. He should be moser nefesh in those places of tefillah where he feels external thoughts invading. In reality, these thoughts are the sparks of holiness in search of rectification," we're going to have to explain this, "By exerting himself, he elevates these sparks and restores them to kedushah." Further, Rav Natan adds that tefillah is one of the things that preceded the world and is the means through which everything is transformed from the potential to the actual.

Tefillah represents koach. When we daven, we connect with hakadosh baruch hu, we create those pipelines, we bring the shefa down mikoach el hapoal. So tefillah is those things that have yet to actualize. The power of tzaddikim essentially stems from prayer, which means that the tzaddik who has engaged in personal development, this is really coming, it's built on tefillah. Therefore, the shell of our allegory, our mashal, it's talking about the shell that the chick dies in, this corresponds to prior to creation. The shell is koach, that is what the chick will develop from, and therefore the shell is talking about tefillah, something that's pre-actualization.

At that point, nothing has come into existence. The chick, which will be born, this corresponds to after something is actualized. Just as the after-creation derives its life force from the koach, from prior to creation, also the tzaddik gets its power from the shell, from the prayer which preceded the world, which is bekoach, and therefore the tzaddik's power to elevate the sparks of holiness is the greatest during prayer. The tzaddik is the one who has actualized this koach, this potential, and he has brought that into the actual. Now we can take a step back and we are going to go through the Torah.

One more point I'm going to mention, which we've discussed a lot over the course of you know the many shiurim and we're continuing to explore, is often times when we relate to a talmid chacham or even a tzadik, colloquially we're talking about where a person is holding in terms of his own personal avodah, there also is the idea that the tzadik is a role, that as much as each individual has his own צורה, his own structure—a head, hands, feet, and a person is therefore able to function—the Jewish community as a whole in any particular דור, and maybe from the beginning of time, but however you look at this, the Jewish community itself is a צורה.

And the tzadik plays a role in that צורה of a community. And really just to bring it down to earth, like any community or like any country, civilization, the leader's concerns, what keeps the leader up at night, and what actually does you know plague him emotionally or the leader's successes are not necessarily, or necessarily not if he really embodies this role, his own personal concerns. People you know maybe he can retire and go live out in an island someplace. The leader who is fully engaged embodies that role. He embodies the concerns of the community. So this Torah, as much as there is certainly relevance for how we we on our own can relate to tefillah, but the the entrance point into this Torah is actually relating more to a tzadik.

And Rav Chaim Kramer points this out as well, that even though this is talking about the tzadik and his obligations to sacrifice in order to elevate the sparks, we'll have to see what that means, which is more of a global, a כלליות'דיק עבודה, this the Torah also does have a meaning, a role for the common Jew through the concentration that we put into our prayer and our mitzvot we perform, each of us is participating in the process of increasing holiness in the world. So we're all rectifying our part of it, and the tzadik is taking all of those pieces and presenting them, putting them together into the greater into the greater structure.

And therefore each of us, in commensurate with our own level, have to expend energy and self-sacrifice and so on. So now let's go dig into the Torah from the beginning. לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה: רציצה דמיית בביצתה, a chick that dies in its shell. Interestingly, I was just thinking that ב- could mean in, ב- could also mean with. We're really going to be asking about the רציצה, the chick, the efroach, we're going to align with the tzadik. How is he moser nefesh as regards tefillah, with with regard to tefillah? The to the tefillah we already mentioned this, the ביעה, the ביעתא, בעותא, the same language as the shell is the same language that we use for tefillah.

תפילה בעצם represents בכח. If you think even in simple terms, not in you know kabbalistic terms per se, if a person develops a relationship and then based on that relationship there could be a... sale, there could be a business relationship, a son can approach a parent, a תלמיד could approach a רבי, and then once they're aligned, certain things are going to follow from their relationship, from their agreement, from the conversation that will now flesh that out. Here's what we discussed and here how it's going to come out in practice. If we understand tefillah as our aligning, our avodah with הקדוש ברוך הוא, things that come into the world are an outgrowth of this relationship with הקדוש ברוך הוא, of us building a personal relationship, creating pipes, הקדוש ברוך הוא sending שפע down.

So tefillah, again, represents everything that is בכח, and therefore the tzadik is the one whose job it is to actualize it vis-a-vis himself. He's moser nefesh, he changes himself, he changes his רצונות, he brings in line with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Vis-a-vis the community, he brings that attachment, the השראת השכינה, the alignment in his role as the leader of the community. So the סבי דבי אתונא ask that this רציצה, this אפרוח that dies in or with the shell, the way that we're suggesting, היכא נפיק רוחא, where does the ruach go out or up? ואמר להו בהאי דעל, where it came in.

רציצה זה אפרוח. The רציצה is the chick, זה בחינת צדיק, בחינת יפרח בימיו צדיק. Now, interestingly over here the note says יפרח could be split up the letters as י' פרח. י' would represent חכמה, this is the מחשבה, this is going to be the avodah, and פרח would be רפ״ח, 288. There's an ענין of the רפ״ח ניצוצות, and therefore our our Torah would be asking about the תיקון of the רפ״ח ניצוצות and answering that through the מסירת נפש of the צדיק, which we're going to see will be in rejecting מחשבות זרות, this is going to be מעלה, this will elevate from the קליפות these ניצוצות of קדושה.

This requires a lot of explanation, much of which we're not going to go into, but at the highest level we're we're going to explain, and I I hope that this is framed accurately. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created a world. We've said many times before, why did Hakadosh Baruch Hu create the world? We can't really ask, but now that we have a world we can ask what is not why did Hakadosh Baruch Hu create it, but in Hakadosh Baruch Hu's creation we work back to understand רצון השם and purpose, our תכלית, our תפקיד, so that we can fulfill that רצון השם once He created.

We're asking all of our questions in a post-creation world within the בריאה. Hakadosh Baruch Hu was was created the אין סוף. The אין סוף, it's a discussion in the in the in the great minds, but whether or not we relate to אין סוף ברוך הוא, אין סוף is a reference to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, or the אין סוף itself was a creation, because even when we talk about אין סוף, this already again in a post-creation world, the role, so to speak, כביכול, as we talk about the אין סוף, is to be משפיע. But a משפיע is only defined once you have the idea of having a מקבל.

So if you say that the אין סוף now in part of this process has a job to be משפיע, that means until it's משפיע, in whatever form we could even say, not to not chas v'shalom, so already represents a שלמות of itself, is incomplete, that means that a job of a משפיע is incomplete until one is מקבל. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we don't even talk about, at the level of pre-creation there was nothing missing, there was nothing lacking, we're not even going to discuss it. Hakadosh Baruch Hu now created a world, חק הטוב להיטיב, הקדוש ברוך הוא wanted, as it were, to be able to bestow good, and the greatest good is where we participate in that, where we earn our good.

Therefore, we have to have bechira. We're speaking incredibly high level. In order for there to be bechira, there has to be what to choose between, and therefore, if we fast-forward through creation, Hakadosh Baruch Hu developed the steps, as it were, not only to present us with a world, but to present it with a chain, with an interconnectivity where you have עולמות, you have systems that are independent, they are also related and interrelated, they parallel each other so that they coexist, we believe we discussed in Torah כ״ד. Now, as we look around the creation, that means that there are different דרגות where there is a lack of clarity.

Things, at least from the bottom up, from our perspective, are not presented as as being totally Godly energy. We look around, we see a physical world. We see what we perceive as טוב ורע, and yet on the other hand, there certainly is and necessarily is Godliness in every single thing, or else it can't exist. There is no other basic level of existence itself. What is, as Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so to speak, created these כלים, created the possibility of being מקבל, where something that's a כלי קיבול, something that is a receptacle, until it receives what the אור, until it receives something, is חסר, it's missing the אור.

But what's keeping the כלי alive? This entire iteration -tion of creation. What's keeping the מקבלים, the כלים alive as they become created until they're מקבל the אור and they can elevate? That will be called, we're gonna call that the רפ״ח ניצוצות, so that you have something that presents itself as being גס, as being physical, as being mundane, as being רע, and when you separate it out, the truth is you could say, "Oh, really this is just a more physical representation of the godliness, our role being to attach it back to the source." To say, "Oh, Hakadosh Baruch Hu had a tachlit in everything.

There is now this stage, this universe in which I operate. It's not clear necessarily to the uninitiated, from the lower perspective, how everything is really Hakadosh Baruch Hu presenting this, that it really relates to a גילוי of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Our job is to make בירורים, to separate that out, to gain a higher level of clarity, to to to look at things from a higher altitude, and now from a higher place looking down, everything makes sense in how it's really orchestrating and and one with the רצון ה׳." In the tzaddik's role of a leader, in the tzaddik's role of tefillah, I'm just going to read a small piece of Kuzari because it struck me.

I saw it not that long ago. And I'm actually going to read it's easier maybe from the English translation Feldheim, page 300, it says, "One who recites one recites blessings that are inclusive of all Yisrael" - it's talking about Shemoneh Esrei - "personal prayer, petitions and prayers are not part of the standard Amidah, but are instead voluntary additions. The sages established a place for these personal prayers in the Amidah blessing by שמע קולנו for those who desire." So this already creates a very interesting a very interesting framing of tefillah, which is tefillah's primary purpose is not to ask for personal prayers, although there is a place to do that, but that is not actually the purpose of tefillah.

Tefillah is avodah shebalev, there is a level of hitbatlut there. If we were going to ask for personal prayers to fulfill our own needs, we're not really being mevatel ourselves to Hashem, we're asking Hashem to be mevatel Himself, as it were, to us. Now, there is a place for personal prayers, we ask personal prayers to fulfill Ratzon Hashem. I don't want to get into that, but at its core, if we understand tefillah is to bring רצון ה׳ מכח אל הפועל, and he says over here, the Otzar Nechmad, he brings in note 134, "One's objective in prayer should be to attach himself to the Divinity, to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

This can only be accomplished when one is part of the nation of Israel, to which Divinity adheres, but not when one is acting merely as an individual." So that the tzadik, he might be a very important person, but he person can't fulfill the role of a tzadik or the role of any leader without the constituents, without the people who he's tasked with leading. We saw Rashi not that long ago that Moshe Rabbeinu did not receive did not receive communications from HaKadosh Baruch Hu certain times when Klal Yisrael was not ראוי, because Moshe Rabbeinu was ראוי for it, as the Gemara brings that other people, I think by Shmuel HaKatan, that other and and other personalities as well would have been ראוי to receive the שכינה, but if the דור was not ראוי for it, then in their role as a leader they're not going to receive it.

Therefore, when the tzadik steps forward to daven in that role, all of us in our own way, and the tzadik certainly in his role, the tefillah is there are requests as a way of connecting, we just had the seder where there's a question and answer, the best way to connect with information, connect with teachers, connect with connect with an idea is to create a void that has to be filled, is questions and answers, so there are requests, but the idea of relating to tefillah is really a mesirut nefesh in what we're trying to accomplish, which is attaching ourselves and our world and our people to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, recognizing that there is a void, recognizing that there is a כלי קיבול, that there is a a seeming vacuum from godliness, from spirituality, and when we actually look behind the curtain and we realize that everything's actually totally orchestrated divinely by HaKadosh Baruch Hu specifically to give us an avodah, to realize its place in the broader בריאה, its place in our avodah, and therefore, it's not it's not really it's not really separated from הקדוש ברוך הוא at all.

It's just a representation where we were we don't want to take the bait, it's where somebody who has a lower perspective sees physicality, they see competing priorities, but once somebody says, "Oh, no, this was actually coded in very specifically, right, this is how הקדוש ברוך הוא made the world on purpose, it was for our benefit so that we could go through the avodah of putting together the puzzle, right?" הקדוש ברוך הוא had a picture, the picture was beautiful, He carved it into a puzzle and broke it up, so that we could have the satisfaction when it goes on the wall, when we look at it, that we participated in bringing about that גילוי.

But הקדוש ברוך הוא could bring about the גילוי on His own, but in that case, our that wouldn't have been actualized with the גילוי in such a way that חק הטוב להיטיב that we could have benefited from it. So now let's go forward, and I think we spoke out a lot of these ידיעות, that'll make it go faster. The רציצה's נפריח is a bechinah of צדיק, בחינת יפרח בימיו צדיק, relating to the tzadik as chachmah, the מחשבה is there in order to elevate these 288 sparks, the the רוחניות, the Godliness within the world, that is the tzadik's role on behalf of the community, on behalf of himself, not in terms of personal tikkun, but in terms of being metaken the world to elevate the world, bring it back to its source.

שאלו אותו, the Savi Devei Atona asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania, הצדיק שממית את עצמו, the tzadik that is going to have mesirat nefesh, which at its core is part of this avodah. What What's mesirat nefesh? My nefesh, my priorities, my likes and dislikes. If those seemingly are at odds with ratzon Hashem, well that that is really that's that's not really competing priorities. That's a mistaken notion. If you have somebody who not only assembles, but actually creates yesh me'ayin something, this, by definition, whatever whatever the one who created something decides its functionality is for, by definition, that is its functionality.

I coded something in order to do something, if it's a computer, I built something in order to have this functionality, and not that I made a mistake, and really it's better at B than A. Sometimes you have inventions that are actually much more valuable in a different context. But we're talking about הקדוש ברוך הוא here. If הקדוש ברוך הוא created something in order to do X, then the only way to define it is by the function of X. It is בכח, and it has to bring that about. We are here in order to do avodah, in order to connect to הקדוש ברוך הוא, in order to make a kiddush Hashem, in order to bring about that גילוי individually and as a community.

If we have anything else, then the appropriate then our appropriate avodah is to be moser nefesh. Through that mesirat nefesh, when through this conflict, as it were, and we are giving over our nefesh in favor of ratzon Hashem, what we're really doing is expressing that there is nothing else. It was just mistaken, and as we give mesirat nefesh, it doesn't even become that we're putting aside our ratzon in favor of Hashem, it's that we didn't even have ratzon. Now, let's go a deeper, actually one step deeper, in that context in in that context. What does it mean that we don't really have ratzon?

Clearly, if if there's ahavat Hashem and there's ahavah for something else, I can say that ahavat Hashem is ahavat Hashem is better. What would it mean to say that my ahavah for the wrong thing doesn't really exist? There's a I wanted to quote it, I don't have it right with me, but I believe the Siftei Chen has a has a paragraph that puts it in these terms. He says, הקדוש ברוך הוא created a world. It's not that Hashem is the CEO of the world, and Hashem is not running the world. Hashem creates, continues to create, continues to run.

A CEO enters into a company to run it. Over here, there is no it. Meaning that the Torah doesn't say that murder is asur because murder is bad. Murder is bad because the blueprint of creation defines murder as being bad. Therefore, the outcome is that even a person who is not did not learn it in Torah, we understand that there are certain things that are, objectively speaking, bad. What is the idea of love? A mother loves a child. What is that idea of love? That is because there's Godliness that comes into the world in a certain tzurah that we are able to relate to.

These take on the form of the sefiros: chesed, gevurah, tiferet. The midah of chesed, aligned with ahavah, this how the Siftei Chen explains, this is a love. This is the koach of love. This is the idea, the Godliness, the koach of love in the briyah is really a Godly quality. Now, הקדוש ברוך הוא gives us the opportunity. Here we have love, and this could be used, utilized, related to in different ways. If you think about, like, you know, whatever this means, but just think about the image. Here you have the idea of love. Now, it's perspective.

Am I looking towards הקדוש ברוך הוא, towards connecting the idea of love with its source, and being mevatel myself, and understanding that this entire emotion this is only there in order for me to connect to הקדוש ברוך הוא, or have I decided to sort of shift my perspective, I'm sitting at a different angle, where I'm going to have love for something else, love of self. When we connect things to the source, what we're really doing is aligning ourselves with the truth and understanding, whether I choose to see it or not, הקדוש ברוך הוא is the source, the ultimate source, haMakom, the ultimate context for everything in the briyah, every type of emotion.

And when I understand that this Godliness is really an expression, if we think about we've used white light refracted through a prism. We don't have the kelim to relate to the white light, so the but הקדוש ברוך הוא gave us the way to since we are lower down the chain, we can relate to the individual colors. So, when you shine that white light through a prism, each one of those individual lights, you could have just put the original light under a microscope, but each one of those those different colors really are coming from the original divinity itself, which is fascinating chizuk for me, also.

Why? Because this means that even if a person's applying love love in the wrong way, they're actually literally just as close, just as engaged with Godliness, I mean this unbelievable powerful point, as if they are loving the right thing. The only difference is perspective, priorities, but teshuvah, I'm not far away from Hashem. I'm literally engaging a midah of retzon Hashem. I should be humbled, and this should bring me to teshuvah, realizing that I'm utilizing the retzon Hashem the the the midah of Hashem for the wrong thing, but a person uses his eyes in the wrong way, it's not that they're far away from Hashem, they're not using the power of vision, they're not using the power of eyes, they're literally engaged with Hashem, they're engaged with that power of sight, just towards the wrong thing.

So now, it's not that I have to reattach myself to Hashem, I am attached to הקדוש ברוך הוא. I just have to reorient myself, right? It's just a paradigm shift, it's the way that I look at it, but the pieces are there, I'm already engaged. This raising of the רפ״ח ניצוצות is something that the tzadik in his role is going to create just a different orientation of mesirat nefesh, a putting aside of all priorities, and the tzadik is in the has the ability to do this because he's so otherwise elevated and purified, he is not going to get lost in the personal priorities.

He's the one to engage in the avodah of taking things from the shell, from the klipah, and and bringing into the בריאה this tikkun of aligning it with its source. And therefore, when the Sabei deBei Atuna asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, this tzadik that is going to create this mesirat nefesh, where is the—we daven for a lot of ruchniyut, but this mesirat nefesh, this reorienting, this putting aside of the idea of nefesh, where does where is that the most important, so to speak, באיזה מן המקומות מן התפילה צריך למסור את נפשו, where should he put aside his נפש, ולהתחזק?

And the answer is, והשיב להם היכא דעל. Not where it came in where it entered. In Aramaic we would say על is where it entered. על is to become elevated. היינו היכא שיש לו להעלות ניצוצי הקדושה, where we have to elevate these sparks. Now again, it's really בתורת משל. The elevating of the sparks is, so to speak, attaching it to the source. So if you think about creation being top-down, you're elevating the sparks and then everything else falls away, right? What what what does it mean? Here I am, I have an intention, I create something to do a certain purpose.

When you are looking at the machine, looking at the item on its own without knowing any of this information, there there might be two or three different things that you can use it for. When you discover intent, and it fits, it's just right. That's what it means, I am now aligning it with a source which was one level up, one altitude up, and the other perspectives, the other mundane parts of it that, you know, you were going to use this radio for this iPhone for a for a doorstopper, that just takes up it stops having meaning.

It it not only falls down, it evaporates. Elevating the sparks within the lower level of creation brings them up and everything else just falls away and evaporates. היינו היכא שנכנסים בו מחשבות זרות. Where is this place where the tzadik has the opportunity to elevate it? Where there are מחשבות זרות, וצריך להעלותם כידוע, and he has to elevate them כידוע. Now there's a little bit of a girsa, potential girsa change here, כי מחשבות הזרות הן ניצוצי הקדושה שנפלו. These מחשבות זרות are the ניצוצי הקדושה, שם צריך למסור נפשו, that is where the tzadik has to be מוסר נפש.

Now I just want to point out over here, and this is my own thoughts, I'd love to hear how you how you think about it if this resonates: Everybody davens and has מחשבות זרות in whatever form they take. There's different ways to deal with that. For the average person, when we daven and we have מחשבות זרות, if you think about somebody who is trying to distract you, this is a mashal from the Baal HaTanya, there's two reasons why somebody might come to talk to you during your Shemoneh Esreh. One reason is because they need something.

If you answer them, then they're going to go away, you can resolve the problem, and now you'll be able to daven. But there's another reason why somebody might distract you: because they're trying to distract you, they're trying to be annoying. The more that you engage them, the more that they have their hooks in you, the more that they try to distract you. You're actually never going to answer the question or fulfill its needs, because its needs are to distract you. It knows that it can't just come on full force, so it'll go little by little, the more that you engage with it, the worse it gets.

When we are davening Shemoneh Esreh and all of a sudden our מחשבות come, the yetzer hara comes, something comes, and we look at that as being something external. We're we are a nefesh a a חלק אלוק ממעל. Where are these external thoughts coming from? They're not us, they're externalities. Our job is actually not to engage it. This is why we said before, this Torah we can all learn from it, but in the role of a tzadik, or in the role of maybe some of us play the role of a tzadik in certain elements, there's there becomes a different role which is in line with what we said before.

If you ignore something, then it won't affect your avodah, but it goes away, it doesn't find a tikkun. To the extent that the tzadik is in the role of the leader, the communal leader, to bring about the tikkun that this people, that this generation, whoever it is that he is leading, is supposed to bring about, because as much as we are working on ourself, we are also fixing fixing the בריאה, right? It's almost, I think in the last Torah we discussed this dual perspective of avodah being to be metaken oneself and also that each one of us, as we're metaken ourselves, we also bring a tikkun to the בריאה.

The tzaddik who, let's say, is already on top of the mountain as far as self-development, I think I think that this is a good way to present it when we talk about this friction, a person who is a tzaddik vis-a-vis his own avodah has already achieved a self-tikkun, so now he's no longer working on that, but what he is is he is actually in the perfect position to help bring about the tikkun of the world, because he won't get distracted. For some of us, if we had to go into the depths, we had to go into a non-kosher restaurant, into a bar, whatever it is, and fix it, we would have a problem because not the bad music, the bad smells remind us of our misspent youth, let's say.

They they might resonate with us, we might have a personal desire. How are we going to be metaken the world when we have our own problems? All of a sudden we're going to shift back into self-development. The one who's going to be metaken the deepest parts of what has to be elevated has to be somebody where they they are not going to become misaligned in that avodah, because then they can't bring about the tikkun. Now all of a sudden their vision is impacted. We just if you heard, we put up a Tzidkat HaTzaddik אות ב, we talked about the path, ברכות לראש צדיק.

The the the orientation, the brachot, the alignment with Hashem is the first on the path towards becoming a tzaddik, and that is that aligns with this. The perspective and orientation has to be in place before the tzaddik engages in his job in that role of a tzaddik. Therefore, the one who has to ultimately achieve a tikkun and elevate the the the רוחניות that's at the lower aspects that nobody else could do, this is the tzaddik, and that's why we say, where should the tzaddik It's it's almost the way the way I'm learning, it's interesting. On one hand, we're saying, where should the tzaddik be moser nefesh the most?

Which which, on one hand, is is true, that is what the Torah is saying, and the greatest degree of mesirut nefesh, of putting aside any notion of mundane, any perspective of something that's lower down in the chain, is the lower down you go, the more shielded it is, the more העלם there is, the more הסתר פנים there is, the more that a person has to be mevatel all of the mundane things in order to reorient to understand that that actually is coming from a higher place as well. The greatest mesirut nefesh is understanding the true divinity in the things that are seemingly the farthest away, because if something is very clear, then you don't have to be that moser nefesh to see the clarity.

The more obscure something is, the more that a person has to work to not falling for the trap, taking the bait, and looking at it through that lens. But the other thing is that we could potentially say is not only where a tzaddik has to be moser nefesh the most, where the tzaddik is the most in a position where he's the one to be moser nefesh because he's actually the only one to accomplish this task. Okay, we will explore these ideas more in the next Torah, but I think, as far as the takeaways are concerned, just a couple of points of התבוננות, aside from the role of a tzaddik which we've addressed before, is just the understanding, at least on an intellectual level, that number one, we are always close with Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

The job that we have is not so much bringing godliness in, as it were, it's bringing the gilui, which is really a matter of orientation. And no matter where we're holding, we are actually just as in touch with Hakadosh Baruch Hu as we could be. It's just that we had actually become misaligned in our perspective. If anything, one could say that when we're aligned with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that's unbelievable. When we're misaligned, it's Hakadosh Baruch Hu Himself who, kivayachol, is rooting for us. He's he's our biggest the the biggest supporter of us, who's just sitting there begging, watching His children if they would just align slightly differently, understand, look at things a little bit differently, ask the right advice, go to the right tzadik, then they they could just reposition themselves, and I could get so much nachat from them.

The other thing is that, intellectually, we understand that everything is literally godly and just as much part of the divine process as anything else, right? Everything, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is perfect and creates perfectly. There is actually no difference where you are in that chain, where you are on that curve, whether or not it's divinely orchestrated, programmed, and and a reflection of רצון השם. The only difference is where your perspective is. If you are higher up on the chain, then you can see that רצון השם aligned with the emet, aligned with godly priorities. If you are further down in the chain, so then Hakadosh Baruch Hu created seemingly competitive, competing priorities so that we can be the ones to make that choice, but that also is aligned with Hashem.

That actually is exactly what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted. Only the person who is not fooled, who doesn't have that altered perspective, is the one who can be in a position to see that the most clearly. But if we intellectually know this and we can apply this to some degree in our own life, we say גם זו לטובה, כל דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד. When we understand that it's just a question of positioning and perspective rather than rather than than the situation, then this gives us a lot of chizuk, hopefully, in order to understand that, no, this is what our task is. Everything is, Baruch Hashem, perfect. It's exactly how it's supposed to be. It's my job to be able to bring this from my from my mind, וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך, to bring this into our into our heart.