Letter No. 27
To the honorable student ... may his candle burn:
... I do indeed want to unite with you in body and soul, in this and in the next. However, I can only work in the spirit and the soul because I know your souls and can unite with them, but you can only work in the body, since you don’t know my spirituality, so as to unite with it. If you understand it, you will also understand that I don’t feel any distance from me to you, but certainly need the physical closeness. And yet, this is for you and for your own work, not for me or for my work, and with this I answer in advance many questions with regard to me.
But I do pray to the Creator to lead you on the path of truth, that you will be saved from all the obstacles along the way, and that the Creator will succeed for you all that you do.
As for you, you should meticulously follow the ways that I have set out for you regarding mind and heart, longing and prayers, and then the Creator will certainly succeed for us and we will soon unite in body and soul, in this and in the next.
To reply to your letter from the 26 of Kislev, the second day of Hanukah [December 2, 1926], you wrote that the world was created for work, and that He has created the darkness for the purpose of work—to have substance on which to work in it—since in the light, there is pleasure and not work. Accordingly, you asked, “What is the Klipa [shell/peel] of the right [side] for, for it feels the darkness as light, and the creature feels the darkness as separated from him, as though it is not his, so how can it continue throughout his seventy years? Such a person, why was he born?” You demand a complete answer for it, and it is not the great lights that you need, but only to remove the disgrace of hypocrisy from yourself, which reaches as deep as the soul. And you conclude that you can say about it ... “truth will show its way,” and “it is already the fifth year” and so forth.
In truth, your words are confused, and therefore I don’t know that truth. You said news: the world was created for work. If so, then should work remain forever? But it is known that eternity is rest! Also, your question about the creature replacing darkness with light without knowing the darkness in it, we need to know how to discern right from left, and you still haven’t been rewarded with seeing the darkness, since darkness and light are as the wick and the light. Therefore, we must see the candle and enjoy its light, and then you will know right from left.
However, why are you asking about the Creator, who gave great powers to the Klipot [pl. of Klipa]? I have already given you elaborate explanations about it, and primarily that the Creator protects Himself that one who clings to Him will not doubt Him, and this will never happen because He is Almighty, and I have no wish to elaborate here.
But I consider your words as “a prayer for the poor,” which is a prayer in complaint. It is closer to being answered than all other prayers. See in The Zohar about the verse, “A prayer for the poor,” etc., “And David was poor, but a poor one’s prayer is in complaint,” etc.
Also, your concern about a good sign, it seems that you need wholeness, as in merely a sign. This is a good sign because five years ago you weren’t complaining about that. I have already told you that from “And they journeyed from Rephidim” to the reception of Torah is only one journey. But know that my words must not calm your worry and comfort you, because at the end of the first year you were higher than you are now. And yet, do not give up on mercy.
The evidence you bring from the writing to the purpose of creation, that it’s for work: What does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God ... and to serve the Lord your God,” indeed, there are two purposes: one should be before man’s eyes, and one is for the Creator Himself. But the writing speaks of what should be before the eyes of the creature.
The matter is as is written in Pirkey Avot [Chapters of the Fathers]: It is not for you to finish the work, nor are you free to idle away from it.” That is, since wholeness is the purpose of the work and its conclusion, there is an open side to the Sitra Achra to come near and make one understand that he is incapable of it, and bring one to despair, since we should know that the end of the work is not at all our work, but the Creator’s work. Therefore, how can you know the Creator and gauge if He can or God forbid cannot finish His work? This is insolence and heresy!
“And you are not free to idle away from it,” even in that manner, if the Creator wishes you to work without finishing the job. This is the meaning of what is written, “What does the Lord your God ask of you?” That is, the creature must know only this: the Creator ... work, and will therefore do His will wholeheartedly, as in, “Open for Me one opening of repentance, as thick as a tip of a needle.” By that he will be saved from the Sitra Achra ever approaching him. If a person is completed in that, he can be certain that the Creator will finish His work on His end, “And I open for you gates through which carts and carriages enter.”
But if he is not ready to serve Him even in a manner that he is not rewarded with the completion of the work and the opening of the hall, no flattery or lies will help him. I have already explained what is written in The Zohar, “On the evidence of two witnesses ... he who is to die shall be put to death,” that it is SAM and he is dead to begin with, and it is not hard to kill the dead, though the dead has the Klipa of the right, since the harder Klipa is cancelled by proliferation of thanksgiving before the Creator, and proliferation of work.
I don’t know if my words satisfy you, so do let me know and I will reply accordingly, because the question, “What is the proof,” is a wise man’s question, if he is one who works.
Yehuda