THE IMAGE OF GOD
Man is the highlight of creation and deserves honor and respect for he carries the image of God.163The honor due man as the representative of God who carries His image is a basic theme in Chasidic thought. Supposedly, this was the last teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. On his deathbed, his final statement was, “An artist invests him-self and expresses his deepest self in his work. Want to understand an artist? Look at his handiwork.” The point of the lesson was that to appreciate God and to love God it is necessary to appreciate and love man. Man is God’s greatest masterpiece—study the sculpture and appreciate it in order to appreciate the Divine. See further Ma’asei Hashem, vol. 1 pg. 55. What is the meaning of tzelem Elokim, “the image of God”? If I look at my reflection in a mirror, am I to think for a moment that I have seen God?! Judaism abhors any attempt to ascribe to God any physical characteristics, as Maimonides defined it, and it is one of the articles of faith that Jews recite on a daily basis, “I believe with complete faith that the Creator, Blessed is His Name, is not physical and is not affected by physical phenomena, and that there is no comparison whatsoever to Him.”
God is totally incorporeal, so in what way is man in His image?
The mystics explain that each Hebrew name of God denotes a different way in which man perceives the Omnipotent. Sometimes, I feel the Almighty’s boundless love, at other times I witness His awesome force and power, at still other points I might see His hand in nature. Each of the different attributes of God that man acknowledges is characterized with a unique name. The name Y-H-V-H164In deference to the saintliness of the names I have not spelled them out fully. reflects our feeling His love, A-do-n-ai is the name for the fact that He is the master of all, and Shad- dai reflects His power and dominion, His setting limits for the world.
Man was formed in the image of Elokim. This name represents the awareness that God is Baal ha-kochos kullam u-vaal ha-yecholes, “Master of all powers and He has total authority.”165Tur, Orach Chaim, Chapter 5. See also Nefesh Ha-Chaim 1:2. Man in the image of Elokim means that man, too, in a certain sense, is the master over all the forces of creation and is endowed with unbridled power. Tzelem Elokim teaches the cosmic effect of human behavior. Our deeds affect the entire world and the entirety of creation follows man’s lead.
An example of this principle is the story of the great flood. In Parashas Noach, the Torah tells of a time when all creatures were corrupted. Even animals and the inanimate earth violated nature’s law. Lions copulated with bears, and a man would plant peach seeds only to reap apples. As a result of the pervasive corruption, God sent a deluge of water that destroyed almost all of humanity, the animals, plants, and several feet of topsoil. Only man has freedom of choice. Animals, plants, and the earth do not have the ability to decide between good and evil, so how did all of creation become corrupt? The answer is that man controls the rest of creation.166See further Beis Ha-Levi on Parashas Noach. When man performs evil, the spirit of misconduct is increased throughout the world. Animals and the earth become infected too, and they start to perform in ways that are at variance with their law.
Mankind at the time of the flood was thoroughly rotten. They consistently chose evil. All the humans were sinners who polluted them- selves, and they caused the rest of creation to be polluted as well. Noah was righteous, and his influence allowed for a minute sample of animal and plant life that maintained fidelity to its laws.
Currently, we confront a physical world that suffers from pollution, ozone depletion, and global warming. The earth’s illnesses do not result merely from industrialization and its excesses. Spiritually there is an obvious cause for our planet’s troubles; human society is an increasingly corrupt group. Presidents lie, corporate titans shamelessly deceive, and the various forms of media pull readers and viewers to the lowest of lowly urges. Innocent faith, old-fashioned honesty, decency, and morality have become rare commodities. The rest of creation reflects our misdeeds.
How does this cosmic power work? Why do the actions of man have such effects? The answer is that man is a miniaturization of the entire spiritual realm. Man’s soul parallels God’s spiritual universes that form the foundation for this physical world.167The technical term for this concept is olam katan, man is a miniature of the entire world. See further Sichas Malachei Ha-Shareis Chapter 2, and the Over-view of ArtScroll’s Tehillim by Rabbi A.C. Feuer. When God created man, He said, “Let us make man.” Nachmanides explains the plural of “Let us” to mean that God invited all of creation to contribute to the creation of man; man has within him microcosmic traces of each created being. When a man displays strength and power that is the aspect of the lion within man, sometimes man is timid and fearful, that is when the nature of the lamb expresses itself in man. When people idle, doing nothing, it is a display of the plant element within man.
Imagine two harps tuned to the same pitch placed right next to each other. Play note A on one harp, its string will vibrate and produce a loud sound. Even though you have not touched the second harp, note A in the other harp will also vibrate softly. Man and the universe are parallel harps; when we cause our strings to vibrate, parallel strings in the supernal realms vibrate ever so softly, broadcasting the same notes throughout the world.168The imagery of two parallel harps is utilized by Rav Wolfson to explain a Talmudic story. The Talmud in Berachos 3b relates, “There was a harp hanging above the bed of David. When midnight would hit, a northern wind would blow. The harp would then play. David would awake and rise to study Torah until the morning.”
This story sounds too fantastic to be true. Can a wind play tunes on a harp? The story is not to be understood in a literal manner; rather the Talmud is utilizing allegorical imagery. The harp above the bed is really David’s heart, and the northern wind is the song of the souls of tzaddikim who reside in the northern part of the Garden of Eden. The righteous begin to sing at midnight. David’s heart was perfectly attuned to the souls in the Garden of Eden. When they started to sing, like a parallel harp, his heart started to vibrate in harmony, and he then awoke and studied Torah.
The Spiritual Dimension as Supernal Universes
A great Rabbi once walked with his student along a grassy path. While they were talking, the student carelessly picked a flower from the ground and started to scatter its petals. The Rabbi stopped walking and said to his student, “In the Midrash169Bereishis Rabbah 10. it is taught that every blade of grass has an angel that stands behind it hitting the grass saying, ‘Grow.’ When you picked the flower from the earth, you caused this flower’s angel to die. Do you have a good reason for destroying the life of a celestial light?”
Our physical world is controlled by a spiritual world. Each blade of grass, for instance, has a spiritual channel, an angel that provides for its life. Jewish mysticism details the makeup of this spiritual dimension. In a broad sweep, this spiritual dimension is comprised of five spiritual universes.
Why is there a need for a spiritual dimension? Can’t God direct us personally without any intermediates? The answer is that man’s feeble physical and spiritual nature would be overwhelmed by the presence of God.170When the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, the Jews experienced a direct rev-elation of Godliness. The experience was so overwhelming that their souls left their bodies, and all of Jewry had to undergo a revival of the dead. Finite man cannot directly experience the breath of the Infinite.
God’s essence is so overpowering that it does not allow for anything to exist independently before It. The spiritual universes are the steps in which God has limited His essence so that an independent existence can emerge. The key terms in understanding these steps are tzimtzum, “constriction,” and Or Ain Sof, “Light without End.”
Consider light. Light usually enables sight, yet too much light can blind.171The same is true with noise. A whisper can hardly be heard. Only if one raises the volume of speech is it audible. However, if one shouts at the top of his lungs, the heightened noise renders the words inaccessible. Similarly, God is called Infinite Light (Or Ain Sof), with no end and no beginning. He is the ultimate Reality. His life and vitality is so powerful, it overwhelms all other existing items that face Him directly. To allow for creation God acted with tzimtzum—He pulled in His light. He then emanated from Himself a light that was less bright than His essence. Even this light was too much for existence, so out of this light He caused another further limited light to emerge, and then another and another. At the last stage of limited light a physical universe emerged out of the spiritual lights. Olam is a universe, and the words he’elam and ne’elam, “unknown” and “hidden,” share the same Hebrew root. A universe is a “hiding of the Infinite,” a diminution of Divine light. The process of limiting the light and turning the spiritual into a progressively more physical creation is called seder hishtalshlus, the “order of development.”
Hishtalshlus shares a root with the word shalsheles, “chain.” Creation is a chain for two reasons. First, in a chain each ring leads to another, and creation is a process of cause and effect, greater lights producing lesser lights, out of which are formed even smaller forces.172“The Nefesh Ha-Chaim and many other sources tell us that there are many interlocking levels to the Creation. In an infinitely stretching chain beginning at the very Source of existence, many worlds are connected in sequence. Each of these higher worlds infuses the level below it with existence and energy; each is ‘male’ with regard to the world below it which is relatively speaking, ‘female,’ and together they ‘bring out’ yet another level below them. This process continues with myriad complexity until finally our finite world results” (Living Inspired pg. 71). This process is called the seder hishtalshlus. Second, in a chain, the rings interlock, the end of the first ring’s airspace has within it the beginning of the second ring, and in the spiritual dimension each level is interwoven with the next level. For instance, the lowest level of the universe of atzilus (the first universe), is also the highest level in the universe of beriah (the second universe).
The different stages of the seder hishtalshlus are the universes that are the soul parts of the physical universe. The first supernal universe is so high that it too is a light that is almost infinite. This universe is hardly spoken about in Chasidic literature173The Ari Ha-Kadosh wrote that humans should not try to meditate and think about this world (Sichas Malachei Ha-Shareis, Chapter 3). and is called Adam Kadmon, “Initial Man,” in Kabbalah; it parallels the human soul part of yechidah.
The second universe is atzilus. Atzilus means “next to,” “noble,” and “emanated or given off.” This world is “next to” God; it is the first light that God gave off. An atzil is a nobleman;174See further Exod. 24:11, Ve-el atzilei bnei Yisrael, “And to the noblemen of the Children of Israel….” he has power and importance because of his proximity to the king. Similarly, this universe is next to the King of Kings and that is where its importance stems from.
Prayer is a soulful sojourn through the universes. Atzilus is represented by the extremely righteous in their Shemoneh Esreh (Silent Devotional) part of prayers. For the silent devotion, one takes three steps forward to enter into a new dimension in which the prayers are recited silently. At this point of the service the petitioner is standing next to God, and that is why all can talk with Him in the hushed tones of an intimate whisper. Furthermore, according to halachah ideally this prayer should lead to leaving the physical self and getting lost in rapture of the Divine. During the silent prayer the tzaddik achieves deveikus, “absolute cleaving.” Deveikus means becoming one with God. Oneness cannot be described nor defined; it can only be understood through the experience of a sensitive heart. Loss of all bodily sensation and absolute union with the Infinite is a human sensation that is atzilus-like; it is a sense of a wholly new dimension. The sense of absolute oneness with the Divine is an out-of-body experience that emerges from atzilus, the universe that is above our world and serves as a makkif, an enveloping light, to our physical dimension.
Atzilus is all good and it produces the chayah part of the human soul. Chayah is the source of deveikus, devotional oneness, and what chayah is in the human is what atzilus is to the cosmos.
Out of atzilus a further diminished light emerged, the world of beriah, “creation.” Atzilus experientially is felt as a loss of self-hood. It is called ayin, a sense of nothingness. Beriah emerged out of it; thus beriah is a manifestation of, and the place of, yesh me-ayin, something coming out of nothing. In this world, there is a possibility of evil although good is the majority. This world parallels the section of prayers that speak of accepting God’s yoke, reciting Shema and its blessings. This world is also termed Olam Ha-Kissei, “the universe of God’s throne.” Symbolically the Almighty “sits” there. That is why there is a widespread Jewish custom to sit during the prayers of Shema. Beriah produced and parallels the neshamah part of the soul. The neshamah is located in the mind and expressed through thought; in the world of beriah, thoughts are tangible and real. The depths of neshamah can be felt when all of one’s thoughts are holy, centering on Torah knowledge and Mitzvah fulfillment.
Beriah let out a lesser light that became the world of yetzirah. Yetzirah implies yesh mi-yesh, “something from something,” to form an item out of a primordial matter. In yetzirah, evil has even more presence and is equal to the amount of good. This world is represented by the Pesukei De- Zimra—verses of praise—part of the morning prayers. Zimra also means to prune, the verses of praise are pruning shears—they cut away the forces of evil and allow man’s prayers to enter before God.175See further, A Call to the Infinite, pg. 67, quoted from Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla. This universe let off the ruach part of the soul that it parallels.176In yetzirah, the forces for good and evil are equals. This is why the heart, which contains ruach, has two ventricles. The left ventricle contains an advocate for sinful acts and the right ventricle contains a spiritual force that attracts man to Mitzvos. Yetzirah is the world of feeling and man’s emotions of holiness reach this world. The ultimate level of ruach is felt when one’s heart is filled exclusively with the best desires, such as swirls of love for Judaism, or awe and fear of Heaven. Feelings are as tangible in the world of yetzirah as objects are in our universe.
Finally, there is the universe of asiyah, where the majority is evil, and it parallels the nefesh part of the soul, as well as the prayers of korbanos, the sacrificial order that purified and provided the spiritual merit for this world.177See further, A Call to the Infinite, pgs. 74-75, quoted from Derech Hashem, 4:613-14. Good deeds performed on this earth reach the world of asiyah.
After the spiritual universes stands the physical universe itself, which is joined to the world of asiyah.
Man in Hebrew is called adam, a word that shares a root with the word adammeh, literally, “I will resemble.” What is a man? A being that resembles the Heavenly domain. Since man’s soul parts constitute a small harp to the great harp of the physical universe’s “soul-parts,” his actions cause similar results in those realms. Man is the soul of the universe.178See further Sichas Malachei Ha-Shareis, Chapter 3. Rabbi Tzadok explains that the life-forms on our planet are roughly divided into four categories: (1) domeim, inanimate materials such as air and water, (2) tzome’ach, growing items such as grass and trees, (3) chai, living beings like animals, fowl, and insects, and (4) medabber, speaking creatures, namely, humans. The world of asiyah and the soul part nefesh are expressed through righteous deed. If you put a coin into the hand of a poor person without any care for his welfare nor a thought about why it is correct to give charity, then it is exclusively in the realm of asiyah. Domeim bears a trace of asiyah. An act without feeling or thinking is like an inanimate item, the doer was a block of wood during its performance, no better than a machine. The world of yetzirah is the source for ruach and feelings and resembles tzome’ach. Most of what I feel is internal; only a small fraction of my love or hate can be seen by others. I cannot see the tree moving up when it grows. However, I do see a small fraction of the growth process, and by regular monitoring of a plant I can stay abreast of its development. Animals have some intelligence, thus chai corresponds to beriah and neshamah, the sources of thoughts. Chayah and atzilus is total connection to God, thus corresponding to medabber, the human, who, through speech, can experience union with Infinity.
The secrets of creation are hinted in the letters of the Hebrew language. Lesson Ten will show how the spiritual universes and the parts of the human soul are hinted in the four letters of God’s name Y-H-V-H.