Evil also comes from a Divine source & according to Yoram Jacobson:
"The Evil Urge...possesses very great vitality, even greater than that of the Good urge...man must harness it to religious service by turning it about and restoring it to its source...If on the other hand, man rejects evil and banishes it from his heart, he also turns his back upon divine vitally, which approaches him seeking redemption."
Yoram Jacobson Hasidic Thought p. 176, Tel Aviv, MOD Press, 1998.
There are two paths for the righteous persons who serve God, may God be blessed: one who isolates himself and serves God without any Evil Urge, and the second is one who serves God with his Evil Urge...That is, when a person is about to commit a transgression, Heaven forbid...because of the Evil Urge, and then breaks his appetite and urge because of God's honor and fear and follows the path of the service of God, he thereby subdues the left (side) to the right (side), thereby bringing about complete unity above. And this is the complete perfection, more so that (that of) the righteous person who serves God in innocence without the Evil Urge, and only goes in the right-hand line...
-Rabbi Yakov Yosef of Polnoye (disciple of the Ba'al Shem Tov)
It is praiseworthy to learn from their deeds (evil-doers), so that he may take pleasure from those who perform good, like the evildoer who takes pleasure from those who perform evil. And as I wrote elsewhere, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?"(Job 14:4): that he may take the pure pleasure from the impure pleasure, which is a wondrous thing..." -R. Yakov Yosef of Polnoye
(1) Man born of woman is short-lived and sated with trouble. (2) He blossoms like a flower and withers; He vanishes like a shadow and does not endure. (3) Do You fix Your gaze on such a one? Will You go to law with me? (4) Who can produce a clean thing out of an unclean one? No one! (5) His days are determined; You know the number of his months; You have set him limits that he cannot pass. (6) Turn away from him, that he may be at ease Until, like a hireling, he finishes out his day. (7) There is hope for a tree; If it is cut down it will renew itself; Its shoots will not cease. (8) If its roots are old in the earth, And its stump dies in the ground, (9) At the scent of water it will bud And produce branches like a sapling. (10) But mortals languish and die; Man expires; where is he?
True to his eclectic ways, Malbim combines elements of both theories in his interpretation of this verse as a demand that God make allowances for man's innate unclean tendencies when he judges him. As he writes:
For is the branch not always like its root and the plant like the seed from which it grew? And so, how can man who is born out of uncleanliness, for he is born of woman – from semen and menstrual blood which is an unclean thing – how can he change his nature and not be at one with the lowliness of the source of his birth 'and the quarry from which he was hewn' (Isaiah 51.1)? He therefore tends to uncleanliness from his birth and from the womb and from conception.
During the 18th century a fierce debate raged between those who believed that the growth and development of an embryo was 'epigenetic', i.e., all its limbs and parts emerge from the primordial material and become recognizable at the same rate, and those who believed in the doctrine of 'preformation' according to which the primordial germ already contains a miniature replica of the adult and this only has to enlarge and unfold before birth. Whereas the former theory required an agency which conjured the limbs from the undifferentiated primordial material the latter just involved an inherent mechanical process. Aristotle, who advocated the epigenetic model, regarded the semen as being the spiritual agency that conjured the limbs and other body parts from the menstrual blood.
True to his eclectic ways, Malbim combines elements of both theories in his interpretation of this verse as a demand that God make allowances for man's innate unclean tendencies when he judges him. As he writes:
For is the branch not always like its root and the plant like the seed from which it grew? And so, how can man who is born out of uncleanliness, for he is born of woman – from semen and menstrual blood which is an unclean thing – how can he change his nature and not be at one with the lowliness of the source of his birth 'and the quarry from which he was hewn' (Isaiah 51.1)? He therefore tends to uncleanliness from his birth and from the womb and from conception.
"...from everything which the Zaddik sees, he derives the service of God; and if, Heaven forbid, he sees a certain person desiring to perform a sin, the Zaddik takes from this desire the service of God." -R. Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev
"...For I heard from my grandfather, of blessed memory (i.e. the Ba'al Shem Tov), that the Master of the world is hidden within sin...for the Aleph is not revealed and not recognized in pronouncing it (i.e., Aleph, the final letter of the Hebrew word for sin chet, is not pronounced, and alludes to Alufo Shel Olam, the 'Master of the World'), and it is at the end.
-R. Efriam of Sudylkow
Encyclopedia Judaica:
ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER BA'AL SHEM TOV (known by the initials of "Ba'al Shem Tov" as Besht; c. 1700–1760), charismatic founder and first leader of *Ḥasidism in Eastern Europe. (See Chart: Ba'al Shem Tov Family). Through oral traditions handed down by his pupils (*Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and others) as well as through the legendary tales about his life and behavior, he became Ḥasidism's first teacher and its exemplary saint. These tales, collected early in Shivḥei ha-Besht (Kapust and Berdichev, 1814–15; In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov, 1970) are also the main source for his biography. It is related that Israel was born in Okop, a small town in Podolia, to poor and elderly parents in hard times aggravated by wars in the region. Orphaned as a child, he later eked out a living first as an assistant (behelfer) in a ḥeder and later as a watchman at a synagogue. At Yazlovets, near Buchnach, where he was working as behelfer, he met and became friendly with young Meir b. Ẓevi Hirsch *Margolioth , later a famous talmudic scholar; Israel was considered by Meir both as colleague and teacher. According to tradition, in his 20s Israel went into hiding in the Carpathian Mountains in preparation for his future tasks. (He was accompanied by his second wife, Hannah, the first having died shortly after their marriage.) There he lived for several years, first as a digger of clay, which his wife sold in town; later he helped his wife in keeping an inn. In about 1730 he settled in Tluste. Israel had one son, Ẓevi, and a daughter, *Adel . His grandchildren were *Moses Ḥayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow and *Baruch of Medzibezh; *Naḥman of Bratslav was his great-grandson.
In the mid-1730s – ḥasidic tradition fixes it on his 36th birthday – Israel revealed himself as a healer and leader. The circles of Israel's followers and admirers widened rapidly. Many people were drawn by his magnetism and the widespread reports of his miracles, and several groups of Ḥasidim which had been formed earlier came under his influence and accepted his leadership and teaching to a greater or lesser degree (see *Ḥasidism ; *Abraham Gershon of Kutow, Israel's brother-in-law; *Aryeh Leib of Polonnoye; *Naḥman of Kosov; and *Naḥman of Horodenka (Gorodenka)). Tradition hints that some of the members of these ḥasidic circles were at first repelled by Israel's activity as miracle healer, as a *ba'al shem , although Israel himself was proud of this work, as demonstrated by his signature "Israel Ba'al Shem of Tlust"
Yoram Jacobson:
"The world of Hasidism is one of sublime spiritual values, which can only be upheld by a small number of the very greatest people of the generation, distinguished by their greatness of spirit, by the refinement of their souls, and by the purity and holiness of their conduct. But at the very same time that Hasidism rests upon a small group of spiritual aristocrats, there is also another dimension...the social mission that the unique individual is required to take upon himself...this mystical adept is simultaneously revealed as the leader sent to his flock who...is unable to escape contact with the members of the community and the activities of tikkun...he must descend from the heights of his attachment to God so as to lift them (his flock) up to a higher level of spirituality and holiness." (pp. 183-184)
"If the generation is wicked, and he is a Zaddik who is not at all on their level, so as to be able to raise them up, then at times the Zaddik must descend from his level by dint of some sin which is drawn upon him from the people of his generation...and once he is on their level - then he can raise them up, when he reascends to his own level."
-R. Yakov Yosef of Polnoye in Ben Porat Yosef
Book Review from the New York Times - Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer
November 13, 1955
A False Messiah
By MEYER LEVIN
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SATAN IN GORAY By Isaac Bashevis Singer. |
This black-mirror narrative of miracles and cabala, of a hamlet in seventeenth-century Poland and a false Messiah, is in the tradition of such classics as ''The Dybbuk'' and ''The Golem.'' Poetically conceived, it captures the fever of longing, the folk-frenzy for salvation, that possessed the Jewish population of central Europe after the dark decade of the Chmielnicki massacres, three centuries before Hitler.
The isolated village of Goray had been gutted. But after some years, the ancient rabbi returned from Lublin, and remnants of the population crept back, shops opened, and there was a quorum for the synagogue. Then came tales of the advent of the Messiah. His name was Sabbatai Zevi; he had risen in Smyrna and would lead the Jews back to Israel. Cabalists pronounced 1666 as the year of fate, and wandering preachers carried the word.
Sabbatai Zevi, it was related, had already departed for Stamboul to claim his crown from the Sultan who ruled the Land of Israel. Lords and prophets from the other side of the legendary river Sambation accompanied him, ''riding on the backs of elephants, leopards and water oxen. Sabbatai Zevi himself rode before them on a wild lion, wearing garments of purple and spun gold.''
Believers in the Messiah let everything fall into idleness and confusion, to stand ready for the miraculous cloud that would waft them to Israel on the Day of Atonement. In Goray, it was a ritual slaughterer, Gedalia, who led the messianic believers; all opponents were virtually banished from the village. Rechele, a lame girl, spoke in strange tongues and prophesied. The wan young woman scarcely partook of food. Emissaries went out from Goray to tell of her miraculous inspiration, as a confirmation of messianic times. But months later they returned with the dire news that Sabbatai Zevi had become a Moslem while in Stamboul.
Then began a strange period of evil-worship, in Goray as in other Jewish communities. For Sabbatai Zevi's apostacy was interpreted as part of the final stage of redemption, when all evil had to be embraced, on the way to salvation. Reb Gedalia took the prophetess Rechele from her husband and married her; then strange rites were pursued, orgies and every abomination. Demons visited Rechele.
Eventually she became possessed by a dybbuk, the spirit of a student who had died an atheist. The messianic movement having waned, a true believer in the Torah came to exorcise the dybbuk, and Rechele was cleansed, only to die soon after.
Beautifully written by one of the masters of Yiddish prose, and beautifully translated, ''Satan in Goray'' is folk material transmuted into literature.
Mr. Levin, a journalist and novelist, is the author of ''Search: An Autobiography.''
"When there is a sin in the community, i.e., when the community does not behave properly, because they have distanced themselves from the king, the King of the World, to behave according to the customs of those of little value; then happy is the generation, 'whose ruler sins'(Lev. 4:22) - that is, the changing of his garment in order to wear their garments and to be connected with them by means of this sin, to restore them to their father the king.
-R. Yakov Yosef of Polnoye
Yoram Jacobson:
"The leader of the Hasidic community is the embodiment of the metaphysical Zaddik, the 'righteous one', who is the foundation of the world...which is seen as the channel of flow of the divine fullness from above to below."
"When the Zaddik, who brings about flow, wishes to receive the abundance from above, he must make himself small with great humility. Afterwards, when he brings the flow to the world, he expands himself and becomes wider so as to bring flow to the entire world..."
-R. Elimelech of Lizhensk
Katnut (smallness) vs. Gadlut (greatness):
"With regard to worship, smallness is a state of imperfection, whereas greatness is full development to the highest state. Worship during smallness contains an element of compulsion, and not the high qualities of fear and love that characterize greatness...
-Rabbi Norman Lamm, The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary, Yeshiva University Press, 1999, pp. 148-149, Footnote #49
"The true Zaddik is the focal point of all Jews. Therefore it is of prime importance to be connected to zaddikim...and they will enlighten and arose one's heart by virtue of the holiness concentrated in them. One should...also speak...with his friends regarding the fear of Heaven, in order to assimilate the good traits of these friends. For there is a positive aspect in every Jew, something valuable that only he and no one else possesses. This point of goodness in everyone is an aspect of the zaddik, enabling him to influence and illuminate the other's heart; and the other should receive willingly the inspiration coming from him. Hence, there is between them a relation of reciprocity, an aspect of 'and they receive from one another.' (Isaiah 6:3)
-R. Nahman of Bratzlav
(א) וקרא זה אל זה, ותרגומו ומקבלין דין מן דין, מסכים לדעות המחקרים והמקובלים שהמלאכים כ"א נשפע מחברו, וכאילו השיג כי הזמינו זה את זה להשכיל גדולת יוצרם וקדושתו
...Each calls to one another: The translation of this is 'they receive one from the other', I agree with the thought of the scholars and mystics that the angels each receive Divine flow (shefa) from their friends, and it is as though they've achieved that each [helps the others] to be wise in the greatness of [their knowledge of[ their Creator and God's holiness.