Tefilah - Creation, Process, and Specificity (2)

This is the second class of an ongoing series.

Notes on the first session.

In the previous class we looked at Tefilah - the service of the heart, Avodah s'b'lev - as built in to creation - necessary for creation to function. This is unique among Mitzvot - that it is an activity that is essential.

We looked at the second telling of Maaseh Bereshit.

Hazal point out that the אלא invalidates the original telling. The first telling uses the "Elohim" name of God exclusively. It was creation in דין. The world couldn't exist that way - there's no room for participation, etc. (See notes on Elul, Rahamim, Teshuva)

בְּהִבָּֽרְאָ֑ם

A very odd word - a passive gerund - "In their being created".

The ה here is a written small.

Hazal read this as "with ה created" - that the world was created without a bottom. It's possible to fall out. It's also an invitation to come and create the ground.

Falling out the bottom - it's falling out the bottom to death - little deaths. Life is a series of mortalities. Every moment.

But the ה also allows coming in, through the side, birthing. Not to come back in where you fell out, but to create anew - a new format - which integrates that which seems to have died and been lost. Constantly creating a perspective beyond the givens of the moment. Moving upwards.

Creation involves an unfolding.

The creatures are participant.

Even when you have many obligations, external obligations, the place for creative input and dynamism is vast. The דין is critical, through. The Rahamim is given precedence, but with no structure, with no womb, there's no context for רחמים.

Note - that as creatures become more complex, there's more structure needed to hold them together, and they show the greatest freedom. The more highly structured the context, the more advanced the emergent phenomena that can be realized.

Highly structured brain patterns are problematic - they're usually a sign of an epileptic seizure. For an organism this complex to be functioning - complexity and openness is the sign of health.

All of this is related to מחשבה מועלת

As for עבודה שבלב...

The clear assumption here is that רחמים is the standard.

In Aramaic, prayer is called "Rachamei"

The question is asked if women have to pray, and the answer is of course, it's "Rachamei" - it's incument in every creature.

This defines what a creation is.

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These were the problems of the world, the man came to solve, that prayer came to solve (according to Hazal.)

There are two rebellions here - the grass, and the trees.

Already in the command - תדשא הארץ - it's an open road. He could have followed the pattern and said יהי דשא. This is already a description of a creation that has latent potentialities within it.

(Here minor polemic against creationism - cf. Torah, Rashi, Gra)

God is joyous when the grasses go their own way.

God's honor - כבוד - is increased when there is something new, when creation shares his creativity, when existence continues to unfold existence. It's not when people say "He's the greatest", it's when grasses say "it's amazing to be alive! I want to be what I am!" Creation has reached a point of development that only organic living realities have. Not water, light, etc.

Biologically here, we're at the point where the organism is self propagating.

This is real שמחה. If there is no כבוד, then there is no שמחה. Where do we see God being happy, in Tanach? It's not common - it's here.

Beautiful that we open Pesukei d'Zimra with that.

עשב are unique species.

דשא is a different term, like "lawn".

עשב is very specific.

What are they waiting for? That there be a human awareness of the needs of those grasses.

Awareness - in mind

Concern and care - in heart

יצמח -> ישמח