Parshat Bereishit In memory of Shimshon Ben Shalom

On this opening verse, Rashi comes to explain something interesting -

The commentators ask on this above Rashi, how can there be a change of desire or planning from the perspective of the heavens [HaShem is perfect, how could it be that they had to make a change of plans, why was it not perfect from the start]? Furthermore, as an additional question - as we assess the words of Rashi we see this was said - "..therefore gave precedence to Divine Mercy allying (partnering) it with Divine Justice." What type of partnership could possibly exist between Mercy and Justice? They are two opposites of a spectrum completely far on different ends of each other.

To begin to answer, we are going to, with the help of Heaven, look into the words of the Holy Rav, the Great Maggid, Rebbe Dov Ber of Mezeritch, may his merit be counted for us. He has a teaching on this famous saying which is sung on Shabbat -

On this he asks the question - isn't the word used above for G-D (E-L) a name of the attribute of mercy? We know this from the Holy Zohar (Tzav 31a) on the verse in Pslams where chesed and E-L -

If so, how can E-L be placed next to being a jealous and avengeful G-D as we saw before in the common Shabbat song?

So the Holy Maagid gave an analogy via the following story

There is a King with his guards walking through the villages and a young peasant throws a rock at the king... the guards get the boy and tell the King they are ready to kill him as they would anyone who rebels against the King.. the King says wait and did not want to sign on the judgement! This young boy won't understand why he is being punished so harshly. He doesn't know better.. He only threw a rock, and this boy is used to throwing rocks all day.. He will think that we are perverting the law and being unfair to him.. Instead... let us take him to our capital city, and provide him with all that he lacks, and teach him and raise him up so he understands what he actually did.. They took the boy and taught him and trained him..and he started growing in his knowledge, and as the days progressed, he would realize the greatness of this King, and the amount of Kindness the King showed him.. Which brought to light the gravity of the action he did when throwing the rock at the king. Soon the boy started getting regret and anguish in his heart that he threw a rock at such a great and loving and merciful King.

So we see here that the kindness the King showed the boy was a greater punishment than just killing him. Since now the boy feels genuinely bad about his actions vs. being dead and not even knowing what he did wrong. So again, we see the mercy the King showed actually caused the justice the boy needed.

And herein is the expiation of our question from the song - 'Meshosh Chasdecha L'Yodecha' - which means pull mercy towards the ones that know you, which we can now read to mean that we are asking from HaShem to deal with us kindly.. and what type of kindness? 'E-L Kano V'Nokem' - which means a G-D who is jealous and avenges. We are asking HaShem to be merciful with us to punish us. Let us be like the boy from the story who gets his punishment from Mercy itself. Through the Kings mercy the boy found justice on his own.. let us pray that HaShem treats us the same way.

Based on that above session - it now makes perfect sense in regards to the above Rashi (Z'L) when he teaches on the first verse 'In the Beginning Elo-him created' - That yes, HaShem did create the world with Justice (implied in the name Elo-him), and then after seeing that the world wouldn't be sustainable with only justice, HaShem never changed His mind, He just found a very deep and mysterious system to continue allowing the world to run on justice, and still stay in existence. Which is via placing his attribute of Mercy before Justice, and as we mentioned before, His mercy will still cause justice on man when man sees how great the King is who gives such amounts of mercy to us, even though according to the letter of law, we may not even be worthy of it, so again, we see that the mercy itself causes justice within ourselves.

Which to finally answer our question on Rashi - yes, its very possible to say that there was a partnership between Mercy and Justice, as they are both from one single aspect and partners because the mercy in itself really is justice.

Now that we understand this lofty concept, we will see how it plays out elsewhere with Yaakov our forefather.

We have the same question as above over here - as we have the name of YH-VH which is Mercy together with Elo-him which is Justice. Why is Jacob asking for the Mercy name to become for him Justice?

Rather - the answer is that the intention here is that the attribute of mercy itself is El-ohim - which is justice, and Jacob is asking that his justice should come through the pathway of mercy, as we have explained above being a unique mechanism built into The Creation.

We see this concept play out clearly again with Yaakov later on -

The natural question here too would be how can we put the words Emet (truth), which is an aspect of justice, as HaShem acts with all his creations based on Emet, next to the words Chasadim (kindness), as the two are contradictory realities.. however, again, based on what we taught above, we can understand this verse, that through the chasadim, the kindness, man will come to recognize the truth, to know where he has sinned with his soul against the Great and Awesome King who deals with him with kindness.

And through this process we comes to be subdued and humbled and we see that all the kindness we received was a punishment, as it brought us to a place of properly seeing and understanding the greatness and lovingness of HaShem, which puts us in our place.

This is the explanation of what Yaakov was saying before, Katonti, I have become small.. Yaakov is saying that I have become small in my eyes, because of your Chasadim, your Kindness.. because of your kindness I have become small in my eyes.. because when I saw all of the Chasadim that you do with me.. which is why we have the words Emet in there, that the truth was revealed to me through your Chasadim, kindness... because of your kindness, I was made aware of truth, and then I noticed how my actions are not proper, and I was made to feel lowly.. (but not from suffering, from kindness, which seems like the best form to get humbled).

This is also founded within the 13 attributes of Mercy.

We see counted here amongst the 13 are Rav Chesed (Much Kindness) and Emet (Truth) - again two opposites sitting next to each other! So the same question gets asked here, where there is a contradiction between the two attributes seemingly being placed together.

So, based on what we learned above, we can say the intention here is that the justice comes right after the abundant kindness that HaShem bestows upon man, and because of that kindness, what happens? He will then come to realize the truth and his sins and have regret.

So we see that mercy and judgement actually are partners and work hand in hand. HaShem should help us to mercy and much kindness, and a great awareness to accept and understand all of this with wisdom and knowledge, amen, may it be His Will.