A Piece of Wood

10 Shevat 5782

“Yet, the root and core of the chochmah in the divine soul is in the brain and does not clothe itself in the sackcloth of the kelipah in the left part of the heart in a true state of exile, it is merely dormant in the case of the wicked, not exercising its influence within them as long as their knowledge and understanding are preoccupied with mundane pleasures.” (Lessons in Tanya, Likutei Amarim, Chapter 19)

As long as a person is in the hands of the sitra achara he cannot accept holiness. Only a major event can awaken the chochmah within him. It “arises from its sleep” and enables even the simplest Jew to accept martyrdom, “to withstand the test of faith in G-d, without any reasoning or knowledge that he can comprehend.” Until such a major event, the yetzer hara is able to deceive him that he “remains ‘a good Jew’ in spite of his sins.” Were he to comprehend the magnitude of the chasm each sin creates between him and Hashem, he would be able to effortlessly withstand any temptation, just as he is able to offer his very life for the sanctification of the Divine Name.

However, as long as he is “preoccupied with mundane” pleasures no such realization can occur. There is simply no space in his heart for holiness, since it is completely filled by desire for worldly pleasures and vanities. Everything he perceives, even in the ways of holiness, will be tainted by his own appetite for the material, to the point that it will be unable to lift his soul up out of this world.

“They could not drink of the waters of Marah, because they were bitter” (Shemos 15:23)

“Because they—the children of Israel—were bitter, everything they tasted was bitter to them.” (Chassidic saying)

So too, we see here, that because the Jews were in a negative state of mind, anything they took in, including life-sustaining water, seemed bitter and unpleasant to them. They first had to overcome their own spirit of negativity by symbolically casting a piece of wood into the water. This small and seemingly irrelevant act took them out of their previous state of mind. Immediately after, G-d filled their mind with Torah, as it says “He gave them a statute and an ordinance” (Shemos 15:25), which the Rashi identifies as the laws of Shabbos, the red cow, and jurisprudence. By filling their mind with holiness immediately after disturbing their habitual state of mind, Hashem helped the Jews sustain their more elevated state of mind, in preparation for the giving of the Torah which followed soon after.

“When G-d deals strictly, I praise His word; when the L-rd deals mercifully, I praise His word.” (Tehillim 56:11)

We also learn in this parashah that Hashem does not visit sickness upon us to cause suffering, but “only to a positive end, like a doctor who may at times cause pain to his patient in order to heal him” (Malbim on Shemos 15:26). We praise Hashem at all times, when He seemingly deals strictly with us and when He deals kindly with us. We must realize that everything in this world has its purpose, sometimes “bad” things need to happen to “shock” us out of our complacency just in time to infuse us with the necessary holiness to reach the next step in our spiritual journey, and that of the entire Jewish nation, until the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our days.