Limitations

28 Adar II 5782

“If a man or a woman has a lesion on the head…” (Vayikra 13:29)

“The eruption of tzara’at on the head is caused by self-pride and arrogance, as opposed to tzara’at elsewhere on the body, which is the result of gossip or slander. The reason for this difference is that gossip and slander are superficial misdeeds, as explained above, which therefore affect the skin elsewhere on the body. Pride and arrogance, in contrast, are warped mental attitudes that affect the head.” (Daily Wisdom, Lubavitcher Rebbe)

“To the extent that the intellect of finite, limited, created beings is capable of understanding.” (Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 39)

The Alter Rebbe here qualifies his statement about the souls who are privileged to perceive chochmah, binah, and daat of the Ein Sof in Beriah, where it shines forth directly, albeit in a contracted manner, from the essence itself in Atzilut. Even those souls, he says, can only perceive G‑dliness with the limitations of a finite, created being. How much more so are we, who are steeped in the gross corporeality of this world, unable to perceive G‑dliness clearly, no matter how deeply we study and how far we progress spiritually. This alone should humble us to an infinite degree.

“Knowledge [to escape You] is beyond me; it is exalted, I cannot know it.” (Tehillim 139:6)

If the above wasn’t enough, we should ponder how Hashem fills and encompasses all worlds, both in a permeating and transcendent manner. How we have no way to escape or outrun Him. How He alone is exalted beyond the knowledge of all created beings. All our study, all our contemplation should always, like this verse in Tehillim, come to the conclusion that “I cannot know it.”