Four Kingdoms

24 Nissan 5782

“For His kindness was mighty over us, and the truth of the L‑rd is everlasting. Praise the L‑rd!” (Tehillim 117:2)

The Torah of Hashem is truth, everlasting and unchanging, like the minerals of the earth.

“And he shall then go out to the altar that is before the L‑rd and effect atonement upon it: He shall take some of the bull’s blood and some of the he goat’s blood, and place it on the horns of the altar, around.” (Vayikra 16:18)

The Oral Torah, the Mishnah, is all-encompassing, terse, and spread out, like the vegetation of the earth. Its concise expression and constricted reasoning, is in and of itself, hard to satiate oneself from. Its talmudic exposition and later commentaries, however, glean and refine the hidden energy contained within it, like animals grazing on vegetation.

“The essential thing, however, is the training to habituate one’s mind and thought continuously so that it always remain imprinted in his heart and mind, that everything one sees with his eyes—the heavens and earth and all they contain—constitutes the outer garments of the king, the Holy One, blessed be He.” (Lessons in Tanya, Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 42)

The Chassidic masters, in turn, fed on the “high-caloric” fare of all that preceded them–the Talmud, the Geonim, Rishonim, Acharonim, Kabbalah, Halacha, and everything in between–and provided us with the insights necessary to see through the world’s obscuring garments to their hidden core, “the infinite light of the blessed Ein Sof that animates them.”