Parshat Hashavua with Sulam Yaakov Student Danny Cohen

Keter

In the journey from enslavement to freedom, from the bonds of Mitzrayim to a life of unfettered flourishing, Parshat Beshalach paves the way through potentially treacherous waters. Immediately following the splitting of the Reed Sea, their successful passage, and the drowning of their oppressors, Bnei Yisrael break out into exuberant song, “the song of the sea,” which is part of our daily morning liturgy. The midrash explains that the angels also wanted to sing in celebration, but God rebuked them – “My creatures are drowning and you mean to sing!?”[1]

In Pirkei Avot, the tractate of sage maxims, Shmuel haKatan distills this principle in quoting Proverbs, “do not rejoice at the downfall of your enemy”[2]. And what premise is necessary to rejoice at the downfall or failure of another? It is that sense of the person as totally other, as one who is in competition with me. Whose essence is other than my own and whose existence threatens my advancement. As if God intended only for me to be here and not he. This is a fundamental error in perception which betrays the deeper truth of our nature as being in fact arevim zeh la’zeh[3], interincluded and part of one another.

Rebbe Meir[4] expresses a common sentiment in the face of frustration with others: “I wish they would just die.” The implication is that this would end his problems. Rebbe Meir is emphatically rebuked and corrected by his wife, Beruria: you must distinguish between the people who oppose you and the deeds they do. Meaning, do not reduce them to their actions, and in doing so lose sight of their Godly essence and, therefore, your shared core.

Rather, Beruria says, pray that they repent and return, that their errant ways, but not they themselves, cease from the earth. This approach reflects a deep understanding that we cannot reach satisfaction by closing off others, rather we must be responsive to them and work for their realignment with their own higher nature. In so doing we align with our own Self of which others are a part.

It is in this spirit, as we learned with Rav Daniel Kohn this week, that Shmuel haKatan (the small), established the 19th bracha of the Shmoneh Esrei/Amida, the bracha of the minim. The minim are others (or parts of ourselves) who seek power over, seek to exploit resources for themselves. They slip into fearful hoarding, acquisitiveness and territorial protection of self.

We learn the rectification to this errant orientation from the sun and the moon during Creation, where it has its origins. The Torah first describes the two great luminaries, created as equals. It then names them larger and smaller.[5] The midrash[6] explains that upon their creation together the moon questioned Hashem. How will we would rule together, “two kings cannot use (mishtamshim) one crown (keter)?” This question is borne of the ego consciousness. Yours or mine. It is the desire to be on top, and to control in order to affirm one’s tenuous sense of self. This is the consciousness of Pharoah. And the punishment for her desire to be on top was to become the maor ha’katan, the smaller luminary.

The tikkun for this mistaken outlook is to be found in the same place as the error. It is in re-accessing the keter (crown), the non-dual consciousness. More essential and primary than the self-generated sense of you and me as separate entities. From the keter, all is One.

Feeling compassion for the moon in her diminished (katan) state, Hashem sought to console her. He compared her to others who will be known as katan, including King David and Shmuel haKatan. In doing so, Hashem teaches the lesson of the greatness to be found in smallness, in humility. Humility, the Baal Shem Tov says, is the active awareness that everything is Divine.

Moshe is the paragon and paradigm of this humble awareness. In its light, the need to dominate others is an inferiority complex, literally a small-man complex (Pharaoh). He replaces it with servant leadership.  The mishtamshim (users) become meshamshim (servants), we shift from possessive using to serving and sharing. From the approach of “ain’t big enough for the both of us” to an understanding that we can in fact work together. An experience of me and you as two limbs of the same Body, here not for ourselves but in service of the larger Organism.

In this new light of keter, we see the moon for its merit of reflecting light. Whatever comes her way she passes on for the benefit of others, without hoarding anything. She no longer fears and fights the dissolution of a vulnerable and false sense of self. It is just this orientation for which Shmuel haKatan established birkat haMinim, the 19th bracha of the Amida. The shmoneh esrei (18) retains its name and its purpose, to cultivate ourselves as vessels to bring Life in its fullness into the world. To establish the malchut of the shechina and make manifest the heavenly kingdom in our earthly reality. We impede this possibility when we fall prey to insecurities and a false sense that power and acquisition will save, satisfy, and make us secure. Shmuel haKatan, in his greatness, established the 19th bracha to realign us with our deeper keter, our nature as interdependent, interincluded beings who live out their fullness in partnership rather than territoriality, hierarchy, and competition.

The Gemara teaches that we are to stand in the shmoneh esrei with our legs together, as if one leg, in imitation of the angels. The invitation is to become like angels, and in doing so, learn the same lesson they learned from God’s rebuke. That all people are valuable and we are only complete when we learn to accept the other, even those we most dislike. Standing with our legs together, the body forms a “ו” (‘vav’), the letter of connection and the simplest stroke of a brush. All is One.

Special thanks to Rav Daniel Kohn and Rav James Jacobson-Maisels for lessons learned and incorporated herein.