The Shattering of the World of Chaos
Post-traumatic growth is of course based on the metaphor of the growth of plants. In Chasidut, it is emphasized countless times[1] that growth is only possible after a seed is buried and decays in the ground—only after a complete breakdown of the previous reality. As was already hinted, crisis and burial are terms in Kabbalah that are distinctly associated with the breaking of the vessels—the breaking of the seven kings of the world of Chaos (Tohu), who died, fell into the place of the lower worlds, and were buried there.
About each of the seven kings of the world of Tohu, it is written "And he reigned… and he died" (וַיִּמְלֹךְ… וַיָּמׇת)— a phrase whose value is exactly the value of “the world of Tohu” (עוֹלַם הַתֹּהוּ), meaning that the crisis is already inherent in his reign. Whoever rises to greatness but is not in a stable state, even if all his sins are forgiven at that moment,[2] is immediately in danger of breaking and falling, as the verse states, “Before shattering, there is pride and before failure, there is a high spirit.”
After the list of the seven kings, where it says, "And he reigned… and he died," the king Hadar appears, who is the only one among the kings whose wife's name, Mehitavel, is also mentioned. About him the Torah does not write that he died. From this, it can be deduced that Hadar and Mehitavel represent the key to the rectification of the shattering and death of the kings, as will be explained further.
The absolute shattering in the world of Tohu starts with the sefirah of knowledge (da’at) and continues to the sefirot below. The seven kings thus correspond to the sefirot from knowledge to kingdom (malchut); in the world of Tohu, the sefirot of victory (netzach) and acknowledgment (hod)—the habitual faculties of the soul—are like two halves of one body, like two sides of a coin, and thus are counted as one. At the same time, in the higher sefirot there was a blemish in the crown and a nullification of their backside in wisdom and understanding. However, unlike the lower sefirot, they did not fall outside the boundaries of the World of Emanation (within the World of Tohu). Only the lower sefirot experienced a “death,” i.e., a fall below the realm of Emanation, and burial in the place of the lower worlds.
A true trauma is a crisis that involves burial and decay, after which, a door is opened that leads to renewed growth in a way that is incomparably greater than the previous state (just as a complete tree, with sweet fruits, is incomparably greater in both quality and quantity compared to the seed that it came from). Thus, every crisis is essentially the secret of the broken world of Tohu. However, since the world of Tohu is divided into seven kings who were broken and died, it is appropriate to consider them as seven types of emotional crises—each king having undergone a different type of crisis, one that broke him until he died—meaning, until he reached the feeling that his life is truly meaningless and not worth living, akin to the saying “A poor person [in his own eyes], is like a dead person.”
Knowledge: Nervous Breakdown
As mentioned, the first breaking in the world of Tohu occurs in the sefirah of knowledge, in the first king, Bela ben Beor. His Hebrew name, בֶּלַע בֶּן בְּעוֹר represents the opposite of the future, when “God will swallow up death forever” (בִּלַּע הַמָּוֶת לָנֶצַח) after the shattering of the World of Tohu is rectified and the lights of Tohu will be drawn into vessels of rectification. Indeed, in Chasidut it is explained that one of the meanings of the word Knowledge (דָּעַת) is breaking.[3] In the systems of the body, the system corresponding to the sefirah of knowledge is the nervous system. The first, most general, and severe breaking is a nervous breakdown (a mental crisis, which sometimes, externally, is caused by issues related to the physical world).
At first glance, knowledge is a fundamental and positive mental power, and inner psychological work depends on in depth consideration and thought using the sefirah of knowledge. Indeed, when there are not enough vessels—just as in the world of Tohu, where there were many lights and few vessels—excessive deep thought and rumination can lead to the breaking of the vessels. A well-known example of this is a very talented young person who immerses himself deeply in his studies, and as a result experiences a breakdown. The cause is not the in-depth thought, but rather that it was not done with true humility and lowliness. These two traits give stability to the vessels and protect them from breaking.
A nervous breakdown can be very difficult, a terrible thing, but from it, one can grow. In a sense, anyone who wants to grow must go through some form of nervous breakdown—but we wish for everyone to experience a very, very light breakdown. If, after the breakdown, growth follows, the person can discover within themselves the spark of the Mashiach that dwells in every Jew.
Loving-kindness, Might, and Beauty: Crises of Love, Paranoia, and Alienation
In the sefirah of loving-kindness (chesed)—symbolized by the king Yovav—the crisis is a sense of alienation, a crisis of love. It is the feeling that “no one loves me”: God doesn't love me, my family doesn't love me, neither my parents nor my other relatives, and in general, there is no one who loves me. An individual who feels that “everyone hates me” nurtures the thought that “I am just a despicable person,” essentially, and this leads them to hate themselves.
It is possible that the emotional crisis of love is based on experiences a person has had, situations where they felt they had no love. However, in general, this is of course a fabricated picture of reality. Of course there is love in the world, and one should feel the love, starting with God’s love for them and extending to all the love surrounding them from their family and friends.
In the sefirah of might (gevurah), the death of the king Chusham, there is an experience of fear—not only do I feel that no one loves me, but that everyone wants to hurt me. The fear is based on experiences of harm and exploitation that the person has gone through in their life (up to trauma like sexual assault, the most severe form of harm), and it can develop into a constant paranoia that everyone is trying to hurt me and harm me.
The sefirah of beauty (tiferet) is the place of society, with all its many facets. The crisis of beauty is one of complete inability to integrate into society; the person asks himself, “What am I doing here at all?! The world is not my place, and I cannot find my place in any society.” In the crisis of love associated with loving-kindness, the blame seems to lie with those around me who seem to not love me—who turn away from me and even hate me; here the problem is mine, that I cannot integrate into society.
The king that corresponds to beauty is called Hadad ben Bedad (הַדַּד בֶּן בָּדָד). His first name stems from the verb meaning “echo” or in Modern Hebrew, reciprocity (הֲדָדִיּוֹת). His father’s name (בָּדָד) means “loneliness” (בְּדִידוּת). So he experiences an existential loneliness and has no reciprocal relationship with anyone. The sefirah of beauty receives from both the right and the left, Hadad from loving-kindness and Bedad from might, but while in the world of Tikkun, beauty tends toward the right, in the world of Tohu, of the kings of Edom, it tends toward the left. Regarding this inability to integrate into society, the Talmud states, “Either companionship or death,” meaning that if one cannot find companionship in learning Torah, it can bring him to death.
Victory and Acknowledgment: The Feeling of Failure
The sefirot of victory and acknowledgment are the forces of action. They represent the transition from potential to actualization, and the crisis that corresponds to them is the feeling of failure. A person feels and says that, "Things are not going well for me in life, I am a total failure, every initiative I take fails, I have no luck, and therefore I am poor and destitute because, in reality, I am poor in knowledge (da’at).”
This is the shattering of the king named Samlah (שמלה), which means “garment.” So the feeling a person has is that “no matter what clothing or attire I wear, no matter what position or job I try do perform, nothing will suit me, as I am simply unlucky.” In the body, victory and acknowledgment correspond to the two legs, which are clearly felt where we feel that things are not going well in life, and I fail (obstacles in life impede walking and cause the legs to stumble).
In the soul, the sefirot of victory and acknowledgment represent active and passive confidence, respectively.
Victory is active confidence, described by the verse, “for it is He that gives you the strength to be successful,” but there are those who feel that every initiative they take fails—they try and do not succeed. This is a particularly frustrating state—someone who does nothing, who goes to sleep, may be hopeless, but at least they are not frustrated by their failed initiatives. In contrast, someone who tries and fails becomes frustrated and broken.
Acknowledgment is passive confidence, trust in God that He will take care of things. When one experiences a crisis in this trust, it essentially leads to a weakening and a breakdown of faith and trust in God. This state is described as, “My glory [hod, my sefirah of acknowledgment] has turned destructive against me.” For someone who is not sensitive, failure only leads to a disbelief and a weakened state of faith. But for someone who is sensitive, a crisis of faith leads to mental breakdown, a trauma. This may very well be the most common crisis today among those who observe Torah and mitzvot.
Foundation: Family Crisis
The sefirah of foundation is associated with peace in general and peace in the home (Shalom Bayit) in particular. The crisis in the sefirah of foundation is thus a crisis in Shalom Bayit—mainly a crisis between husband and wife, in the relationship between man and woman, but also family crises in general, between parents and children or between siblings. This crisis is especially prevalent today because the prevailing views on marriage and family are completely distorted, which naturally leads to many crises (sometimes within the family that has been established, and sometimes crises that impact the very ability to find a partner and start a family).
These family crises are represented by the death of King Shaul from the river’s bank, which hints at King Saul, the first king of Israel, who fled from his future wife due to his excessive modesty until she pursued him and caught him. This is a situation that is destined to give rise to problems in Shalom Bayit both in his own relationship with his wife and also with regard to his children—Michal and Yonatan—who loved his son-in-law David and chose him to establish the monarchy, rather than themselves as the progeny of King Saul.
In general, when there is a crisis in Shalom Bayit, it is important to seek external help, but one should not settle for a psychologist or marriage counselor whose concepts are foreign to Torah values—such a counselor, most likely, is himself tainted by the distorted views that caused the crisis. The sefirah of foundation is associated with the Tzaddik, the Pillar of the World, referring to the guardian of the covenant, and it is specifically a righteous counselor—who sees the root problems causing the crisis—who can help rectify them. Therefore, we see that much of a Rabbi’s work—and especially that of a Rebbe—includes bringing peace between a man and his wife. Indeed, the value of “bringing peace” (הֲבָאַת שָׁלוֹם) is the same as “the action of a tzaddik” (פְּעֻלַּת צַדִּיק) is meant to “bring life,” and life alludes to the purpose of “see life with the woman whom you love.”
It is told that once, the Alter Rebbe spent a long time working intensely to bring peace between a husband and wife, time that was taken away from his learning. Someone who was aware of the Rebbe’s involvement asked him: “Indeed, bringing peace between a man and his wife is one of those things for which a person eats the fruits in this world and the principal remains in his name in the World to Come, but it is clearly stated that learning Torah study is valued equally as all other things?” The Alter Rebbe responded that in the mishnah that enumerates those things for which a person teat the fruits in this world and the principle remains in his name in the World to Come, a period should be placed after the words “and contemplation of prayer.” Then the mishnah reads:
These are the things that a person eats the fruits of in this world, and the principal remains in his name in the World to Come, and they are: honoring father and mother, acts of kindness, rising early for the morning prayer, the evening prayer, hosting guests, visiting the sick, escorting the bride, burying the dead, and contemplation of prayer. [In contrast:] Bringing peace between man and his fellow, between a man and his wife, and Torah study—these are equal to them all.
Ultimately, the coming of the Mashiach depends on the rectification of Shalom Bayit in and between Jews.
Kingdom: The Anxiety of Emptiness
Regarding the sefirah of kingdom, it is said, “It has nothing of its own.” This refers to a crisis that does not arise from anything external or incidental. In the previous part of the lesson, we discussed three deep anxieties, with the most complex—and most fitting for the modern age—being anxiety over existential emptiness.
It is possible that someone feels loved and connected, they are doing well and succeeding, both materially and spiritually, they have good livelihood, peace at home, success in their mission and in society—"everything is fine"—but they feel that nothing is "worth it," that they cannot find their place in the world, "Why am I here?!" They don't know why God created them and what their purpose is in this world. On the contrary, the greater their success, the more emptiness they feel. This experience causes deep frustration, without being able to pinpoint the cause of the frustration and ultimately leads to a crisis.
This is the death of the king Ba'al-Chanan, who is the secret of the famous verse, “grace is false”[4] (which blemishes the sanctified grace of kingdom[5])—the feeling that the entire reality is without charm and meaningless. At a deeper level, this feeling belongs to someone who takes ownership of grace but does not feel that grace is entirely a gift from God. Out of his pride—opposed to lowliness, which is the sanctified quality that emerges from kingdom—he experiences that although everything seems fine for him, and he is graceful in people’s eyes, he does not receive a fair response from the exterior reality, one that would elevate him and his significance. As a result, reality appears empty and meaningless in his eyes.
If we reflect on the location where each of the problems in every crisis is found, we see that in knowledge, the problem is “mine”—the breaking of the very essence of the “I,” my self-awareness (this is the breaking of the essential quality of “I will rule,” which plagued the kings of chaos).
In loving-kindness and might, the problem is "yours," meaning that the blame is placed on the environment (the cheftza of “the object”)—while those close to me do not love me and threaten me.
In beauty, victory, and acknowledgment, the problem is "mine" (the gavra, the person). The feeling is that I do not fit into society and am unsuccessful.
In foundation, the problem is in the energy between us—between the two sides of the crisis in Shalom Bayit.
Finally, in kingdom, the feeling is that no matter who is to blame for the problem—the main issue is that I suffer from it to the point of breaking. In essence, the problem is with the Creator, as if He created a world without meaning, which is the secret of the first contraction, where God withdrew the light of meaning and left a void and emptiness.
The Growth of Rectification
As already mentioned, the beginning of the rectification is hinted at in King Hadar and his wife Mehitavel. Out of the seven crises of the kings of Edom themselves, begins the post-traumatic growth of rectification, growth from crisis. It is this couple, Hadar and Mehitavel who grow. They represent foundation and kingdom from the crises of foundation and kingdom, i.e., the crisis in Shalom Bayit and the crisis of emptiness.
The process of growth and rectification includes three stages: first, the mental strength to go through the crisis. This stage is depicted the other strength: “Hold back for a moment until the anger passes.”[6] Next, the strength to correct the cause of the crisis, through a deep counseling process (a psychoanalysis of holiness), with the help of a good Chasidic mentor—a counselor of the soul. Finally, the ultimate goal of the process is to be able to grow anew from the crisis, a leap that is incomparable to the previous state that preceded the crisis, so much so that it is revealed the crisis is a "descent for the sake of an ascent.”[7] By adopting a new worldview and accepting a joyful mission from the Rebbe, one merits to achieve, “His name is Tzemach, and from beneath him, it will grow."
Ultimately, everything depends on the sacred lowliness (depicted in the verse with the phrase, “beneath him”)—the inner dimension of the sefirah of kingdom (as King David said, "And I will be lowly in my eyes"[8]), the secret of Hadar-Mehitavel whose gematria is the same as “woman” (אשה). Specifically, Hadar—whose meaning also includes return (like "he will return to it")—is the awareness that one can turn the wheel backwards, to begin life anew from scratch, from the low point a person has reached (and the recognition that the feeling of "I am nothing" is not despair, but a source of joy and the possibility to start completely anew). Mehitavel is the secret of the union of the names Mah and Ban, as is well known—the union of male and female (a union that characterizes every point in the world of rectification, in contrast to the world of Tohu). Mehitabel provides the awareness that I am lacking a partner—my entire problem is that I am alone, feeling that "I exist but there is none besides me,"[9] yet it is written, "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper for him."[10]
This consciousness, beyond being the foundation of the rectification for the Shalom Bayit crisis, the crisis of the sefirah of foundation, is also the foundation of the rectification of emptiness. When there are relationships with others, one can give profound meaning to all of life—the meaning of life is "an opportunity to do good," to the extent that a soul descends into the world for sixty or seventy years in order to do a good deed for a Jew,[11] to help an elderly Jew cross the street or offer him a glass of water. Such a good deed fills me completely, giving me meaning, accompanied by gratitude for all the good God has given me, and above all, for the merit I have received to be able to do good. Gratitude is the beginning of the rectification of the crisis in kingdom. And when kingdom is rectified and one merits the humility of rectification, they are able to balance and rectify the entire soul and grow from all other crises.
Let us summarize all seven crises in a partzuf:
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knowledge-da’at דָּעַת Nervous Breakdown
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| loving–kindness–chessed חֶסֶד
Crisis of Love
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might–gevurah גְּבוּרָה Crisis of Paranoia |
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beauty–tiferet תִּפְאֶרֶת Crisis of Alienation
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victory–netzach נֶצַח and splendor–hod הוֹד Crisis of Failure
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foundation–yesod יְסוֹד Family Crisis
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kingdom-malchut מַלְכוּת Crisis of Meaninglessness
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(based on a shiur given on 16 Shevat 5785)
[1]. See Tanya Iggeret HaKodesh 8. Resisei Laylah 52. Tiferet Shlomoh Mo’adim, Purim, s.v. Im Mizera HaYehudim.
[2]. See Sanhedrin 14a.
[3]. As in Judges 8:16.
[4]. Proverbs 31:30.
[5]. See Sefer Yetzirah 4:2 and commentaries there. See Kehillat Yaakov s.v. “chen.”
[6]. Isaiah 26:20.
[7]. Likkutei Torah Behar 41a following Makkot 7b.
[8]. 2 Samuel 6:22.
[9]. Isaiah 47:8 and v. 10. Tzephaniah 2:15.
[10]. Genesis 2:18.
[11]. HaYom Yom 5 Iyar in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov.
