Partzuf
The Four Aspects of Our Yom Kippur Service
| letter of Havayah | aspect of Yom Kippur | ||
| yud | cleaving to God (prayer) | עֲבוֹדַת הַדְּבֵקוּת | י |
| hei | confession and teshuvah | וִדּוּי וּתְשׁוּבָה | ה |
| vav | afflictions of the body | עִנּוּי | ו |
| hei | ceasing work | שְׁבִיתָה מִמְּלָאכָה | ה |
Our partzuf/model this week will be on the four different aspects of our service on Yom Kippur. Most people would probably identify either the prayer or the fast as the most predominant aspects of the holiest day of the year. However, there are 2 additional aspects that are just as important—confession and ceasing work, like on Shabbat. Since altogether there are 4 aspects to our service on Yom Kippur, it would be most natural to correspond them to the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah, also known as the Tetragrammaton.
Corresponding 4 elements to the Tetragrammaton is one of the earliest methods of constructing a partzuf in Kabbalistic and Chasidic literature. It is also the method most employed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Certain aspects regarding how to understand such a partzuf once constructed were also reviewed by the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe.
This particular partzuf emerges from a shiur on the daily 3 chapters of Rambam that HaRav Ginsburgh teaches once a week. Recently, the daily Rambam covered the chapters of the laws of the Yom Kippur service in the Temple.
Yom Kippur in the Rambam
In the opening of his treatment of the laws of Yom Kippur (Hilchot Shevitat Asor), the Rambam states that there are four Torah commandments governing the holiest day of the year: The first two commandments are: 1) "to cease from work" and 2) "to not perform any work on it." These first two commandments are also found in the laws of Shabbat.[1] The third and fourth commandments though are unique to Yom Kippur: 3) "to afflict oneself on it" and 4) "to neither eat nor drink on it." The Rambam understands that both the third and the fourth commandments derive from the “Shabbat” aspect of Yom Kippur, because it is as if one is ceasing from eating and drinking.
For the Rambam, all four commandments of Yom Kippur are found in the notion of "the resting on the tenth" (שְׁבִיתַת עָשׂוֹר) because, like the commandment "to cease from work," he also defines affliction, as "ceasing from eating and drinking."[2]
However, this is not the only place the Rambam addresses the laws of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is discussed extensively earlier in the Laws of Return/Repentance (Hilchot Teshuvah), as it is "a time of repentance for all, both individually and collectively, and it is the culmination of forgiveness and atonement for the Jewish people. Therefore, everyone is obligated to repent and confess on Yom Kippur." The connection between the commandment of repentance and Yom Kippur is so strong that some say that the commandment of confession along with repentance—the commandment upon which the laws of Return are based—is a prescriptive and obligatory commandment only on Yom Kippur, while during the rest of the year, it is merely a conditional commandment.
It can be argued that the mention of Yom Kippur in the laws of Return is even more central than its central treatment in the laws of Yom Kippur (Hilchot Shevitat Asor), because atonement, which depends on return/repentance, is the very essence of Yom Kippur.
Yet, there is more. The Rambam also mentions Yom Kippur in in the Laws of the Yom Kippur Temple Service (Hilchot Avodat Yom HaKippurim), all of which are included under the headline of “one positive commandment, which is that the entire [Temple] service of Yom Kippur should be performed in the correct order….” Yom Kippur is a day described as “once a year.” It is a day of absolute cleaving (דְּבֵקוּת) to the Holy Blessed One throughout the entire day and all of its rituals and services are included in this "oneness."
For all the oneness celebrated on Yom Kippur, it seems that the number 5 recurs many times: five afflictions, five prayers, and others. The division of “oneness” into 5 indicates that our singular cleaving to God on this day permeates and encompasses all five levels of the soul: nefesh, ru’ach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah.
Cleaving is expressed through the Temple service and now—when we do not have a Temple—through our prayers on this day. Prayer was always the the inner soul of Yom Kippur. In the time when the Holy Temple stood, the High Priest would offer a brief prayer in the Holy of Holies, and today, when due to our sins the Temple service is not possible, prayer is the revealed and central aspect of the entire day. As Sefer HaChinuch concludes regarding the mitzvah of Yom Kippur[3]:
And now, due to our sins, when we no longer have the Temple, the High Priest, the sacred garments, nor the sacrifices, all of Israel keep the custom of serving on this day with prayers and supplications, as it is written, “And we will render the offerings of our lips.”[4]
Yom Kippur’s Inner Structure
The four commandments governing Yom Kippur according to the Rambam are thus: ceasing from work (שְׁבִיתָה מִמְּלָאכָה), afflicting the body (עִנּוּי), returning to God (תְּשׁוּבָה), and cleaving to God (דְּבֵקוּת). They correspond to the four Worlds and consequently also to the four letters of the essential Divine Name Havayah, the Tetragrammaton. Let us look at this correspondence in more depth, all the while recalling that the verse describes our work on Yom Kippur with the words, “Before Havayah you will be purified”[5] (לִפְנֵי י-הוה תִּטְהָרוּ), meaning that these four aspects of Yom Kippur are all “before Havayah”—the four-letter essential Name of God.
Ceasing from Work
Ceasing from work corresponds to the World of Action (Assiyah), the realm where the 39 archetypal forms of labor are performed, and from which one must refrain on Yom Kippur. In a sense, the World of Action is defined by these 39 categories of labor.
When we cease from our daily work and toil, we are manifesting the Zohar’s explanation of the verse, “God founded the earth with wisdom.”[6] In the language of the Zohar, "Father [who dwells in the World of Emanation (Atzilut)] founded the daughter [the kingdom (malchut), which dwells in the World of Action (Assiyah)]"). The source of this cessation is in the highest level, the self-nullification that is the staple of the World of Emanation, particularly in the inner aspect of the sefirah of wisdom, but its practical expression is in the labors of the World of Action. By ceasing from work on Yom Kippur (and Shabbat), we are infusing the World of Action with the World of Emanation. The latter is the realm in which there is no consciousness of self, only consciousness of God. Infusing the World of Action with this consciousness sanctifies it and allows us to experience our connection with God at a different level.
Afflictions of the body
Afflictions of the body, in its most straightforward sense, represents self-restraint (אִתְכַּפְיָא) and should therefore be associated with the spiritual work of the World of Formation (or, Yetzirah). In Hebrew, the word for “formation” (יְצִירָה) is cognate with the word meaning “inclination” (יֵצֶר). Thus, the World of Formation is associated with our inner inclinations, including the evil inclination (yetzer hara), which we are required to overcome and subdue. These inclinations mostly appear as physical desires.
When we divide the 10 sefirot according to the Worlds, the sefirot from loving-kindness-chessed to foundation-yesod are associated with Formation. In the Arizal’s Kabbalistic nomenclature, the world of Formation also corresponds to the general persona/partzuf known as Ze’er Anpin—the small countenance. The five physical afflictions of Yom Kippur—not eating and drinking, not washing, not wearing leather soles, not anointing, and no marital relations—are designed to sweeten the five gevurot—powers of mighty judgment that spread through the five extremities of Ze’er Anpin (these form a partzuf in their own right[7]).
Indeed, on Yom Kippur, it is felt that “the body’s weakness empowers the soul.”[8] When one subdues the evil inclination, the good inclination is filled with strength and vitality. Therefore, on Yom Kippur, there is also an inner vitality and even a certain delight in the affliction, a state alluded to in the phrase, “sustaining them with hunger.”[9]
One who truly experiences this does not feel the need to eat on Yom Kippur. This vitality is also connected to the World of Formation, which is also the World inhabited by the angels known as “holy creatures” (חַיּוֹת הַקֹּדֶשׁ), which Ezekiel describes as “running and returning”[10]—the quintessential Biblical verse describing the pulse of life.[11]
The purpose of the five physical afflictions is the service of teshuvah—returning to God—which is associated with the sefirah of understanding, a connection we will explain shortly. Still, because of their connection with the sefirah of understanding, the five physical afflictions are hinted to in the continuation of the verse quoted above regarding the cessation of work, “God founded the earth with wisdom,”[12] which goes on to symbolically describe the relationship between Ze’er Anpin and understanding: “He established the heavens [referring to Ze’er Anpin; the earth is kingdom-malchut, its feminine counterpart] with understanding.” The idea here is that from understanding comes the power to sweeten the harsh judgments within the five afflictions of the body on Yom Kippur.
Teshuvah
The service of teshuvah/return to God on Yom Kippur corresponds to the World of Creation (בְּרִיאָה), where the sefirah of understanding (or binah) resides. Indeed, throughout the Zohar, the sefirah of understanding is associated with teshuvah, as stated in the verse, “his heart will understand and he will return.”[13] The physical act of confession—i.e., physically articulating the heart’s return to God—is also associated with the sefirah of understanding in Kabbalah. First, Patach Eliyahu, the introduction to Tikkunei Zohar reveals that, “understanding is the heart, and with it the heart understands” (בִּינָה לִבָּא וּבָהּ הַלֵּב מֵבִין). The act of expressing the heart’s state is described as “the mouth of comprehension” (פֶּה הַתְּבוּנָה), a phrase that is associated in the Zohar with the concept of the “vapors of the heart” (הֶבֶל הַלֵּב).[14]
Cleaving to God
Cleaving to God on Yom Kippur, as expressed through the prayers of the day, is the absolute cleaving that is possible in the World of Emanation (Atzilut), the World in which our consciousness is one with God. This corresponds to the letter yud of Havayah, the Tetragrammaton and to the sefirah of wisdom (chochmah).
In Kabbalah, it is customary to analyze the form of the yud as it is written in a Torah scroll and to identify a fifth, higher level, with the yud’s tips. Thus, cleaving to God on Yom Kippur also includes the soul’s highest level known as the yechidah—the singular one.
A foundational principle in understanding every partzuf that includes the intellectual sefirot wisdom and understanding (or correspondingly the letters yud and the first hei of Havayah) is that they are regarded as “two inseparable companions”[15] (תְּרֵין רֵעִין דְּלָא מִתְפָּרְשִׁין). We can apply this to teshuvah and cleaving to God, which on Yom Kippur are inseparable. As one’s return to God strengthen so one’s cleaving to Him deepens.
In effect, we have taken the four letters of the Tetragrammaton and “divided” them, as it were, into the first two and the final two. This division echoes the Chassidic interpretation of the verse, “the concealed is for Havayah our God and the revealed for us and our offspring”[16] (הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַ-יהוה אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ)—the concealed are the first two letters of Havayah, yud and hei, and the revealed are the two final letters, vav and hei. Note that the word “and the revealed” (וְהַנִּגְלֹת) begins with the final two letters of Havayah, vav and hei.
This division fits well with our partzuf of the four aspects of Yom Kippur. The two more "practical" dimensions—affliction of the body and cessation from work—are indeed more visible, and thus correspond nicely to the “revealed” letters in Havayah. One of them is positive (to afflict the body) and the other is prohibitive (to cease from work), which further parallels the notion that the vav is associated with Ze’er Anpin, which is relatively masculine and hence an active influencer, and the hei, which is associated with Nukva, Ze’er Anpin’s feminine counterpart, which is relatively more passive.
The higher two aspects—teshuvah and cleaving to God—are concealed, as they cannot be seen on the exterior. Both are inner experiences that occur privately in every individual. Thus, the two higher aspects also beautifully fit the notion that the two higher letters of Havayah, yud and hei, represent the “concealed” dimension of reality.
[1]. See Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Farbrengen of Shabbat Korach 5744, which notes that the Rambam did not include the laws of Yom Kippur with the laws of Shofar, Sukkah, and Lulav according to the sequence of the festivals but instead placed them adjacent to the laws of Shabbat because "there is no difference between Shabbat and Yom Kippur in these matters [laws of cessation of labor], except that intentional labor on Shabbat is punished by stoning, and on Yom Kippur by excision" (Hilchot Shvitat Asor 1:2). Thus, Yom Kippur is more similar to Shabbat than to other holidays.
[2]. More specifically, Yom Kippur is called “Shabbat Shabbaton.” From the Shabbat aspect, the sages learned that one should cease from eating and drinking, whose punishment is excision. From the Shabbaton aspect, they learnt the other 4 afflictions of the body on Yom Kippur: washing, anointing, wearing leather shoes, and performing marital relations.
[3]. Mitzvah 185.
[4]. Hosea 14:3.
[5]. Leviticus 16:30.
[6]. Proverbs 3:19.
[7]. The correspondence between the afflictions and the five extremities of Ze’er Anpin is beyond our scope here. See also the class from the 6th of Tishrei, 5780.
[8]. Based on Zohar 1:180b.
[9]. Psalms 33:19. See the deep explanation of this phrase in Likkutei Torah Shir HaShirim 14b.
[10]. Ezekiel 1:14.
[11]. Like the pulse, which is composed of two phases, spiritually, the soul is constantly going through two phases known as “run and return” (רָצוֹא וָשׁוֹב). The numerical value of these two phases is the same as “Torah” (תּוֹרָה), 611.
[12]. Proverbs 3:19.
[13]. Isaiah 6:10.
[14]. Zohar 3:235a. The seven vapors of Ecclesiastes’ second verse are associated with the heart and the trachea.
[15]. Ibid. 3:290b and 1:123a.
[16]. Deuteronomy 29:28.
