Rabbi Yitzchak Luria Ashkenazi (the Ari) was born in Jerusalem in the year 5294 (1534) to his father Rabbi Shlomo, of the renowned Luria family, and to his mother, daughter of the Francis family of Jerusalem. In his youth his father passed away, and he moved with his mother to Egypt, to the home of his uncle. There he studied under Rabbi Betzalel Ashkenazi, author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, and under the Radbaz. During his years in Egypt, he immersed himself deeply in the holy Book of Zohar, merited a revelation of Elijah the Prophet, and uncovered a new and profound system in Kabbalah. At Elijah's instruction he made aliyah to Tzfat in his final years. Over the course of three years, he taught his system to a select group of students, many of whom had been like the Ari himself, disciples of his predecessor, Rabbi Moses Corovero. Among them were Rabbi Yisrael Sarug and Rabbi Joseph Ibn Tabul. His primary disciple though was Rabbi Chaim Vital, whom the Ari selected to write an official version of his teachings. Rabbi Chaim Vital’s titled the volume containing his teacher’s core principles Eitz Chaim (The Tree of Life).
The Ari, of blessed memory, departed this world on the 5th of Menachem Av, 5332 (1572), at the age of thirty-eight, and was interred in Tzfat, adjacent to Rabbi Moses Cordovero. He was greatly blessed in that his Kabbalah was accepted with great respect by all parts of the Jewish people, who continue to study it to this very day.
In his youth, before he had yet plumbed the depths of Kabbalistic wisdom, the holy Ari sat one day in the synagogue at prayer, and beside him sat another man. The Ari glanced over and noticed a book in the man's hand. He looked more closely and perceived within it sublime mysteries. After the prayer, the Ari said to the man: "Tell me, what is written in this book?" The man replied: "What can I say, for God has withheld honor from me. I am among the anussim (forced conversos to Christianity, who kept their Judaism in secret), and seeing that everyone around me was praying from a book, I took this one out of embarrassment. I do not know what is written in it." The Ari said to him: "If so, sell me this book, and I will give you a siddur in exchange." The man replied: "Am I so lacking in funds that I would sell you the book for money? I have but one request of you: ask your father-in-law to waive the customs duty I owe, and in return I will give you the book." Since the holy Ari greatly desired the book, he prevailed upon his father-in-law, who indeed agreed to waive the duty.
In exchange, the Ari received the book, and he would study it together with the Zohar with every fiber of his strength, through fasting and mortification. Thus, he merited that each night he would be told in a dream whether he had correctly understood the words of the Zohar or not. At times he was told that his understanding was correct, but was not the intent of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the Mishnaic sage whose teachings it contains. At other times he was told that if he wished to grasp a certain passage, he would need to undertake further mortifications — and so he would. Perceiving this, he went and secluded himself in a small hut on the bank of the Nile for six years, studying by day and by night in holiness and purity, until he merited that each night his soul was taken on high and he was asked in which heavenly academy he wished to study and from whom he wished to learn; wherever he wished, he was brought. Awesome secrets were transmitted to him, and in the morning he would not forget a single thing and would reveal what he had received to his students. He likewise merited ru’ach hakodesh, and at times Elijah the Prophet would appear to him and teach him the hidden dimensions of Torah.
His student Rabbi Avraham HaLevi, of blessed memory, related that once, on the Shabbat of Parashat Balak, he came to visit the Ari and found him sleeping his afternoon sleep. He noticed that the Ari's lips were moving in his slumber. Rabbi Avraham drew close and inclined his ear toward the Ari's mouth to hear what he was saying. At that moment the Ari awoke and found him standing beside him. He said: "What are you doing here?" Rabbi Avraham replied: "May the master forgive me. I saw that his honored lips were moving, and I leaned in to hear what the Rabbi was saying." The Ari said to him: "Whenever I sleep, my soul ascends on high through pathways and channels known to me. The ministering angels come to receive my soul and bring me before the great angel Metat, the minister of the interior in heaven. He asks me to which heavenly academy I wish to go, and in those academies mysteries of Torah are transmitted to me that were never heard even in the time of the sages of the Mishnah." Rabbi Avraham said: "Will the master not reveal to me what he was taught just now?" The Ari smiled and said: "I call heaven and earth to witness: even if I would expound without pause for eighty consecutive years, I could not fully relate all that I had learned this time in the Torah portion of Balam and the donkey."
"Wherein lies your greatness?" Rabbi Chaim Vital once asked his teacher the Ari. "Surely I and other Kabbalists have also labored in the Torah of Kabbalah, yet we have not attained what you have." The Ari replied that the matter depends entirely upon the intensity of one's toil. "If you could truly measure," he said, "the intensity of my labor in Kabbalah, you would not compare your toil to mine."
What can we learn from this story? One might dismiss it with a general remark about the importance of effort and toil in the service of God. But if we sharpen our gaze, much is revealed, all of it necessary for us as well when we approach our own service of God.
First, the toil the Ari demanded of himself may be divided into two: toil in study through the investment of many hours and intense mental effort, and toil of purification and repentance expressed through fasting and mortification. Indeed, in the Tanya as well, we learn of two forms of toil in contemplation: toil of the flesh (known as yegi'at basar) and toil of the soul (known as yegi'at hanefesh). Toil of the flesh is self-nullification through heartfelt thoughts of repentance from the depths of the heart, which are the ultimate purpose and inner motivation behind the Ari's mortifications as well. Toil of the soul is prolonged contemplation of Divine content, in complete concentration sustained over a lengthy period. The Ari and the Tanya teach us that toil in Torah without toil in repentance — and likewise its reverse — will not yield the desired result.
Second, once we understand what true toil requires, we must reflect: what qualities bring a person to labor with such intensity? In both the story and the teaching cited here, the Ari's immense submission and self-nullification before the Torah are unmistakable. These qualities caused him to feel that no effort was too great to merit it, and that to truly merit it he must also purify himself by repenting and undergoing mortification. The Ari drew the immeasurable power of his toil, which was truly beyond all reckoning from the total devotion and profound humility he felt before the Torah.
We should note an additional teaching of the Ari. He once related that all his accomplishments came to him through the joy of performing mitzvot. The relationship between this and his reply to Rabbi Chaim Vital is bound up in the secret of “Understanding [binah] extends as far as acknowledgment [hod].” Binah, whose inner dimension is joy, extends itself and empowers the sefirah of Hod, whose essence is devotion and submission.
In conclusion, let us add one further principle — one that presents the Arizal’s presaging one of the quintessential Chabad principles. What is striking in the story is that many of the great revelations he merited were of a different character than one might expect from knowledge that is gathered from a supernal source. We might expect that the supernal secrets would be transmitted and revealed directly, without guiding the receiver to fast, or to investigate more deeply, and without cryptic statements such as your understanding was correct, or not quite precise. That the revelation did not come easily illustrated the Chabad principle known as “serving by one’s own power” (עֲבוֹדָה בְּכֹחַ עַצְמוֹ) — which is immeasurably higher than spiritual levels attained by gratis.
In some accounts of these matters, it is told that Elijah the Prophet refused to reveal the plain meaning of the text to the Ari, so that the teaching would be ascribed to the Ari’s credit. From this, the Chasidic masters, the tzaddikim, understood that the revelation of the yechidah (the soul’s level that is singularly unified in God) is greater than a revelation of Elijah — for Elijah withheld from the Ari what could only be disclosed through the total devotion of his soul to the Torah. One may go further still and speculate that the Torah ultimately revealed to the Ari through his efforts was of such a stature that even Elijah the Prophet could not have disclosed it. The true willingness to toil in Torah reveals a person's own Torah — a Torah of the yechidah, singular to him alone.
The Maharal, a contemporary of the Ari, reflected on the spiritual level of Elijah as it is described in a Talmudic passage recording Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's encounter with the Mashiach. In that account, Elijah serves as an intermediary between the Mashiach and Rabbi Yehoshua — explaining to the latter how to find the Mashiach, and then explaining the Mashiach's reply that he will come "today."
When Rabbi Yehoshua was disappointed that the Mashiach had not come, Elijah interprets: "’Today’ — if you will but hearken to His voice." According to the Maharal, the account is not merely a riddle and its solution, but three distinct spiritual levels: the Mashiach himself dwells in a world of redemption, in which he can indeed come today; Rabbi Yehoshua is bound to the present conditions of the Jewish people, who are still in exile; and Elijah mediates between these two planes, pointing toward the capacity to move between worlds and to advance toward redemption.
In the context of our discussion, the revelation of the yechidah of the soul is the disclosure of the personal spark of Mashiach within it. It is for this reason that the revelation of the yechidah surpasses the revelation of Elijah — for Elijah brings the redemption down into reality through conditions and contractions. When the yechidah of the soul is revealed, the redemption is immediate, palpable, and unconditional.
