We continue our review of the 9 Principles of Faith of the Torah’s inner dimension with the fourth principle: that all descent is for the sake of a subsequent ascent, meaning that all failures are meant to lead to an ultimate higher state, even those failures that the Torah deems to be sins.
The contents of this series first appeared in Hebrew, in HaRav Ginsburgh’s book, Emunah VeMuda’ut (Faith and Consciousness). It is being translated here for the first time.
Click here for all the chapters in this series
We now come to the fourth principle of faith of the Torah’s inner dimension. God created our world to present our souls with the opportunity to rise higher, to an elevated state. To access this opportunity, our soul must be willing to descend from heaven into our physical body. Despite this initially being a descent from the soul’s high spiritual state, ultimately, by traversing the difficulties inherent in life, the soul merits to ascend to a higher state. This is the root of the principle that every descent is for the purpose of an ascent.
Every descent from one’s earlier, higher status, is brought about by the sefirah of might (gevurah), also known as the attribute of judgment (מִדַּת הַדִּין) and of contraction (or, sometimes, concentration). Every descent is for the purpose of a subsequent ascent to a place incomparably higher than the initial starting point. It requires a keen sense, but for one who can “see,”[1] present already within the descent itself is its purpose—the peak of the ascent.[2]
This principle applies not only to the descent of the soul into our mundane reality, or any other descent that accords with God’s will, but even to a descent caused by sin or transgression committed by a person through his free will and contrary to God’s will. Though sin is against God’s supreme will, concealed within the unwanted act there lies a hidden intention that originates from God’s highest essence, a realm that is higher than God’s revealed will, as explained in Chasidut regarding the verse, “God is… held in awe for His deeds toward humanity”[3] (לְכוּ וּרְאוּ מִפְעֲלוֹת אֱ־לֹהִים נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה עַל בְּנֵי אָדָם), which is explained in the midrash as follows[4]:
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korchah said: Even the terrible things You bring upon us, You bring them through entrapment (עֲלִילָה, alilah).
Come and see: when the Holy Blessed One created the world, from the very first day He created the Angel of Death…. Adam was created on the sixth day. Yet the scheme was pinned on him and he was blamed that he had brought death into the world, as it says: “for on the day you eat of it [the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge] you shall surely die.”[5]
To what may this be compared? To a man who wishes to divorce his wife. Before going home he wrote the bill of divorce, then entered his house with the get already in hand, seeking a pretext to give it to her. He said to her: “Pour me a cup to drink.” She poured it for him. As soon as he took the cup from her hand, he said: “Here is your bill of divorce.” She said to him: “What is my offense?” He replied: “Leave my house, for you poured me a lukewarm cup.” She said to him: “You already knew that I was going to pour you a lukewarm cup, for you wrote the get [Bill of Divorce] and brought it in your hand!”
So too, Adam said before the Holy Blessed One: “Master of the Universe, You did not create Your world until two thousand years had passed, during which the Torah was with You…. And in the Torah it was already written, ‘This is the Torah: when a man dies in a tent.’[6] Had You not already ordained death for Your creatures, would You have written such a thing in it? Rather, You have come to pin the scheme upon me.”[7]
Let us explore this for a moment from God’s perspective. God knows all human deeds, including those defined by the Torah as sin, in advance. Nonetheless, He sustains and makes even these actions possible, despite their being contrary to His revealed will as stated in the Torah. The sinner could argue that because of this, he is not to blame for the sin, for if God had only willed otherwise, God could have prevented the sin from ever happening. Yet, God chose that free-will would be a fixture of human existence and based on man’s freedom of will, God would judge man and his actions. Given all of the above, every individual is responsible for his or her deeds and must answer for them. However, when a sinner returns to God in complete teshuvah and cleaves to God’s primal will and desire for Creation that transcends Creation and the ways of the created world, they reveal how the sin is actually a connection to God Himself—to God’s essential and transcendent Being that is beyond understanding and definition.
Evil as a Throne for Good
Accordingly, the ultimate purpose of all evil in the world is to serve as a means for refinement and redemption. Evil is destined to become “a basis for good,” as expressed in the famous teaching of our teacher the Baal Shem Tov: “evil is like a throne upon which the good sits.”[8] In other words, once evil serves its true purpose, it will be instrumental in elevating the good in our world to a level incomparably higher than it was when it stood in direct opposition to evil. After evil is refined, the good need not confine itself to definitions that prove it is not evil, and it can rise above all definitions to become infinite and ever more similar to its source—God—who is infinite.
In a similar vein, the Maggid of Mezritch explained that the linguistic origin of the Hebrew word for evil (רַע) is related to the word meaning, “lower” (מִלְּרַע). Thus, evil entered our world with what fell, shattered, and died with the Breaking of the Vessels, the Kabbalistic idea that parallels (and includes) Adam and Eve’s sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Evil is meant to act as a scaffolding for the good. It supports it from the bottom.
Evil has two dimensions. There is the “real” part of evil. This part includes the Divine spark that is trapped within it and sustains its existence together with the shard of the broken vessels; they constitute its very existence.[9] This part is destined to be refined and redeemed, and it will fulfill the purpose of evil as a throne for good. But there is also an imaginary part to evil, about which the prophet says, “I shall remove the spirit of impurity from the Earth.” This will happen once the real part of evil is refined.
“None Shall Be Lost”
The ascent that follows the descent is an act of teshuvah—a return to God. Teshuvah governs both the ascent of the individual and of the collective. Maimonides writes that regarding the Jewish people: “Israel will ultimately return to God at the end of their exile, and they will be immediately redeemed.”[10]
One who has returned to God by ascending out of his descent attains a higher level of closeness to God than even the righteous who have never sinned. The Talmud tells us that, “where masters of teshuvah [of return to God] stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.”[11] Because of this, one of the most important tasks of the Mashiach is “to bring the righteous to do teshuvah,”[12] so that even the righteous individuals will merit to stand at the level that the penitents—the masters of teshuvah can stand. The distance opened between them and God, between their being and all that is Godly and good, creates a yearning like no other to ascend and that energy catapults them above the state they were in before they sinned. The point is that those who have done teshuvah for their sins, for having engaged with evil, reach their greater proximity to Godliness because they have completed the full cycle of “descent is for the sake of ascent, even with sin,” and they have done so out of love for God, love for what is good.
Teshuvah that is born of love for God—and within every Jew there is a hidden love destined to be revealed as teshuvah from love—has the power “to transform even intentional sins into merits.”[13] The sin and the distance from God become, retroactively, propulsions toward greater and more powerful closeness. This is the deep meaning of the verse said about each and every individual soul of Israel, “none shall be lost.”[14]
Reward and Punishment
This fourth principle of faith of the Torah’s inner dimension—“All descent is for the sake of ascent,” even regarding sin—corresponds to Maimonides’ 11th principle of faith regarding the reward that comes to those who observe God’s commandments and the punishment that is administered to those who transgress His will. The Torah’s inner dimension adds that punishment is nothing more than a concealed act of loving-kindness. Its function is to refine evil itself so that it may become a throne for good.
According to Maimonides, “evil does not descend from Above,” meaning that it does not originate in God.[15] Evil is entirely man made. But according to the wisdom of the Torah’s inner tradition, nothing in the world is truly created by the lower beings themselves—everything is created from Above. The meaning of the phrase “evil does not descend from above” is that since everything in the world, including all evil within it, is from Above—it is not true evil[16] whose purpose is to punish and cause suffering, but rather it comes to ascend itself and to elevate the good to be encompassed within the infinite.
The Chamber of Merit
We have already explained the connection between descent and the left axis of the sefirot and particularly the sefirah of might (gevurah), to which we correspond this fourth principle of faith of the Torah’s inner dimension. Let us add another point in this respect.
The Zohar and the writings of the Arizal speak of another parallel nomenclature for the seven emotive sefirot—a nomenclature that is rooted in the idiom of heavenly chambers. Among them, the “Chamber of Merit” (הֵיכַל הַזְּכוּת), where the Heavenly Court sits to judge reward and punishment, is the chamber associated with might, the attribute of judgment. It is telling that it is not called the Chamber of Justice, but rather the Chamber of Merit. From this we learn that the true purpose of reward and punishment is to vindicate the person, to refine even the evil within him so that it can become a throne for the good, and to transform every descent into the purpose of ascent.
This principle of faith is associated with the left axis of the sefirot also because it is sensitive to the inherent limits—limits are related to contraction—of created beings, just as it is the power of contraction that limits the Divine revelation so that it can be understood by the lower creatures, and on the other hand produces the attribute of judgment that evaluates each and every act of the creatures. Because it corresponds with the sefirah of might, this principle situated just under the principle of faith in “Our Divine service is a need of the Most High,” which corresponds with the sefirah of understanding. The relationship between understanding and might is captured in the verse, “I am understanding, I have might.”[17] Applied to these two principles of faith of the Torah’s concealed tradition, this verse means that when a person, in serving his Creator and does good below, in the mundane realm, Above he is also doing good, as it were, for God. This is governed by the principle that, “an awakening below generates an awakening Above. But even when a person sins below, the supernal intent (concealed within God’s highest essence, as above) descends to transform the descent caused by the sin into an ascent that will bring God endless pleasure and satisfaction (especially with the ultimate repentance of the entire Jewish people, as above). Thus, “I am understanding” refers to good that is needed by the Most High and “might is mine” refers to the might needed to transform a descent into an ascent, might that is possessed by God Above.
