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Orchard of Delights
(Tanchuma 14) which explains that at the revelation of the burning
bush God appeared in a lowly bramble bush to Moses and not in a
stately tree to show His empathy with Israel’s pain (Exodus 3:4).
Echoing this theme, Rashi cites another source from Psalms 91:15:
“I am with them in their suffering.”
Kabbalah, especially in the last five hundred years, has constantly
stressed the “exile of the Shechinah.” As long as the Jewish people
are in exile, God’s Presence also is in exile, as it were. This idea finds a
biblical source in God’s comforting words to Jacob before he descends
to Egypt: “I will descend with you to Egypt and I will also surely
bring you up” (Genesis 46:4).
Perhaps the primary evidence for God’s attitude towards evil in
this world appears in His explicit reaction to Israel’s first victory
over the very embodiment of evil – its archenemy Amalek – just
after leaving Egypt. God figuratively puts His hand on His throne
and dramatically promises war with Amalek in every generation:
“For the hand is on the throne of God; a war to God against Amalek,
from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). Rashi notes that two
words in the verse are missing letters: the Hebrew word for “throne”
is missing a letter and the Hebrew word for “God” is written with
only the first two letters of God’s four-letter name. This deficiency,
so Rashi informs us, signifies God’s promise that His name and
His throne will remain incomplete until the name of Amalek, the
embodiment of evil in the world, is totally uprooted. God empathizes
so fully with the unrectified state of the world that the revelation of
His oneness must wait until evil is finally uprooted.
Given the fact that even God seems to abhor the existence of evil
in the world, we can now ask Moses’ question with even greater
urgency: Why did God choose to create a world fraught with evil
and all the pain and brokenness that accompany it, when He could
have created any reality He wished? One of the answers given by
the Rabbis throughout the ages is that without the existence of
evil, human beings could not have free choice. God must, as it were,
tolerate the existence of evil, if He wishes to allow human beings
to choose between good and evil. Thus, the world’s incomplete and
fractured state is more a consequence of humanity’s choices than
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The key to sanctifying both time and space is choice. To observe
Shabbat or construct the Tabernacle, the Jewish people in the desert
had to make a conscious choice. The choice itself endowed them with
the ability to transform “ordinary” space and time into something
holy. In following in their footsteps, we actually join all three aspects
of reality – space, time, and soul – when observing the Shabbat and
investing our homes and places of worship and study with holiness
and subsequently revealing the Divine aspects present in these
dimensions.
Indeed, in making choices humanity merely imitates God as He
too infused all three dimensions of creation with sanctity through
His choices. God chose Shabbat as sanctified time: “And the heavens
and the earth were finished and all their host. And God completed His
work which He had done and rested on the seventh day from all His
work He had done, and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified
it” (Genesis 2:1-3). God, as the Torah repeatedly makes clear, chose
the Land of Israel, in general, and Jerusalem and the Temple Mount,
in particular, as distinctly holy places. Indeed, the first time God
speaks to Abraham he tells him to go “to the land I will show you”
(Genesis 12:1). Finally, God also made choices on the “soul” level, as
He chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and revealed Himself to them
so that they would give birth to the Jewish people. Later at Mount
Sinai, God once again made a “soul” choice, as He chose the Jewish
people to be “a nation of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).
Just as God’s “decisions” invest time, space, and soul with
additional levels of holiness so too humanity’s choice has the power
to reveal within “ordinary” space, time, and soul their full potential
for holiness. The more we increase our Divine state of consciousness
the more we are able to experience the inherent levels of holiness
infused within space, time, and soul. The nearer the Messianic era
comes, the more these levels of holiness will be revealed to individuals,
communities, the Jewish people, and the world. In the Messianic era,
time will be “all Shabbat,” Israel’s holiness will spread to the entire
world, and human consciousness will be infused with God’s continual
revelation: “and the knowledge of God will fill the world like the
waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 56:7).
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