lest it undergo further materialization, so that even considering the contractions and evolving of the worlds, it might still be possible for God’s created ones both to attain a sense of Divinity and to raise up the holy Sparks from this material world to the higher levels of being. And for this very reason bodies were not created for the demons, lest the world become materialized to any greater extent.
And even now, it is necessary for each person to be careful to seek quickly to repair what he has damaged, because no person is able to grasp to what extent he has distanced himself from what is holy. It is concerning this that our wise ones intimated that God hallowed the Day and the bodies of the demons were not created, in order that the world would ascend and not become further materialized.
And this is the interpretation of the verse, “on the Seventh Day God finished . . .”: that with the Seventh Day, the holiness of Shabbat, God completed His work in the sense that it would not continue further. And as Rashi alluded, the blessed Holy One, knowing precisely His times and moments, entered into the Seventh Day as a hairbreadth, setting a very precise limit to the contraction, even to the extent of a hairbreath, and bringing down the holiness of Shabbat in order to halt the world’s process toward materialization. The divine Wisdom decreed that the world might assume physical character up to that precise point, but not beyond it. . . .
Comment: The master and preacher latched on to a rabbinic agada which explains the divine Name, ʾEl Shaddai, in terms of its last syllable, dai (“enough”), signifying God’s halting the expansion of the world immediately following the days of creation. The preacher, however, did not simply repeat a much older bit of cosmological lore.
He understood that motif in terms of a context gleaned from Lurianic Kabbalah which delineated the physical world’s evolving from the infinite state of the Divine. The vessels brought into being were unable to contain the Light, the manifestations of divine energy, and hence they collapsed. This cosmic scheme speaks in terms of a complex and uncertain relationship between forms and what they contain, presented almost on a mechanical level. The Kraków master, however, read both that example of rabbinic lore and its Lurianic interpretation in terms of the effect of such contractions on human consciousness and even on a broader consciousness pervading all of existence.
In Kalonymus Kalman’s reading of that agada in the context of Lurianic teaching, all that is spiritual in nature could have acquired a very precarious state-of-being. Hence, a critical need to halt the further expansion of the created world was crucial, lest it continue to acquire a more and more material, physical character to the point that it could fail to allow for any awareness of its more ultimate spiritual moorings.
A delicate balance between the material and the spiritual was in danger of being violated, and only a definite halt to the expansion of materialization could preserve that balance. The timing contributes a meaning to the Seventh Day as a way of preventing man’s drowning in his materialistic orientation and understanding of himself, something that could forever close the door to humankind’s reaching upward to its Root in the divine. Shabbat (the Seventh Day) preserves a sense of connection with a deeper spiritual reality, a connection that, however, continues to stand in danger of being conclusively lost. And the world hangs in the balance.
That sense of balance is heard and overheard in various passages in the collection of Kalonymus Kalman’s homilies. Furthermore, it will become evident that the balance is one that works in more than one direction as it guarantees that neither physicality nor spirituality would completely demolish the other, as only a proper balance between the two can truly allow for the world’s continued existence.
This homily refers also to another rabbinic agada, this time having to do with the ḥitzonim, demonic agents, for which bodies were never created due to the entrance of the Seventh Day following the days of creation. The very name ḥitzonim indicates their externality and their opposition to all that is holy. Reflecting Hasidic teaching’s emphasis upon interior meaning and the inner life, the name ḥitzonim defined those demonic forces as the antithesis of Hasidism’s own value-system. It would follow that understanding the world and life and humans and the Torah itself solely in terms of their external character brings in its wake something that is in itself potentially demonic in nature.
Humility and the World’s Sustainability34
“Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created . . . .” (Gen 2:4)
As it appears in the Torah-text, the word b’hibarʾam (“when they were created”) contains one letter, hei, written very small, an occurrence which has been explained in various ways including reading that word as bʾAvraham (through the merit of Abraham, simply situating the same letters in a different order).35
. . . When the worlds evolved one from the other, down to this physical world, its inhabitants forgot God’s Divinity and came to think that they have no Lord or ruler over them. Each person said, “I shall rule,” and consequently they were destroyed.
The important point is the need to know that God is the master and ruler and the Root of all the worlds36 and to be humble before Him, like Abraham who said, “I who am but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27). And through the merit of such a person, the world is sustained. And this is b’hibarʾam: bʾAvraham (through Abraham), continuing in the way of the quality of Abraham which is one of humility before God, unlike that of the early generations, each one of whom said, “I shall rule” and, accordingly, were destroyed. And the small letter hei alludes to his humility; conveying that each person should consider himself small and lowly before God, and in this way the world can continue to exist.
Comment: In the Torah’s opening chapters Abraham emerges as a figure who stands in rather sharp contrast to the generations that preceded him. While all else conveys a picture of consistent and repeated human failure, only Abraham stands out in a positive way against that background. In that one word, b’hibarʾam, that rabbinic midrash claimed to locate a somewhat concealed reference to Abraham already in the Torah’s account of creation; the letters of that word, given a different order, could read as bʾAvraham, conveying that the world was created for the sake of Abraham and those like him.
That thought in itself might be interpreted in terms of various qualities or actions of Abraham, but Kalonymus Kalman, in the above passage, focuses on one particular quality, namely Abraham’s humility. The homilist here viewed Abraham’s humility as his distinguishing trait. And in the context of Hasidic teaching, humility represents the antithesis of egotism which is itself understood as taking seriously something that lacks any true place in existence itself. Humility, in this sense, is a recognition of truth and a rejection of distorted self-centered perceptions of oneself in comparison with others.
When One Person Judges Another37
“(Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat;) but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it . . . .” (Gen 2:16–17)
The person who comes to serve God must be careful not even to look at the fault of his fellow, and not to consider himself wise and capable of understanding his fellow and his way. “Man sees only what is visible, but the Lord sees into the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). The person who looks upon the faults of his fellow does so out of one’s own arrogance, whereas if that person were humble, recognizing his own shortcomings, he would have a more favorable picture of his fellow and would not come to any awareness of the latter’s shortcomings. It is only due to a person’s sense of self-importance that his fellow’s words and ways fail to meet his approval. In contrast, our father Jacob, may he rest in peace, who was a mild man (Gen 25:27) did not look upon himself as a person of wisdom capable
