Infinitely Broken Shards
The Baal Shem Tov once visited the Noam Elimelech in a dream. They stood on a high mountain, taller than any mountain on earth. The Noam Elimelech cried out to the Baal Shem Tov: "Please, master of the good name, show me something true!" and the Baal Shem Tov threw himself from the mountain. As he fell, he shattered into six hundred thousand pieces. The Noam Elimelech ran down the mountain to gather the pieces, only to find that each individual broken shard of the Baal Shem Tov resting on the forest floor contained in reality the entirety of the Baal Shem Tov.
Now then. Know this:
In a beginning, Elokim created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was chaos and void (Bereishis 1:1-2)
There’s a legend that Elokim created a thousand worlds before this one (Or haChaim on Bereishis 1:1). This is why, some say, the Torah begins with the second letter ב, and not the first letter א (Bereishis Rabbah 1:10). This is not the beginning, but a beginning. There was time before this beginning, and letter-numbers to count the many worlds.
And now, Elokim begins with an earth that is תהו ובהו / tohu vavohu, chaos and void. But what, precisely, is both chaos and void?
The letters of the alef-bet are numbers. א is the first letter, and ב the second. A word with א in it gets a little one-ness; a word with ב receives a little two-ness. A word with both א and ב receives one-ness and two-ness, which is three-ness.
Each word is a facet of an underlying number. Two words for the same number are two faces of the same coin.
תהו ובהו is one face of the number 430. Another is נפש / nefesh: an embodied soul, an ensouled body.
In our beginning, the earth wasn’t chaos, alone. The earth wasn’t only void. The earth was chaosvoid, potential, the spark of a single bodysoul.
The Torah begins with ב – the second letter, the sign of life and death (Sefer Yetzirah) – to teach us: we were all one bodysoul...
and then Elokim separated
Know this:
Our holy Torah teaches that we may not destroy trees as part of war (Devarim 20:19). The pshat of this verse is both beautiful and ugly. The Torah, our holy book, forbids us from an act of destruction. The Torah, our holy book, assumes war to be inevitable, seeking only to intervene before trees are destroyed.
And why?
Because: trees cannot run away to safety, the Torah says, so how could you destroy them?
I write this today as olive trees are being destroyed in war by Jews. I write this today as humans who cannot run away to safety (who should not have to run away to safety) are being destroyed by Jews. May the compassionate one have mercy on us all.
And: our teachers of blessed memory expanded this mitzvah to apply beyond war and beyond trees. In Maseches Bava Kamma, Rabbi Elazar quotes "do not destroy" from this exact verse to stop people from tearing their garments too far or even harming themselves in their grief.
Understand this: we call each volume of the Talmud a maseches because "one who wants to innovate innovations of torah that have real substance to them must first cry....this is why a work of halacha and new torah is called a maseches, this is the sense of masachti (i mixed) my drink with weeping" (rebbe nachman). May all our weeping today bring about new understanding, an embodied torah.
So how did Rabbi Elazar bring this new Torah, take this verse forbidding the destruction of trees and understand its prohibition with such breadth?
The verse says:
וְאֹת֖וֹ לֹ֣א תִכְרֹ֑ת כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה לָבֹ֥א מִפָּנֶ֖יךָ בַּמָּצֽוֹר
you may not cut it down, for is the tree of the field a human [adam] to come away from before you into the besieged city?
But the statement
כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה
for is the tree of the field human [adam]
does not need to be read as a question. Inside, the verse says
כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה
for/because the-adam tree-of the-field
There is no subject or object in this sentence. There is no verb. It does not say "is the tree of the field like a human". It says
כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה
because THE ADAM [is (is!)] THE TREE OF THE FIELD
We, descendants of adam, are made from the same earth as the tree.
We come from the same bodysoul, the earth of chaos and void.
Yes, Hashem Elokeinu creates by separating. But the secret at the heart of these separations is this:
Each piece of this world, each broken shard of that nefesh, is an infinite piece containing within it the entirety of the infinite whole.
To refrain from destroying the tree of the field is to refrain from destroying ourselves.
As we say havdalah tomorrow night, the Shabbos before Tu BeShvat, as we bless HaShem for separating light from darkness, holy from mundane, Yisrael from the other peoples...
Let us remember this truth. Each broken piece of this world contains the infinite whole.
Good shabbos,
ada
p.s. I don't remember where I heard the story about the Baal Shem Tov (ETA: I think it was a R’ Joey Rosenfeld shiur, but I can’t find it). Googling, I found a slightly different version [by Gal Einai](https://inner.org/the-baal-shem-tovs-mount-sinai-stone-leap-of-faith/). If you know more, please share, and I will update the newsletter.