vayetzei: being known
sholem aleichem,
Yaakov sleeps, and dreams, and:
וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי
yaakov woke up from his sleep and said: truly there is god in this place, and i did not know it
Rebbe Nachman teaches that this is the essence of Yaakov: to look deeply at each individual piece of creation, to find within it the aliveness of god.
This is what it means to be a god-wrestler:
הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִי צָרִיךְ תָּמִיד לְהִסְתַּכֵּל בְּהַשֵּׂכֶל שֶׁל כָּל דָּבָר וּלְקַשֵּׁר עַצְמוֹ אֶל הַחָכְמָה וְהַשֵּׂכֶל שֶׁיֵּשׁ בְּכָל דָּבָר
the god-wrestler must always reflect on the שֵּׂכֶל of every thing, and join themself to the חָכְמָה and שֵּׂכֶל that exists in every thing
כִּי הַחָכְמָה וְהַשֵּׂכֶל הוּא הַחִיּוּת שֶׁל כָּל דָּבָר
for the חָכְמָה and שֵּׂכֶל is the chiyus/aliveness of each thing
I haven’t translated שֵּׂכֶל or חָכְמָה here — Moshe Mykoff translates them as “inner intelligence” and “wisdom” respectively. But I think its important to understand these as aspects of god, and the Hebrew makes me less inclined to assume they mean “human intelligence” and “human wisdom”.
Together, these aspects of god form chiyus/aliveness, the life-force that is found in everything. This is not aliveness in the biological sense, but in the god-sense — for example, the Alter Rebbe teaches that stones have even more concentrated chiyus/aliveness than animals (see Chapter 8 of Kabbalah and Ecology, David Seidenberg).
So the god-wrestler must reflect on and bind themself to these aspects of each thing. The word used for “reflect” is לְהִסְתַּכֵּל, a kind of verb that grammatically indicates reflexivity or mutuality. It is not enough, in other words, to think about each thing as separate from ourselves — to be the Knower of the thing that is Known. The kind of reflection that Rebbe Nachman is talking about requires mutuality: to reflect on the thing and invite the thing to reflect on oneself. To be Known as well as Knower.
An example of this in practice from brin solomon’s recent dvar on vayeira:
When I am home alone on shabbes afternoon, I’ll usually read for as long as I can see the page, and then just settle on the couch in the dying light, letting the last however many minutes tick by until it’s time for havdalah, sitting there quiet and patient in the dark. In these moments, I feel a great communion with the objects around me, the chairs and books and tables that clutter my life. Here we all are, persisting in space amidst the gathering night. I feel the boundary between myself and the world dissolve — just one more temporary accumulation of atoms formed in the heart of dying stars.
I think this moment of communion is what Rebbe Nachman is gesturing toward: a moment of mutual reflection, where the sun begins to reflect the light of the moon.
The Rambam calls god “the Knower, the Known, and the Knowledge itself.” All three are eternally one. Not so for humans. Here’s R Eliyahu Touger on Hilchos Yesodei haTorah Perek 2 Halacha 10, explaining a section of Guide to the Perplexed:
Though at the moment a person conceives of a concept all three [knower, known, knowledge] are one, before and afterwards they exist as separate entities.
For us, there can be a moment of true communion, where we are knower and known and knowledge all at the same time, where our borders dissolve and chiyus joins with chiyus and we unify the shem hashem.
But this is only possible briefly, in the present moment.
I’m not very good at this, though I’ve been practicing more lately. But there are some times where I’ve felt a bit of this reflection, a bit of the joining of the light of the sun and the moon, a bit of the mutual reflection of the chiyus in every thing.
Here are some fragments from those times:
notes from a covid zine club meeting that first winter
there’s a wild part of me still there with you,
behind the dominos, in the freezing snow
all big boots and lightly-gendered carhartts
there were no borders through our bodies, then
no post-exilic labored pain beneath our layers
for the small part of each broken second,
our keratinous skin flickered here and gone
notes from rosh hashanah at the quaker meeting house
children are explaining the art of respecting beanbags (and each other)
just outside the sensory break room, where:
my cushion is soft between me and the empty grey carpet,
stretching almost wall to wall, strips of
creaking wooden floors at the edges where we walk sometimes
in aimless circles. i close my eyes.
half-worlds of light illuminate the room i left below
notes from shabbos in the hospital
the air is heavier
in the sunrise terrace
breathing in an orange
as it thaws
hands in the dirt garden
chalk drawings in the
caulk between
bricks saying
give the infinite to the endless
saying
i was here too
good shabbos,
ada
p.s. I highly recommend reading all of brin solomon’s drashes this year — one word from each torah portion beautifully and lovingly illuminated.
p.p.s. “give the infinite to the endless” is an interpretation of an idea from mishnah pesachim that I learned from R’ Xava de Cordova