Parshas Behar/BeChukosai 5769

Put That In Your Pipe and Smoke It!

“And Hashem spoke to Moshe at Mont Sinai to say, “Speak to the Bnei Yisroel and say to them, “When you come to the land that I give to them and the land shall rest a Sabbath to Hashem.” Shemos 25:1 – 2

“And the land shall give its fruits and you shall eat to satiation and you will dwell securely upon it. And if you should say, “What will we eat in the seventh year? For we will not sow and we will not collect our produce: And I will command my blessing to you in the sixth year and the produce shall be sufficient for three years.” Shemos 25:19 – 21

The Noam Elimelech asks a very fundamental question on these verses; the Torah doesn’t need to spell out the question that someone may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year?” Rather our expectation, (in line with the usual style of the Torah), would be: “And the land shall give its fruits and you shall eat to satiation and you will dwell securely upon it. And I will command my blessing to you in the sixth year and the produce shall be sufficient for three years.” This is a stark departure from the normal style of the Torah!

The Noam Elimelech explains as follows:

“The answer would appear to be that Hashem Yisborach Baruch Hu, as he created the world, affixed a pipeline to deliver His bounty to fulfill the needs of humanity. The nature of this bounty is that it never ceases to flow, except, when a person falls, and doesn’t trust in the Creator Baruch Hu, the true Guide, who feeds and provides plentifully, without interruption at all. Thus, this person with his thought that is not pure, causes a blemish in the upper worlds and “weakens” the strength of the heavenly host and Hashem Yisborach needs to establish from new this pipe line, so that it should flow as it did from the start of the Creation.”

All of a person’s requirements are provided for by Hashem, it’s only someone’s lack of
trust which damages the Divine distribution system

(Maybe this could be the explanation of the verse in Psalms which we say in Ashrei, “Open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” – Hashem opens His “hand” to provide for us, it’s up to us to make ourselves able to receive what He’s trying to give us by trusting in Hashem alone. This is very different from the popular notion that we generate our own income and Hashem decides whether to help us or to get in our way).

Rabbi Dessler says, “There is no reality to nature and causality,” and elsewhere in the same piece, “Nature is no reality but rather a means of hiding, (the miraculous nature of the world), ….. , in order to allow one to be mistaken” – that is to allow for free will by hiding God’s constant, direct intervention in all aspects of creation.

There is a fundamental concept of “midah keneged midah”; measure for measure.

The world is run through Hashem’s constant miracles; there’s no such thing as nature. When we realize this, we enable ourselves to receive Hashem’s blessing. This is measure for measure, we accept that God’s running the show and in return He looks after us.

However if we question Hashem’s direct involvement and start attributing the availability of food to our planting and harvesting – that is to the apparently natural causes, then measure for measure we disable our ability to receive His bounty. Nature can’t help – there’s no such thing!

The Noam Elimelech said that if a person drops a level in faith, then the Divine pipeline will be broken. As long as he remains at this level, every time Hashem “fixes” this pipeline, it will immediately break again! In order for it to remain fixed, he needs to raise his level of faith and trust in the Creator to a higher level.