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The following story about one of the Baal Shem Tov’s students provides us with some answers. Rav Baruch of Kaminka, a student of the Baal Shem Tov, was an ox trader at a time when many animals sent to market were stolen along the way. One day, Rav Baruch sent some of his oxen to market to be sold. As they disappeared around a bend in the road, Rav Baruch was overcome with worry that something might happen to them, so he sent his son, Rav Josef, to seek the Baal Shem Tov’s advice. He asked him: “What could be done to keep his oxen safe?”
The Baal Shem Tov told Rav Josef, “You should have come to me before your father sent your oxen to be sold, for then I could have ensured they would be protected.” With that, the Baal Shem Tov opened the Zohar and began to read. After a few minutes, he said to Rav Josef, “I see your oxen were not stolen.” Astonished, Rav Josef asked, “Does it say that in the Zohar?” To which the Baal Shem Tov replied, “With the light that is called the concealed light, you can see everything: everything that was, everything that is, and everything that will be. If a person merits, through study, to connect with the Haganuz, with the concealed light of the Torah, he will have the ability to see everything, everything in our world, the most spiritual and the most mundane.”
Then the Baal Shem TOV turned to Rav Josef and paused for a moment, as if to give his words special emphasis: “Did you consider that all I saw were the oxen?” As the Zohar says, there are those who can see and there are those who cannot. But thanks to the gift of the Zohar, each of us has the potential to see everything—not only on the Shabbat of Beresheet, but every time we open the Zohar. There are endless levels to the Zohar, including the physical, the spiritual, and the Surotal, and sometimes, this will help us see all as clearly as the Baal ShemTOV.
This insight can be an awakening of the heart so that the next time we have a decision to make, for example, we do so with a little more kindness and generosity of spirit.
In Rome, some of the more opulent bathhouses contained enormous baths decorated with elaborate artwork. If the water in the bath was dirty, you could no longer see the beauty of the ornate tiles. However, once you removed the dirty water, the artwork was revealed in all its glory.
The Midrash explains that this describes Creation itself, a period when the world was completely in darkness. This darkness (Tohu Vavohu) was like dirty water. Nothing new was necessary for Creation to take place; all that was needed was the removal of the darkness, or dirty water.
The process of Creation did not require anything new. It required the removal of darkness so that the beauty of what was already there could be seen. This is also true of our world today.
The Midrash says that if we were to repeat the phrase “Vayechulu HaShamayim
( וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם ) or “The heavens and the earth became complete,” we can reveal the perfection that underlies all things; we can become partners in the creation of our world.
Pain, suffering, and death are illusions, dirty water that obscures our vision. Like Rabbi Israel of Koznitz, there will come a time when we look back and realize that this perfection was right here in front of us, all along. We just didn’t see it. Most of us believe that when we achieve our spiritual goals, something new will appear in our lives or that things will go any way they wanted. It’s not going to happen. The Midrash explains that when pain, suffering, and death are finally removed forever, the result won’t be something new. It will be like seeing beauty where it was throughout the house, or searching 🔍 everywhere in the house for our glasses or keys, only to return to our desk to see they’ve been sitting there the whole time.
The Midrash indicates that this change will happen in an instant. How can this be when there’s always so much work to be done in our world? Because perfection is already here. Don’t be fooled by the dirty water covering the hand-painted tiles. Drain it. No matter what happens in our lives, no matter what anyone does to us, no matter what we think of ourselves, perfection underlies it all. If we think we have to create something new, we’ll never get there. We must realize that perfection exists now. We are perfect.
The perfection of the world is here now. Our job is simply to remove the illusion that tells us otherwise. And the best way to do it is together.
As one.
Also read on this site:
Genesis Made Simple.