Tefillah - 166 Leaving The Disparate View

The He’aras Panim (Illuminating Countenance) of Hashem

ברכנו אבינו כולנו כאחד (ביחד) באור פניך – “Bless us, our Father, all as one (together), in the light of Your countenance.” We ask Hashem in the blessing of Sim Shalom that we should merit His he’aras panim, His illuminating countenance; as the Torah writes, יאיר ה' פניו אליך – “Hashem will shine His face towards you.”

Rashi writes that the concept of “he’aras panim” is when Hashem shows us a “panim sochakos”, a ‘friendly’ face. In the words of our Sages, we find different meanings of “he’aras panim”: it can mean to give us “me’ohr einayim” (radiant eyes), or it can mean “Torah ohr” (a Torah of light), or it can mean yeshuah (salvation), as well as other meanings.

More importantly, the word “panim” (face)is from the word “p’nim” (inside). The face of a person reveals what’s going on in his inner essence. Man’s body contains an inner essence: his neshamah (Divine soul), his spiritual energy and life-force, which is rooted in the above and connected to G-d; “cheilek eloka mimaal”, “a portion of G-d above”. The soul is hidden and concealed from sight, but the face of man reveals that there is an inner essence within him: a soul. The face is the seat of the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. The soul’s light can be detected through the parts of the face.

“Panim” is also from the word “poneh”, to turn. When one wants to turn to another, he looks at his face. On an inner level, when one’s p’nim (inwardness) is turned outward, this is the evil use of “panim”. When one’s p’nim is turned outwards, the person loses his inner world as a result[1]. But when the power of “panim” is used for holiness, one is “poneh” to Hashem, as in the term “panim b’panim” (face to face).

But what does it mean to bask in the “ohr panim” (the light of the Face) of Hashem, as we say here in this blessing of Shemoneh Esrei? It is because the essence of each thing in Creation is its p’nim - that is Hashem’s reality. That is His ohr panim.

The Sages state that the “ohr panim” of Hashem refers to Torah, which is called “Torah Ohr”. It is because Torah is the p’nim (inner essence) of Creation. “Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world” – this doesn’t just mean that Hashem looked into the Torah as a mere blueprint to create the world, like a person who looks at a mountain so that he can paint it. It means that the Torah is the p’nim, the inner essence, of Creation.

Just as man contains body and a soul, so is there a body and a soul of this world. The “body” of this world is the physical layer of Creation that we see with our physical eyes. The “soul” of the world is the holy Torah; the Torah is called the “neshamah haKelali”, the collective soul, of the entire Creation.

When a person only has a superficial lens on reality, all he sees is the physical world in front of him. But if a person merits the he’aras panim of Hashem, he is able to see the p’nim of each thing that he comes across. This is all a revelation of he’aras panim of Hashem.

Oneness

But as we mentioned earlier, “panim” also means to be “poneh”, to turn. When one turns to inappropriate places, his “panim” is turning to this “alma d’piruda”, this “world of disparity”. This is the total opposite of the idea of the Sim Shalom blessing, where we pray for shalom in the world, to have a unified world. When each person in the world is being poneh towards the various directions of this world, this is all a form of pirud (disparity).

At the root, Creation is all one. The Pirkei D’Rebbi Eliezer states that Hashem was One before creation and He will again be One at the end of creation, but now we are in between the beginning and the end, which is this world, the “alma d’piruda”.

In order for there to be shalom in the world, we must understand how the beginning of Creation looked and how its end must look, and which direction it is currently heading towards. When we don’t reflect about the beginning and end of Creation [the oneness of Hashem], then the middle point which we are in is alma d’piruda. But if we do reflect on the root of Creation, we can realize that “Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world”, and the Torah’s ways are ways of shalom, which means that the essence of Creation is the oneness of Hashem. The Torah is entirely “names of Hashem”, and His name is One, thus the Torah is all His oneness.

When we think about the p’nim of Creation – its essence – we see the root. The root of Creation is the oneness of Hashem.

To say this all in simpler language, when we look around at the world, we see “many” people and families. But the more a person views the p’nim of Creation, he is aware that there is only root to Creation, and that there are many branches which stem from that one root. The many people we see in the world and the many details that comprise this world are like scattered fruits, which have grown from one tree trunk. That one trunk is: Hashem’s oneness (Echad).

The Depth of Shalom\Peace

Now we can understand a greater depth in the blessing of Sim Shalom. The concept of shalom is not just about promoting peace in the world and getting along with people. Shalom is rather a deep perspective towards how we view life. It certainly results in acting peaceful towards others, but the root of shalom is its perspective: to see a unified world. Shalom is the deep point in the soul which is found in each Jew’s soul, but it is usually hidden and concealed, and it needs to be brought out from its hidden state.

First one should contemplate this concept on an intellectual level, and then he should seek to internalize it: All the many creations we see on this world are but branches of one root. This is the core of the concept of shalom: all of Creation, at its root, is all one. The p’nim (essence) of Creation is one: “Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world”.

Seeing A Unified World

We see a world in front of us in which each person is going about doing his own thing, living his own life. Although it appears that people bond with each other and have dealings and associations with each other, upon some reflection, we know this that these connections are all pseudo and superficial. If a person sells something to a customer, did they bond with each other? Just because people are dealing with each other doesn’t mean that they are joining with each other and connecting to each other. It seems that we live in a very divided world, and we do not see a unified Creation. So it does not seem that there is a oneness binding together all of Creation.

But if we remind ourselves of the deep concept that Creation is unified at its root, we can change our perspective towards this. The Ramchal elaborates on this concept in sefer Daas Tevunos. Although each person on this world is acting for himself, somehow, this is all leading to the goal of Creation which Hashem has planned, in which it will be revealed that Hashem’s name is one.

The Ramchal goes even further with this concept: the revelation of Hashem’s oneness upon the world won’t just be a mere announcement to the world that He is one. Rather, it means that we will realize how everything since the beginning of time has served to reveal Hashem’s oneness.

In summary, the superficial view towards Creation is that one day in the future, it will be revealed that Hashem is one, but that right now, the world is not like that. We see a world in front of us which is self-serving, where people sin, where people do not have pure intentions in their acts, and how there are only a few people who live truthfully. Hashem will remove all evil from the world in the future, and then the world will change, and it seems that from that point on, Hashem’s name will be revealed upon the world. But the Ramchal tells us that the true perspective is totally different than this. When Hashem’s name will be revealed in the future, that will mean that it will be revealed retroactively how every act of creation was a part in revealing Hashem’s oneness upon the world.

Changing Our View

It is impossible for us to understand how every single act in Creation serves a part in revealing Hashem’s name upon the world, because it is above our level of comprehension right now. But we can have emunah in the words of our Sages, who stated this concept. Although it seems to us that the world is not heading in the direction of revealing Hashem’s name, in the future it be will revealed to us how it was all worth it. Right now, though, we cannot understand it.

Being aware of this concept can change one’s entire perspective towards life. We see many things which don’t seem to have a point. It doesn’t seem to us how everything that people do is somehow going to reveal Hashem’s name upon the world. But when we have just have emunah in the concept that the Ramchal taught (even though we can’t understand it), we can view the entire world as all “one piece”. It will all serve to reveal Hashem’s name.

So it seems that each person is being “poneh” in his own direction, and the entire world is being poneh in different directions. But when we have the view that comes from the “p’nim” (inner essence) of Creation, we will instead see a world which is all heading towards one direction. It does not look that way at all to us, but the deep perspective towards Creation is, that it is. We cannot understand it right now, but we can absorb this fact of our emunah.

Redemption of the Soul

If a person internalizes this concept, he has essentially left the “alma d’piruda”. This is the secret known as “geulas nefesh” (redemption of the soul).

Galus, exile, is basically a situation of experiencing alma d’piruda. By contrast, the geulah, the redemption, is when the exiles are gathered from all four corners of the world; our Sages wrote that besides for the general redemption which will come to the public, so is there a private redemption which each person can experience. This is based on the verse, “My soul is close to her redemption.”[2] When is our soul in exile, and when it is it redeemed from exile? When one lives in the viewpoint of alma d’piruda, our soul is in exile; when one has the perspective of achdus (the unity of Creation), he has been redeemed already from the exile.

(Of course, even after one merits this, he must still await the general redemption of the world. This is because redemption is still needed on the collective level, and our physical bodies will also need to experience the redemption.)

The more a person lives in a viewpoint of alma d’piruda within himself, he is found in exile. The Chovos HaLevovos writes of a negative trait called “pizur hanefesh”, scattering of the soul. When the Jewish people are scattered all over the world, they are in exile; when one is scattered inside himself, he is in an inner exile. Pizur hanefesh affects a person on two levels. It is a lack of orderliness in the soul, which scatters the abilities of the soul and causes inner turmoil. Here we are not addressing this. The other effect of pizur hanefesh is that it affects one’s da’as, his p’nim.

The more superficial a person is, he can only see what his physical eyes see, and all he sees is alma d’piruda. It is certainly true that there is an alma d’piruda in front of our eyes, because we see a world in which each person is living his own life, and we usually don’t see true bonding and connection between people; the connections that we see are often superficial. But when a person merits to penetrate past this perspective and he sees the p’nim of Creation, he sees the he’aras panim of Hashem being shined upon him.

This is not mere knowledge to him, but the way he sees reality. He sees a creation which has only one root. He sees all the disparity in Creation as a temporary situation, for the alma d’piruda we are currently in is only a stage that we must traverse between the beginning and end of Creation. In the words of our Sages, the beginning of Creation is Shabbos, where Hashem is One; the middle of Creation is the six days of the week, where we have left that oneness and we enter into disparity, and the end of Creation is where we go back to Shabbos, where we enter Hashem’s oneness again.

When one lives only on the level of the “world of action”, or even if he lives in the world of emotion and feeling, he will not be able to grapple with this concept. But when a person lives the concepts that we are taught about by our Sages, which are called “hilchos de’os”, he lives in a realm higher than action and emotion: the realm of da’as. The power of our da’as can grasp the concept that the root of Creation is all one, as a palpable knowledge, and not just as intellectual information. It is felt as a palpable reality. To illustrate, someone traveling from Jerusalem to Tzefat doesn’t just know that he’s traveling from Jerusalem to Tzefat. He feels the reality of this.

Absorbing the perspective that all of Creation is heading towards the revelation of Hashem’s oneness is a redemption of the soul. Again, this is not an intellectual perception, but a perspective that comes from our daas: to have the perspective of achdus towards Creation.

“My soul is close to her redemption” implies that the soul can have a redemption. Although our physical body is still in exile, as well as the external layers of our soul, there can still be a point in our soul which experiences redemption. The Ramchal and others write that one who has merited a personal “Moshiach” within his soul is the one who can truly await the general redemption to the world.

We Are In A Dream

Thus, the prayer of Sim Shalom is not simply a request for peace in the world, but a prayer for the revelation of the perspective of achdus upon the world, in which all people will see that all of Creation is one root.

The alma d’piruda that we see in the world in only the temporary situation which conceals and covers over the one root that binds together all of Creation. In fact, it is even explained in the works of our teachers that the entire concept of “alma d’piruda” is all “medameh”, an “imagined” reality, which conceals from us the achdus of Creation. It is all an illusion. This is hinted to in the verse, “Then, we were like dreamers.”[3] In the future, the current time we live will all feel like a dream. A person who deeply realizes this already now is one who has reached the inner redemption!

In Conclusion

There is a unique kind of request in the blessing of Sim Shalom which doesn’t appear in any of the other blessings of Shemoneh Esrei: עלינו ועל כל ישראל עמך – “upon us, and upon all of Yisrael Your nation.” It is more all-inclusive. It is asking Hashem that peace fill the entire reality. All of the Shemoneh Esrei is pointing towards this concept.

The purpose of Creation is that each individual should come to recognize the oneness of Hashem. The many places which we find ourselves in are all but a path that leads us towards one thing alone: the revelation of Hashem’s oneness.

This is the meaning behind the words, ברכנו אבינו כולנו, ביחד, באור פניך; [we want the he’aras panim of Hashem to dwell upon of all of us in Creation, together; this is the achdus that will unify together the entire Creation].[4]