Letters of Light. Kalonymus Kalman Epstein

from the sight of his fellow [in the sense that the one is unable to understand the mind of the other].

      Comment: The above passage, commenting upon a final meeting of Jacob and Laban some two decades after the earlier dream-episode, revolves around the word, mitzpah, a mound which Laban built in order to separate his household from that of Jacob, who had married his two daughters. That word, as indicated in the verse, would mean “to look over, watch,” the mound serving as a look-out point. But the homilist read the word, mitzpah as meaning “to overlay, to cover over,” hence serving as an intimation concerning the true nature of all physical reality: the physical, empirical world in its totality is a garment placed over—covering, overlaying—the deeper reality, which is the Divine.

      Spelling out this thought in terms of a kabbalistic conception of many worlds or levels of being, the preacher stated perhaps the core Hasidic conception of the cosmos as just such a garment which draws its very existence from what it covers and conceals, namely the presence of the Divine which is the innerness of all that exists. This view neither negates nor ignores physical, external reality, but instead conveys the need to purify and lift up that external reality to the level of its own true innerness.

      The mound in this passage was constructed to separate Laban and Jacob, and that note of separation in the homily is then read as a separation between the people of Israel and the other nations of the world in terms of a basic contrast between each population’s consciousness and conception of existence. In that sense, it reflects attitudes that predate any sense of mutual understanding and appreciation among different religious traditions and any sense of what they might share.

72. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 21ab.

73. b. Ḥul. 91b, and Midr. Gen 68:11.

74. Midr. Gen 68:9.

75. Midr. Gen 69:7.

76. m. ʾAbot 2:6.

77. b. Yebam. 109b.

78. b. Ber. 26b, quoted in Rashi’s comment on Gen 28:11.

79. Midr. Gen 63:10; 68:11, also b. Mak. 23b.

80. m.ʾAbot 1:17.

81. Maʾor va-shemesh, 23b.

82. Midr. Gen 3:4.

83. Midr. Gen 1:1, referring to Prov 8:30, and m.ʾAbot 3:14.

      Vayishlaḥ

      Angels84

      “Jacob sent messengers ahead (to his brother Esau).” (Gen 32:4) [The word, malʾakh, could indicate either “angel” or “messenger.”]

      Rashi maintained that they were really angels. And one must consider the precise meaning of lefanav (“ahead of him”), which would seem to be superfluous. In addition, it is difficult to grasp how the wicked Esau would be able to see angels sent from on high. Did we not find that Rashi commented on the verse “(to see your face is) like seeing the face of God” (or “the face of angels,” Gen 33:10), as Jacob’s informing Esau that he saw angels in order to make his brother fearful. From this it would appear that to perceive angels was something threatening to Esau, and now Jacob himself sent angels to Esau!

      But one might first consider something found in the Zohar as well as in other holy books: anything of a spiritual nature that comes from a higher realm to this lower world must assume a physical character to a degree through a garment (malbush) in order that this world might be able to bear it. And even when God gave our holy Torah to Israel for the lower world, it was necessary that the Torah, similarly, assume a more physical character and be clad in the form of narratives, as is explained there in the Zohar.85