(the Infinite state of the Divine), sublime beyond all the heights, something that not every person is able to experience. And in what way can one arrive at that understanding? Our Sages determined that one is to recite the Sh’ma, “Hear, Israel, . . . God is One,” (Deut 6:4) morning and evening with the intention of recognizing the majesty of the blessed Holy One both above and below and extending in all directions. And in reciting this verse morning and evening with this inner intent and with great longing and yearning for God, it will be possible to attach oneself to God every day and every night.
But the person who has not yet adequately repaired his qualities and who has not shattered the force of his physical desires will be unable to recite this verse and to proclaim the word “One” (ʾeḥad) with clear and flawless intention. This is because alien, disturbing thoughts still prevail within him to confuse him, and in reciting the Sh’ma, one ascribes kingship to God according to the extent that the person has attained a degree of oneness and unity within the self.
In order to recite the word “One” properly as is required, in a way that such foreign thoughts will not confuse him, he is advised, before praying, to devote considerable time to the study of Mishna and Gemara and the Zohar with this intention in mind. [The Mishna and Gemara are the two layers comprising the Talmud, the Gemara consisting of discussions on the Mishna, and the Zohar became the central text in medieval Kabbalah.] In that case, one will certainly be able to affirm and reify God’s reign over all the higher and lower worlds, providing the person proves his diligence and devotes considerable time to study and does not trespass the time of prayer, God forbid. [The leaders and followers of Hasidism were accused by those who opposed the new stream of reciting traditional daily prayers when they were so moved, even long after their proper time, and in this comment the preacher voices his own opposition to taking such liberties. The various prayer-services connect with different times of the day: Shaḥarit after the first sign of dawn, Minḥah prior to sundown, and Maʿariv (ʿAravit) after sundown.]
It is known that the Torah is called water [mayyim,21 based on Isa 55:1, “Ho, all who are thirsty, come for water . . . .” As the prophet speaks of water metaphorically, that metaphor provided Kalonymus Kalman with a key to reading a verse from the toraitic creation-account in a way that transcends its much simpler surface meaning]. And from these points we can clarify what is written, “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water’” (Gen 1:6). With the understanding that Torah is called “water,” we can grasp that water is not included in the list of created things for the reason that the Torah preceded the world by two-thousand years. But the verse points to something very necessary: “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water,” meaning that a curtain is spread between the innerness of the Torah and its plain meaning. For the Torah’s innerness must be concealed; not everyone should have access to that innerness of the Torah lest that person inflict damage upon it, God forbid, as did those early generations (prior to Abraham’s time). [This theme might have its source in the Zohar, I, 176a in reference to the “secrets of wisdom” given to those early generations who utilized them for evil purposes.]
The pronouncement of the King, “God made the expanse,” serves as counsel to humankind who would be moved to see that innerness of the Torah. With the words, “And God said, ‘Let the water beneath the sky be gathered into one area’” (Gen 1:9), one is advised to study the simple level of the Torah, which is beneath the heavens, in our own level of existence, with great intent. Doing so, a person thereby accepts upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of God and crowns the blessed Holy One in the heavens and everywhere on earth, including all the corners of the earth, as he recites the Sh’ma, which includes the word ʾeḥad (“One”). And in that way it will be possible to attain the Innerness of the Torah.
And the verse continues, “that the dry land appear,” signaling that in reciting the word, ʾeḥad (“One”), one will be able to grasp whether that person’s uttering that word is something dry and lifeless or whether it contains the vitality of holiness. For according to the level of one’s own self-purification, a person will be able to accept upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of God while reciting the Sh’ma. And understand.
Comment: In his discussion of verses from the Torah’s creation-account, the concern of the Kraków preacher is remote from the actual phenomenon of waters, above and below. Rather, building upon the metaphorical significance of water itself, as evident in that verse from the book of Isaiah (55:1, and delineated at length in Midrash Shir ha-Shirim rabbah 1.19 on the opening verse of the Song of Songs), Kalonymus Kalman overheard in those verses from the creation-account a key-issue concerning conflicting senses of Torah itself, an issue with which the Kraków master engaged and wrestled in several of his discourses. This homily is built upon the premise that the more sublime essence of the Torah, its depth and innerness, transcends its surface-meaning, the manifestation and character that the Torah assumes in our finite, physical world. And accordingly, the homily raises the question: how do we then relate to that simpler meaning of the Torah which includes also a body of law that might be felt to occupy even a vast distance from the Torah’s innerness?
That Innerness is hidden from us, and our path to find it, the preacher insists, must bring us through the Torah’s surface meaning with all that is contained in it. There is no shortcut to a grasp of the Torah’s innerness. Building upon the biblical and rabbinic use of water as a metaphor for Torah, the master went on to read the verses concerning the division of waters as an allusion to those two dimensions of Torah.
In one respect, he subscribed to a consciousness anchored to the recognition of a higher and inner meaning of all that is written in the basic Jewish sacred text, while in another respect he remained fully loyal and insistent upon the importance of the tradition as a whole which developed around the written Torah-text. He viewed that necessary relationship with the Torah’s simple meaning, however, not as an end in itself, but rather as a means and as the keys with which to attain a sense of the Torah’s Innerness.
In this sense, he was, at one and the same time, both radical and conservative. He advised his fellows to study and direct their lives according to that surface-dimension of the Torah and its traditional rabbinic understanding, while also maintaining that through doing so, they might be able to reach that deeper, more sublime, and even mystic grasp of the Torah identified with its guarded innerness.
The dual-emphasis in this passage is sounded in any number of homilies in which the preacher continued to wrestle with a potential paradox in his understanding of the central Jewish sacred text.
A Longing Permeating All Existence22
When the thought of creating the worlds arose in God’s highest and most essential will, God contracted His Divinity from its heights and the worlds evolved and the blessed Light of Infinity glistened through all the worlds from the most sublime to this very lowest, physical world. The Light of Divinity could then be experienced in the higher realms of existence, while in the lower realms it appears hidden, even though there is no created object in the world in which the Light of the Infinite (ʾOr ʾein-sof ) does not glisten. This is noted in ʾOr ha-Ḥayyim, which explained the verse, “The heavens and the earth were finished and all their array” (Gen 2:1), reading the word, vaykhulu (literally, “were finished”) as conveying longing, as in the expression, kalta nafshi (“I long, I yearn . . . my soul longs,” Ps 84:3). This same interpretation is found also in the teachings of the Ar’i (Rabbi Isaac Luria) who understood plants’ growing upward from the ground as indicative of the ascent of the worlds (to their sublime Source).
The Midrash mentions that each blade of grass here below has an angel from above who strikes it and commands it to grow.23 [The midrashic source actually refers to a mazal, a star or constellation, striking the blade of grass, while the preacher refers instead to an angel, avoiding the astrological overtones of crediting a mazal.] This comment can be understood only with the realization that the blessed Holy One created all the worlds with the twenty-two letters of the Torah together with the Torah’s vowel-points