Today, If You Will Hear His Voice

The Wall of Wonder, the Hidden Fire, and the Road from Exile to Redemption

It is written: “Today, if you will hear His voice.” Our Sages teach that when a Jew asks, “When will Moshiach come?” the answer is: Today, if we listen to the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He.

We must understand: What is the meaning of “today”? Every day is a day. And if Redemption depends upon Torah and mitzvos, why is it connected specifically with the word “today”?

We must also understand the condition of a person who senses that today will be the day when everything is returned to him. Life, with all its challenges, words, missed opportunities and unresolved moments, appears before him again and asks: Have you realised what you must do?

The explanation is as follows:

“Today” is not merely a measurement of time. “Today” is a level within Divine service. It is the moment when a Divine light that was concealed yesterday becomes revealed now.

Yesterday, a person may have known the truth, but it existed within him only as knowledge. Today, that knowledge becomes a call. It demands an answer through thought, speech and action.

He is therefore told: By now, you should have begun to understand what you must do. Not because he possesses every answer, but because the truth is already present within the essential Jewish point of his soul.

As explained in Tanya, every Jew possesses a Divine soul, “an actual part of God above.” The soul does not need to invent its purpose. It already knows. The body, the animal soul and the concealments of the world create such noise that a person can no longer hear what he knows within his deepest self.

The Voice That Returns

There are times when a person feels that life is returning all his unfinished matters to him.

A teaching he once heard returns.

A resolution he postponed returns.

A spark of holiness he neglected returns.

This is not revenge from Above, God forbid. It is Divine compassion. God gives a person another opportunity to elevate something from the past and restore it to its spiritual source.

Teshuvah does not mean regret alone. As the Alter Rebbe explains, teshuvah means tashuv hei, returning the letter hei of the Divine Name to its source.

A person returns his speech to the source of speech, his thought to the source of thought, and his vitality to the Life of all life.

Then the past is not erased. It is transformed.

Falls become steps.

Wounds become openings.

Concealments become vessels for light.

The Hidden Fire

A person may hear a rumour in the street that the fire within his heart has gone out.

The “street” represents the public domain, the realm of separation, where everything appears disconnected from its source. There, a voice declares: You have lost your passion. You have suffered too much. You have seen too much. Your fire is finished.

But this is only the external appearance.

The fire within a Jew can never be extinguished.

Ash may cover it. Stones may surround it. The person himself may feel no warmth. Yet the innermost point, the pintele Yid, remains eternally bound to its source.

It is written: “The soul of man is the lamp of God.”

A lamp may be covered, but its nature is to illuminate.

The task is not to manufacture a new fire. The task is to clear away the ash.

This is accomplished through a mitzvah performed in practice.

A person puts on tefillin even when he feels no inspiration.

He guards Shabbos even when the world demands endless production.

He recites a chapter of Tehillim.

He gives tzedakah.

He studies a line of Tanya.

He performs an act of kindness for another Jew.

Then the wind of holiness blows upon the ember, and the hidden fire becomes a flame once again.

No One Feels What Your Soul Feels

A person says: I do not believe anyone feels what I feel.

Externally, this may express loneliness. Every soul travels through its own journey. Each person possesses a mission that no one else can accomplish in precisely the same place.

Yet inwardly, loneliness itself can become a gateway to unity.

The soul feels that no one fully understands it because its deepest longing is not for anything finite. It longs for Ein Sof, the Infinite One.

No created being can fill the entire space within a soul, because that space was created for Godliness.

A person may believe that he longs only for a particular person, place, condition or lost period of his life. Yet within the deepest dimension of that longing is the voice of the soul saying: I desire to return to my source.

This does not make human love or ahavas Yisrael less real. On the contrary, when love becomes a vessel for Godliness, a deeper truth is revealed within it.

One loves another not because that person must become the absolute source of salvation, but because an actual part of God above shines within them.

The Winding Roads

All the roads we must travel appear winding.

It is known that the descent of the soul below is a descent for the sake of a greater ascent.

The soul comes from a realm of revelation and descends into a world of concealment. It passes through worlds, spiritual levels and garments until it enters a physical body.

Within the body, it does not travel along a straight road.

There are ascents and descents.

Expanded consciousness and constricted consciousness.

Times of illumination and times of darkness.

Times when a person feels closeness, and times when every prayer seems to strike against a wall.

Yet the winding path is also governed by Divine providence.

Within the order of hishtalshelus, the Divine light descends from level to level through contractions, screens and concealments. What appears to be a detour is, in truth, the process through which a higher light can become invested within a lower vessel.

Had the road always been straight according to human understanding, a person would reach only what his own intellect could contain.

Because the road rises beyond his understanding, he is brought to a place he would never have chosen, yet which his soul was required to reach.

The Lights That Blind

There are lights that reveal the road, and there are lights that blind.

Even within holiness, there are revelations that the vessel cannot yet contain.

When a person encounters a great illumination, he may believe that he has already arrived. He may experience insight, spiritual excitement, a vision, an intense feeling or an overwhelming mystical moment.

Chassidus, however, demands: lights within vessels.

The truth of a spiritual light is tested not by the intensity of the experience, but by what it produces in practical life.

When the light creates greater humility, responsibility, love of one’s fellow Jew, guarded thought and speech, and stronger observance of mitzvos, it is a light entering a vessel.

When it creates ego, superiority, or a belief that a person no longer requires boundaries, the resulting blindness can be stronger than the light itself.

The angels, understood symbolically, represent different forms of Divine service.

Michael expresses the line of kindness.

Gabriel expresses the line of strength.

Raphael expresses the drawing down of healing.

Uriel expresses the light of recognition.

Yet the human being is, in a certain respect, higher than the angels, because a human being can unite kindness and strength, light and vessel, heaven and earth.

The angels, metaphorically speaking, tell the person: Do not see us as independent powers separated from God. See within us the diverse ways through which one Godliness serves one purpose.

Things the Soul Wishes to Say

There are many things the soul wishes to say, yet the mouth does not know how to express them.

This is the level of voice that precedes articulated speech.

Speech is limited. Words divide one concept from another. The inner voice exists before the division into letters.

A melody can therefore express what words cannot.

The Alter Rebbe taught that melody is the pen of the soul.

When a person cannot explain what he feels, he does not always need to force the feeling into language. He can transform longing into prayer.

The sigh of a Jew is also a prayer.

A tear can become a mikveh for the soul.

A quiet decision to improve may reach higher than many speeches.

Yet voice must eventually descend into words, and words must descend into action.

The inner call must reach the hand that puts on tefillin, the feet that walk towards a mitzvah, and the lips that speak well of another person.

Who Will Save You?

A person cries: Maybe you will be the one who saves me.

Chassidus answers: Salvation comes from God. “My help comes from God, Maker of heaven and earth.”

No human being can become the absolute redeemer of another. When one places the entire burden of salvation upon a created being, one places upon that person a weight they cannot bear.

Yet God sends salvation through emissaries.

A Rebbe can awaken the essence of the soul.

A friend can restore hope.

A husband and wife can build a faithful Jewish home, a place where the Shechinah rests.

A child can reveal hidden self-sacrifice within a parent.

A stranger can speak one sentence that alters an entire life.

The messenger is not the source. The messenger is the channel.

Here lies an even deeper concept: Every Jew possesses a spark of Moshiach.

The aspect of Moshiach within the service of each individual is the power of the yechidah, the innermost level of the soul. It is the point completely united with Godliness, which can never truly be exiled.

When a person reveals his yechidah, he becomes an emissary to bring Redemption into his portion of the world.

One may therefore say: You may become one of those who helps save me, not by replacing God, but by revealing the Godliness that God placed within you.

And I must do the same for you.

The Wall of Wonder

What is a “wall of wonder”?

A wall divides. On one side stands the person. On the other side is that for which he longs.

Yet there is a wall that is itself wondrous.

The Western Wall remained standing throughout exile. It testifies that the Shechinah never departs from its place. Even while the Beis HaMikdash is concealed from us, its holiness has not disappeared.

Within the Divine service of a person, there is also a wall.

A person feels himself standing before a closed barrier. He cannot see what lies beyond it. He does not understand why his prayers have not yet been answered.

Yet the wall can become a wall of prayer.

He places his broken letters into its cracks.

He gives God both the words he can speak and the words he cannot.

He then discovers that the wall which appeared to be a separation was itself the place of encounter.

Concealment awakens a deeper faith.

Obstruction awakens a deeper will.

Exile itself awakens the cry: Ad mosai? How much longer?

This cry is not a deficiency in faith. It is the cry of a soul that believes the world was not created to remain in darkness.

Today, This Very Day

One voice says: Today will be the day.

Another voice says: Today was meant to be the day, but once again the opportunity was lost.

Here lies the difference between despair and teshuvah.

Despair says: The day is over.

Teshuvah says: The day begins in this moment.

God renews the work of creation in His goodness every day, continuously. This does not mean only each morning, but every instant.

No person is therefore imprisoned within yesterday.

Even when he did not do yesterday what he should have done, today he can create an authentic turning point.

Even when the beginning of today was not as it should have been, the next moment can become “today”.

This is the service of our generation, the final generation of exile and the first generation of Redemption: not to wait for another person, another place or another condition.

We must open our eyes and see that the world is prepared for Redemption.

We must complete the final refinements.

We must bring another Jew to a mitzvah.

We must illuminate our own four cubits.

We must transform the home into a miniature Sanctuary.

We must transform the heart into an altar, but not an altar of endless suffering. It must be an altar of love, joy and self-transcendence.

Redemption Within the Soul

True salvation begins when a person stops waiting for someone else to live his soul on his behalf.

The Rebbe shows the path.

The tzaddik gives strength.

A friend provides support.

An angel, metaphorically, carries a mission.

Yet the person himself must answer: Hineni, here I am.

Here I am for my mission.

Here I am for my body, which must become a vessel for holiness.

Here I am for my past, which must be transformed.

Here I am for my home, family, community and generation.

When he says hineni, the concealed fire is revealed.

The winding roads join into one path.

The blinding lights become a source of illumination.

The wall becomes a gateway.

The person then understands that what he sought along every road was the revelation of God’s Essence within the simplest physical act.

The Earth Will Be Filled With Knowledge of God

In the future Redemption, the physical world will not cease to exist. Rather, it will become transparent to its true source.

“The earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”

The earth itself will be filled with Divine awareness.

Physicality will no longer conceal.

The wall will no longer divide.

The roads will no longer confuse.

The lights will no longer blind, because the vessels will be broad enough to receive them.

It will then become revealed that every challenge of exile formed part of the preparation for a revelation higher than the light that existed before the descent.

We must therefore begin living with Redemption now.

Living with Redemption does not mean escaping from the world. It means revealing Divine unity within it.

It means speaking words of truth.

Performing mitzvos with joy.

Seeing a soul within every Jew.

Creating peace between mind and heart, between spirituality and physicality, and between a person and his mission.

The cry is then no longer: Maybe you will save me.

The cry becomes:

God saves us by giving each of us the power to become an emissary of light for another.

After every winding road, every concealment and every word we could not express, we stand before the wall of wonder and see that it is beginning to open.

May this take place hayom mamash, this very day, through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, with kindness and compassion, within the physical reality of this world. May he lead us upright to our Land and to the Third Beis HaMikdash, immediately and without delay.