Longing Like the Waters: Cleaving to the Creator

1“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.”¹ This raises a question. Tohu vavohu, the state of being formless and void, came before creation. Should the Torah not have put “And the earth was formless and void” before “In the beginning He created”? We will also explain how the Torah's last words connect to its first: “before the eyes of all Israel. In the beginning He created …”² And we will explain the Midrash Rabbah: “‘And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters’: this is the spirit of King Moshiach.”³ What does the Midrash mean? Why should the spirit of King Moshiach hover over the waters in particular?

2My holy father and teacher, zt"l, connected the close of the Torah to its beginning this way. Israel must always reflect on the greatness and the wonders of the Creator, because this is how it comes to know Him. As the Rambam writes: “What is the path to loving Him and fearing Him? When a person reflects on His wondrous deeds and creations, and sees in them His wisdom, which is beyond all measure and without end, he immediately loves, praises and glorifies, and is filled with a great longing to know the great Name, as Dovid said, ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’ And when he thinks about these very things, he immediately recoils and is afraid. He knows that he is a small, lowly, obscure creature, standing with slight and meager understanding before the One Who is perfect in knowledge, as Dovid said, ‘When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers … what is man that You should remember him?’” So far the words of the Rambam.⁴ This, my holy father said, is hinted at here: “before the eyes of all Israel. In the beginning He created.” All Israel must keep the creation of heaven and earth before its eyes and reflect on it. Those are his holy words.

3We may explain his words more fully. We are commanded to attain deveikus, cleaving to Hashem, as the verse says, “and to Him you shall cleave,”⁵ and it also says, “And you who cleave to Hashem your God are all alive today.”⁶ The Rema, in his glosses on the Shulchan Aruch, likewise writes: “‘I have set Hashem before me always’ is a great principle in the Torah … All the more so when a person takes to heart that the great King, the Holy One, blessed be He, Whose glory fills the whole earth, stands over him and sees his deeds … Immediately fear and submission will come upon him, in dread of Hashem, and he will be ashamed before Him always.” That is the gist of his words.⁷ So every Jew is obligated to reach the level of “I have set Hashem before me always” and to live at all times in deveikus with Hashem. But how is this done? Chazal have already shown us how to keep the mitzvah of deveikus: “Is it possible to cleave to the Shechinah? Is it not written, ‘For Hashem your God is a consuming fire’? Rather, just as He is merciful, so you be merciful; just as He is gracious, so you be gracious.”⁸

4aChazal tell us that at the creation of the world, when the Holy One, blessed be He, separated the upper waters from the lower waters, the lower waters wept and said, “We want to be before the King.”⁹ Hashem comforted them with two mitzvos, so that through these the lower waters too would draw close to Him. Salt is put on the korbanos, the offerings, and salt comes from the lower waters; and water is poured on the altar on the festival of Sukkos. That is the teaching of Chazal.

4bThe sefer Yitav Panim says that this should rouse us to learn a kal vachomer, an argument from the lesser to the greater, from the waters. If water, which has no soul, wants and longs so much to draw close to Hashem, then we, who have within us a soul that is “a portion of God from Above,”¹⁰ must surely yearn all the more to draw close to Hashem and to cleave to His ways. With this the Yitav Panim explained the verse “Pour out your heart like water before the face of Hashem.”¹¹ How do we come to “pour out your heart,” to long for Hashem? Through “like water”: by learning that we ought to be like the waters, which yearned so much to be before the face of Hashem. In the same way he explained the Jewish custom of going to a body of water on Rosh Hashanah to say Tashlich, the prayer recited beside water. The custom is there to remind us of the desire and longing to draw close to Hashem, for on these exalted days above all we must be roused to be close to Him. That is the gist of the Yitav Panim's words.

5The Yitav Panim's words let us explain how the end of the Torah connects to its beginning: “before the eyes of all Israel. In the beginning God created the heavens.” The word shamayim, “heavens,” can be read as sham mayim, “there is water.”¹² This is why it must always stand “before the eyes of all Israel”: Israel should keep in view how the waters hinted at in the word shamayim wanted and longed to draw close to Hashem. It should learn from this and be roused to deveikus with the Creator. To teach this, the Torah opens with the verse “In the beginning … the heavens” [rather than with “And the earth was formless and void”]. This answers our first question. The Torah is teaching us that the very first thing, the reishis of everything, is to cleave to the Creator, in keeping with my holy father's teaching that we cited. We learn this from shamayim, in the spirit of the verse “The reishis of wisdom is the fear of Hashem.”¹³

6aThis lets us explain the Midrash “‘And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters’: this is the spirit of King Moshiach.” The explanation rests on what the Rambam writes about the days of Moshiach. “The occupation of the whole world will be only to know Hashem. Therefore all Israel will be great sages and will know hidden matters, and they will attain knowledge of their Creator as far as man is able, as it says, ‘For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.’”¹⁴ The verse in Koheles also says, “The end of the matter, when all has been heard …”¹⁵ [It is taught in the name of the Yid HaKadosh of Peshischa, zt"l, that this means: at the end of the matter, in the future, at the time of the redemption, speedily in our days, no talk at all will be heard except “Fear God and keep His commandments.”¹⁶]

6bChazal also teach, “The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.”¹⁷ And then the verse will come true, “Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy.”¹⁸ The point of all this is that in the days of Moshiach all of nature and the whole expanse of the world will long to come close to the Creator of the world. They will be just like the waters at creation, which wept and asked to be close to Hashem. This longing of every created being to draw close to its Creator is what Chazal call here “the spirit of King Moshiach.” That is why they derived it from the verse “And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters”: this wondrous longing of all creation to draw close to the Maker of all is like the longing of the lower waters, which wept and yearned for the Holy One, blessed be He.

7With this we can also understand why those at the Simchas Beis HaSho'evah, the rejoicing of the water-drawing on Sukkos, were granted ruach hakodesh, divine inspiration, as Chazal said.¹⁹ At that celebration they were busy with the water libation, the mitzvah through which the lower waters reach their fulfillment and draw close to the Creator, as we saw in the Midrash about the weeping waters. So at the Simchas Beis HaSho'evah Bnei Yisrael were roused to learn the kal vachomer from the waters. They came to a wondrous longing to draw close to Hashem, and through it they were privileged to reach deveikus with the Creator. This great deveikus with Hashem is the ruach hakodesh that rested on them there.

8May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us welcome the coming winter days for good, in deveikus with the Creator, and through this may we bring the redemption closer. Amen, may it be His will.

9[²⁰In practice it is not enough to “expound well”; one must also “fulfill well,”²¹ and draw lessons from all this for the fear of Hashem and for deveikus, as we have explained. This obligation rests even on people of our level, as the Shulchan Aruch rules: “I have set Hashem before me always.”²² The verse says the same: “The end of the matter, when all has been heard: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man.”²³ “Fear God” means yiras Shamayim, the fear of Heaven, and deveikus, and the words “for this is the whole of man” teach that this is a duty on each and every one, even on the simplest people. As we have explained, yiras Shamayim and deveikus correspond to the spirit of King Moshiach, whom we need and await; may he come soon, in our days. When we take this upon ourselves, we will be privileged through it to receive the spirit of King Moshiach, speedily in our days. Amen.]