Not the Beginning of Holiness: Humility and Our Fathers' Merit

1“This is my God and I will glorify Him, the God of my father and I will exalt Him.”¹ Rashi explains: “I am not the beginning of the holiness. Rather, the holiness is established and abides with me, and His Godliness has been upon me since the days of my fathers.” Notice how long Rashi's wording is. It would have been enough to say that the holiness has been established since the days of the fathers. Why did he need to open with “I am not the beginning of the holiness”?

2Let us first cite another teaching of Chazal: “When Israel received the Torah, the nations of the world were jealous of them: ‘Why should they be brought closer than the other nations?’ The Holy One, blessed be He, shut their mouths. He said to them, ‘Bring your book of lineage, as My children bring theirs.’”² Several of the holy sefarim ask about this: the Chida in his Rosh David, the Ahavas Yonasan, the Yismach Moshe and the Hafla'ah.³ Why should receiving the Torah depend on lineage? Surely nothing is needed to acquire the Torah but toil and understanding!

3Chazal also said of the verse “Hashem called to him from the mountain, saying”: “In the merit of ‘the mountain.’ And ‘the mountain’ means none other than the Avos, as it says, ‘Hear, O mountains, Hashem's quarrel.’”⁴ Here, too, we must understand why the giving of the Torah should depend on the merit of the Avos.

4aMy holy father and teacher, zt"l, spoke about this,⁵ building on a teaching of the holy Rebbe R' Yechezkel of Kuzmir, zt"l, on the verse “And Bnei Yisrael were going out with an uplifted hand.”⁶ R' Yechezkel explained that Bnei Yisrael raised their hands toward the Holy One, blessed be He. My father showed that this follows the same line as the verse about Moshe Rabbeinu in the war with Amalek: “and his hands were faith (emunah) until the sun set.”⁷ Every Jew must believe and know that everything he does and achieves in physical matters, by his own strength and with his own hands, comes entirely from the Creator's power. This faith gives us the strength to endure the bitter exile. That is the meaning of “his hands were faith” in the time of exile, “until the sun comes,”⁸ that is, until the coming of the Redeemer, to whom the sun alludes. This is also what R' Yechezkel of Kuzmir meant when he said that they raise their hands to Hashem: they recognize and know that even business, buying and selling, all comes from Him. And this is what happened at the Exodus from Egypt, when “Bnei Yisrael were going out with an uplifted hand.” They reached such a grasp of faith then that even in physical matters they knew that everything comes from His power, blessed be He.

4bThey reached this faith through humility. For of an arrogant person it is said, “I and he cannot dwell together under one roof.”⁹ This is the meaning of Rashi's words “I am not the beginning of the holiness.” Where there is an “I,” which points to self-importance and arrogance, a person cannot come to holiness and faith. Only when he becomes humble and recognizes that nothing at all comes from his own strength, but that “the holiness is established and abides with me from my fathers,” does he come to holiness and faith. Those are his holy words.

5aThe holy sefer Tiferes Shlomo writes along the same lines.¹⁰ Whenever a person is granted some high level or rung, this is the truth he must take to heart: “I am not worthy of all this, and it is not in my own merit. It is only in the merit of our fathers, who opened a door for us and made the road straight for us to avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem.” That is why we say “our God and the God of our fathers”: He is our God by the power of our fathers' Godliness.

5bSo too, he writes, the whole redemption from Egypt came about through the humility of Bnei Yisrael. The wording of the prayer hints at this:¹¹ “From Egypt You redeemed us … and the Red Sea You split for them … for this the beloved ones praised … songs and praises, blessings and thanksgivings to the King, the living and enduring God.” Then the prayer breaks off in the middle: “Exalted and uplifted … He lowers the haughty and raises the lowly.” None of this has to do with the redemption from Egypt, and only afterward does the prayer go on, “Praises to God Most High …” Why is this interruption placed in the middle of the praise? The hint is that they were redeemed through their humility. That is why we say, “From Egypt You redeemed us … You split the Red Sea and brought the beloved ones across.” Chazal have already said that at the splitting of the Red Sea, Bnei Yisrael were raised up beyond measure, until “a maidservant at the sea saw what the prophets did not see.”¹² Yet for all that, they did not grow proud. “The beloved ones gave hymns, songs and praises” out of humility and lowliness of spirit, for Hashem alone is “exalted and uplifted,” and He “lowers the haughty and raises the lowly.” That is why the prayer goes on, “He releases the captives and redeems the humble”: He redeemed them because they were humble and lowly of spirit.

5cIn the same way, in Ma'ariv we say, “He split the sea before Moshe; ‘This is my God,’ they answered and said.” Notice the wording: why does it say “before Moshe” alone? Surely all Israel was with him! But Moshe Rabbeinu was the great foundation of humility, and from him it spread to all Israel. Indeed, when the Torah tells of Moshe Rabbeinu's greatness, the only praise it records is that he was humble: “And the man Moshe was very humble …”¹³ Since the splitting of the Red Sea came about through humility, the prayer says “He split the sea before Moshe,” in the merit of humility. From there it flowed on to all Bnei Yisrael: “‘This is my God,’ they answered (anu) and said.”¹⁴ This is the hint in Rashi's words “I am not the beginning of the holiness”: rather, the holiness comes from the days of my fathers. They said “This is my God” and pointed with a finger. Even so, they kept their humility, knowing that this came not through their own merit but through the holiness and merit of the fathers. Those are his holy words.

6aAll this can be explained through the words of my holy father on the verse “so that he will command his children and his household after him …”¹⁵ He drew attention to the words “after him”: surely a man's children come after him and not before him! He explained, in these words: “There is a hint here. Someone walking in the wilderness loses his way. He does not know how to get out of his confusion and onto the king's highway. If he meets a man who knows the roads well, that man warns him to follow behind him, step by step, and to take care to tread exactly where the guide treads. Then he can be sure that in the end he will reach the right road.

6b“In the same way, Avraham Avinu commanded his children to walk after him, following all his steps, and to keep all the customs, fences and safeguards of Israel; for the Gemara says of Avraham Avinu that he kept the entire Torah, even the rabbinic laws.¹⁶ Then they will go their way in safety, for those who seek Hashem are ‘the seed of Avraham, My beloved.’¹⁷ One who sows a single seed sees much grow from it. So it is with the customs of Israel: even when we do not understand their reason and meaning, lofty things grow from them at their root. The main thing is to accept the yoke of the kingship of Heaven wholeheartedly, without clever reasoning or investigation. Therefore what matters most is to believe in and keep all the words of the true tzaddikim, all the words of our holy Rabbis and all their customs, and all the holy customs of Israel. Then Heaven's mercy will be awakened for Knesses Yisrael.” Those are his holy words.

7In other words, as we have explained, whatever we are privileged to do in mitzvos and Torah, we must know that it all comes from the merit of earlier generations. This is also a special means of preserving the Torah: to walk as we received from our fathers, changing nothing on our own.

8This explains the words of the Yalkut we cited: why lineage and the merit of the fathers were needed to receive the Torah. What guarantees that we receive the Torah and keep it is this very lineage: tracing ourselves back to the fathers and setting ourselves aside before them. It is in the spirit of Chazal's saying, “If the earlier generations were like angels, we are like human beings …”¹⁸ Tzaddikim explained it this way. If we understand that the earlier generations were like angels, then we are at least like human beings. But if we think they were people of our own stature, then we are only like donkeys. This is the way of Israel, which wants to walk in the ways of the fathers. The nations of the world do the opposite: they hold that later generations surpass earlier ones in understanding and wisdom. That is what the Holy One, blessed be He, told them: they have no connection to the Torah, since they have no book of lineage. They lack the foundation that receiving the Torah requires, which is to trace oneself back to the earlier generations and walk in their way.

9aOn this basis we can explain a passage in the Gemara. “The Rabbis said to Rav Hamnuna: R' Ami wrote four hundred Torah scrolls. He said to them: Perhaps he wrote ‘The Torah that Moshe commanded us.’”¹⁹ Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, explain in the name of Rabbeinu Tam that this verse is called “Torah,” as the Gemara says elsewhere: “When a child knows how to speak, his father teaches him Torah: ‘The Torah that Moshe commanded us.’”²⁰ So the verse “The Torah that Moshe commanded us is the heritage of the congregation of Yaakov” counts as a complete Torah scroll. But it is wondrous and hard to understand how a single verse can be considered equal to the whole Torah.

9bBut the words of this verse need explaining in their own right. We learned in the Mishnah, “Prepare yourself to learn Torah, for it is not yours by inheritance.”²¹ How, then, can the verse call the Torah the heritage of the congregation of Yaakov? The verse means that we recognize and know that all the Torah we are privileged to learn, guard and keep comes entirely in the merit of the fathers. On our own we have nothing; everything came to us as an inheritance. And since it was in the merit of this very awareness that we received the Torah, as we said, this verse is considered to contain the whole Torah.

10In the same way we can explain the Midrash we cited, that “Hashem called to him from the mountain” means in the merit of the Avos. Everything Israel was privileged to see and grasp at Mount Sinai came only in the merit of the Avos.

11With this we can also explain the Midrash on the verse “Why do you cry out to Me?”: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moshe: Why do you stand and pray? My children have already prayed, and I have heard their prayer.”²² This is difficult. Because Bnei Yisrael prayed, should Moshe not pray as well? Surely the prayer of Moshe Rabbeinu pierces the heavens and would help still more! We can explain it this way. Bnei Yisrael prayed knowing and recognizing that nothing at all came from their own strength, only from the strength of their master, Moshe Rabbeinu. In the same way, we say at the start of every prayer, “God of Avraham, God of Yitzchak and God of Yaakov,” to show that we come to pray by the strength of the Avos. This is what Hashem told Moshe: Bnei Yisrael have already prayed by your strength, since they made their prayer depend on you. Why, then, must you pray again? Their prayer has already been accepted through you.

12This is the meaning of “I am not the beginning of the holiness. Rather, the holiness is established and abides with me, and His Godliness has been upon me since the days of my fathers.” At the Exodus from Egypt we learned this foundation: a person does “not” reach high levels through the “I,” which is arrogance. We must know, rather, that “the holiness is established for me since the days of my fathers.” We believe that even if we have attained lofty levels, none of it comes from our own strength. It all comes only through the merit of the fathers; on our own account we would not be worthy of any of it, only on our fathers' account.

13This is especially true in our generation, the generation of “the footsteps of Moshiach,” the last era before his coming. We must know that the generation before us was, in the Gemara's phrase, “See it like this and sanctify it”:²³ a model for us to look at and follow. We must learn from them and carry on their deeds, until the verse is fulfilled in us, “And he will turn back the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers,”²⁴ with the coming of Moshiach. Amen, may it be His will.