The Burning Palace and the Guide of the Exile

1The Midrash Rabbah [Bereishis Rabbah 39:1] on the verse “Hashem said to Avram: Go forth from your land” [Bereishis 12:1] begins: R' Yitzchak opened with the verse “Listen, daughter, look, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house” [Tehillim 45:11]. It is like a man traveling from place to place who saw a palace on fire. He said, “Can it be that this palace has no one in charge?” The owner of the palace looked out at him and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” So too, Avraham Avinu kept saying, “Can it be that this world has no one guiding it?” And so Hashem looked out at him and said, “I am the Master of the world.”

2aThis Midrash is puzzling, and its parts are hard to fit together. Many holy books have already discussed it, and my father and teacher, R' Yechiel of Alexander, zt"l, explained it as follows. Avraham came to know Hashem and to believe in Him through his own reasoning. He saw that the world was sinning, enslaved to the pursuits of this world, because the fire of the yetzer hara burned inside people “like a blazing fire” [Yeshayahu 10:16]. That is the “palace on fire.” As the Midrash says further on [Bereishis Rabbah 39:8], R' Levi said: When Avraham was traveling through Aram Naharayim and Aram Nachor, he saw people eating, drinking and carousing. He said, “I hope I have no share in this land!”

2bHis reasoning then led him to a question. Hashem watches over every single person with individual providence. Without His watching, and the life He gives at every moment, everything would return to nothingness. How, then, can a person sin and rebel against Him, Heaven forbid? Avraham answered himself this way: Hashem surely watches with an open eye over the tzaddikim who cling to Him, as it says, “Hashem is with you while you are with Him” (Divrei HaYamim II 15:2). Over those who cling to Him, there is no doubt that He watches. But the rest of mankind He has left to the order of the heavens, the natural system of causes. That was Avraham's first assumption.

2cBut the truth is that Hashem watches even over the very lowest, and nothing is hidden from Him. It is only that, in His compassion and great mercy, He bears with the rebellious and looks away, so that the world can go on. As Chazal say, “The world follows its natural course, and the fools who corrupted it will one day have to answer for it” (Avodah Zarah 54b). This is what the Midrash means. Avraham asked, “Can it be that this world has no one guiding it?” in the sense we have explained. Hashem answered, “I am the Master of the world”: the whole world is Mine, in every quality and every quantity, as it says, “Can a man hide in secret places and I not see him?” (Yirmiyahu 23:24). It is only out of My great mercy that I bear with the rebellious and look away, so that the world can continue to exist.

3Perhaps we can explain the Midrash another way, based on what the Midrash and the holy Zohar teach: the exile began here, and Hashem told Avraham Avinu, “Go and pave the road for your children” [cf. Bereishis Rabbah 40:6]. Avraham saw how harsh the exile would be, and how dark the times would become at its end, in the period just before Moshiach. Now, Hashem's ordinary way of running the world is based on strict judgment. Even when He acts with mercy, some judgment remains, blended with kindness. So it was at Creation, when He joined the attribute of mercy to the attribute of judgment (Bereishis Rabbah 12:15). Everything still works through some measure of judgment. That is why every arousal of mercy from Above needs at least some “arousal from below,” some first step on man's part, for “a person is measured with the measure he uses” (Sotah 8b). This is what it means that Hashem guides the whole world with the attribute of mercy: judgment blended with kindness. But if there is no merit at all and no arousal from below, then under the rule that “a king establishes the land through justice”¹ [Mishlei 29:4], we could not come out innocent in judgment. Our only hope would be that Hashem act for His own sake [cf. Yeshayahu 48:11], out of His higher kindness and the great mercy of “For My sake,” which has no end or limit, and that He be gracious to us “from the treasury of free gifts” [cf. Shemos Rabbah 45:6]. But that is not His ordinary way of running the world.

4aWith this we can explain the Midrash's parable of a man traveling from place to place who saw a palace on fire. As he watched² the fire grow stronger and stronger, he wondered, “Can it be that no one is in charge here?” But once the owner looked out at him, he understood. Since there is an owner who sees the fire and does not put it out, even though “a person is anxious about his property” [cf. Shabbos 117b], the owner must know that this is for his good. He is letting it burn until the blaze grows, and then it will be put out, and in this way it will turn out well for him.

4bSo too, our father Avraham looked out over the whole exile, from beginning to end. He saw the fire set by the yetzer hara, “the leaven in the dough” [Berachos 17a]; the harshness of the oppression; the darkness of the times. No one “builds up the fence” and no one “stands in the breach” [cf. Yechezkel 22:30]. “Each day's curse is worse than the day before” [Sotah 49a], as the fire and the flames keep growing. And what can “the poor of the flock” [Zechariah 11:7] do, wandering without a shepherd or a guide? They are poor in understanding and in a lowly state. They cannot stir themselves even a little, cannot open even “an opening the size of a needle's point” [cf. Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:2] of arousal from below. So under Hashem's ordinary way of running the world, there would be no way to have mercy on them. Nor would they have anyone to call down great mercy for them from the Source of mercy. By Avraham's reckoning, then, they would have no way to survive, Heaven forbid.

4cThat is why Hashem looked out at him and said, “I am the Guide of this world.” He meant: even if all the gates are closed, and they sink, Heaven forbid, to the fiftieth gate, the lowest gate of impurity, as happened in Egypt, Hashem will still act for the sake of His great Name and redeem His people. This is the meaning of “a king held captive in the tresses” [Shir HaShirim 7:6]: the King, as it were, is bound by His love for His people. For He looks at the inner point in the heart of every Jew, something no angel or seraph can perceive. Only “I, Hashem, search the heart and test the innermost thoughts” [Yirmiyahu 17:10]. That is the force of the word “I” in “I am the Master of the world”: in this way I am the Guide of the world at that time.

5In truth, Hashem told him that He would do this for the sake of Avraham, “His servant” [Tehillim 105:42] and “His beloved” [cf. Yeshayahu 41:8], and that the merit of the forefathers would never run out [cf. Shabbos 55a]. This is the meaning of the Midrash's words “So too our father said”: he is our father and we are his children, and in his merit Hashem will have mercy on us. But Avraham looked at his own origins and was afraid. If Hashem remembered his merit, He would remember his ancestors as well, and they were not good people. So Hashem told him, “Forget your people and your father's house” [Tehillim 45:11]: the lineage of My treasured people begins with you, and not, Heaven forbid, with them. “Then the King will desire your beauty” [Tehillim 45:12], which the Midrash explains as “to make you beautiful in the world” [Bereishis Rabbah 39:1], for you are the one who is “beautiful, indeed pleasant” [Shir HaShirim 1:16]. The line of the holy people begins with you. For your sake I will be kind to them, and your light will shine on them in the time of darkness, until they merit the “everlasting light” [Yeshayahu 60:19].

6The Midrash says the same further on (Bereishis Rabbah 44:16)³: “The birds of prey came down on the carcasses, and Avram drove them away” [Bereishis 15:11]. R' A. said: Avraham⁴ took a stick and struck at them, but they would not be beaten off. Even so, “Avram drove them away (vayashev)”: he brought them back through teshuvah⁵. R' A. said: When your children become like carcasses without sinews or bones, your merit will stand for them. See also the Targum Yerushalmi on this verse: “When harsh decrees come upon the children of Israel, the merit of Avraham the righteous will cancel them.”

7aThe Midrash's phrase “carcasses without sinews” can be explained this way. A person's 248 limbs correspond to the 248 positive commandments, and his 365 sinews to the 365 prohibitions [cf. Makkos 23b]. When a person keeps a positive commandment, he draws holy vitality into his soul from the light of that mitzvah. And when a person “sits and does not sin” out of awe of Hashem's command, “he is rewarded as if he had done a mitzvah” (Kiddushin 39b). He draws life from the light of “the words of the living God,” the holiness of the prohibitions. From all this, life flows to all his limbs and sinews. But when, Heaven forbid, people fail to keep the positive commandments, and all the more so when they violate the prohibitions, they become like lifeless carcasses (as explained in Sha'arei Kedushah).

7bThis is what Hashem was hinting to Avraham. Even if, Heaven forbid, the harshness of the exile, its pressures and its oppression, lead your children to violate positive and negative commandments under duress and without knowing, so that they draw no life from the Source of the mitzvos, even so I will look into the depths of their hearts, which cry out to Hashem, “the Rock of their heart and their portion” [cf. Tehillim 73:26]. Because their faith stays strong even in the darkness of exile, I will remember for them the merit of your faith, for Avraham Avinu was the first of the believers. Through the power of their faith in the darkness, they will stir “the mighty right hand” to “do valiantly” [cf. Tehillim 118:15–16]. This is the meaning of “with you they conclude”⁶ [Rashi on Bereishis 12:2]. It refers to the Redemption, which is the goal and the conclusion of everything, as Chazal say, “Everything follows the conclusion” (Berachos 12a). At that time it will be the merit of faith alone, believing even in the state of “Your faithfulness in the nights” [Tehillim 92:3], which alludes to the darkness of exile, that awakens the merit of Avraham, the head of all believers. That merit will be their shield, their refuge and their shelter.

8Faith is something any person can attain, whatever state he is in. As long as he still holds on to his faith, he can believe in Hashem and His greatness. He can believe that Hashem's compassion has no end or limit, and that He can have mercy even on someone low, despised and “forsaken by men” [Yeshayahu 53:3], someone like me. The power of this faith awakens the merit of Avraham, the attribute of kindness, and draws kindness down on him from the Source of kindness: that Hashem have mercy on him in this exile, awaken his heart to love Him, and bring him back to Him in complete teshuvah. In the merit of this faith we will merit the everlasting Redemption, as it says, “Hashem will be your everlasting light” [Yeshayahu 60:19]. (From the author's handwritten manuscript.)