Why Rashbi's Students Lamented His Passing

1aIn the holy Zohar on this parshah (I:83b), at the end of the passage on “Pharaoh gave orders concerning him” [Bereishis 12:20], the students of R' Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi) say to him: “Woe, woe! When you leave the world, who will shine the light of the Torah?” In the second volume (II:25)¹ they say much the same: “After the Master leaves the world, who will shine the light of the Torah? Woe to the world that will be orphaned of you!” This is hard to understand. How could students say such a thing to their teacher's face? We can explain it simply. We have discussed Rashi's words at the beginning of Vayikra (Rashi on Vayikra 1:1): “What purpose did the breaks serve? To give a pause between one section and the next, to reflect between one subject and the next.” This means that someone who hears Torah from his teacher has to stop and look into himself. Has he already put into practice what he heard? Has the first subject left some lasting impression on his soul? The Ramban says the same in his letter to his son: when you finish learning, search yourself for something in what you learned that you can put into practice. Only once he is satisfied that he has worked on the first subject as much as he can should he go on to hear the next one.

1bHow much more is this true between one leader and the next, Heaven forbid. When one leader passes away and another takes his place, a person must reflect very deeply on what his first teacher taught him and on what his second teacher is teaching him. Now when Rashbi opened his holy mouth to teach the highest secrets, the whole heavenly court and all the worlds rejoiced, as the Gemara describes (see Chagigah 14b) and as the Zohar says in many places. At those times he was completely stripped of physicality, as if he were no longer in this world. (As the Reishis Chochmah teaches, even during prayer a person of understanding heart should picture himself as if he were in Gan Eden among the tzaddikim.) This was far above the students' level, all the more so since he revealed many secrets at once. When the students tried to take in matters so far beyond them, they could see plainly that he could not stay with them in this world much longer. So they said to him, “Woe to the generation when you leave us!” They said it to draw him out of his deveikus, his rapt attachment to Hashem, so that they could bear his great light. Meanwhile they would have a little time to reflect on what he had taught.

1cThis also fits what the holy books teach: in a time of gadlus, of expanded spiritual awareness, a person must prepare himself for the time of katnus, of contraction, that will follow. The students asked, “What will we do afterward? Who will teach us on such a level, at such a height?” So when Rashbi went on to reveal more secrets, he taught them the way the leader after him would teach. He also gave them the strength and stability to bear the next leader after him. In fact, as they pictured to themselves what would come later, this became a remarkable reflection on the passage from one leader to the next, because Rashbi himself was now among them as though he were a new leader.

2Or the students' words can be explained through the Tzror HaMor (R' Avraham Saba, on Parshas Shemos), who builds on the Midrash Rabbah (Naso) [cf. Bamidbar Rabbah 14:4] on “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly planted” [Koheles 12:11]. On this basis he explains Elisha's request of Eliyahu: “Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me” [Melachim II 2:9]. The Tzror HaMor writes: Eliyahu answered, “If you see me taken from you, it shall be so for you” [Melachim II 2:10]. That is, if you regard me as already taken from you, so that when you have a doubt you will not say, “I'll go to Eliyahu and he will explain the hidden things to me,” then it shall be so for you. Once you know that he is not there beside you, and that you must toil day and night, studying with all your concentration, you will be able to attain everything, and it shall be so for you. This is what the Midrash on Koheles [cf. Koheles Rabbah 12:11] says on “The words of the wise are like goads … ba'alei asupos”²: “When do words of Torah endure in a person? When their masters are gathered away from them. As long as his teacher is alive…” Chazal are saying explicitly what we have said: a person cannot truly master Torah while he always has a teacher beside him to ask. But when “their masters,” the Sages, “are gathered away,” and the students are left exposed, with nothing to cover them, they study with all their concentration until they grasp the matter. (End of the Tzror HaMor's words.) This explains what the students said to Rashbi.³ Think it over. (From the author's handwritten manuscript.)