ספר דברים

‎‎30,9. “and then the Lord your G’d will make you over-‎abundant in all the work of your hands, the fruit of your ‎womb and the fruit of your domesticated animals for good; ‎for the Lord will again rejoice over your success as He has ‎done for your forefathers.” In order to truly ‎understand the unusual expression ‎והותירך‎, “He will make you ‎overabundant,” it will help to look at Avot 3,15: ‎הכל צפוי ‏והרשות נתנה ובטוב העולם נידון‎, “everything is foreseen yet freedom ‎‎[of choice] is given and the world is judged according to the ‎good;” one of the difficulties in that Mishnah is that the ‎word ‎נידון‎ “is judged,” which refers to the word ‎עולם‎, is in the ‎masculine mode, although the word ‎עולם‎ which it defines is a ‎feminine noun, so that we would have expected the author of the ‎Mishnah to have said ‎נידונה‎, in the feminine mode.‎However, we can explain this masculine mode of the word ‎נידון‎ seeing that in our prayers on New Year’s day and Yom ‎Kippur, the days on which G’d sits in judgment when He ‎hopefully decides to provide us with an abundance of blessings ‎and good things in the year just beginning. Our author quotes ‎‎Tikkuney Hazohar 68 according to which on New Year’s Day ‎all of mankind implores G’d for His largesse to be generous in the ‎year just commencing. There are, however, two classes of human ‎beings who ask for this, i.e. those who truly deserve it on the ‎basis of past performance, and those who in the past did not ‎deserve it, but on the basis of their promise to improve their ways ‎in the year commencing, expect to receive this largesse of G’d “on ‎credit,” as it were.‎When the souls of the Jewish people “line up” to be judged on ‎New Year’s Day, G’d derives a great deal of satisfaction from the ‎ones immediately inscribed for a good year. G’d’s pleasure is ‎described in a proverb cited in Pessachim 112 which says that ‎the mother cow is more anxious to provide its new born calf with ‎milk than the calf is to suckle it. The Zohar II 32 describes the ‎following scenario, (Kings I 22,19) where Michayoh, the only true ‎prophet in the Northern Kingdom advises King Achav against ‎trying to recapture Ramat Gilad, as it would cost the king’s life. ‎We read there: ‎ראיתי את ה' יושב על כסאו וכל צבא השמים עומד מימינו ‏ומשמאלו‎, “I have seen a vision of G’d sitting on His throne ‎whereas all the heavenly hosts stood above Him.” [not ‎around him. Ed.] The unusual phrase of the angels being ‎above G’d, prompt the Zohar to understand this verse as ‎the angels being about to “judge” G’d. This also makes more ‎plausible something that we have read in a book reportedly given ‎to Adam by the angel ‎רזיא'ל‎ in which G’d is referred to as ‎מלך עלוב‎, ‎‎“a king in a miserable, wretched frame of mind.” [more ‎about this angel in ‎מלאכי עליון‎ by Rabbi Reuven Margolies. ‎Ed.]‎