ספר שמות

Exodus 34,6. “Hashem passed before him and ‎proclaimed:” A look at Rashi’s commentary on these ‎words shows us that G’d wrapped Himself in a tallit, prayer ‎shawl, just like the reader in the synagogue. [This is not ‎taken from Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, but from the ‎Talmud’s allegorical interpretation of this verse in Rosh ‎Hashanah 17. Ed.]‎Concerning the above, my late and revered teacher Rabbi Dov ‎Baer said that the 13 attributes the Torah mentions here are the ‎spiritual equivalent of the 13 principles of Rabbi Yishmael that ‎are considered as legitimate tools of exegesis of the written Torah. ‎For instance, the principle known as ‎קל וחומר‎, using logical ‎conclusions, is the counterpart of the attribute ‎א-ל‎, whereas the ‎principle known as ‎גזרה שוה‎, replicas of the same word used for ‎apparently divergent subjects, is the equivalent of the Divine ‎attribute ‎רחום‎.‎When a wealthy person takes pity on a poor, destitute ‎person, he automatically begins to understand the pain and near ‎despair experienced by the poor so that he lowers himself ‎mentally to that level. He experiences the pain endured by the ‎poor and his feelings of being hemmed in from all sides. When ‎this happens, the wealthy person, -parallel to G’d-, extends pity ‎and mercy to the poor so that the poor and the rich have reached ‎the same level. A similar process occurs when G’d looks with ‎mercy on the Jewish people in distress. This is what Moses ‎referred to when he said in psalms 91,15: ‎עמו אנכי בצרה‎, “I am ‎with him in distress;” this is what is meant by “equating” the ‎Divine attribute of mercy to the exegetical tool known as ‎גזרה ‏שוה‎, “establishing common ground based on identical words used ‎in texts speaking of different subjects.”‎