ספר בראשית

Another approach to the verse above, which appears to be a ‎prelude to Yaakov experiencing painful experiences apparently ‎linked to his settlement on holy soil.‎We have a rule, (Avot 6,10) that all of G’d’s creations ‎were designed only for His honour, from which it follows that all ‎of man’s activities must be aimed at pleasing his Father in ‎heaven. In order to illustrate what the author of the statement in ‎the Mishnah had in mind when he said that whatever G’d created ‎was designed to enhance His honour, consider that even when we ‎sit down to perform a necessary activity such as eating in order to ‎keep our bodies healthy, we must at the same time have in mind ‎that by remaining healthy we can better serve our Creator. [If we ‎do this consciously, every meal we eat is a ‎סעודת מצוה‎, a meal that ‎has been sublimated from being merely a mundane activity to ‎performance of a sacred duty. Ed.] Such hallowing of what appear ‎on the surface to be secular activities, also enables us to help the ‎‎“sparks” of the “Shechinah” which had been condemned to ‎enter our domain, to return to their origin having proved to their ‎Creator that they had put their sojourn on earth to good use. ‎‎(Compare our comments in square brackets on page 21). These ‎‎“sparks” from the Shechinah, though in “exile,” on earth, ‎had preserved the lower universe’s inhabitants’ ability to ‎eventually find their way back to the innocence, the ideal state in ‎which man had been created, before he had committed a capital ‎sin. The “sparks” that had separated from the Shechinah at ‎the time had become an almost integral part of the physical ‎universe, having some presence in everything that serves man to ‎continue to live on earth, so that all organic matter that serves ‎man as food also contains parts of these “sparks.” When man ‎sublimates this “food” by consuming it with the intention of ‎enhancing his service of the Lord, he has “opened” a path for ‎such a “spark,” or part of it, to return to the celestial regions ‎from which it originated.‎The deeper meaning of the halachah requiring us to ‎wash our hands and to recite a benediction over this, i.e. ‎something we do not do when we wash our hands in order to ‎cleanse them from dirt, is also connected to the hopefully sublime ‎nature of the food that we are about to consume. The prophet ‎Isaiah 63,9 refers to this ‎נטילת ידים‎, “washing one’s hands,” as a ‎religious rite,” with the words: ‎וינטלם וינשאם כל ימי עולם‎, “He ‎washed them and exalted them, for ever.” According to the ‎kabbalistic interpretation of that verse, the words ‎יד הגדולה‎ in that ‎verse in Isaiah refers to “three types of hands,” when G’d uses His ‎יד הגדולה‎, when performing redemption, the letter ‎ג‎ in the word ‎הגדולה‎, alludes to three different levels of elevating, sublimating ‎something that was mundane, secular. The benediction which ‎ends with the words ‎המוציא לחם מן הארץ‎, is accordingly ‎understood as the raising of something that was merely earthly, ‎bread, to a progressively higher status through the thoughts that ‎will course through our hearts and minds while we eat the bread, ‎i.e. the meal. The deeper meaning of the benediction is that ‎although it is apparently pronounced over the most basic ‎material component of the physical earth, bread, the staff of life, ‎it contains within it, through being sublimated, the potential to ‎enable one of the exiled sparks from heaven to begin its journey ‎homeward, to its roots in the celestial spheres.‎