The Secret of Dust and Ashes: How Humiliations Elevate the Mitzvos

Lesson No. 15 | Lesson 1 - Sunday Morning, Parashas Nasso, 28 Iyar 5755 - At the Yeshiva (Continued from No. 14)

The lesson reveals the secret of the greatness of the holy Patriarchs who were in the aspect of [dust and ashes].

From all the mitzvos and Torah that Avraham and Yitzchak learned, angels were created. When Yaakov Avinu (our Patriarch Jacob) walked alone in the world to face Esav and Lavan the Aramean, there was no one to help and support him. The ones who guarded and protected him everywhere he went were those six hundred thousand angels created from the power of Avraham and Yitzchak. Every letter of Torah that a person learns, when he is bound to the true tzaddik, becomes an angel that guards him, his children, and his grandchildren.

The Power of Absolute Nullification (Bitul)

The "Sfas Emes" explains that the immense greatness of the holy Patriarchs stemmed from the fact that they were in the aspect of "dust and ashes." Avraham Avinu said about himself:

"And I am but dust and ashes"

Yitzchak was like ashes upon the altar, and regarding Yaakov it is said:

"Who can count the dust of Yaakov"

Only one who makes himself like dust and ashes can create angels from the letters. Avraham Avinu was completely nullified in reality to Hashem, blessed be He, without any sense of "I" or independent existence. He turned himself into a holy "fleeting breath" (hevel b'alma). In the merit of this nullification, he became the foundation of the entire world, as the Sages expounded on the verse, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created (b'hibar'am)" – [reading the letters as] through Avraham (b'Avraham).

The tzaddik, who is in the aspect of dust, includes within himself the entire world and becomes the "Foundation Stone" (Even HaShetiyah) upon which the world is established. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov explains (Likutey Moharan, Torah 5) that the world is divided into seven climates, and corresponding to them are seven shepherds. Every person is responsible for a certain part of the world, and he must create angels to guard the area belonging to him. When there is strict judgment (din) or sorrow in the world, the person appointed over that part feels it, and his task is to sweeten these judgments through joy and reading the tales of tzaddikim.

The Secret of the Sotah Waters and the Level of Avraham Avinu

This secret of the dust is also revealed in the Torah portion of the Sotah (the suspected adulteress). This woman, who undergoes a process of humiliation and disgrace before everyone's eyes, drinks water mixed with dust from the floor of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). The Rambam rules that if she is pure, after drinking the water she will be strengthened, her face will shine, and if she was barren – she will be blessed with a male child.

Why does she merit all this abundance? Because through the humiliations she endured, she ascends to the level of Avraham Avinu, who was "dust and ashes." When a person undergoes humiliations and remains silent, he merits reaching the level of the holy Patriarchs.

Humiliation as the "Slaughtering" of Arrogance

Rebbe Nachman says that a person should strive every day to experience a humiliation, because without humiliations—nothing can ascend on high. Sometimes a person wakes up early, prays for four hours straight, and immediately begins to swell with arrogance: "I am the most righteous tzaddik, I am the greatest scholar, the most holy, the most ascetic."

When Hashem wants to "taste" from that person's mitzvah, He, as it were, cannot. This mitzvah is considered a "limb torn from a living animal" (ever min hachai), which is forbidden to eat, because it is full of the "blood" of arrogance and ego. Hashem cannot swallow the prayer of a person who is more inflated with arrogance than the Creator Himself.

In order for Hashem, blessed be He, to be able to accept the mitzvah, it must undergo "shechitah" (ritual slaughter). The humiliation a person undergoes is the slaughtering of his arrogance. When he is humiliated and his blood is spilled, the murky blood of arrogance flows out, and only then can Hashem taste and delight in his mitzvos.

This is the secret of what Yitzchak said to Esav:

"And make me delicacies such as I love"

Delicacies "such as I love" – means mitzvos without arrogance. Only when a person is willing to be in the aspect of dust and ashes, to accept humiliations with love and subdue his ego, does he become the foundation of the world and merit that all his prayers and mitzvos will ascend and be accepted with favor before the Master of All.

Part 2 of 4 — Lesson No. 15

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