377. Better a Poor Child
December 1971
Rabbi Shimon said, “Come and see, ‘A poor and wise child is better...’ is the good inclination. But a child is better, as it is written, ‘I was a youth, now I am old.’” Another thing: “He is a child, a poor child, who has nothing of his own. So why is he called ‘child’? It is because he has renewal of the moon, which is constantly renewed, and he is always a child… and he is wise because wisdom dwells in him.”
“‘An old and foolish king’ is the evil inclination… since the day he was born, he has not moved from his Tuma’a [impurity]. ‘A child,’ since he is with man from infancy, while he is from thirteen years and on.”
We should ask, for it implies that in a person who is twenty years old, the evil inclination is twenty years old and is called “old.” When a person is seventy, the good inclination is fifty-seven and is called “a child.”
Yet, we should understand that we are dealing here with natural laws, which are just like the commandments that nature obligates us to follow. They divide into externality and internality. For example, when a person eats bread or other things, and drinks water or other drinks, the bread is called “externality,” for the externality does not undergo any change in a person.
In each one, the matter appears in the same form, meaning he cannot say that a slice of bread has changed its form from one to another, but rather everyone sees the bread in the same external shape. Also, it is the same with other external things, such as water or wine. Everyone sees the external things without any change, and there is no difference between one person and another.
This is not so with the internality, which is clothed in the external things. It is known that in everything, a pleasure of a different flavor is clothed, which does not exist in another.
For example, the taste that is in bread does not exist in meat. Even in the meat itself there are quite a few discernments to make, since the taste of the meat of beef is not the same as in poultry. And in poultry, too, we should discern flavors, since the taste of chickens is not the same as in the meat of turkey or pigeons, and so forth.
This means that within the externality, a flavor is clothed, which is internal, and all the pleasure that delights a person is only from the internality, and not from the externality. Only in the internality can one discern between one person and another, for each one feels a different taste and pleasure from his friend. Even the same person does not always feel the same inner taste in food and drinks; it depends on one’s health and mood.
But at the same time, we see that when a person cannot feel the inner taste and pleasure that is clothed within those things, a person must use external things. A person cannot say that since he does not feel the flavor of the food, he will not eat for a week or for a month.
Or as we see with little children, when they do not feel the taste and pleasure clothed in the food, they must eat against their will, without any flavor or pleasure, or they will not be able to continue to exist and will perish and die.
But when a grownup eats when he feels no taste, he will attribute it to some reason, such as an illness or melancholy and so forth. Concerning children, we say that they have not yet developed so as to understand and feel the taste in eating and drinking, and so forth.
It is likewise in Mitzvot [commandments]. The Torah divides into internality and externality. Here, too, the externality of the Mitzva [sing. of Mitzvot] is the same form for everyone, and there is no difference in the externality of the Mitzva between the righteous of the generation and a simple man off the street.
Here, too, the difference between man and man is only in the internality that is clothed in the Mitzva, as each one feels a different flavor in the same Mitzva.
Also, within the same person we should discern between one flavor and the next, since one does not always have the same understanding and the same mood so as to feel the internality of the Mitzva.
For this reason, if we take into account the externality of the Mitzvot, then every person is regarded as “continuously adding,” since more or less each day a person performs Mitzvot. Hence, as long as he continuously adds, he has many Mitzvot, as our sages said, “The empty ones among you are filled with Mitzvot like a pomegranate.”
But from the perspective of the internality of the Mitzvot, namely the flavor and pleasure that is clothed in the Mitzvot, and the purpose for which the Mitzvot came, as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice,” where the Torah and Mitzvot should cleanse and purify him so as to emerge from self-love and come to love of the Creator, a person might reach the age of seventy, and have many Mitzvot in externality, but in the internality, the intention clothed in the Mitzvot, he has still not achieved and is still in self-love.
The way for one who wants to be rewarded with internality is to say each time, “What happened, happened, and from now on, I will take upon myself to walk in the ways of the Creator, meaning to be rewarded with the desire to bestow.”
It therefore follows that he is always a child. Even when he is seventy years old, he says, “Until now it was wrong; from now on, I begin.” Thus, he is always in a state of “child.” Even when he is a grownup, he is still in the quality of a child (such as the story about Rabbi Saadia Gaon).