431. A Shoe for His Foot
“That shoe places… Hence, everything that the dead gives to a person in a dream is good. But if he took an object from the house, it is bad, such as taking his shoe. What is the reason? It indicates that he has moved his leg” (The Zohar, Hukat, Item 8).
We should interpret that “dead” means the will to receive. All the efforts he makes in the work for Kedusha [holiness] are because the will to receive gives the strength to bestow. But if the will to receive takes, it is bad because there are only two domains: the domain of bestowal or the domain of reception. Reception is called “death” and bestowal is called “life,” since by this we adhere to the Life of Lives.
Hence, if the dead takes, it means that he takes forces from the domain of bestowal and transfers them to the domain of the Sitra Achra [other side]. And the reason he says precisely “shoe” is that Naal [shoe] comes from the word Man’ul [lock], namely a place that should be locked from the external mind. Instead, it should be in the manner of faith above reason. The dead takes this shoe and wants it to be open so that the intellect will permeate it and make its inquiries.
This is the meaning of the shoe being specifically on the feet, since Raglaim [legs] comes from the word Meraglim [spies]. In that place—in the Providence of the Creator—we must go with faith above reason, meaning there must be a shoe on one’s foot, a prohibition to enter with the intellect.
If the will to receive, which is called “dead,” takes it, it means that he has entered the domain of the Sitra Achra. This is the meaning of “Do not inquire in that which is beyond you.” Only in this manner do we adhere to the Life of Lives.
“This is when the dead takes him. But when the live one removes his shoe and gives it to another, to keep the possession, he affects the decree of above” (Item 9). That is, if a person takes off his shoe and wants to know and understand with his intellect not because he wants to walk in the ways of the external intellect, but in order to see Providence, how it is hidden from him, and that he is full of contradictions to the external mind, and he does it in order to keep the possession, meaning for his faith to be sustainable, then he will be able to do everything by the decree of above. In other words, he will be able to observe the Torah and Mitzvot [commandments] as a constitution, which is “I have given a decree and you have no permission to doubt it” or comprehended with the intellect. Instead, he should accept everything with faith above reason, meaning understand that faith contradicts reason.
If he has no reason that will understand otherwise, it is not regarded as “against reason,” but rather this, too, is regarded as “within reason.” But when he takes off the shoe and spies there to see what the intellect has to say about such places where the intellect sees otherwise than faith, then faith lies over the “against reason.”
Yet, this is called “simple faith,” for only simple faith obligates him to be a servant of the Creator and not the intellect. It follows that he took off his shoe only to observe the faith and to be certain that all his work is only because he works because of the decree from above, called “constitution,” and this brings him eternal life.