544. Man Is Born a Wild Ass [Donkey]

May 5, 1977

It is written in The Zohar (Emor, Item 59) about the verse, “When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born,” it asks, “It does not say ‘a calf or a lamb or a he-goat or a kid [young goat],’ but rather ‘an ox or a sheep or a goat.’ It explains that what she has in the end, she has when she is born.”

That is, man is not so: What he has in the end, he does not have in the beginning because “Man is born a wild ass.” The reason is that a beast means that it cares only for itself and has no feeling of others. When one is born with the will to receive, he has no passion to change his ways.

Hence, what he has in the end, he also has in the beginning. But man is not so. Although “A man is born a wild ass,” in the end he will achieve the degree of “man,” meaning with sensation of others. By this he will come to feel Godliness, which is called “Know the God of your father and serve Him.”

“It shall remain seven days under its mother.” The Zohar interprets that it is so that that power will settle in him, which was appointed over him and will exist in him. By what will it exist in him? When one Shabbat [Sabbath] is over him … for there is no existence to people unless in the light of Shabbat, as it is written, “And on the seventh day, God concluded His work, which He had done,” and afterward, it is written, “It shall be accepted as a sacrifice of an offering by fire to the Lord.” This is what the Sulam [Ladder commentary on The Zohar] interprets.

Regarding the matter that there is no existence to the six days of action except through the light of Shabbat, it is because Shabbat is called a “similitude of the next world,” and “the next world” means “the purpose of creation.” As long as it has not been revealed over the work, called “six days of action,” regarded as the correction of creation, the wholeness is not apparent on the correction if the purpose of the correction has not been revealed, when a person sees that the purpose is on the correction.