Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy

“Who satisfies you with good.” That is, the Creator gives such abundance to a person that he becomes satiated by the measure of goodness of the Creator. At that time, a person becomes a witness to the quality of the Creator, that He is called “The Good Who Does Good.” Adyach [you] comes from the word Edut [testimony]. It follows that the good itself is the testimony.

Should you ask why are not everyone receiving this good, but only a chosen few are worthy of receiving the abundance, the thing is that there is a difference between types of people: There is a type that receives in the will to receive, and a type of people who work in order to bestow. The difference between them is from one end to the other.

It is known that the whole Kli [vessel] to receive the abundance is praise and gratitude. The more one expands the Kli with this desire, the more one can taste the flavor of the abundance.

The abundance itself is like an ocean. There is one who draws with a thimble, and there is one who draws with a bucket, and so forth. It is all measured according to the Kli.

If we say that the praise and gratitude are the Kli, for according to the feeling, so is the gratitude, since if one prevails as soon as he feels the salvation of the Creator and gives praise and thanks, by this he sustains and extends the abundance more powerfully and more strongly. Through the gratitude, the Giver of the abundance is imprinted in all his organs, and the more he feels who is the Giver, the more his Kli to receive the abundance expands.

It follows that this matter pertains only to the giver, and not to the receiver, since in the receiver, the Creator becomes indebted, and there are no praise or gratitude toward one who is indebted, for so is nature, just as there is no gratitude in a son toward his father.

But if a person off the street does something good for another, he praises and glorifies him. To the extent of the remoteness, so is the measure of gratitude. The reason is that to the extent of the closeness, so he becomes indebted. One who is far from another becomes indebted to him because of Hesed [mercy/grace]. Naturally, the opposite occurs where the other one becomes indebted to praise and glorify him.

One who receives, the more he is given, the more the Creator becomes indebted to him in his eyes. It is like one who gives each day one penny to his son. After some time, the power of love for his son increased in the father, and he wanted to benefit him so he gave him five pennies. The little one, who sees that today he received from the father a greater gift, is impressed by this and wants to thank his father for it. But afterward, when his father wants to give him one penny, as usual, the son becomes furious with his father for the decrease in his reception.

It follows that yesterday’s addition not only did not bring closeness to his son, but through increasing the good he grew far from him for in his eyes his father has become indebted, so the little one wants his father to add each day. If not, all his presents mean nothing to him. To the receiver, it is as our sages said, “One does not die with half one’s wishes in one’s hand,” since one who has one hundred wants two hundred.

Conversely, in one who bestows, the Creator does not become indebted, so he can always praise and glorify. If He sometimes gives him a greater gift, he glorifies Him more, since he knows about himself that he is utterly unworthy of the Creator bestowing upon him, and all he wants from the good that he receives is that greater praise of the Creator will emerge from it.

By this we will understand what our sages said, that where those who repented stand, complete righteous cannot stand.

It is known that it is impossible to be a complete righteous without prior repentance, since “Man is born a wild ass.” Rather, it is certain that he had repented. When he repented, and the Creator accepted his penance, he clearly felt his smallness. At that time, he had the most intense feeling of praising and glorifying the Creator, for he saw then that “He lifts the indigent from the trash.”

But later, after a few days, he sees that he is a complete righteous. And so it truly is—that he is a complete righteous. It follows that he lacks the sensation of lowliness of the time of repentance, so his praise and gratitude have waned. Thus, now he is smaller than those who repent, meaning from before. Perhaps this is the meaning of the words, “He who is great is small, even if he is actually great.”

This is the meaning of “The Lord is high and the low will see,” meaning that there is a desire to connect to something small, since doing something small and making it similar to something great is a wonder. Even in corporeality, we see that small things that are similar to big things have more value. This is why there is a desire in the upper one to connect to little ones. For this reason, even when one becomes a great righteous, it does not mean that he has become great, but rather that the Creator has become great in the eyes of the righteous.

Therefore, when a person is proud, the Creator tells him, “If it were great ones that I needed, I have greater ones above.”