Introduction to A Sage’s Fruit (Three Partners)
The manuscripts of the books before us were before the RABASH. He proofread them as he had proofread the previous books. Once, when I brought him a part of a manuscript to proofread, he gave me the essay, “Three Partners,” and said he intended to write the introduction based on that essay, as it reflects the book before us.
Regrettably, we were not blessed with his editing the introduction. On a bitter and mournful day, on the fifth of Tishrey, Tav-Shin-Nun-Bet [September 13, 1991], the RABASH passed away.
Here, I bring the complete essay as he had given it to me:
“Our sages said, ‘There are three partners in man: the Creator, his father, and his mother. His father sows the white… his mother sows the red… and the Creator places within him a spirit and a soul’” (Nidah 31).
“Man” means the souls within him, as our sages said (Yevamot 61), “You are called ‘Man.’” This is the Israeli soul, for in this he is distinguished and separated from the nations of the world.
Man consists of two things: matter and form. We refer to creation as “matter,” and to the Creator as the “form.” It follows that we necessarily have three partners: the Creator, who gives the soul and the light that sustains the Kli [vessel], which is called “installing of the Shechina [Divinity],” as He installs His Shechina in the Kli, while the Kli is drawn from the father and the mother—his father gives the white, and his mother, the red.
As man consists of two things, so the Kli consists of two things: 1) a desire to receive, 2) the force that detains. The completeness of the Kli cannot consist of one matter—desire to receive. Rather, it must also consist of corrections of the Kli, called “the force that detains,” which prevents his desire from receiving.
Therefore, he receives the desire to receive from the mother, the environment, and he receives the corrections of the Kli from the father, his teacher, and the light, the form that clothes inside the Kli, is called “the Creator.”
“Father” means the teacher, as our sages said (Sanhedrin 19): “Anyone who teaches his friend’s son Torah … it is as though he begot him.” “Mother” means the friends, for one acquires from one’s friends “blushes,” meaning Gevurot. As much as the teacher exerts in him and places whiteness in him, whitening the redness he had acquired from his friend, as soon as he leaves the teacher’s house and enters the environment, he immediately loses all the desires, passions, and inclinations he had strenuously acquired with his teacher’s help.
Yet, the loss is not so great since in the end, he ascends higher and higher until he reaches the summit, for through the sling that throws him time and again from his teacher to the environment and from the environment to his teacher, the Kli is formed and he becomes fit for the instilling of the Shechina, where the Creator is the middle line that decides and makes peace between them, as in, “For He will speak peace unto His people” (Psalms 85:9).
By these three, man is born. If he lacks one of them, he will not be able to be born, for the Creator cannot give this bad that he acquires from the society.
If we find this perplexing, since the Creator is almighty, so why can He not impart the thickness and the bad? After all, it is known that everything we see, understand, and feel does not mean that reality is as we see it, for all the forms we attribute to reality do not impress or activate it.
The rule is that the lower one cannot act upon the upper one, but only to the contrary: The upper one can act on the lower one. Yet, the Creator imprinted in us this power so we would sense some form in reality, and say about it that only this is the reality, that there is nothing above it, a higher quality, and what we feel, see, and understand is the truth.
Yet, we must know that all this is nothing less and nothing more than a true, complete degree. The degree on which we stand now compels us to feel this way, so that by this we will achieve the real goal. It is known that there are many degrees in order to achieve wholeness. This is why there are many feelings, and each feeling is true, for otherwise, if we do not perceive this way and feel this way, we will not achieve what we must achieve.
But in the end, we cannot force reality to be in the form that it appears to us, for it shows us according to what the goal compels us, according to our smallness. It is like a father who sees his son climbing a rickety ladder and shows him a cruel face so as to scare him from climbing, while his intention is to save him from death. Can we assert that the cruel form of the father is really him and say that indeed the son has a cruel and mean-hearted father because he does not give him what he wants? Rather, each time the matter depends on corrections, the corrections give the shapes, and not reality, since we cannot grasp reality.
Concerning what we asked above, if the Creator is almighty, why can He not impart the thickness and the bad, the answer is that when a person obtains only thickness and evil, he does not believe that the Creator is the doer of all these. Before one is rewarded with private Providence, he cannot grasp that He does and will do all the deeds, even the bad deeds that manifest in our world.
For this reason, he must acquire through the environment—the society. But in order not to remain inside the environment, he must have a teacher who will always pull him toward him and will not give him time to sink in the mire. This is called the “white” in him, and only in this way is the Kli that is fit for the light of the Creator and His Torah to be on is fashioned.
We can also say that it is impossible to attribute the bad to the Creator since he is the absolute good. Hence, as long as one feels bad states, he must say that they come from elsewhere, from the environment. But in truth, when one is rewarded with seeing only good and that there is no bad in the world, and everything is turned to good, then he is shown the truth, that the Creator did everything because He is almighty, and He alone did, does, and will do all the deeds.