THE HUMAN CONDITION
The English translation od Rabbi Alexander Zisze Ajzensztadt’s (the Tzosmerer Rebbe) Torah discourse, dictated to his son – the autor of „Endurance” – while hiding in the bunker during a Nazi pogrom in April 1942 in the ghetto of Ostrowiec.
The rush and the noise of our present daily life is great.
Never was human existence so hurreid as during our era. Never was human
ambition to acquire „the good things in life” so strong as during our epoch.
Every one of us can, in this own circle od friends, notice
individuals of various mentalitics and characteristics, who are chasing and
running, often even sacrificing their health, risking their lives, in order to
attain their ambition.
As if chased by the secret power of some mysterious
stymulant, most people strive for all sorts of aims which tempt their
imagination.
Moved by a hidden driving force, these people are
instinctively and forcefully drawn like a bee to honey or a firefly to flame,
in order to satisfy their longing for fortune and wealth, honour and
popularity.
The question arises, therefore: Why?
What is, after all, the root, the basic factor, which causes
in all these people the undaunted will, the unwavering patience, the tremendous
initiative to attain their limitless wants?
Is it a factor which exists within the desired aims
themselves? Do these desires themselves centain some magnetic power, some
potency which is capable of overwhelming the chosen one of creation and propel
him forcibly towards iyself?
Or is it an internal subjective tendency, which is hidden
within the being of man proper?
When you observe life and analyze the psychology of the
never ending, unsatiated desire for these objectives; when you try to penetrate
the psyche of despair, of disappointment, and the results in suicide which take
place more often among the supposedly „fortunate” and „rich” than among the
so-called „poor” and „destitute”, you draw the conclusion that the entire sound
and fury, the whole searching, striving and reaching for one’s goals is not
something which is created by external experiences, but which comes solely form
within. It lies within he very being of man himself.
Let us, however, try to understand that creation is,
according to mysticism and metaphysics, a radiation of godliness that os – no
more and no less – someting which was at its origin and on its genesis pure
spirit in the infinity, in the andlessness. At a certain moment, during the
creation of the universe, it was converted by the creator into actual and
tangible physical entities.
In the Kabalah it is expressed in a picturesque
phrase [Benhadin Kamtza dilvusheh minaich] concering a small garment is
an organic part of his being.
And in philosophy the term is: „emanation”.
Man, being the most intellectual, most sensitive and most
imaginative creature of this reation, feels, therefore, subcenciously and
intuitivle like some lostsouyl, who actually was privileged to be of a godly
sovereign descent, and thus had once the good fortune to find himself to be of
a godly, majestic origin, thanks to which he could enjoy all the possible pleasures
of the world in a condensed form.
The chosen of creation is therefore confused and desparate.
He wishes to recapture for himself the most satisfying soure of happiness in
the previous „royal court” when he was still under the wing of the shekinah,
or divine presence, and in blissful heavenly serenity.
However, he becomes, alas, lost in his hasty and erroneous,
groping and scurrrying. With a blurred consciousness and earthly materialistic
conception, he grasps at every shimmering, shining, sparkling immitation
object. He is like a thirsty desert-wanderer who falls upon an oasis of
salt-water, which not only will never satisfy his thirst, but, will also
increase his thirst many Times and make it unbearable. It is only an exercise
in futility.
The truly happy person, however, is he who raises himself
above the low, merely earthly concepts, to the highest comprehension, to a
clear and bright world-outlook and sees unmistakeably the necessary genuine
attracrion.
That comes, however, only when he can distinguish and see
that the tempting illusions are, in the final analysis, no more than a fata-morgana,
a mirage for shortsighted human earthlings.
Human lust does not originate from external sensible,
observable sources, but is born from the inner spiritual longing for the secret
and godly genesis-sources, which became concretized in the eyes of mortal homo
sapiens as material and enthralling objects of his lust.
Fortunate is he who understands how to counteract these
misleading illusions and blurrings of a banal, shallow world-conception, as we
are cautioned to do by the first Chassidic declarations.
Endowed is the man who has open ears and is privileged to
hear the echo of the heavenly call: „It is I who am the propietor and
iluminator of the world-mansion.”
Then his eyes are opened and he sees how the entire material
creation of minerals, plants, and all that lives seeks for the wings of the
divine presence and strives to reach their orginal creator; continuously
imploring for his mercy, so that he should again accept them into his godly
arms – as of old – before the creation of the universe.
That is the height from which man must see the world. Those
the desires which should have been the final goal of our nervous, confused and
rushing generation.
Only a return to the source of genuine happiness, to
godliness in Jewish faith can revive and save the whole world, which is in
great danger, and which longs unconsciously for the time when, as Isaiah said
„They shall beat their swords onto ploughshares, and their spears into pruning
forks.”
Ony a return to the principles of Judaism, to all the Torah
values, can cure a world that had been blinded by materirialism, where one must
have a more beautiful car than that of his neighbour, a better and swifter
flying airplane, and a more deadly bomb.
That is the choice: to discern and select the true essence
of life, and to extract it from its materialistic shell.
This is the way to recovery for an ailing humanity, the only
road leading to recuperation for a morally-diseased mankind bent on homicidal
and suicidal self-destruction.
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz