Faith and Service:
rectification of mind and heart |
Excerpt from the Main Principles of Service
Chapter 2 The Sulam: the Biography of Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag
by Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Gottlieb,
Translated from the Hebrew by Yedidah Cohen |
The will to receive is the basic constitution of a person and expresses itself in the person in two ways:
1) Via the mind: A person wants to know and understand the purpose for, and the logical consequence of every act of his. For it is through the intelligent understanding of matters that the will to receive gets pleasure. This is not the case when a person performs an act whose purpose or use he does not understand. This causes him suffering.
2) Via the heart: This concerns the sensual will to receive, which is part of every person’s make-up, which desires to sense and feel pleasure and delight in the different situations in this world, through the animal appetites of eating, drinking, sleep, desire for money, honor, power, and intelligence.
These two aspects of the will to receive are two halves of the same nature, and they work in an integrated way within a person.
Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag used to define it thus:
It is as if there is a vessel which goes directly from the heart to the brain and says, There is none quite as wise and clever as you…!”
Over and against these two aspects of the will to receive there are two modes of rectification (tikkunim):
1) for the mind—the work of faith,
2) for the heart—the work of service
The Sage, Rabbi Baruch Shalom spoke on this (in the year 5751).
We need to work on the aspect of both the mind and the heart. Because if a person were solely to work on his intellectual side, only taking on himself the yoke of faith, it is possible that he is doing so in order to receive a reward. Therefore a person also needs to work on his will to give benefit in an altruistic manner. However, if the person were to work solely on the aspect of giving benefit and love of one’s fellow, without working on his faith, that would also be insufficient, because he would remain disconnected from God. This is what happened in communism, which held up as its banner love of one’s fellow man, but persecuted men of faith, and thus, from its very outset, was doomed to failure.
For the rectification of the intellect there is the work of faith as we spoke above, that is to say that a person should not rely on his intellect but have faith in all the ways of the Torah.
This may be broken down into several points:
a) Faith that the way to draw near to God is only through giving benefit and love to one’s fellow human.
This is so, even though the body, that is the will to receive for oneself alone, denies this. This faith needs to obligate a person in actual practice to establish his life on giving benefit to his fellow, without which closeness to God is impossible.
b) Faith in the reality of God as the root of all; faith that only He can give us faith in Him; faith that His Divine Providence is present at all times and in every detail.
This faith is designated as accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven in the paradigm of faith, which is higher than the paradigm of knowledge. A person should educate himself to behave in a way that is fitting for one who is in the presence of the King, the King of Kings. He needs to visualize for himself how he would behave, speak, and think, if he were in the presence of a very great man. Similarly, he needs to conduct himself in no lesser way in the presence of the King of Kings.
Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag writes in the Book Shamati (article 209) as follows:
A person who sits in his house is not like someone who is in the presence of a king. A person’s faith has to be of the quality that he should be feeling the entire day as if he is in the presence of the King. Then he would certainly have both Yirat haShem (the fear of being separate from God) and Ahavat haShem, Love of God in a complete manner. So long as he or she did not reach this level of emunah (faith) he should not rest. As we say in the daily prayers, “With everlasting Love you have loved your people the House of Israel, You have taught us Torah and mitzvot, statutes and laws. Therefore, O Lord our God, when we lie down and when we rise up we will meditate in Your statutes and we will rejoice in the world of Your Torah and Your mitzvot for ever and ever. For they are our life and the length of our days and in them we will meditate day and night, and never remove Your love from us for ever. Blessed are You who loves His people Israel.” (evening prayer) And if the person were to so act, then for sure he would never wish to receive for himself alone. The longing for faith needs to be woven into his limbs until it becomes second nature, according to the phrase, “when I remember Him He doesn’t let me sleep!”
Rabbi Baruch Ashlag further writes: (in Shamati article 211)
Whoever believes in the reality of the holy Blessed One that all the world is filled with His glory, then he is filled both with Yirat haShem, fear of being separated from God, and with the love for God. Such a person does not require any preparation of meditation since he places God first naturally. Just like we see in the physical world: When a person truly loves his companion, then he thinks on and longs for his friend’s benefit. He stops himself from doing any action which would not benefit his friend. This is done naturally, without thinking about it. One doesn’t need any great intellect for this because this is natural, just like the way a mother loves her child, that all she desires is the best for her child and she doesn’t require any conscious preparation to love her son. Because something that is natural does not need intellect to compel the matter, but one’s actions come forth from our instincts. Our natural instincts themselves work to such a degree that it is in our nature that we are ready to sacrifice ourselves for the love of something until we achieve our purpose, and until we fulfill our purpose our lives are not worth living. Therefore, whoever feels for himself as if he is standing before the King certainly will achieve perfection, that is to say perfect faith in the Creator. Until he feels that he is standing before the King then he doesn’t have complete faith (God forbid).
Here we need to distinguish two modalities:
1) If a person acts in order to gain a reward in this world, whether it be money or honor or even just a good feeling, or, if he acts in order to gain a reward in the next world, then his will to receive for himself alone doesn’t oppose him so much. This is because his focus is not actually on the holy Blessed One, who is the Giver, but he is only looking at what he will receive.
2) However, if the person is acting only for the sake of God, that is to say, he acts in order to come into affinity of form with God, according to the measure he feels the greatness of His love and His Divine providence, then the will to receive for oneself alone opposes this action with all its power. Because the will to receive for oneself alone does not want to work without getting a reward for that work. Then the person’s will to receive for oneself alone comes to him with two questions: “Who is God that I should listen to His voice?”—a question that opposes faith, “What does this service mean to you?”— a question that opposes service. (Both these questions come from the Passover Haggadah. The first one is Pharaoh’s question, the other question is that of the wicked son, of the four sons.)
So now we can understand perfectly, that it is impossible to tread the pathway of the service of God in the true way, which is the way of giving, not for the sake of getting a reward, without experiencing ups and downs. Because going against the will to receive for oneself alone is paved with ups and downs. As it says in the Talmud (Gittin 43a) nobody can fulfill the words of the Torah unless he stumbles in them. However, this is not the case for those who don’t oppose their will to receive pleasure for themselves. They don’t suffer so many ups and downs, but they are to be found in a state that is more or less stationary.
In connection with this we can mention here an occurrence with the Seer of Lublin: One time a man came to him and told him that prior to every prayer he experienced a descent. The Seer answered him: “Before every prayer I experience four hundred descents!” Our teacher Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag explained: “A person who experiences a descent, that is to say a “down” has to have had an ascent first. So if the Seer of Lublin had four hundred descents he must have had an equivalent four hundred ascents… . But this occurs only with someone who is truly searching for unity (dvekut) with the Holy Blessed One and is self-critical and searches even within his good deeds to see if his will to receive for oneself alone got involved.”
Our teacher Rabbi Baruch Ashlag further said:
The process of accepting Malchut Shamayim (that is to say, the Divine providence) is through ups and downs, like we see in the moon, that waxes and wanes, and whose spiritual root is the Sephirah Malchut. Our intellect thinks that a person can progress from stage to stage just by going up, without any intervening falls. But in fact this is not so. As it is written “as the light is seen more clearly when it comes from within the dark” (Eccl. 2: 13), that it is impossible to see the light except from within the dark. Just as we see in the physical world: If a person is very thirsty and is suffering on account of his thirst, then when he gets water he feels pleasure and gives thanks to God for the water.
The most distinct factor in actualizing one’s faith in God, that He is the Source of all, and that all is conducted by Him, is if a person is prepared to work without getting a reward. Just the fact of serving God is his reward and joy. As we see in the physical word, a person is prepared to minister to the great Sage of the generation without receiving payment. Not only that, but it often happens that people are prepared to pay for the privilege of so doing. How much more so is the case in spirituality with regard to serving God! This is the language of the Tanna (A Sage at the time of the Mishnah) quoted in Ethics of the Fathers (Chapter 1 Mishnah 3):
Antigonus, of Socho, received the oral Law from Simon the Righteous. He used to say, “Don’t be like slaves who serve the Master for the sake of getting a reward, but be like slaves who serve the Master, not for the sake of getting a reward, and may the awe of Heaven be upon you.”
Rabbi Chayim of Volozhyin may his holy memory be for a blessing writes in his book Ruach Chayim:
Concerning a king’s servants: It is a well-known fact that whoever is closest to the king takes a greater salary than a servant who is not numbered amongst his favorites and who does not come into his presence. This operates because he was previously an important and honoured minister, and because of his skill, or his wisdom, or his work he increased in status until he became one of the familiars of the court. But for someone who was born a peasant, and who suddenly found favor in the sight of the king, who raised him up, seating him first with him and placing him above all the other minsters, it wouldn’t enter his head to request a further reward from the king for his work. That would be wicked, since the king has already been so gracious to him and made him one of his chief servants, now standing in his presence, with none higher than him. Likewise, we human beings, who are so lowly from our material aspect, in which we are like the primitive inhabitants of Canaan, of whom it is written, “my mother’s sons were incensed against me,” (Song of Sol. 1,6) yet He elevated us to the degree that we can serve Him and stand before Him, which is such a great merit and sufficient reward, how could we possibly be so brazen as to request a further reward for serving the holy Blessed One?! And this is what it says: “Do not be like the servants who serve, who stand before the Master and serve in His temple and request yet more salary, but be like the lowly servants who serve the Master in His temple, not for any gain.” Understand this deeply.
(Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag said more than once that the pupils of the Gaon of Vilna, of whom Rabbi Chaim Volozhiyn was one, were all Sages of great spiritual stature, who knew the matters of serving God in depth.)
In connection with this, Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag taught that the saying, “the reward of doing a mitzvah is another mitzvah” (Ethics of the Fathers 4 ,2), should be read, “the reward of the mitzvah is the great merit of having been asked to do it!”
The reward of those who serve God is to merit more and more faith in the Creator as being the Root of all, until they no longer ask anything for themselves, but the service itself is their reward.
c) Faith that there is nothing other than God, according to the Scripture, “You have shown us to know that the Lord is God, there is none other than Him” (Deuteronomy 4,35).
That is to say, that there is no other reality in the world except God. A person needs to look at the world from the perspective that all the people and the created beings are bidden to act by God Himself and all their actions are ordained by Him. It follows that a person’s behavior has to be consonant with this perspective. For example, if someone hurts him, he has to consider that it is not the person who hurt him, but it was God Himself. Therefore, if he responds in a way that is insulting or belittling, it is as if he is belittling God Himself. Likewise, if a person tells a lie to someone, in fact he is telling the lie to God, and so on. If someone were to act against him, then since the person has to consider the action as coming from God, he needs to receive the action with love and not get annoyed, because all the actions of the Creator stem from His desire to give only benefit to His created beings.
d) Faith that the Creator conducts the world according to His attribute that He is Good and does Good. Even when a person sees that the opposite is taking place, in his private life, in the life of the community, or in the life of the nation as a whole, he has to believe that what he sees is false. So long as he is given over to the governance of selfish love he cannot see the truth that the Creator conducts the world according to His attribute that He is Good and does Good. A person’s faith in the goodness of God needs to be expressed in practice through actions of joy and satisfaction in the way that God runs the world. The person should not act in an a way that conveys the opposite. In accordance with this Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag explained, “Why was it that at the Baal haSulam’s table it was customary to drink wine with the blessing, “He is Good and does Good? This was to remind ourselves that this blessing is the greatest thing of all that a person can believe, that the Creator is Good and does good.
e) Faith that God “hears the prayer of every mouth” (from the morning prayer). The Baal haSulam said, this saying includes even the most lowly mouth of all; that God hears prayer and God has within His power to rescue even the lowliest person from his situation. Let not a person say that God can only help someone who is not so down, but He has the power to help even the lowest of the low. This faith has to be expressed in practice, that a person should never despair of the help of God.
f) Faith that all the spiritual descents are sent to us from Above. There is purpose to spiritual descent. This may occur in order that a person should gradually come to the recognition of the evil that is within him. The evil within a person is only revealed to him from Above when he has progressed sufficiently in his spiritual work to be able to cope with it. The revelation of the evil within the person is in accordance with his work. Only after the evil within the person has become completely clear to him in its true measure can he give a prayer from the depth of his heart that God should take him out of the pit of his exile and from the rule of the seventy nations which lie within the heart. A spiritual descent may also occur in order to give the person the opportunity to serve God even when he cannot feel any taste for the work. This means serving God unconditionally, as the Scripture says, “Walk after me in a land that is not sown” (Jeremiah 2, 2). Faith gives the person the power of commitment, so that he does not despair, but continues all his work in exactly the same way as he does when in a period of spiritual ascent.
Thus the Sage Rabbi Baruch Ashlag spoke on the anniversary of Rabbi Yitzhak Agassi’s death:
A person needs to fulfil the mitzvah of “Love the Lord your God” in two ways: When he feels good and experiences a good feeling in Torah and prayer, and, even when God takes his soul. Because this is the way the Sages taught: (Berachot chapter 9 mishnah 5) “and with all your soul” means “even if He takes your life.” But one needs to ask the question: if He takes the life of a person, then the person can no longer serve Him. But one must understand this teaching according to the service of God, that God takes from the person the soul of Life, that is his life-force in Torah and prayer. He takes away from him the taste of Torah and prayer. Then a person has to work to reveal and to make manifest all his love for the Creator and to be happy even in his state of spiritual descent.
Further the Sage Rabbi Baruch Shalom said in the name of his father:
“It is written, ‘All that the Master of the House tells you to do, do, except if He tells you to leave” (Pesachim 86:). That is to say a person needs to cleave to the Creator in such a way that everything the Creator tells him to do he does, except if He tells him to go out of the framework of holiness, then he mustn’t listen to Him. And this matter is very deep and not everyone can tolerate this thought.”
He further said, “
When a person is in a state of down, he has two options: Either to concentrate on the descent itself, or to focus on the One who gave the descent to him. The distance between these two possibilities is as the distance between east and west. For the place where a person puts his mental focus is the place where he is in actuality. Therefore, if a person is connecting with his thought to the down itself, then he is connecting to a negative state of consciousness, and it is not possible from the negative to connect with what is blessed. Therefore, if a person is connecting to the One who gave the descent, then he is one with the Creator, May He be blessed, and remains totally connected, and thus, in practice. is already saved from the down.
g) Faith in the greatness of the eternal God; complete faith in His perfect attributes, with the intention to rejoice in even the smallest contact that a person merits to in spirituality. For there is a general principle that in order for a person to receive satisfaction from something of low quality he requires a large quantity; but for a person to receive satisfaction from something of a high quality, even a small quantity will suffice. The higher the quality, the smaller the quantity that suffices to give happiness. For example, a person wishes to bring a wedding gift. If he decides to bring gravel he would need tons for it to be a gift… . If he brings iron he needs a smaller amount. If he were to bring gold, two hundred grams would be enough. And if it were diamonds, fifty grams would suffice. In an analogous way we see that the more a person develops faith in the greatness and importance of the Creator within himself, the more he can be happy and the more he can value even the smallest aspect that appertains to holiness—even the smallest word or deed—even if he does not yet have the requisite intention. Our holy teacher, the Baal haSulam, spoke frequently on this subject, and many times mentioned that we need to be happy and joyful, even when we are practicing Torah “not for its own sake”. We cannot estimate how important this work is, even regarding Torah that is practiced “not for its own sake”. We are simply unable to estimate how important any act of spirituality is. Rabbi Baruch Ashlag emphasized this point on many occasions, teaching that it is a key for happiness, and one that shows the measure of faith a person has in God. He often said, if a person were to come to the Beit haMidrash (study hall) or to the synagogue, but he didn’t manage to learn any Torah, nevertheless he should still be very happy, since God gave him the merit of having a good thought. Just imagine how many millions of people there are in the world who were not privileged even all their lives to have such a good thought as this!
h) Faith in the way of unifying the contradiction between “If I am not for myself who is for me?” and “if I am for myself what am I?” (From the dictum of Hillel the Sage: “If I am not for myself who will be for me? And if I am for myself what am I? and if not now, when? (Ethics of the Fathers chapter 1, mishnah 14). A person has to say about the past, “If I am for myself, what am I?” That is to say, “I didn’t do anything, but everything comes from the Creator.” However, regarding the present, he needs to say, “If I am not for myself who is for me?” That is to say, if I don’t do anything, no one will do it for me.” In such a way he is saved from all manner of disruptions that tend to occur in daily life. It is easier to take an extreme position than to walk in the middle way. There are some who say “If I am for myself, what am I?” therefore they don’t want to do anything. If they are sick, they don’t want to go to the doctor, because they say that everything comes from God, so what use is a doctor here? If God wants them to get better then He will heal them even without a doctor. There are others who say, “If I don’t go to the doctor then for sure I will certainly never get better.” But the correct way is to go to the doctor like everybody else. After one has gone to the doctor then one must say “It was God who healed me, and not the doctor, and if I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor, then I still would have got better, because that was the will of God.” But the next time he gets sick he should again go to the doctor saying “if I am not for myself then who is for me?” Afterwards, when he gets better he needs to say again that it was not the doctor who healed him but it was God. This way is beyond the understanding of the will to receive.
This applies likewise for earning one’s living. Some people say, “If God wants to send me a living, then I will have a living even if I don’t work.” And so they don’t work. But there are others who say the opposite, “If I don’t work, then I certainly won’t have the means to live.” The way of holiness is to work, and afterwards to say, “Even if I hadn’t worked, but I had sat at home all day, then God would have given me a living because that is His will.” We learn that the way in holiness is always in opposition to the opinion of the will to receive and this is meaning of the phrase “the way of Torah is opposite to the opinion of the householder.”
Rabbi Baruch Shalom wrote:
When a person is in the path of serving God then he has to believe that he receives a reward from the Creator, and that reward is cleaving to the Creator. And this is the greatest reward of all, to become close to God. Punishment means separation from Him. And this is within the person’s province, for this is the focus of the choice. However, once a person has made his choice, and opted for the good, and left the evil, and God has drawn him close to serve Him, then he has to believe that everything comes from God, and that if God had not helped him he would not have been able to prevail. So before the action, a person needs to know that the choice is his and the principle of “If I am not for myself who will be for me” applies, but after the action he has to believe that everything comes from God. This is hard, because before the action the evil inclination comes to the person and tells him, “don’t do it, everything comes from God,” and after the action the evil inclination tells the person, “you did it all yourself!” according to the dictum, “If I am not for myself who will be for me?” as if to say, that if the person himself had not acted nothing would have been gained. A person needs to fight against this thought.
i) Faith in the greatness of the Sage.
Since the work of a person with respect to his Sage of necessity involves nullifying one’s own will, it is of utmost importance that the teacher with whom we work in this way is a teacher of integrity. The Sage must embody humility and truth. He wishes only to serve others and has no desire for students or others to serve him. He keeps Torah and mitzvot completely and has knowledge of the innermost aspects of the Torah. In his presence we feel an earnest desire to reach dvekut with the Holy Blessed One. Through our work with him we come to nullify and transform our will to receive for oneself alone. Only such a person is worthy to be considered a Sage.
The following refers to the way of working with the great Sages, the Baal haSulam and his son, Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag. The more that a person believes in the greatness of the Sage then the greater the motivation he has to give unconditionally to the Sage, without considering his will to receive at all.
As the Sages stated (Berachot 7b)
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The service of Torah is greater than its learning, as we learn from the book of Kings (II 3,11) ‘and Jehoshaphat questioned the servants of the King of Israel saying, “Is there no prophet of God that we may inquire of the Lord by him?” and one of the servants of the King of Israel answered, and said, “Here is Elisha, the son of Shefat, who poured water on the hands of Elijah.” ’ the Scripture does not write that he learned from Elijah but that he served him.From this we learn that serving Torah is greater than learning Torah.”.
This work is very practical, because a person can measure every day the degree to which he is prepared to sacrifice himself in order to give to his teacher. And one can add to this daily. Now this work is a preparatory work to that between a person and the Creator, because it has precisely the same nature as the work one needs to do towards God, may the One be blessed. However, regarding the Creator, there is an extreme difficulty, in that He is completely concealed; likewise society does not have a tangible opinion as regarding His greatness, unlike the students and the disciples regarding their teacher. Nonetheless, when a student has eventually acquired the attribute of unconditionally giving to his teacher, then he can transfer this attitude towards God, relatively easily.
j) Faith in the greatness of the other students.
As Rabbi Ashlag writes in his book, Matan Torah,
“Every student needs to regard himself as the least amongst the students, and then he will be able to acquire an feeling of the greatness of the Sage from all of them. This is because a person who feels himself to be greater cannot receive from one who he considers to be lesser than him, especially with regard to being moved by his words. Only one who feels himself to be lesser, is influenced by one who he esteems as being greater. Thus every student needs to value and love his fellow student to the utmost, and regard him with the same esteem as one who is the greatest teacher of the generation. (Matan Torah essay on the conclusion of the Zohar.).
Further, the more a person has faith in the worth of his fellow, the more he will have motivation to work for the sake of love of his fellow, according to the Scripture, “Love your fellow as yourself”.
Rabbi Baruch Shalom writes:
The human being is created with a vessel that is designated as being selfish love, so that if he cannot see that from a certain action he will gain something for his own benefit, then he has no motivation to put in any effort to make even the smallest move. Therefore, without the negation of this selfish love it is impossible to come to dvekut with God, which is called ‘affinity of form’. Since this is against our nature, we need a community that can form a great force against this selfish love in that we all work together to nullify our will to receive for ourselves alone. This will to receive for oneself alone is designated as being evil, because it prevents us from arriving at dvekut, which is the purpose for which the human being was created. Therefore the community needs to be made up of individuals all of whom are of the same opinion that we need to arrive at dvekut with God. Then all the individuals together can make one strong force that the individual can use against his own selfish love, because all are included in each other. We see that every person can then base himself on this great will that all share, in order to arrive at the purpose for which we are all created. However, in order that we should be able to include each other in the creation of this force, everyone needs to negate himself with respect to his fellow. That is, everyone will be able to see the worth of his friend and not his lack. But whoever thinks he is of a higher level than his companions will not be able to join with them. (Sefer HaMaamarim part one essay one)
(It is important to understand that here Rabbi Ashlag is relating only to other students who are working in the same way, of wanting to nullify their will to receive for oneself alone, in order to come closer to God. Although love of one’s fellow-man in general is an important principle in Judaism, he is not advocating that one should see everyone one comes into contact with as greater than oneself, because that would cause confusion and a low self-esteem, leading the person off the way rather than helping him on it. However, negating his own will to that of others, who are similarly working on themselves, enables the student to learn ways of giving benefit that may not be obvious to him and adds great powers of motivation and strength.)
That is to say, that a person goes, at every stage of his life, against his logic, against his knowledge, against his feeling.
2) For the rectification of the heart: the service of giving benefit to one’s fellow. A person should take whatever he himself desires and give it to his fellow man. This is in order to arrive at love of one’s fellow, and from here to love of one’s teacher, and to love of God. This is according to the commandment of “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18). So a person, in a systematic and orderly way would begin to consider the needs and lacks of his companions, he would be concerned about what bothers his friend and he should try to help him, to the same extent that he would help himself. Similarly he should participate in the joys of his friend and participate in his celebrations as if they were his own. This is daily work against the natural desire of the body. As regards the work of giving benefit in general we can discern several modalities:
Firstly that a person should endeavor to do actions of giving benefit regarding his fellow and actions of giving benefit regarding the Creator, not for the sake of receiving anything, just for love. After a person has completed this work to its very end, that is to say he has completely nullified his will to receive for himself alone, and his only purpose in life is to give benefit to the Creator or to his fellow man then he arrives at the second stage, wherein a person can receive joy and pleasure, but not for the sake of receiving for himself, but only because he knows that it is the will of the Creator to give to him. By allowing the Creator to give to Him he is in effect giving to the Creator. Similarly with regard to his fellow man. We see that in our daily life there are many people who do give benefit to others but they are doing this in order to receive some reward. However, here we are talking about a person who is endeavoring to give benefit, not because he hopes for any reward— because this would be considered as receiving and not as giving at all. He is acting to give benefit because he values the other person, and therefore considers it an honor to be allowed to give to him, even if he were not to receive any reward at all. There are many people who occupy themselves with giving and doing acts of loving kindness. However, not all who do so are acting in order to arrive at dvekut with God, or because of their faith in God, but because their humanitarian conscience obligates them to so act. They have mercy on their fellow man and they understand that a rectified human community should be of that nature, or they don’t feel at ease with their conscience if they do not help their fellow man. But though one must not negate such help towards one fellow man, because through such help there is an improvement in human civilization, such an approach has two main deficits:
1) This approach does not require faith in God or any connection with the Creator, and so the person does not need to have any intention to come to dvekut with the Creator. As the Creator is far from His created beings so is such giving far from true giving. And our teacher Rabbi Ashlag wrote on this: (Panim Meirot paragraph 6) “
The purpose of the donkey is not to serve all the other donkeys in the world of his own age. Likewise, it is not the purpose of the human being to serve all the other human bodies who are the same age as his human body. But the donkey’s purpose is to serve the human, who is higher than him. Similarly, the purpose of the human is to serve the Creator, and to perfect His intention in the purpose of Creation, as Rabbi Shimon Ben Elazar said, ‘these were only created in order to serve me, and my purpose is to serve the Creator.’ ” (Kiddushin chapter 4 mishnah 14).
2)The purpose of helping one’s fellow man is to come to love of one’s fellow man. It is clear that a person is not able to come to love of one’s fellow man if he doesn’t create a connection on the basis of equality. Therefore, although actions of loving-kindness are beautiful and important in themselves, they cannot bring a person to love of one’s fellow man. For example, when a person gives charity to the poor, or he looks after an elderly or sick person, but then goes home and has no connection with the needy person, even if he fulfilled his duty from the perspective of loving-kindness, nevertheless, from the perspective of love, he did not accomplish that which is necessary. When a person does acts of giving from the desire to nullify his selfish love completely, then the will to receive bothers him at every step of the way. It sees a threat to its existence, so it opposes him with all its power. Therefore, the will to receive tries to subvert the basis of the person’s faith and asks, “Who is God that I should listen to His voice? It also asks “What is this service to you?” (These are the questions of Pharoah and of the wicked son, from the Passover Haggadah). But for people who are not interested in nullifying their selfish love, not only does their will to receive for themselves alone not ask such questions and doesn’t bother them, but it even helps such people to do their acts of giving benefit, because these acts build up their ego.
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