The Living
Tree

In Patach Eliyahu, Elijah praises the hidden God and names the sefirot through which the worlds are governed. God unites and sustains them as a soul gives life to a body. The teaching makes divine unity available to contemplation through a living form.

Its account of that form is precise. Lovingkindness is the right arm, Might the left, and Beauty the torso. Wisdom is the brain and Understanding the heart. Malkhut is the mouth, associated with the Oral Torah. These correspondences belong to the text’s image of a body; the printed Tree arranges the same names in a different figure.

Cordovero explains what this divine likeness requires of a person. Resembling the divine limbs is a beginning. A hand must also learn to give; a person with the power to punish must learn what mercy requires. The divine image becomes visible in action. Knowledge of the sefirot therefore reaches into the treatment of other people.

Read the sources 12

In the sixth attribute of mercy, Cordovero describes a heavenly chamber whose angels receive the kindness people show one another. When judgment accuses Israel, these angels bring that goodness before God. The generous act continues beyond the moment in which it was performed. It has entered the life of heaven, where it can help preserve a people threatened with destruction.

The explanation begins earlier with a more unsettling example. A wrongful deed creates a destructive spirit, a prosecutor that stands before God and names the person who brought it into being. God sustains even this creature while allowing the sinner time to repent. Mercy holds open an interval in which a person can change what they have made. Repentance reaches into the harm’s spiritual existence as well as its human consequences.

These passages give the ethical teaching its force. People continually bring things into the world through their actions, and those things continue to act. Cordovero asks the reader to become attentive to that responsibility while learning the patience of the God who sustains creation. The ability to forgive belongs to strength: the offended king possesses the means of vengeance and continues to give life.

When Cordovero returns to ordinary anger, he asks the reader to remember whatever goodness remains in the person who caused it. A kindness shown to someone else can be enough to begin softening the judgment. The human act follows the heavenly one. The person who learns mercy makes room for the same mercy to reach others.

Read the sources 2

In the chapter on Malkhut, Cordovero asks the reader to imagine leaving home. Even the traveler who carries provisions has lost the ease of familiar surroundings. The Shekhinah’s exile is more severe: she has been separated from the fullness that belongs to her. Someone who voluntarily leaves comfort for sacred study begins to understand what it means to accompany her.

The student can become a chariot for the divine presence. Cordovero recalls Rabbi Shimon and his companions going out from their homes to occupy themselves with Torah. Their wandering joins them to the Shekhinah in her estrangement. A journey through the country becomes a way of sharing her condition and carrying her presence into the places where the teaching is spoken.

He also brings the subject into married life, speaking to the male householder of his obligations toward his wife. Sustenance, clothing, and conjugal care acquire a celestial meaning. The generosity he receives must pass onward, while the union below corresponds to the union of the divine bride and bridegroom. The teaching gives the household a place within the sacred life described by the Tree.

Prayer gathers these obligations into conscious intention. By reciting the Shema and keeping appointed times for Torah study, the worshiper works toward the reunion of Malkhut with Tiferet. Cordovero pictures the Shekhinah as the King’s daughter, received by someone who has prepared himself to welcome her. The hours of study and the deeds of the day become part of that preparation.

Read the sources 4

Hayyim Vital begins his account of Luria’s cosmology with an unbroken fullness of light. Creation becomes possible through tzimtzum, the withdrawal that leaves an opening within that fullness. A thin ray enters the opening, allowing the worlds to receive light in measure. Vital’s image explains how distinct beings can come into existence while continuing to receive their life from the infinite.

Later comes the shattering. In the world of Tohu, the lower vessels cannot contain their intense illumination. They break, and sparks remain with the fragments that descend. Restoration brings the sefirot into fuller cooperation. The story gives earthly disorder a history reaching back into the formation of the worlds.

The later Hasidic work Tanya brings the gathering of sparks into familiar actions. Its thirty-seventh chapter describes the physical objects used in a commandment. Permitted animal parchment becomes part of tefillin, and honestly acquired money is given in charity. Food strengthens the body that studies Torah or prays. What the person does with these things lifts their vitality into holiness.

This teaching gives embodiment a task. The soul enters circumstances in which it can take up particular things and turn them toward sacred use. Prayer requires breath, and giving requires something that can pass from one hand to another. The repair of creation proceeds through the life being lived here, with its materials, obligations, and opportunities to act.

Read the sources 567