Zadok HaDin

“On the day when Rabbi died the Rabbis decreed a public fast and offered prayers for heavenly mercy. They furthermore announced that whoever said that Rabbi was dead would be stabbed with a sword. Rabbi's handmaid ascended the roof and prayed: 'The immortals desire Rabbi [to join them] and the mortals desire Rabbi [to remain with them]; may it be the will [of God] that the mortals may overpower the immortals.' When, however, she saw how often he resorted to the privy, painfully taking off his tefillin and putting them on again, she prayed: 'May it be the will [of the Almighty] that the immortals may overpower the mortals.' As the Rabbis incessantly continued their prayers for [heavenly] mercy she took up a jar and threw it down from the roof to the ground. [For a moment] they ceased praying and the soul of Rabbi departed to its eternal rest. 'Go,' said the Rabbis to Bar Kappara, 'and investigate.' He went and, finding that [Rabbi] was dead, he tore his cloak and turned the tear backwards. [On returning to the Rabbis] he began: 'The angels and the mortals have taken hold of the holy ark. The angels overpowered the mortals and the holy ark has been captured.' 'Has he,' they asked him, ',gone to his eternal rest?'- 'You,' he replied, 'said it; I did not say it”[1]

In a world unmitigated by chesed

(for after all “olam chessed yibaneh”)

then the horror of death

the unmitigated loss of a loved one forever

the pain of separation

is consistent with the prayer above, ZADOK HADIN

the claim that God is just and metes out deserved reward

that His world is based on Mishpat, we claim.

But what happens when all unravels?

When the innocent suffer,

When a million babies go up in flames?

What narrative suffices?

What Jobian exegesis satisfies abomination?

Can we be satisfied with Lurianic myths of souls and reincarnation?

Or paradoxical faith of Reb Nachman?

Or eschatological visions of the resurrection of the dead?

I still mix up mercy and grace

Touched by my Christian culture

I see grace as divine grace, a gift from the treasury of unearned gifts

To the sinner who repents because of it.

But chessed/grace and gevurah/din are on opposite poles of a spectrum

So whatever din is

Chessed is the mirror image.

Chessed is not dependent upon my actions

Chessed is open and unconditional

Din is measured and earned

Din is meted out to the nanogram not more

Its precision is defined in the Book of Life and Death

Punishment is exact, halachic.

So what is rachamim/mercy?

Mitigation? the parade of witnesses at the sentencing hearing

Influencing the judge to soften his justice

Having already been pronounced guilty?

What of a world where God is in hiding?

Where Mengele was called an angel

Of death no doubt, but an angel nonetheless?

And Satan? What of his role in forcing God’s hand with Job?

Where God is swayed by him? Where is mercy/rachamim?

There is a feminine quality to rachamim

The Rechem is the cosmic womb

Out of which all emerges

And God exposes His femininity when he delivers rachamim

And what of this Mituk Hadin? This “sweetening of harsh judgments/dinim?

That the Zaddik has the ability to “sweeten” the judgment?

By his actions, his piety, and his own vicarious suffering?

How does that alter the definition of DIN?

As if God can be swayed, His rage assuaged,

His strict sense of justice moved…

And those Talmudic sages who died without fault?

We are told they too must die…

For the world has been forever altered by that cunning old serpent

So the Rabbis bid we “hang their death on the Nachash Ha-kadmoni”

That primordial serpent who precipitated death in this world.

In a neat system of ethics and virtue there is no room for chessed

But this is not a neat street (and Mr. Plumbean could not care less).

And God has introduced the notion of mitigation and mercy/rachamim

Precisely because of His chessed.

Kabbala teaches these archetypes are found within the godhead too!

Reflecting the holographic image of the human soul.

And in the production of the human from a putrid drop of semen

The Ari z’l describes the journey through which

the drop travels in the process of

unification (yichud) as a process that unifies chesed and gevurah:

“And then yesod of Abba is clothed in yesod of Ima, where chesed and

gevurah are mixed together...

That is why yesod is called ‘West’ (ma’arav), for it is

a ‘mixture’ (eiruv) of chesed and gevurah together.

Each soul has this anatomical duality,

this schizophrenic graft (eiruv) that tears it

apart throughout life…

As if we live the life of the divine

Or He lives His anguish through our suffering.

And then we are judged…

The sefirotic tree and the tension between chessed and gevurah

is the basic spiritual DNA of the universe and reflects

the same quality of the divine immanent within it.

And in this Lurianic system we see for the first time

the power of the human/adept

In rescuing the divine from its own gevurot.

Since creation produced a catastrophic implosion within the divine,

And a failure, it devolves upon the mystic

to rescue the lost divine sparks, that

have been surrounded by the forces of satanic evil (husks/kelipot)

And return them through the power of ritual practice

and meditational yichudim.

This “sweetens” the gevurot.

The world of creation is a dark gnostic place where evil rules

And represents the explosion of gevurot out of the divine godhead

In this world of divine refuse,

The human soul has no chance,

Only the Zaddik might overcome the powers of evil and banality

Through his life of piety, abstinence and self-abnegation for human desire.

He alone is able to sweeten the harsh judgments (gevurot) through his

Mesiras nefesh, his martyrdom.

In my body I only experience Midat Hadin

The slow decline is irreversible

The diabetes progresses despite medicine

The shoulder and hips crackle and creek from wear and tear,

And the memory loss, well let us leave it at that!

This is nature, the cycle of birth decline and death

There is no escape, [2]

הולא הזחא ירשבמו claims Job

This is Mishpat, de natura, din period.

And in this setting zaddok hadin is appropriate.

Only in our mythic narratives and texts of faith

Have we come to see the divine

Working in history,

And project images of grace in His miracles.

And sense of chesed at times in nature, music and lovemaking

Those moments when the sublime is felt

And being alive is tasted on the palate like a good wine

[1] BABYLONIAN TALMUD, Ketubot 104a (Rabbi I. Epstein ed., The Soncino Press 1935)

[2] It is known that this world is like a cloak for the elevated world. Just as clothing allow us to get an idea of the shape of the person wearing the clothing without revealing his true essence, so too God can be understood, though not truly, through examining the physical world. It is said of man that he is created in the image of God…which means to say that through contemplating man’s physical body, a person can come to know God.