Parshat Ha’azinu
In the song of HaAzinu it states: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance; when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel” (Deuteronomy 32:8). Yet, the seventy archetypal nations appear chronologically before the seventy souls of Jacob/Israel! From this we understand that the archetypal model of the seventy souls of Jacob in a spiritual sense preceded the seventy nations. The archetypal nations are seventy because the souls of Jacob would be seventy.
On the first letter of the first word of the Torah, bereishit, “in the beginning,” Rashi explains that the letter beit, means not “in the beginning” but “for the sake of the Torah that is called ‘beginning’ and for the sake of Israel which is called ‘beginning’ – for that reason God created the world.
It is further taught in the Midrash: When the thought first arose in the “mind” of God to create the world, the thought of Israel arose first (Breishit Rabbah 1:4; Tikunei Zohar 6). Just as God looked into the Torah and created the world, He first thought of Israel, the archetypal ideal man, and created the world to correspond to His initial thought and ultimate purpose. This idea is connected to the interpretation of the following verse: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, on the day that God [Hashem E-lohim] made earth and heaven” (Genesis 2:4). Traditionally the letter hei, in the word בהבראם (behebaram), “when they were created,” as it appears in this verse is written especially small in a Torah scroll. This calligraphic cue directs our attention beneath the surface of the purely semantic meaning of the word itself, to seek out its deeper significance. The Sages point out that the Hebrew word בהבראם (behebaram), “when they were created,” contains the same letters as the Hebrew word באברהם (b’Avraham), “in [or through] Avraham” (Bereishit Rabbah 12:9). The implication being that heaven and earth were created for the sake of, or through the aspect of chesed, which Avraham embodies. The name Avraham in gematria equals b’tzelem E-lohim, (248) “the image of God” in which all humans were created. Thus, we see that Avraham is the archetypal “image of God,” for and through whom God created the world.
The idea that the source of the seventy nations are the seventy souls of Jacob, coupled with the other teachings that it was for the sake of the Torah, Abraham and Israel that God created the world, is further strengthened by the very next verse in the song of Ha’azinu: “Because God’s portion is His people Jacob, the lot of His inheritance.” This verse expresses how God views the role Israel is to play in the world, that of witnesses and representatives of his ultimate will for mankind. Even deeper is the interpretation of Chassidut of this verse which reads it slightly differently: “Because a portion of God is His people.” This is seen as a proof text that the soul contains a portion of Godliness.
A parallel concept that forms one of the main teachings of Chassidut is that the soul is “an actual part of God Above” (Tanya chapter 2; based on Job 31:2). The soul in its heavenly source is a part of God, and its task in this world is to reveal that Divine source in the material world. Yet this deeper reality is not always felt or even acknowledged. Making a place for God in this world and acknowledging the Divine source of one’s own being unites God’s desire to have for Himself a “dwelling place in the lower worlds” with the human recognition that the essence of the soul is actually a part of God above (Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16).
The commentaries point out that in the verse commanding Israel to build a Tabernacle: “They will make for Me a Sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst,” it states “in their midst” and not the expected, “in its midst.” This subtle linguistic hint alludes to the teaching that the ultimate purpose of God’s “dwelling” in this world is not only to infuse all physical space (and time), but to be manifest in the mind, heart and soul of each and every person.
