The Land I Will Show You, sec. 7, chapter 7
On the Good
(For the previous chapter of “The Land I Will Show You,” click here. For the ToC, click here.)
For Rabbi Gil Student’s recent review in Jewish Action, click here.
7: On the Good
The first commandment to the Patriarch of the nation was the mandate of correct sight – to see the good in the eyes of Hashem. Let us delve deeper to understand what this sight is and how it is essentially the root of the whole Torah and every good deed.
The sense of good that a person has is a very powerful motivator, in fact, the most powerful in the human soul. It is the most fundamental sense, the measure by which we align ourselves to everything around us. The good is the primary object of desire. The sense that something is “good” motivates a person to act accordingly naturally, without struggle and without doubting, “Why it is good?” and “For what it is good?” and “Why do it?”. This sense is a person’s private guide directing him to follow its ways; everything it desires is done automatically, with ease. If the sense is healthy and whole and corresponds to reality – that is, if the person calls good “good” and evil “evil” – his deeds will be good, and to the extent that the sense is not healthy, his deeds will be evil.
Just as a person has a sense of good, so, metaphorically speaking, does Hashem, as it is written: “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:4). His sense too, so to speak, motivates Him to act, to create a good world. Meaning: Goodness is the most fundamental metric that exists. The true good, absolute and eternal, is the most fundamental reason for the existence of the world and all it contains; it is the root of reality and its true essence.
What happens when a person replaces his sense of good with that of God? Let’s explain what this means. Instead of determining things as good and evil based on his natural human inclinations, such a person makes himself aware of the existence of a divine sense of good. He constantly contemplates that there exists such a higher consciousness at the root of everything, including his personal sense. The notion will fill him with awe and love, with strong longing and desire to know that good. By imagining God like a human and His thinking like human thinking (in order to approach Him and understand Him, as the prophets do who compare created form to its creator1), and deeply contemplating His goodness based on this analogy, gradually he will internalize God’s sense of good and cultivate the divine feeling for himself. In the next stage, he finds himself desiring to do the best deeds, the great deeds that are good in the eyes of Hashem, those that are good in an eternal and true sense. All this automatically, as the good deed is executed with ease.
This practice of seeing things through the eyes of God can always be practiced. You see something; maybe it interests you and is good in your eyes, maybe not. But it is possible and preferable to forget about that entirely. Instead of this automatic thought, you can train yourself to think: This particular thing is good in the eyes of God. He created it as an expression of good and saw it along with all that He had made, “and behold it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Why is it good and for what is it good? These are great and noble questions, but there is no need to answer them in order to cultivate divine thinking. It is enough to observe the reality of the thing and its natural laws and to know that all these are good in the eyes of Hashem. Just as it is good in the eyes of a person to live, enjoy, be peaceful and happy, so it is good in the eyes of Hashem that there be light and heavens and earth and sea and dry land and kinds of grass and luminaries and animals and man. Just like the person’s limited, personal sense of good, so is the divine sense of good, rich and deep and motivating action; all existence is nothing but its revelation. If you always practice thinking of things as good according to the divine thinking, in God’s knowledge, until it becomes natural for you, you will succeed in cultivating the vision of God and begin to fulfill the mitzvah of “I will show you.” Then you will desire only one thing: To live in accordance with the holy feeling, to maintain the good and promote it in the land, and then you will begin to fulfill the mitzvah of “the land I will show you.”
Everything God created is good. But there is also evil, as it is written: “And Hashem saw that the evil of man was great in the earth” (Genesis 6:5). This is because man approaches things from a different viewpoint than that of God. Naturally, man assesses things based on how they align with his interests and unique needs, and from this perspective, indeed, not everything is good. A person thinking this way will conclude that there is also evil and become confused. He does not delve into the depths of the teaching of the divine good and instead gets stuck in the human good, which is but a partial, limited, and relative good, good for one and bad for another. Both God and human saw the tree as good: God, as is written: “Let the earth sprout vegetation… and trees… and God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:11–12); and the woman, as is written “and the woman saw that the tree was good” (Genesis 3:6). But she saw it as “good for food”, that is, from the perspective of her personal needs, and from this perspective not everything is good, since there are things in the world that conflict with the personal needs of the human being. Thus, a consciousness of evil was born, and after that, evil acts stemming from this consciousness.
In summary: God created only good, while man invented evil by his way of looking. This is the depressing arch of the parashah of Bereshis, from “and it was good” and “behold it was very good” to “the evil of man was great”, and there is no escape from it except by learning the method of seeing as God sees.
Now it is clear why the mitzvah of proper vision is the heart of the divine call to humanity. It is not just a condition for the Torah, or an introduction to the Torah – it is everything. This is what is required of man, that is, it is his purpose and perfection: to be aligned with the divine knowledge.
A person who cultivates this quality will not be able to tolerate evil, that is, a thought or deed that does not match the natural law, the action of God. When he sees humans corrupting the divine perception of good, he will abhor them and be moved to correct their evil, to restore things to the divine truth, the root good, and thus to elevate and sanctify the land, domain of man.
The whole creation is good, according to the intention of its Maker; man is very good,2 and in his hands lies the power to choose to promote the divine intention or, God forbid, to distort it; the Holy Land, which protects and preserves the divine good, is, in the words of Joshua and Caleb, “very, very good” (Numbers 14:7).
The Hebrew book is available for purchase from me directly, in Judaica stores, and online, here:
See Genesis Rabbah 27:1.