Two Men Enter the Vacated Space
Akiva Weisinger
Part I
One summer night in Podolia, 1806
The boy is dead, and, with him, the hopes and dreams of his father.
He believed that it was time, The Time, and that this boy, his boy, would be The One, and that he would bring this long exile, its darkness, its absence of God, to an end. He had truly believed with his whole heart, with the self assurance God grants only to his truest believers, to the insane, and to those who walk the fine line between the two. In a burst of energy and passion he barely remembered, he had written down his doctrine, the black ink taking the form of letters and words on the blank paper, until they had filled a book that could be printed, replicated, distributed in bound form to all those who yearned for the end of days, who would recognize him as its harbinger, the Tzaddik upon whom the world is founded. He gave copies of this book, the articulation of his very being, the expression of the depths of the soul he knew was destined for greatness, to his followers, and sent them out to spread his teachings, anxiously waiting to hear of the great awakening that would result.
But no one awoke. His followers, imbued with the true zeal of the converted, expected their teachings to be greeted with rapture, with joy, with all the feelings they themselves felt at the feet of their master. Hostility – in the form of anger at being confronted with the truth – they could have lived with, and they did find their fair share. But mostly they were met with apathy. The books were politely taken, maybe glanced at a bit, maybe greeted with an appreciative nod, only to be left on tables, on benches, on shelves, never to be read, their secrets safe within their bindings. The people would remain asleep.
They returned to their master, ashamed of their lack of success, perhaps secretly fearing that what they saw in him, a man who could peer into their souls and set them aflame, was a mirage, an illusion, the product of a trickster and charlatan everyone but them saw through. Meanwhile, he agonized. Was it not yet time? Impossible. Bold action had to be taken. More had to be done. He delved deeper and tried to put down to paper the deepest mysteries, to print and distribute the secrets that could bring the redemption, that would wake up the snake so it would bite and produce the birth pangs of the messiah, so that the redemption could finally burst through the lower waters like the Jewish people being birthed from the canal that was opened through the Red Sea.
It had failed, and a price must be paid, must always be paid when you enter realms we do not go, when you play with snakes and their fangs, when you bring fires where they do not belong and had not been commanded, when you attempt to force the end.
There are places we do not go.
And now his son is dead.
And Rebbe Nachman of Breslov has nothing to say.
Part II
The Vacated Space
“The date of the sermon [LM 64] is not indicated in the sources, but [Arthur] Green is also of the opinion (Tormented Master, p. 305), that it is probably connected with the years 5565–66 (1805–6). I lean toward dating it to the end of 5566, after the death of his son, which led to the collapse of his messianic hopes and the awakening of many doubts, both his own doubts in himself and the doubts of his Hasidim in him. It cannot be earlier than that….”
–Haviva Pedaya, “Crisis and Repair, Trauma and Recovery,” in Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections, eds. Lawrence Fine, Eitan Fishbane and Or N. Rose (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011).
One of the most popular and transformative works of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s Torah, Likutei Moharan 64, begins, after grounding itself in the biblical text, with a relatively conventional retelling of the Lurianic creation mythos:
God created the world as a consequence of His compassion. For He wanted to reveal His compassion, and if Creation had not taken place, to whom would He have shown His compassion? He therefore created the entire creation, from the inception of Atzilut all the way down to the center point of the corporeal world, in order to display His compassion.
Yet when God wanted to create the world, there was no place in which to create it, since there was nothing but Ein Sof (the Infinite One). He therefore contracted the Light to the sides, and through this contraction the Vacated Space was made. Then, within this Vacated Space, all time and space came into existence—this being the creation of the world {as explained at the beginning of Etz Chaim} (translation by Moshe Mykoff, Sefaria).
Because God is infinite, if God continued to exist in infinite form, then there would be no space for the existence of a universe to which God could be compassionate, and so God needed to withdraw Godself to create an empty space for the universe to exist. So far, so Lurianic. But Rebbe Nachman takes a turn.
This Vacated Space was necessary for the creation of the world, since without the Vacated Space there would have been no place in which to create the world, as explained above. Yet, understanding and comprehending this contraction [that resulted in the formation] of the Vacated Space will be possible only in the Future, since it is necessary to say about it two contradictory things: existence and nonexistence.
The Vacated Space is the result of the contraction; that [God], so to speak, withdrew His Godliness from that place. Thus there is, so to speak, no Godliness there. Were it not so, it would not be vacated. There would then be nothing but Ein Sof, with no place whatsoever for the world’s creation. However the actual truth is that, even so, there is surely Godliness there as well. For there is surely nothing without His life-force. This is why it is not at all possible to comprehend the concept of the Vacated Space until the Future.
According to Rebbe Nachman, the Vacated Space was necessary to create the world, and God retracted Godself in order to create it. Therefore, it stands to reason, God is not present in that Vacated Space; otherwise, there’s no point to the contraction. But at the same time, it cannot be that there is a space without God. So we must say two contradictory things about it: That God exists there, and that God doesn’t exist there. Our understanding of the tzimtzum process as articulated by Luria and his followers would indicate that there is no God in that Vacated Space. But there is, because it cannot be that anything exists without God willing its existence. And the problem is unsolvable, says Rebbe Nachman, at least until The Future, because it is impossible to comprehend the simultaneous truth of existence and non-existence.
This means that, according to Rebbe Nachman, we are sometimes presented with theological problems that are fundamentally unsolvable, as he makes clear in the continuation of the piece. He posits that there are two forms of heresy. The first is normal heresy, believers being led astray by secular wisdom, trapped within the broken shards that hold the sparks of the divine light scattered by the breaking of the vessels that could not contain the light: the heresy that raises questions that have answers that can be articulated in normal language and with regular logic. These questions are relatively simple to defend oneself against. Not so for questions that come from the second type of heresy, which derives from The Vacated Space.
In truth, it is impossible to answer these questions. This is because the questions [that arise] from this heresy stem from the Vacated Space in which, so to speak, there is no Godliness. There is therefore absolutely no way that one can find an answer for these questions that come from there, from the aspect of the Vacated Space—i.e., [no way to] find God there. For if God were found there as well, it would then not be vacated, and there would have been nothing but Ein Sof, as explained above.
The second type of heresy is impossible to answer in common language using regular logic, because its questions come from the Vacated Space. In order to create the world, God had to create a Vacated Space in order to allow something other than God to exist, which means that the Vacated Space is a barrier of sorts, between us as created things and God as the Infinite source of Being. Without that Vacated Space, we do not exist. Questions that derive from the Vacated Space accordingly cannot be answered without passing a barrier that, if breached, dissolves our existence in the overwhelming light of the infinite. A Vacated Space has to exist for us to exist, and therefore we cannot go to the Vacated Space without annihilation.
The Vacated Space is a Place We Do Not Go.
Part III
Nadav and Avihu Enter The Place We Do Not Go
Undersea divers know of a dangerous and mysterious phenomenon felicitously described by Jacques-Yves Cousteau as l’ivresse des grandes profondeurs, or “the rapture of the deep.” This state, also called nitrogen narcosis, often manifests as a sensation of overwhelming euphoria akin to intoxication. Faced with intense pressure, likely compounded by a chemical imbalance from breathing ordinary air so far beneath the ocean’s surface, the body and mind begin to flex curiously. In this rapture, the diver’s judgment and vision become hazardously impaired. This subaquatic bliss is all the more dangerous because it may lead to an inscrutable longing to go deeper, overruling the panicked instinct to surface. Cousteau noted after a 1951 dive that “I could see, stretching temptingly below me, as far as my eyes could reach, what seemed the infinite sweetness and quiet of a blackness that would yield up the secrets of the universe if only I were to go a bit deeper.”
On that occasion Cousteau’s instinct for self-preservation prevailed, but he later acknowledged that this brush with limits of reason and mortality transformed him forever. And the combination of physical pressure, the feeling of rapture, and the sweeping undersea expanse have tempted other divers into continuing their journey even as prudence calls them to return.
–Ariel Evan Mayse, “‘Like a Moth to the Flame’: The Death of Nadav and Avihu in Hasidic Literature” in Be-Ron Yahad, eds. Ariel Evan Mayse and Avraham Yitzhak Green (Newton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2019).
Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, took each one his pan,
placed fire in them, put smoking-incense on it,
and brought near, before the presence of YHWH, outside fire,
such as he had not commanded them.
And fire went out from the presence of YHWH
and consumed them, so that they died, before the presence of YHWH.
R. Hayyim ben Atar, Vayikra 16:1, s.v. “aharei mot” (trans. Ariel Evan Mayse)
Their death was the result of having come too close to God.
WithgreatlovetheyapproachedthesupernalLightandindoingsothey
expired;
thisisthe
“K
I
S
s” with which the righteous d i e.
It is the same for all righteous individuals,
though while the kiss comes to some of them,
others go forth and
pursue it . . .
even the feeling of their death drawing near cannot hold them back from the
dearest and most pleasant
devequt
beloved intimacy and
sweetest affection,
until their very souls
expire.
The nature of this [experience] cannot be grasped.
It lies beyond intellectual comprehension
and cannot be expressed in words
either spoken or
wRiTtEn.
It cannot even be i m a g i n e d.
In order to understand it even to some small degree,
one must remove the EVIL Inclination that is holding him back.
[Growing spiritual awareness]
will allow one to see the signs of the accursed Inclination,
and he can then nullify it and prevent it
from getting in his way. . .
as this ability i n c r e a s e s
within him,
his soul will
d̴̢̝͚̠̟̩̥̟͂̅͊̈́̽̈́́̈̋̊͆̇͘͠e̸̡̨̗̖͇̫̟̙̝̩̪̝̖̹̽́́͘̕͜s̴͉̟̳͖͖̾͜͠p̸̰͍͓̺͇̖͔̞͆̒̃͒̃̓̃͠i̸̱̘̱̗̪̺̫̪̺̙̞̟͔͆̍s̸̥͍̭̥̔̎̒̏̀͆͝e̵͓̗͈̦͂͊̽͛͊̓͂̍̚͝ ̴̟̹̻̓̀́̀̋̄̕͘̕h̴̰̙̤͕͇͑̅ï̶͇̼̮̬̟̲̤̜̬͙͓̦̭͛̀̆̇͗̈́̍͒́͝͝s̴̞̭̙͊̔̍̎̓̓̋̀́̏̾̓͝͠ ̶̢͍̠͙̠̿͛̓̋͆̉͌̽̿̏̎̒͜͝͝f̷̨̘̥̠̖̱̹͙̱̼͕̓̓͗̔̈́̅̀̄ĺ̵̢̨̻͍̬͎͉̣̖͙͂͛͒ͅe̵̩͇͈̖̥̅͋̔͂̀̇̔̀̄̓͛̕̚s̸͖̫͎̬̭̮͔͉͈̓̑͐̐͑͛͋̽̾͘ͅͅh̶̙̱̪̥̥́̓̈́͐̽͂̎̏̈́̂̆͒
……………………………and will…………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………depart………………………………………………….
back to the house of its Father.
ואודיע למתבונן בפנימיות השכלת המושכל, שהשכלת ההשכל תשכיל ההשכלות, ובהשכל בהשכלתו, ישכיל, שמושכל מושלל ההשכל, וכשישכיל בהערת עצמו, ולא עצמו ישכיל, שהמושכל מושכל ממושכל, בלתי מושכל מהשכל, והשכילו למשכילים ביחוד, השכלתו__ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(Ed note: Rest Untranslatable)
וַיָּמֻ֖תוּ לִפְנֵ֥י הֹ’
And they died, before the presence of YHWH
There Are Places We Do Not Go.
Part IV
Silence
Rebbe Nachman continues:
But know! if there is a great tzaddik who is the aspect of Moshe, he must especially delve into these words of heresy. And even though it is impossible to answer them, as explained above, nevertheless, by his delving into there, he elevates from there a number of souls that fell and became submerged within this heresy. This is because these conundrums and questions [raised] by the heresy that stems from the Vacated Space are the aspect of silence, since there is no intellect or letters to answer them, as explained above.
The creation came into existence by means of the spoken word, as it is written (Psalms 33:6) “By the word of God the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth their entire host [was created].” The spoken word contains wisdom, because the whole of speech is but the five articulators of the mouth. Through them all the things of the entire creation came into existence, as it is written (ibid. 104:24), “You created them all with wisdom.”
The spoken word is the demarcation of all things. [God] circumscribed His wisdom in the letters, such that certain letters demarcate one thing, while other letters demarcate something else. But there in the Vacated Space—which surrounds all the worlds, and which is, so to speak, vacated of everything, as explained above—there is no spoken word at all, and not even intellect without letters, as explained above. Thus the conundrums that stem from there are in the aspect of silence.
Silence, to Rebbe Nachman, is the aspect of the Vacated Space. Because language is the way we understand and conceptualize the world, and the way in which God created the world, the Vacated Space that had to be emptied of God in order for creation to take place is also a space inaccessible to language, and it is that void that divides us as created beings from the Creator, finite entities bounded within letters and words separate from unbounded and undifferentiated infinity. The Vacated Space, though, is prior to language and prior to creation. The heresy that comes from the Vacated Space arises from questions which have no answer that can be articulated in normal language, with regular discursive logic, with arguments from first principles and theological justifications. The only answer to these questions is silence, because the Vacated Space is a space to which language has no access.
Rebbe Nachman takes this framework and applies it to one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in rabbinic literature (Menahot 29b), where Moshe, having been shown the future brilliance of R. Akiva, brilliance that in some ways surpasses his own, is then shown R. Akiva’s cruel death at the hands of the Romans, his skin raked from his flesh with iron combs. Overwhelmed by the injustice of what he sees, Moshe blurts out, “Master of the Universe, this is Torah and this is its reward?,” to which God responds, “Be silent; this intention is what arose before Me.” Rebbe Nachman explains:
This is analogous to what we find of Moshe: When he asked regarding the death of Rabbi Akiva, “Is this the Torah, and is this its reward?” they answered him, “Be silent! Thus has it arisen in thought” (Menachot 29b). That is, you must be silent and not ask for an answer and solution for this question. This is because “thus has it arisen in thought,” which is more exalted than speech. Therefore, you must keep silent regarding this question, because it is in the aspect of “arisen in thought,” where there is no speech to answer it. The same is true of the questions and conundrums that stem from the Vacated Space, where there is no spoken word or intellect, as explained above. They are thus in the aspect of silence; one must simply believe and keep silent there.”
In this reading of Rebbe Nachman’s, God is not telling Moshe merely to bite his tongue in acceptance. He is telling him that whatever reasons he has for doing this to R. Akiva, they cannot be expressed in normal language, existing instead in the inexpressible and inarticulable “thoughts” of God. It is from that place prior to and beyond language, the thoughts of God that have yet to be formed into words, that the suffering of the righteous and the prospering of the wicked stem, i.e., the questions that prompt the second heresy, and thus the only way that Moshe can hope to understand it is through silence, the rule of the Vacated Space, the void between us and God that must exist for us to exist, that must be void of Godliness but simultaneously cannot be empty of God. There is no language available to us to solve this contradiction or to explain this suffering, because it is a space inaccessible to normal language, in which discursive logic fails, that can only be understood, or perhaps withstood, through faith, by believing in impossibility, in things that transcend ordinary language, in a God in Whom contradictions are resolved in ways inaccessible to us.
There are Places We Do Not Go, of which nothing can be said except Silence.
Part V
The Silence of Aharon
Moshe said to Aharon:
It is what YHWH spoke [about], saying:
Through those permitted-near to me, I will be-proven-holy,
before all the people, I will be-accorded-honor!
Aharon was silent.
We can understand why Aharon is silent. A tragedy has befallen him, his two sons killed at the height of the ceremony inaugurating the Mishkan, at the very moment Aharon should be at the peak of joy. His two sons Went Where We Do Not Go, they attempted to blur the boundaries between the divine and human, they fortified themselves with wine, blurrer of boundaries, and put incense in their firepans and burst into the Vacated Space attempting to finish the task of creation and break the final boundary between God and Man, overcoming the primordial tzimtzum so that God’s infinity could be revealed in totality. But they did not respect The Place We Do Not Go, and found themselves annihilated in the infinity they meant to unleash, where language fractures and disintegrates, because it is a space inaccessible to any sort of sense-making and articulation. And because without The Vacated Space we do not exist, they died before the presence of YHWH.
Maybe Aharon knows this, maybe he doesn’t, but we can still understand his silence, the same way we can understand the silence demanded of Moshe in the face of R. Akiva’s death. In the face of tragedy, when dealing with unfathomable loss, all he has is silence. There is no way for Aharon to be reached in ordinary language, with regular discursive logic, to be told why it is that his two sons had to die, or why they had to die now. The question of the death of Nadav and Avihu comes from the Vacated Space, the second type of heresy that raises questions without answers, to which the only response is silence and faith.
So why isn’t Moshe silent? Why does he, at the height of his brother’s grief, offer a theological explanation that is shocking in its apparent banality and triteness?
Because Moshe’s entire purpose, as a prophet, as the Greatest Prophet, as the giver of the Torah, is to give words to God’s thoughts, to shape messages straight from the inaccessible mind of God into words that can be communicated to the people and to eternity. Everything we know about God, Creator of all, who exists beyond thought and beyond language, is founded upon Moshe’s revelation and Moshe’s ability to communicate that revelation to others by confining it within words. It didn’t start out this way. Once Moshe was, when he started out, hesitant and afraid, of heavy tongue and uncircumcised lips, who could only gaze in wonder at the bush that was aflame and was not consumed, who required Aharon to speak on his behalf. But things have changed. After Har Sinai, where Moshe communicated the word of God to the people, when he spoke to God face-to-face and lived, Moshe is no longer the stutterer who does not believe in his own ability to communicate and convince. He is the one who entered the cloud and the fire and did not die, who went up the mountain and came back with the ineffable word of God, made communicable in the form of words that form commands that become laws and rituals that make God’s will embodied in the human community. Moshe is capable, better than anyone who has existed or who ever will exist, to traverse the void of the Vacated Space and confine divinity to words, to make it accessible and communicable.
But there are limits even to Moshe’s ability. Some questions arise from the Vacated Space, and the response to this second heresy cannot be language, no matter how skilled its wielder, because they cannot be conveyed in any kind of language, and any attempt to put words to the silence of the Vacated Space will come across as trite and banal, because there are things language is not equipped to handle. The loss of one’s children, their hopes and dreams for the future, into the smoke of the divine fire, or in one final wracked cough from their tiny body, has no answer that can be conveyed in language. Even Moshe, perhaps feeling compelled to respond because of his role as articulator of divine language, has nothing satisfactory to offer to Aharon in the moment of his grief, because such questions come from a place that is deeper than and prior to language. Moshe masters language to the greatest extent a human being can, gazes into the face of God and emerges not only alive but coherent, and still his articulation cannot penetrate the silence of Aharon that comes from the Vacated Space, because coherence cannot be made of what is in the Vacated Space, and language, when attempted, fails to communicate to and connect with the depths of Aharon’s grief. Because there is a void that separates us from God, that was necessary to create space for our existence, and Moshe can communicate across that void, but he cannot enter it, never having known the same loss that Aharon has. Moshe binds and limits the infinite with language, but he has no access to the Vacated Space, the void that we have contact with only when we experience something so senseless and so tragic that no logic or language, even when wielded by Moshe, could conceivably justify it; only a transcendent God Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes good and evil, in Whom the contradiction of existence and non-existence is resolved, can do so. And thus all we can say of that void of Vacated Space, the source of the second heresy, is silence.
And thus Aharon is silent.
There are Places We Do Not Go.
And Aharon was silent.
Part VI
Aharon Enters The Vacated Space
And yet Aharon must enter The Place We Do Not Go.
YHWH spoke to Moshe
after the death of the two sons of Aharon,
when they came-near before the presence of YHWH and died;
YHWH said to Moshe:
Speak to Aharon your brother,
[so] that he [does] not enter, at [just] any time, the Holy-Shrine, inside the curtain, facing the Purgation-Cover that is on top of the Coffer,
that he [does] not die;
for in a cloud I make-Myself seen, over the Purgation-Cover.
It is not Moshe, who speaks to God face-to-face across the void of The Vacated Space, who can enter that place. It is Aharon, who has entered the realm of silence, who knows the limits of language and logic and sense-making, who must confront the death of his sons and go into the very space where his sons lost their lives, where their existence was annihilated by the overwhelming infinite when they came too near.
Aharon must follow the instructions of Moshe, who has gazed across the void face-to-face with divinity and grasped enough of the infinite to form it into letters and words that become sentences and commands, so that, unlike his sons, he will not die, annihilated by infinity. He will use Moshe’s laws to ground him, as weights to keep him from flying away, to keep within our world of boundedness and distinctness.
But it is Aharon who must go in, firepan in his hand, retracing the steps of his sons as they died, and he must do it alone.
Because only Aharon understands that the only thing that can be said of the Vacated Space is Silence, and that the only way he can enter and leave in peace is if he makes no attempt to understand, or describe, or articulate.
Aharon does what God commands him through Moshe.
And he says not a single word.
There are Places We Do Not Go.
And Aharon Was Silent.
And thus, Aharon Can Go
Into The Place We Do Not Go.
Part VII
Rebbe Nachman Breaks the Silence
But is silence really the best we can do? Is that what God demands of us, silence in the face of tragedy and loss, to see evil triumph in the world and for the righteous to suffer, for us to do nothing but follow the laws and perform the rituals as the world burns, as truth is trampled, as children die, as the world goes on sleepwalking its way to meaninglessness and doom?
Is silence all we have to offer Rebbe Nachman as he sits there, his hasidim looking expectantly up at him, their hopes dashed, their trust shaken, as they look at their leader, their hero, their Tzaddik, his soul broken by grief, his body failing from the early stages of the tuberculosis that will eventually take his life, praying that the man they have put their faith in is the real deal? Is mere silence going to get Rebbe Nachman out of this?
Fortunately, that is not all Rebbe Nachman has. Because there is something we have failed to account for in Rebbe Nachman’s framework. Despite the fact that Moshe is the prophet who masters language enough to communicate the will of God to other people, and that Aharon exemplifies silence when faced with the Vacated Space of tragedy and loss, and who is tasked with entering that Vacated Space to face that loss, it is somehow Moshe, Rebbe Nachman decides, that best represents the aspect of silence of the Vacated Space, the Tzaddik who can enter the source of the second heresy to save the souls mired there.
Despite everything telling him otherwise, Rebbe Nachman retains hope that something can be communicated from the Vacated Space, that an aspect of Moshe can be found there with which to express answers to the questions raised from there. Grasping for something expressive but not verbal, for something that communicates but does not describe, Rebbe Nachman rummages around in the Vacated Space until he finds what he’s looking for.
Know, too, that by means of the melody of the tzaddik who is the aspect of Moshe, he elevates from the heresy of the Vacated Space the souls that fell into there. For know! each and every wisdom in the world has its particular song and melody. This song is particular to that wisdom, so that this wisdom is derived from that song. This is the aspect of “sing an intelligent song” (Psalms 47:8), since each intellect and wisdom has a song and melody.
There is a way out of the Vacated Space for Rebbe Nachman that is not mere silence, for the Tzaddik in the aspect of Moshe must elevate the souls that fall into the heresy of the Vacated Space which raises questions with no answers. There is a way for someone to be silent like Aharon but communicate like Moshe at the same time.
Melody.
Why melody? Because The Vacated Space is a place inaccessible to language, but that doesn’t mean no communication is possible, only that we have to reach higher and deeper to communicate, to arrive at a place that is, like the Vacated Space, prior to language and to our attempts to confine the infinite to finite words and concepts that we can comprehend and use. One way to do this, as Rebbe Nachman stated previously, is faith, the decision to believe in things that cannot be comprehended through rationality and language. But faith alone is just silence, the decision to accept the boundary, that There Are Places We Do Not Go. It is not communication, it is a retreat from meaning, a relinquishing of language and sense-making in the face of The Great Other Who is infinitely beyond human comprehension.
But there is expression that is not verbal, that is not rational, that can go to places that language and logic with their boundedness and concreteness cannot go, that can describe without description, that can create meaning without making sense. And that is melody. The Vacated Space may not have language, but everything has a melody, something that it expresses without words, and the Vacated Space, as an expression of God’s infinitude and transcendence that cannot be described with language accessible to us, has the purest melody. Higher than anything else whose song is small enough to be confined to verbal expression, because only a song that relinquishes language can possibly express infinity.
It is that belief in melody as an expression of infinity, unbounded by language, that allows Rebbe Nachman to posit the existence of a Tzaddik who can save the souls of those trapped in the Vacated Space of the second heresy. There are no answers to those questions that can be worded in the typical way answers are worded to questions, because language doesn’t work in the Vacated Space. But what can be communicated, what can be the aspect of Moshe rather than just Aharon, is that which is not just language.
We may extend Rebbe Nachman’s idea beyond melody, to any type of creative expression that does not merely describe what already exists, but attempts to communicate and express itself in ways that are prior to ordinary language, that convey truth using emotional expression rather than discursive logic. In other words, Rebbe Nachman is really making an argument for the necessity of artistic expression in religious life, as a way of expressing truths that cannot be conveyed in ordinary language using regular logic, but appeal to and communicate with the emotional side of human beings. There are places plain language and regular logic cannot take us. It cannot explain to us why Nadav and Avihu die, and Moshe’s explanation in the text leaves us and Aharon cold. Sense-making and coherence cannot work for things that are inherently paradoxical and beyond language, that form the boundary between us and God, the Vacated Space where God is and isn’t. To communicate from there, to be an aspect of Moshe and not just Aharon, requires expression that is not trying to make sense in an ordinary way, that is trying to communicate the same way melody does, emotionally, symbolically, impressionistically. Melody (and visual art) are the most obvious ways to do this, as they are unbound by words at all, but even verbal expression can be used to communicate from the Vacated Space, provided that it is not trying to make sense or explain, but just trying to express, to emote, to convey experience rather than information. Poetry, the breaking of language into meaning, is the most obvious example.
But what about stories?
Stories that are set in mythic “ancient times” with kings and princesses and giants and beggars and nary a frum Jew in sight. Stories that reach higher and deeper than usual expression, aiming at a place deeper than the usual ways rabbinic thinkers have used language, that attempt to create myth and poetry rather than instruction and prose, that, perhaps, attempt to communicate from the Vacated Space in language that isn’t language, that is more than language, that attempt to turn silence into expression, to become an aspect of Moshe in the realm of Aharon.
Stories in which Rebbe Nachman is able to take his grief, his loss, his pain, the questions of the second heresy that comes from the Vacated Space, and turn them into a corpus of writing to save those who are mired in that space with no one to save them.
There are Places We Do Not Go.
But Rebbe Nachman Went There.
And He Can Show Us The Way Out.
Part VIII
A Different Summer Night in Podolia, 1806
Rebbe Nachman clears his throat, and the hasidim strain to listen.
“While on a journey, I told a story. Whoever heard it had a thought of repentance. This is the story.”
His eyes fill with tears.
He reaches into himself, deep, into the highs and the lows, into the sense of destiny and the struggle to live up to it, into depression, into suffering and persecution, into discord and disagreement, into tragedy, into loss, into illness and coughing so hard you vomit blood until you have no strength to go on and you lie in your bed as the life ebbs away from you when you’re just 38 years old, struck down in what should be your prime, a failure, the dead leader of dead hasidim, outcasts and wanderers looked down on and pelted with rocks, back further, beyond himself, into the prospering of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous, into the increasing godlessnness of the world, into the long exile without a redeemer with worse yet to come, beyond language, into the silence, into the second heresy where there are no answers, into blankness, nothingness, void, into the Vacated Space where God is not, and there Rebbe Nachman stands, unbent and unbroken, armed only with a stubborn faith that this cannot be all that there is, that there must be God in this place even when there is no God in this place, until it yields to him, until he finds God in the place that God is not, until he has quieted his mind so that he can hear its melody, the melody of a God Who exists even where He doesn’t exist, Who can be heard in silences, Who can be spoken of without words, Who can be believed in without reason, Who can be apprehended without apprehension, a melody that has been sung since ancient days, a melody that, if you get that far, you can hum along to, and maybe even put it to lyrics, giving words to silence and form to formlessness, turning the nothing to something, entering the void where language fails and silence reigns and exiting with language that isn’t language, ready to wake up a sleeping world.
He smiles.
He has the words.1
“There was once….”
1 Works I plundered to write this:
Haviva Pedaya, “Crisis and Repair, Trauma and Recovery”; Andre Neher, The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz (JPS, 1981); Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Jewish Lights, 1992); Dov Elbaum, Into the Fullness of the Void: A Spiritual Autobiography (Jewish Lights, 2013).
People who looked at early drafts who gave valuable feedback and encouragement:
Shoshanah Weisinger (and also for the painstaking coding to get this format working correctly, and the love and support), R. Levi Morrow, R. Yonah Lavery-Yisraeli, Lawrence Shenkin, R. Tali Adler, Sara Marcus, and everyone in the TorahLab, Mark Cantora, R. Yaakov Klein.
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