Daily Dvar Mussar Rabbi Michoel Frank

Derech Hashem

Derech Hashem

Derech Hashem

Derech Hashem

Chapter 4 - 03

Derech Hashem Chapter 4 - 02

Derech Hashem Chapter 4 – 01 When we examine an individual person, and his combination of ruchniyos and gashmiyos, of guf and neshamah, of spiritual and physical, we see an interesting thing. A person begins life mostly guf, almost completely a physical being. His mind is hardly developed, and certainly doesn’t determine his actions. His guf calls the shots totally for a while. As he grows older, his mind develops and becomes stronger and more complex, each person according to their growth, but his physical self still rules for the most part and sways most of his choices. But if a person starts to learn wisdom, meaning the Torah, and begins incorporating his learning into action and deeds and character traits, then he can begin to overpower his physical self and he can stop giving free reign to his every desire. He can become a spiritual, thinking person.  But the fact is, that at its core, we are physical people, and our physical self is inordinately powerful. The guf is dark, unenlightened, of a nature

Derech Hashem Chapter 3 – 05 The neshamah as we explained, needs time to recuperate and grow and become elevated. It needs to recognize its own full potential to shine and connect with Hashem and reach perfection. This is one purpose that the Olam Haneshamos serves. Through becoming stronger and greater, it will be able to fully recognize its purpose upon the advent of techiyas hameisim. The neshamah even now, even in its reduced state on this world, even being connected to a physical body, is still tremendous and bright. It would naturally elevate man to such a great and elevated level, that we wouldn’t be people anymore – we would be spiritual beings. The only thing that prevents this from happening is Hashem, who decreed that the neshamah should be held back and not allowed to fully affect its host the physical body. It can only affect the guf, exactly as much as Hashem allows it to. Through doing mitzvos and maasim tovim, the neshamah brightens and elevates a man, to the level which Hashem decreed it coul

Derech Hashem Chapter 3 – 04 These are the famous words of the Mesilas Yesharim as well, in his introduction: וכפי השיעור אשר כבש את יצרו ותאוותיו ונתרחק מן המרחיקים אותו מן הטוב ונשתדל לדבק בו כן ישיגהו וישמח בו According to the amount that he controlled his yetzer and his desires, and distanced himself from the things which distance him from the good (Hashem,) and he tried to connect to what is good, to that measure will he be granted the ultimate good and enjoy it! Being that Hashem decreed that the physical self and the neshamah need to separate and part ways for a while, so that the guf can be destroyed and eventually rebuilt in the world of techiyas hameisim, there is a time-lapse where the neshamah and guf are separate. During this time each one has their place. The guf’s place is in the earth, so that is can decompose and rebuild, as Hashem decreed, כי עפר אתה ואל עפר תשוב. The neshamah has a place in the ‘olam haneshamos,’ the world of the neshamos, (which we colloquially call Gan Eden,) during which

Derech Hashem Chapter 3 – 03 Once Adam Harishon committed the ‘chait’ of the Eitz Hadaas, his intrinsic nature changed. The world was created with imperfections, and Adam Harishon’s job always was to complete the world, and all things were equal so that he could benefit from his own work. But now those imperfections increased considerably, and not only did Adam Harishon become much less perfect, the whole world was affected. The job of perfection both on himself and on the world, became much more difficult.  Initially, it was much simpler for him to avoid evil and the imperfections in the world, and to connect to what was good, and through that achieve perfection. The reason was because he wasn’t the cause of the imperfection – he hadn’t ruined the world. It was just what Hashem had naturally imbued the world that needed perfection, and it wasn’t difficult. As soon as he would avoid those pitfalls, he would achieve perfection. But now through his own actions he distanced the world from Hashem, created a

Derech Hashem Chapter 3 – 02 As we have explained, Hashem created two worlds, two eras, for the struggle that mankind has to fight through. This world is where the struggle takes place, and the world-to-come is where we receive the reward, the final connection to Hashem, and the struggle ends. Therefore, each world was created with rules that make sense for that world. This world is designed so that the struggle is balanced and fair. ‘Chomer’ the physical part of us is given full ability to achieve what it would want, and has the potential to overcome the ‘Sechel’, the spiritual part of us. All the different parts of this world will support ‘Chomer’ in it’s struggle to dominate the person. ‘Sechel’, the intelligent, thinking, and spiritual part of us, is given all that it needs to dominate over the physical, and the world can equally be utilized towards that goal. But once a person moves over into the next world, there the playing field is no longer level, and the sides aren’t equal, because the point of the

   Derech Hashem Chapter 3 – 01 As we have explained, the human is the single creation which was created uniquely to be able to connect with Hashem. He is positioned between the options of choosing perfection or choosing imperfection, and was granted the ability to become perfect.  However, it was imperative that this choice be truly a choice, bechirah, and his own free will. If there would be no choice and we would be forced to do good and chase after perfection, then we would not become the masters of perfection, we wouldn’t own it, it would be something imposed upon us by the one who had achieved perfection, and whatever we did would merely reflect his perfection but have nothing to do with us.  In modern day language, we would be robots, whose programming forces them to follow the commands of their designers, but they have no free will or choice. Whatever the robot does is merely the creator of the robot doing through their invention. It’s not attributed to the robot at all. Likewise,

Derech Hashem Chapter 2 – 03 Hashem created a whole world, with an unfathomable amount of varied and unique creations. There are myriads of living creatures, millions of insects, millions of plants. There are countless kinds of rocks, earth, sand, minerals and other lifeless parts of the world. All these are in the world for the purpose of reaching shelaimus – to achieve perfection! That was the purpose of creation, and everything was created to reach that goal. How does a rock achieve perfection? What does an insect do to become close to Hashem? There is only one creation in the world which contains within it the natural ability to either become close to Hashem or to distance itself from Hashem. This creation is the human being. Every person was created with intellect and a soul, the ability to recognize and appreciate Hashem and become close to Him. Every person also contains a multitude of character traits which drag them down, and is clothed with a physical form which pulls them away from spirituality and

Derech Hashem Chapter 2 – 02 Hashem designed this world with both chesronos and shelaimus, perfection and failings. The way Hashem designed it is, that any aspect of perfection that can be found in this world has its root in connecting to Hashem. Every aspect of failing in this world, of chisaron, is equivalent to it’s measure of being disconnected from Hashem, hester panim. Everything we see in the world as wonderous and perfect and amazing, both in a physical sense and a spiritual sense, is a reflection, or better, a branch of the totality of perfection of Hashem. Think of it this way. In terms of a man-made structure, if we see a beautiful building, with awesome architecture, and are amazed by it, overcome with awe, it connects us to the building. The building has made an imprint upon us. In truth, the building isn’t a thing for itself, but it is an expression of the designer and the builders of the structure. Their ideas, their inspiration, their imagination and vision, are all incorporated into the beaut

We now begin the second chapter, which is titled, ‘Tachlis Habriah,’ the point of creation.  The point of creation was so that Hashem could share His goodness with the world. It’s important to understand, that typically, the concept of ‘shelaimus’, perfection, is used in a relative manner. We deem something to be perfect and complete in relation to something which is incomplete. This item has been perfected further than another item, so we call it perfect. In truth, it isn’t the end of the line in perfection, and it can be perfected further. If we were to use modern technology as an example, one could say, that in 1985, the DOS operating system, or whatever other operating system was in use, was perfected to the best possible level. However, that year, Windows was introduced, and DOS quickly became obsolete. It was perfect when compared to what preceded it, but it in no way defined perfection. However, when talking about Hashem, His perfection and completeness is total. It is the ultimate perfection, and