Tefillah - 045 Yearning For A Pure World

Introduction

In the end of the second blessing of Shemoneh Esrei, we say ונאמן אתה להחיות מתים– “And You are trustworthy to revive the dead.” Throughout this blessing, we mention five times how Hashem revives the dead.

The Sages say that the Torah already alludes in a few places that there will be a resurrection of the dead in the future, and that if someone doesn’t believe that there is a source in the Torah for it, he is a heretic. This is true even if he firmly believes in the concept of the resurrection! If he fully believes in the future resurrection, but he doesn’t believe that there is a source in the Torah for it, he is a heretic [and he doesn’t merit to get revived in the future].

Why is this so? Why is it so necessary for a person to believe that the resurrection of the dead has a source in the Torah? We are not talking about a person who doesn’t believe in the concept of resurrection. We are talking about a person who does believe, just, he denies that the Torah alludes to it. Why is such a person considered a non-believer in the future resurrection?

It must be that a person who doesn’t believe that there is a source in the Torah for the resurrection is missing the main part of the belief. Let us try to understand why.

A Damaged World

When Adam sinned by eating from the Forbidden Tree, the Sages tell us that the entire world was damaged. Not only did Adam and Chavah damage their spiritual level, but the entire world was never the same again. The world we see today is not the same world that existed before the sin; it is a lower form of existence. Mankind was cursed with death as a result of the sin. In the future, when there will be a resurrection of the dead, the world will achieve its rectification, and the sin of Adam will be fixed. The future resurrection will not just be that the dead become revived back to life; it will be a rectification of the entire world, which is currently damaged from Adam’s sin, and it will restore the world back to its original, pure form.

When Adam sinned, the entire Creation was ruined. However, there was one thing that remained pure. The Nefesh HaChaim writes that the Torah remained unaffected by the sin, because Torah can never become impure. “The Torah of Hashem is perfect, it settles the soul.”

We did not yet merit the coming of Moshiach and the future resurrection of the dead. All we have is our belief in it. But in actuality, it has not yet happened. How are we able to believe in it? From where do we derive the strength to believe in the resurrection?

Our soul has a yearning to live in a world of complete good, in which there is no sin; a world of the future resurrection, in which “all death will be swallowed up forever.” In the world we live in, we are sullied with sin. The sins increase all the time. But we must awaken our soul’s deep yearning to live in a world in which there is no sin, which was the pure state that existed before Adam ate from the Forbidden Tree. Our soul yearns to live in a pure kind of world. “My soul thirsts for You.”

Living In A Pure World: Connecting To Our Torah Learning

How do we cure our soul’s thirst? There is only one thing that can cure it, because there is one thing we still have left that remained pure and unaffected by the sin: the Torah. This is the meaning of what we say in Selichos, “We have nothing remaining except for this Torah.” If someone does not feel his soul’s thirst to live in a pure kind of world, then he is unaware of it, and thus he won’t seek to fill it. Even when he learns Torah, his Torah learning will not be able to satisfy his soul, because he does not seek to live in a world in which there is no sin.

We must believe that there will be a future resurrection of the dead, but that is only one side of the coin. On the other side of the coin, we also have to access it somewhat even now, before the actual time of the resurrection has come. How can we have access somehow to the resurrection of the dead? It is by learning the Torah and connecting to it in a deep way.

If a person wants to know if he’s really connected with the concept of the resurrection, he should make the following reflection: he should ask himself if he has this yearning to live in a pure world in which there is no sin. And after that, he needs to ask himself if he is indeed filling that thirst – if he feels that his yearning for purity has been satisfied through learning Torah.

Connecting To The Redemption

The time of the redemption has not yet come; we do not yet have Moshiach, the Beis HaMikdash, and the resurrection of the dead. But although we haven’t yet merited the revealed redemption, we can still have a degree of redemption in our own souls – as it is written, “My soul is close to her redemption.” Before we merit the general redemption that will come to the masses, we need to first experience our own inner redemption. The light of the redemption can be experienced by anyone who truly yearns for the redemption, as the Ramchal writes, especially now that we are nearing the redemption, and thus its light is shining and more readily accessed.

Of course, even if we experience an inner redemption in our soul when we yearn for redemption, this is not like the complete redemption that will come to the masses. But we still need to have a connection with redemption even now, before the actual redemption has come. We need to live the deep part of our soul, which yearns to connect to a pure world in which there is no sin.

These are not your average words which you come across. This is a description of a connection that we should live with – to be connected, in our souls, to a pure world. It is to dwell in an inner world that is nothing like the world we see and recognize. If someone becomes used to living in this deep place in his soul, he is living the future resurrection already.

The Sage Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair lists the revival of the dead as the highest rung in the ladder of spiritual perfection. This shows us that the revival of the dead is not just that the dead will be brought back to life. The revival of the dead is really an understanding, in which a person connects himself to the world of the future revival, in which there will be no sin.

The Connection Between Resurrection and Torah

Now we can understand why someone who doesn’t believe that resurrection of the dead has a source in Torah forfeits his share in the Next World. It is because such a person is not connected with the concept of resurrection – he doesn’t yearn to live in a pure world.

Thus, to believe in the future resurrection is not just because the Torah requires us to believe in it. It is to connect ourselves to that perception of the future, in which our Torah learning will be completely pure, because we will dwell in a pure world. That is the depth of why one needs to believe that the resurrection has a source in the Torah.

The Month of Nissan: A Time of Renewal

The month of Nissan, which we are in now, is known in the sefarim hakedoshim as the month of renewal. It is the time in which Hashem renews Creation. It is a time to begin again anew.

The root of Creation was the Torah, for Hashem looked into the Torah to create the world. Thus, learning the Torah is where we can derive the power to begin, again - anew.

The time of renewal is in the month of Nissan; and in our soul, we renew ourselves by returning to a new beginning – to return to our beginning, our pure state in which there was no sin. We need to thus reveal our soul’s yearning to live in a pure world.

We need to dig deep into ourselves and remove all the dirt that’s covering over our soul, and to identify with a pure world deep inside ourselves in which where there is no sin. We can then begin to feel, with utter clarity, that we are like strangers on this earth, that this earth is not our real place.

The whole reality we live in is right now a reality of sin, a ruined state of Creation. As long as a person thinks that this world is the real place he lives in, he can live in all kinds of places in the world. But when a person realizes that he wishes instead to live in a pure world that is a much better place than this one, he sees how much this world contradicts the reality that his soul knows about. (On a deeper note, he will be able to sense that even Gan Eden can contradict the soul’s idea about reality, because even Gan Eden is not yet the pure kind of world that our soul wants….!)

In Conclusion

In these weeks of the month of Nissan, it is time of renewal. The week of Parshas HaChodesh in particular is a time of renewal, but we must understand that these weeks are not about a mere superficial reading of the four parshiyos; we need to actually reveal the power of renewal that is inherent in these weeks.

May Hashem merit us to reveal this place in our soul – our soul’s yearning to live in a world in which there is no sin.