Timeless Torah

Holidays are unique streams of Divine energy permeating our world.
On those days, one can’t work and still be plugged into the holiday ‘energy’.
Elul: its unique energy is the 13 attributes of mercy.
Why is this month not a holiday?
Alter Rebbe: Analogy of the King in the Field.
1. You don’t have to change. Approach the king as you are.
2. You can ask for insignificant, personal things.
Elul is not a holiday as G-d’s Elul energy doesn’t disrupt our everyday lives.
How is that possible?

City: A spiritual city dweller represents a person whose life is consistent with G-d’s agenda.
Desert: A spiritual life that is a wasteland.
Field: In between.
Our hands may be dirty, our spiritual ‘garments’ dirty.
Nonetheless, He joins us as we are; where we are. This is real mercy!

Source of that mercy:
“G-d saw that the light was good.” Zohar: good to hide. (i.e., so good that it had to be hidden.)
What is the light? Where is it hidden?
Light is revelation, clarity. You see things as they are.
In darkness the objects are still there. You just don’t see them.
He saw the light of the soul (a fragment of G-d).
Not only I, the Creator have clarity, there are creations that have the same capacity. That’s good.
Why hide a good thing? To give us the opportunity to reveal it; to make life challenging, meaningful.
Hidden within us. So our vision is clouded.
Who is responsible? G-d!
That is why He won’t abandon us. That is why He has mercy.

“You shall seek out from there, Hashem your G-d.”
“From there”: from wherever you are at, from the field.
You must believe that He is your G-d.

Yisroel: ישראל
י (yud) added to verb, means its perpetual. שר (sar) = officer. אל (el, pronounced keil) = G-d.
Yisroel: ישראל We are designated as perpetual officers of G-d.
We forever harbor the presence of G-d within ourselves, by virtue of the light (soul).
Just as He is ours, we are His.

The Jewish calendar distinguishes between mundane-chol and holy-kodesh time.
On holy days, we disengage from our material involvements (field) to devote ourselves to spiritual pursuits.

Field is the prototype employed by Torah law to define the work that distinguishes between the holy and mundane days. Mishna: The categories of work are sowing, plowing, reaping, making sheaves, threshing, winnowing, picking the chaff from the grain, milling, sifting, kneading, baking... (Shabbat 73a)
Talmud: “The author of the Mishnah follows the process of bread-making.”
For eleven months, our lives alternate between the field and the city (palace), between the “process of bread-making” and the holy moments when we enter into the royal presence.

Torah links the laws of Shabbat to the laws of the Desert Sanctuary. The work of fashioning the Sanctuary is the prototype for the work of life.
Tanya: “This is the purpose of man...to make for G-d a dwelling in the physical world.”
In other words, the work forbidden on Shabbat, the work that defines the difference between the holy and mundane days - is actually holy work (the work of forming the physical world into a home for G-d).
Why then are the days on which this work is done regarded as the mundane days? Why are the days on which we are commanded to cease this work holier?

Between the holy and mundane times is not a difference in essence, only in perspective.
The material world possesses a deeper truth - its potential to house the Creator. But on the workdays, this potential is all but invisible to us. Our very involvement with the material prevents us from experiencing its spiritual essence.
A holy day is a lookout tower that rises above the surface to behold the essence we are laboring to actualize. Rising to these ‘lookout points’ means interrupting our life's work. Shabbat is when the farmer is invited to the palace: His overalls are replaced, his manners are polished, his soul and fingernails are cleansed of the residue of material life.
When we reenter the so-called mundane days, the Shabbat experience lingers on. Enriched with insight into the true nature of our labors, our workdays become more focused on their goal, and less susceptible to the diversions and entanglements of the mundane.

The exception is Elul when the king comes to the field.
The king is the heart and soul of the nation. He is why we plow, etc.
Bread is the “staff of life” that “sustains the heart of man (in the city).”
We may be in the field, but our toil provides for those in the city, especially the king.
“The king is sustained by the field.” (Koheles 5:8, as per Ibn Ezra)

So is the king in the field an apparition out of its element? We may not be used to seeing him here, but is not the royal heart also sustained by bread of the field?
The king in the field is making contact with the source of his sustenance, with that which fashions His kingdom; while the field is being visited by its raison d'être, by its ultimate recipient and purpose.
When the farmer sees the king in his field, does he behave as if this were just another day in the fields? Of course not! Elul is not a month of ordinary workdays. It is a time of increased Torah, prayer, and charity. We might still be in the field, but the field has become a holier place.

In Elul, the material trappings of life no longer conceal their purpose.
The ‘anthem’ of the High Holiday season is Psalm 27, “G-d is my Light.”
The purpose of light is to reveal.
1. Our flaws. 2. Our potential to transcend those flaws. 3. We are not as far from G-dliness as we thought.
4. We are not a separate entity from G-d, but an extension of Him.
5. Our ability to see this Divine quality in everyone else.
6. The word’s essence.