[Avodah] vsalachta

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 07:18:13PM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
: We have a Tetragrammaton form of both Adnut and E-lohut...

Yes and no. We use Adnus as a stand-in for sheim Havayah by default,
and only use E-lokut when needed to avoid saying sheim Adnus twice. (I'm
sure there is an exception or two I'm not thinking of or am unaware of.)
It's not like the two are on equal footing.

:                                                      Hence, I believe that
: the form of writing is about whether G"d emphasizes His Essence, meaning, 
: lema'alah min hazeman, or the immediacy, as you note indeed later in your 
: post, that "yeileih na Ad-nai beqirbeinu" is one of my sources.

While there is an oft-cited derashah of sheim Havayah as a contraction
of hayah-hoveh-veyihyeh (although it would work better if one thinks of
contracting the words in the opposite order), simple peshat of the word
is the hif'il of /hvh/ -- ie the Causer of Existence.

I believe that it's Hashem's trancendence that makes understanding His
immanence possible.

The very infinitude connoted by the sheim Havayah implies Midas
haRachamim. This is not intuitive. However, the need to create law comes
from a person's limited ability to deal with many individual cases. A
teacher with few students is effective, one with more students, less
so. To manage a country, we need laws and policies, since we do not have
infinite time and attention to cover every decision on a case-by-case
basis. Therefore, it is only because Hashem is Infinite that personal
attention and Divine Mercy is possible.

Think of the person who wonders how a Deity who runs the entire universe
could possibly care if I wait after eating meat before eating milk,
or not. Effectively he is asking the point of accepting the concept
behind sheim Adnus. But G-d is infinitely greater than the universe,
He can pay attention to *everything*.

Sheim E-lokim is different in connotation about Justice vs Mercy and
by parallel therefore actually says less about Hashem's ability to deal
with detail.

When I say birkhas Avos, I lately have been associating the opening
E-lokeinu with natural law, with the "haGibbor" of the next line. Gevurah
in the sense of restraint, of letting our actions follow their natural
consequences. Which in that berakhah is in contrast to both Havayah on
one side, and E-lokei Avoseinu on the other. Notice that this places
Havayah in parallel to "haGadol" (Infinitude) and E"A in parallel to
haNorah. Thinking of Rav Dessler's take on multiple olamos, E-lokei
Avoseinu would refer to the olam they taught us how to reach -- olam
hayetzirah, where moral law is absolute and physical law becomes relative,
nissim geluyim are possible.

And inyona deyoma, Yirmiyahu couldn't find the power to say "vehaNora",
when our people fell pray to natural law and the natural cycle of nations.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv