The core of the issue seems to lie in the nature of Avoda- what is Avoda?
On the one hand, Avoda seems to cover all the Mitzvot, on the hand it seems to be T'filla and Talmud Torah, how are we to understand this?
Avoda, from the root avd refers to service, most completely the service of a slave. What characterizes service is the relationship between the identity of the actor, and the idea or "good" pursued by this actor. A sovereign actor implements an idea or good intrinsic to himself. A servile act results from an idea or good higher than oneself.
In this sense, service is intrinsic to the minds ahava of ultimate grandeur of Chochmas Hashem and every actor in Creation, serves Hashem. Insofar as a mind grasps the eternal beauty of Chochmas hashem, it formulates its identity as a mind in an ahava whose reference is to this Chochma and acts for the sake of better knowing this idea and apprehension. Insofar as this idea is greater than oneself, acting on the basis of ahava is a service, it implements an ideal greater than itself.
The irony is, that the beneficiary of this action is still oneself. When one acts on the basis of ahava, Hashem and his wisdom are not benefitted in any way. The mind is the only beneficiary. We best benefit ourselves, when our ahava for the universal Chochma causes us to be least focused upon ourselves.
This realization of the nature of Chochma causes two types of service each of which emerge from a mind whose identity or "gavra" is primarily forged via focus on a specific application of Chochma:
1) talmud- discovering how His principles of Chochma apply to everyman in every case of human circumstance conceivable- true judgement of a judge.
2) Avodah shebalev- found as one might expect in Sefer ahava- self judgement in the sense of discovering how His principles of Chochma apply not to everyman but to the self
It is in this sense that Avoda can refer simultaneously both to the entire Mitzva system as well as to Tfillah. Most properly speaking, Avoda refers to the "Halachic Man" whose life in totality is application of Chochmas Hashem through Halachic principles. However, developmentally, there is a special act by which the Gavra is forged- tefilla where one sees the Chochmas Hashem as it applies to ones own desires. Every further act of avoda will be built upon the fundamental insight of tfilla.
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2 comments:
Hi Rabbi Sacks, I have a question although it's not entirely "zoomed in": when tefilah is defined in relation to the framework of avodah, is hisbodedus included along or rather do both tefilah and hisbodedus have a similar effect and how would they differ? I read somewhere that you can look at your entire day (some can extend it to the whole year) as a tefilah metaphor and then you begin to define each action you do and daily change that occurs along according to the mindset of tefilah, in the sense that elements developed in tefilah can be applied to everyday action as well, and when hisbodedus in incorporated, then that's like strenghtening your relation with Hashem, and then you can apply this in your interaction with other people as well. I'd argue that hisbodedus is like self-counseling, and tefilah is more dynamic, but I am not sure where exactly the boundaries of each fall. Thank you.
I probably won't be able to comment until Sunday.
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