Sheer simplicity

Often, there was so much waffle and ‘policy speak’ in the document, I’d have to go back to the people who wrote it to clarify what it was they were really trying to get across. I did that job for around five years, and it taught me something profoundly important: when people really know what they are talking about, they can sum it up in a sentence. When they don’t really know what they are talking about, even 300 pages won’t be enough.

 

I was thinking about this recently, after a chat with a friend of mine who is starting to incorporate more emuna and hitbodedut into their lives. They had been talking about these ideas with an acquaintance of theirs, who was very quick to pour cold water on it all.

 

This acquaintance thought that Breslev ideas and teachings were far too simplistic, or ‘childish’. Where were the deep philosophical discussions? Where were the profound intellectual arguments? It was all far too black-and-white, cut-and-dried.

 

I’ve had this discussion myself, with a few people. “G-d gave me a brain”, they tell me. “He expects me to use it. He wants me to use my intellect, not ignore it and rely on ‘emuna’.”

 

Sometimes, I wonder what a fly on the wall in the Garden of Eden would have heard: “Eve, G-d gave you and Adam brains for a reason. He didn’t make you like all the other animals, precisely so that you could think for yourselves, and decide for yourselves the best way to serve Him.”

 

“Yes, that’s true serpent, but He told us we really can’t eat from this particular tree.”

 

“Oh come on, Eve! How simplistic! How black and white! Why would Hashem put the tree in the garden if He didn’t want you and Adam to eat from it?”

 

Of course, the rest is history.

 

But there’s an idea in Jewish thought that the main reason that all of us are here today is because we are still trying to rectify the original sin of Adam and Eve. They only had one commandment, or mitzvah, to do: they had to not eat from the tree. They had to put their own brains aside, and follow what Hashem told them to do, without rationalising it, without intellectualising it, without getting their own egos involved in deciding what Hashem really wanted them to do. And they failed.

 

I once heard a great shiur about this subject, which explained in depth that the whole test for Adam was to serve Hashem in the way that Hashem wanted him to. Adam knew that eating from the tree would plunge the world into chaos and darkness. He knew it would bring death and confusion into the world. But he still did it, because he wanted to prove to Hashem that even in those less than ideal circumstances – even out of the ‘Garden of Eden’ – mankind would still serve Hashem faithfully. And their service would be so much more valuable, precisely because there would be so many tremendous obstacles and difficulties to overcome.

 

There’s obviously a lot of very deep things going on here that are beyond the scope of this article (and also, my own understanding of it all), but in a nutshell, Adam failed his test because instead of doing what Hashem actually wanted, he did what he thought Hashem wanted. Instead of listening to Hashem – who is utter simplicity and profound truth – he intellectualised his mitzvah, complicated matters, and completely stuffed the whole situation up.

 

If Adam could make such a terrible misjudgement, what hope do we have? We, who have 613 mitzvahs to keep, and a million and one opinions about how, how not, why, why not, this way, that way, the other way. How can we, the descendants of Adam and Eve, even imagine that we can rectify that original sin?

 

Like most things, it’s really quite simple. Instead of intellectualising, discussing, philosophising and arguing, we have to cast our own brains aside, and aspire to do Hashem’s mitzvahs in complete simplicity.

 

Not because someone convinced us with a brilliant argument; not because we ‘understand’ with our own tremendous brain power why we should be doing it; not because it makes sense to us. Only because Hashem said so.

 

It’s the hardest thing in the world, and the easiest thing in the world. It’s hard, because our egos can’t stand the idea that they simply don’t get a say in it all. It’s not up to our ego to decide the ‘right and wrong’ of the matter, and we won’t get any credit for exercising our ‘tremendous brain power’ and looking like a clever-clogs. But it’s the easiest thing in the world if we really understand our own futility, and if we really understand that no brain in the world, even the biggest, shiniest most clever brain there is, can hold the awesomeness that is Hashem.

 

When people want to use their brains, instead of simply doing what Hashem wants, they are really saying: “If it doesn’t make sense to me, it can’t be right. If Hashem doesn’t fit into my brain, my thought processes, my intellect, He can’t be right.”

 

Hashem is the creator of the world. We are the creations. It doesn’t have to make sense to us, if we understand that our job is to do what Hashem wants. We have a brain in order to give us free will.

 

We can choose to see how simple the equation really is, and do our best to keep Hashem mitzvahs in simplicity and sincerity; or, we can choose to have a meaningless ‘philosophical’ discussion about it all, where we forage around for an intellectual fig-leaf to cover up our glaring problem, namely, that we really don’t want to do what Hashem tells us.

 

Simplistic, it may be. Black and white – it definitely is. But childish, it definitely isn’t. It’s about as serious as it gets. Either we choose to do our own small part in rectifying Adam’s sin and bringing the world to a state of real perfection, peace and redemption, or we perpetuate the problem – and all the suffering, strife and misery that goes with it.

 

And when you look at it that way, it really is a ‘no-brainer’.