Go Back to Your Cave
Every young married man knows this moment. You walk out of the study hall. The Talmud you were learning is still warm in your hands. Suddenly the world outside looks strange to you. The marketplace. Making a living. The everyday chaos of a home. And deep in your heart, something asks: Maybe I should have stayed in there? Maybe all this busyness is just a waste of time? To answer this, the Talmud tells a story that teaches the greatest lesson of all. The Cave and the Field The great sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai sat in a cave for twelve years. Pure Torah. Holiness with nothing physical in it. No mixing at all with matter and empty things. When he came out, he saw people plowing and planting, simply living their lives. Wherever his eyes looked, they were burned up. How can people busy themselves with the life of the moment and leave aside eternal life? Then a voice came from Heaven and said: “Have you come out to destroy My world?!” The question jumps out at us. For all those twelve years, wasn’t he in the deepest peace with the Master of the world? Torah for its own sake, without a break, without distraction. Isn’t that complete holiness? So why is the word “destroy” used about him? The answer lies in a deeper foundation. The Purpose of Creation: A Home for Hashem Down Here Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya (the classic book of Hasidic thought), writes that the purpose of creating all the worlds is this: that Hashem should have “a home in this lower world.” In other words, the goal is not to lift the lower world up to the higher one. The goal is to bring the higher world down into the lower one. Hashem is not asking you to run away from the world. He is asking you to bring Him into it. Right at the start of the Torah, it says that Hashem placed man in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it.” “To guard it” means the commandments that tell us what not to do. That is the side of keeping away from wrong, the separateness of the cave. “To work it” means the commandments that tell us what to do. That is active work inside the physical world. And “to work it” comes first, because the main thing is the doing, the action, the field. Rabbi Shimon saw the people in the field and thought: they are leaving “eternal life” for “the life of the moment.” But the heavenly voice showed him that he had the main point wrong. Working the field, doing business in the market, the daily struggle: when all this is done the way the Creator wants, it is itself “eternal life.” The highest holiness is not when a person leaves the world. It is when he brings the Infinite Hashem into it. This is the root of the teaching of the holy Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement: serving Hashem through the physical world. The world is not an obstacle to serving Hashem. The world itself is the place where we serve Him. As the holy books teach: “There is no place empty of Him.” No place is empty of Hashem. And so there is no place that has nothing in it to make holy. Twelve More Months Rabbi Shimon went back to the cave for twelve more months. This was not a punishment. It was a lesson, to teach his eyes to see what they had not seen before. When he came out the second time, he saw the same field and the same man plowing. And instead of burning, he saw light. The cave did not lose its value. It gave him the power to see the holiness in the field. But the purpose was always the field.
Putting It into Practice
My dear friend, when you go out in the morning to work, run your business, put the house in order and deal with the bills, don’t think that you are running away from holiness. Ask yourself: Am I doing this the way Hashem wants? If so, you are building Him a home. And that is the very place where He is waiting for you. Torah study gives your eyes the power to see the holiness hidden in ordinary life. But the holiness itself lives out there, in ordinary life.
Questions and answers
Q: When a young man leaves the study hall for work and family life, is he wasting his time?
Rabbi Landau answers: Every young married man knows this moment. You walk out of the study hall. The Talmud you were learning is still warm in your hands. Suddenly the world outside looks strange to you. The marketplace. Making a living. The everyday chaos of a home. And deep in your heart, something asks: Maybe I should have stayed in there? Maybe all this busyness is just a waste of time? To answer this, the Talmud tells a story that teaches the greatest lesson of all.
Q: What happened when Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai came out of the cave and saw people plowing and planting?
Rabbi Landau answers: The great sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai sat in a cave for twelve years. Pure Torah. Holiness with nothing physical in it. No mixing at all with matter and empty things. When he came out, he saw people plowing and planting, simply living their lives. Wherever his eyes looked, they were burned up. How can people busy themselves with the life of the moment and leave aside eternal life? Then a voice came from Heaven and said: “Have you come out to destroy My world?!” The question jumps out at us. For all those twelve years, wasn’t he in the deepest peace with the Master of the world? Torah for its own sake, without a break, without distraction. Isn’t that complete holiness?
Q: What does the Tanya mean that Hashem wants “a home in this lower world”?
Rabbi Landau answers: Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya (the classic book of Hasidic thought), writes that the purpose of creating all the worlds is this: that Hashem should have “a home in this lower world.” In other words, the goal is not to lift the lower world up to the higher one. The goal is to bring the higher world down into the lower one. Hashem is not asking you to run away from the world. He is asking you to bring Him into it. Right at the start of the Torah, it says that Hashem placed man in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it.” “To guard it” means the commandments that tell us what not to do.
Q: What did Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai learn in his extra twelve months in the cave?
Rabbi Landau answers: Rabbi Shimon went back to the cave for twelve more months. This was not a punishment. It was a lesson, to teach his eyes to see what they had not seen before. When he came out the second time, he saw the same field and the same man plowing. And instead of burning, he saw light. The cave did not lose its value. It gave him the power to see the holiness in the field. But the purpose was always the field.
Q: How should a person think about going out to work and handling bills, according to Rabbi Landau?
Rabbi Landau answers: My dear friend, when you go out in the morning to work, run your business, put the house in order and deal with the bills, don’t think that you are running away from holiness. Ask yourself: Am I doing this the way Hashem wants? If so, you are building Him a home. And that is the very place where He is waiting for you. Torah study gives your eyes the power to see the holiness hidden in ordinary life. But the holiness itself lives out there, in ordinary life.