Haggadah: Karpas II: The Ishbitzer Continued
Transcribed by Anna Beller: Basic idea of the fruit the planting corresponds to the Torah you learn, and the rain and care it needs to help its original planting means that as a person changes, a person has certain weaknesses Hashem needs to help him with it specifically. But it’s a different kind of help, its not replanting its helping you use what you already were given and what you took from the Torah originally.
What about vegetables? Since it needs to be replanted and re-taught. If you don’t feed it, the vegetable is dead. Once it’s dead its dead, in no way does it represent the original light it had, its original plant unless its constantly cared for. It can’t in itself draw continued sustenance. It’s not like a fruit.
So he says like this, therefore vegetables in the words of Chazzal are always referred to as the food of beasts. For example when God kicked Adam and Chavah out of the garden now he had to eat vegetables instead of fruit, he had to work the ground, which means vegetables. Fruit don’t need to be worked all the time. So he says I and my donkey should eat out of one plate? In other words he felt that he was being treated as an animal.
So you see the words of Chazzal, vegetables represent a lower level of existence. Which is what the Ari said, it’s the mother, the mother who’s the womb, but its small not as significant or as powerful as a fruit tree. So he says vegetables are the food of animals, so it’s an indication of not being at the higher level a person can be.
It’s also true of kedusha that Hashem puts into the heart of a person and lets a person go. It’s like kedusha I haven’t gained through my own work. Or Kedusha that I haven’t gained through my own learning, its sanctity that God gave to me without my work. God feels that for me to be able to work on it he needs to give me an advantage to take it further but its not really me.
The Ishbitzer says when you compare this it’s like comparing a vegetable to a fruit, since this spiritual fruit is not something I earned on my own. I need God’s nurturing since it’s not something I earned on my own. So a vegetable represents a divine influence that needs to be constant it isn’t something I made my own therefore God withholds the influence from me nothing is going be left.
Vegetable is really a hint for the redemption from Egypt. Because the Zohar says the old one depends, because the whole things happened not at the right time, we were redeemed before the time, we were redeemed because we had fallen as low as possible, we hadn’t learned anything. We spoke about this before: when we start the process, we stimulate things from our position, or when God begins a process from above, instigated from what’s above. The exodus from Egypt we were on the 49th level of impurity, we weren’t able to do anything on our own. The process had to be initiated by God. So on this night the light of God comes down and becomes influence, and if the light would shine incompletely we could literally break any physical drives any connections to our bodies at all. And even more so if we can take advantage of this moment we can make it our own. Not just that God’s giving us this light but that we can use it.