The Greater Chesed

Art by Josephine Wall

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), a modern philosopher and mystic, and the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, composed a line-by-line, word-for-word commentary on ana b’khoach, a Kabbalistic acrostic for the 42-letter name of God. For Kook, the first line of the prayer, “ana b’khoach gedulat yemincha”, “Please with the Power of Your Great Right,” is calling upon the Right side, which in Kabbalah refers to chesed:

The exalted Right of God -- The stronghold of chesed that cycles through the world, and the fundamental trajectory of all of existence, For “a world will be built on loving-kindness (chesed).

Thus in opening the prayer by calling on God’s Right, we are calling upon the ultimate source of Chesed in the world, and in doing so, invoking the fundamental purpose of this world—the desire to bestow good upon an Other. For Kook, invoking God’s Right and the original intent of creation are key, since the world, “which emerged contracted and degraded,” is characterized, in contrast, by boundaries. While absolute loving-kindness may have been the initial impulse of creation, the means to dispensing this goodness was limitations (gevurah). In the words of Chagigah 12b, “When God said ‘Let there be a firmament’, the world kept stretching and expanding, until God said, ‘Enough!’ and it came to a standstill.” Our very existence as independent autonomous beings seems to be predicated on a degree of separateness from God, on the concealment of His light from some places. Just as water requires a vessel to be useful, so goodness requires boundaries in order to be fully appreciated. Yet although limitations may be necessary for our separate existence, we open the prayer by invoking the original impulse to create the world, and the goal of existence, which is and always was loving-kindness.

Kook continues to delineate three levels of chesed: Yemin, Gedulat HaYamin, and Koach Gedulat HaYamin (the Right, the Great Right, and the Power of the Great Right), the third of which is the most precise address of this prayer. In the first distinction, Kook explains the difference between koten hayamin, the Lesser Right, and Gedulat HaYamin, the Greater Right:

Indeed, the Right has both Great and Small: The Lesser Right, is when goodness is allotted according to the limited capacity of the receiver, to the extent that one can bear. But the Greater Right, is the aspect of goodness that gives love greater than the capacity of the receiver, and if one cannot bear the excess of love, then the love is so great, that it gives over from its love also the ability and strength to hold the receiving of the good and the love.

Whereas the Lesser Right gives according to what a person can bear, and no more, the Greater Right gives in such a way that lifts up the receiver so that he or she can receive even more than their capacity. The lesser chesed may correspond to the notion of middah k’neged middah, giving based on what a person deserves, or more broadly, giving according to what a person can appreciate. The greater chesed blurs the boundaries between giver and receiver, by refusing to take the receiver’s qualities as a given, and withholding nothing from the act of giving. In the human realm, the greater chesed may correspond to the love of a parent to a child, or a lover to a beloved, in which one gives of the deepest part of oneself to the other, and changes the receiver in the process. Thus we pray not only to the Right, but to the Greater Right, to lift us up to a place where we can receive even more, as it says in Kiddushin 100a: “The Blessed Holy One gives strength to the Righteous to receive their portion.”

Yet for Kook, the greater chesed is still limited in some way: no matter how grand the love may be, all chesed, once actualized and applied to our reality, becomes inherently limited, marred somewhat by the “characteristic limitations and constrictions of the world.” For Kook, it is only chesed in Potentiality, the koach of gedulat yemincha, that carries within it the full range of possibilities and the most potent potential of God’s desire to give. Only potential chesed will be free of the inherent restraints of reality, and will offer a truly satisfactory resolution to boundedness. If the world was initially created with the goal of chesed, but boundaries and limitations accumulated in the process, we are praying to renew the world with its original intent: that chesed flow uncompromisingly into this world. Thus, we pray: With the Power of Your Great Right, Release the Bound.

Can ultimate chesed penetrate a world defined by limitations, or egos predicated on separateness? In praying to “release the bound,” are we asking to undo the very nature of reality? In his commentary on the prayer’s closing line, Kook describes the final goal:

And when the Power of the Great Right releases the binds, then everything will be drenched in complete freedom, with absolutely no limitations and constrictions. And life will ascend to the exalted heights to be reunited with the body of the king (l’ishta’ava begufa d’malka), and to be illuminated with the light of all life. Then all hindrances, which at some instance could impede the flow of holiness and the upper wholeness from appearing, will be subdued. And forever and ever blessing will abound, and all of existence will sparkle in God's light.

Apparently, while this world may be inherently limited, existence in general is not inherently limited. According to some schools of Kabbalistic thought, this “contracted and degraded world” was not the only possibility for existence, nor was it the original intent. Rather, because of a cosmic accident (the shattering of the vessels) or human error (eating from the tree), the world in its perfect, ideal state became severely contracted. Thus, in looking ahead to the future, we can yearn for a world that both allows our individuality and existence as others, and at the same time, one that openly demonstrates the unity of the world with its source, and enables Benevolence to emanate unobstructed. As in Sefer Ha-Pliah, the world began with ‘A world will be built on loving-kindness,’ (chesed) progressed to ‘In the Beginning Elohim created’ (din), and reached a resolution with ‘“On the day that YHVH Elohim made earth and heaven.” The power of this prayer is to ask that God overcome the very limitations that currently restrict reality, so that this world itself can become a container for God’s infinite chesed: 

And the light of Shechinah (the indwelling Presence) will be illuminated by the light of Ein Sof (the Infinite), without any limitations.

For the history of the forty-two letter name of God and the prayer Ana B'Choach in the Jewish Mystical tradition, see here