Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “There are people with tremendous comprehension, able to grasp huge ideas, but they lack clarity about good and evil.”

 

Beyond the fact that our world is a physical one and constricted in its comprehension, it is also a world that lacks absolute clarity regarding the differences between good and evil, truth and falsehood.

These are two separate areas, and it is possible to distinguish between them even in our world.

There are people with tremendous comprehension, able to grasp huge ideas, but they lack clarity about good and evil.

There are also people without significant powers of comprehension, but who possess constant clarity on the distinction between good and evil.

A person like this knows clearly and sharply what is good and what is evil, what is a commandment and what is a sin within existence. 

Our world is “lowly” in these two ways.

It is both ignorant and blurred.

Its comprehension of matters is rudimentary, because it is limited by its tools for receiving.

It also grasps matters in a blurred and distorted form.

The Divine is understood in limited, external form, and the relationships between good and evil, truth and falsehood, holiness and impurity are not perceived clearly.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz