Reshimos, booklet 53
A. The Torah Was Given to Bring Peace to the World
In our Torah reading, the Torah commands us regarding the laws of marriage (Source 1). Marriage is deeply connected to the Torah, for the Talmud compares the Torah to a woman (Source 2). In addition, the woman is the foundation of the home, and the foundation is strong when it is built according to the Torah’s instructions.
What was achieved by the giving of the Torah? Our Sages say that the Torah was given “to bring peace to the world”—peace between the higher and the lower realms, between the spiritual and the physical.
Even before the giving of the Torah, the Patriarchs observed all the commandments (Source 3). The innovation at Sinai was the nullification of the decree that separated the spiritual from the physical—”the people of Rome may not descend to Syria” (Source 4). From that point on, not only is the person who fulfills the mitzvah sanctified, but also the physical object with which the mitzvah is performed becomes itself an object of holiness. For example, the parchment of tefillin and mezuzot becomes intrinsically holy.
This explains the following difficulty: When Moses ascended on high to receive the Torah, the angels asked, “What is a human being doing among us?” Why did they ask this? Surely they knew the Torah was destined to be given to the Jews? The reason is that they did not grasp the true novelty of the giving of the Torah. They thought that even after the giving of the Torah, the commandments would remain only spiritual acts, as they had been with the Patriarchs, without sanctity attaching to the physical object. When they saw Moses, a physical human being, ascend on high, they wondered: how can materiality be elevated to spirituality? The answer given to them was that the Torah was given “to make peace”—to unite the higher and the lower realms, the material and the spiritual, into one reality of holiness.
B. Inner Peace Is the Key to World Peace
How is this universal peace between material and spiritual achieved? Through making peace within oneself.
A person must make peace between their positive and negative inclinations, just as Abraham did (Source 5) when he harnessed even the powers of his animalistic soul for holiness.
To reach this, we must first build a bridge between the mind and the heart. The Rebbe Rashab once told a famous professor that this is the purpose of Chassidut: to create a bridge between the intellect and the emotions (Source 6). A central principle in Chabad is the harmony between them, with the mind guiding the heart, and the heart acting under the direction of the mind. In this way, we live in balance and inner peace and can fulfill our mission in the world (Source 6).
This harmony also expresses itself in relationships between people: some people are primarily intellectual, while others are more emotional. From the perspective of intellect, there are differences in levels, and the wise might feel superior to the simple. But when a person lives in harmony between their mind and their heart, they recognize that at the level of the heart’s essence, all are equal.
When we create peace within ourselves—connecting the positive and negative inclinations, joining mind and heart, and then also connecting with others—we thereby unite spirituality and physicality, and bring peace to the world.
