T65 Petten Nanach Commentary - Vayomer Boaz L'Rut (Field of Souls, Tachlis, Bittul, Prayer Unity, 10 segs)

Title: 'And Boaz Said to Ruth' (Ruth 2:8-9). Subtitle: 'The Field of Souls.' Opening verse: Boaz tells Ruth not to glean in another field, to stay in his field, to drink when thirsty from the vessels the young men have drawn. This teaching uses the Boaz-Ruth dialogue as a window into the spiritual field of holy souls, the nature of ultimate purpose (tachlis), and how prayer can — or cannot — achieve unity.

There exists a spiritual field of surpassing beauty — trees and grasses of inexpressible loveliness — and whoever has seen this field is truly fortunate. These trees and grasses are the aspect of holy souls (neshamot kedoshot) that grow there. But there are also many 'naked souls' (neshamot arumos — souls without their proper spiritual vessels) that wander outside the field, unable to return on their own, waiting and longing for their rectification. The field represents the realm of fully developed neshamot — souls clothed in their proper spiritual garments — while the naked souls hovering at the margins represent souls that fell short of their tikkun (repair). The baal hasadeh (master of the field) tends both groups.

When the holy souls in the field produce spiritual 'fruit' — fulfilling the will of God through Torah, mitzvot, and prayer — the eyes of the baal hasadeh shine with light and clarity, and he can survey the entire field with spiritual sight. This is the meaning of 'Field of Watchers' (Sadeh Tzofim, Numbers 23:14) — the field becomes a field of spiritual watchmen who can see and be seen. But when the souls do not produce this fruit — when they fall short of fulfilling God's will — then the eyes of the baal hasadeh are darkened (see Ohalos), and he cannot exercise the full scope of his spiritual vision. The field loses its luminous quality.

The concept of 'one' (echad) is the aspect of the tachlis — the ultimate purpose and destination of all creation. The verse from Zechariah 14:9 states: 'On that day Hashem will be one and His name one.' The Talmud (Pesachim 50a) asks: Is He not one now? The answer is that in our present world, we are commanded to bless the True Judge (dayan ha-emet) over bad events and The Good and Beneficent (hatov v'hameitiv) over good ones — meaning we perceive good and bad as distinct. But at the tachlis — the ultimate future — everything will be revealed as entirely good, entirely unified, entirely echad. At that point, the present blessings for bad news will be replaced entirely by the blessing for good — for there will be no 'bad.' The tachlis is thus a state of pure unity where evil has no separate existence.

At the moment of bittul (spiritual nullification) — when a person is completely nullified before the tachlis that is entirely good and entirely one — the yissurin (sufferings) are nullified along with all distinction, for in the state of pure unity, there is no category of 'bad.' However, a person cannot remain permanently in this state of bittul, because if they did, they would exit the human condition entirely. Therefore, the bittul must operate in the mode of ratzo v'shov (going and returning) — the oscillating dynamic described in the chariot vision of Ezekiel — where the soul rushes toward the divine unity and then returns to finite human existence, alternating between these states. When the intellect (sechel) is drawn toward the tachlis in the mode of ratzo, the yissurin are nullified; when it returns (shov) to the vessels, they must be dealt with again.

When the person returns from bittul to their normal state — back to the vessels, the brain, the ordinary mind — the yissurin actually intensify more than they were before. This happens like two wrestlers: when one sees that the other is overcoming him, he redoubles his effort and fights harder. Similarly, when the baalei dinim (the accusing spiritual forces that sustain the suffering) see that this person is striving to overcome the yissurin through bittul to the tachlis, they redouble their pressure. The very fact that you are working to rise above suffering activates stronger resistance from the opposing forces. This is a crucial insight: spiritual effort to transcend suffering can temporarily increase it. The practitioner must not be discouraged by this intensification.

The way to cool and extinguish the intensified yissurin after returning from bittul is through chiddushei Torah — original Torah insights and innovations. The verse (Isaiah 55:1) says: 'Ho, all who are thirsty — go to the waters' — the waters are Torah, and the yissurin create a spiritual thirst that Torah satisfies. Psalms 94:12: 'Fortunate is the man whom You discipline, O God, and teach him from Your Torah' — through the yissurin, one merits to receive Torah innovations. And this is the sign that one received the yissurin properly and processed them as they should be: when afterward one merits chiddushei Torah — that is the sign. The cooling of suffering through Torah is not suppression but transformation: the thirst created by suffering is answered by the living waters of Torah insight.

The baal hasadeh — the master of the field, whose eyes shine when the souls fulfill God's will — can, in the state of spiritual sight (Sadeh Tzofim), perceive each individual soul and gauge how close or far they are from the tachlis. When he sees that someone is far from the tachlis, he can diagnose this precisely in their prayer (tefillah): their prayer has not yet reached the level of unity (echad). Specifically: they cannot unify the entire prayer into one coherent whole. When they reach the end of a word in prayer, they have already forgotten its beginning. The word — and the entire prayer — is fragmented rather than unified. The goal of prayer is to achieve echad: to hold the entire word, the entire prayer, in one unified consciousness from first letter to last, so that beginning and end are held simultaneously.

The baal hasadeh looks at the distant soul and brings them to the tachlis — to the state of entirely echad — and then that person can unify their entire tefillah into one. Even when they are at the end of the prayer, they are still simultaneously holding the beginning. This is connected to the teaching in Shabbat (104a): the letters MaNTzPaCh (mem-nun-tzadi-peh-chaf — the five letters that have special final forms in the Torah) were established by the 'watchers' (tzofim) — as Shabbat 104a says, 'the tzofim established them.' These five final letters represent the two appearances of the letter heh: the regular heh at the beginning of words and the special forms at the end. This is the aspect of the baal hasadeh — who is the tzofeh (watcher) — holding and unifying the beginning and the end of speech, the heh that opens and the heh that closes, until the entire tefillah achieves the unity of echad.

Rabbeinu did not complete this discourse. The teaching ends mid-stream, leaving the thread open. What he gave us is a complete structure: the field of souls → the baal hasadeh whose vision depends on the spiritual fruitfulness of the souls → the tachlis as pure echad → bittul to that unity as the way to transcend suffering → the ratzo v'shov oscillation as the sustainable human mode → yissurin intensifying on the return but being cooled by chiddushei Torah → and finally prayer as the practical domain where union with echad is tested and achieved. The MaNTzPaCh of the watchers is the last image given: the great tzaddik who watches the beginning and end of every soul's prayer, holding the whole in one unified sight.