Kashah alay preidatchem. “Your leaving is difficult for Me.” According to Rashi (on Leviticus 23:36), this is what God says to us on Shemini Atzeret. Rashi understands the word atzeret to mean “staying;” after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the seven days of Sukkot, God is reluctant to have us leave, and turns to us wistfully, calling out – stay with Me a little longer, for this one extra day of Shemini Atzeret. Your separation is so difficult for Me.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe offers an additional interpretation of this phrase. Kashah alay preidatchem, God says, “Your separateness – the discord and disconnection between people – that’s hard for Me.” It upsets God to see us separate and divided.
Building on these two readings of separation – from God and from each other – perhaps we can understand the phrase more broadly, as God’s parting declaration of what matters most; after all this time of teshuva, of repentance and introspection and conscious reassessment and realignment for the coming year, God says – listen, here’s what I really care about: what most upsets Me is separation in all its forms, separation from Me, separation from each other, and the subtle but all too common separation from your own selves. This internal and external divisiveness, this is what is hardest for Me, says God. Keep that in mind as you go forward through your year.
The pain of separateness and the desire for connection is one of the basic themes of this time of year. We are striving to connect, to dwell in God’s house, to “return” – to God, to each other and to our truest selves. But the work is not over. Our hearts yearn for connection – we can sense that tug at all times – precisely because we are never fully at home. God reminds us on this last of the holidays that this re-connection and integration is our ultimate goal in life, and not just our goal, but also a divine goal. It pains God, too, that there is so much division.
We are used to speaking of separation from God and from each other, but perhaps the sense of internal division within oneself bears some explanation. Some signs of the strife inside us, which is common, but usually goes unnoticed, are: a sense of warring polarized parts inside us that pull us in different directions, self-hatred, self-aggression, internal judgment and shame which are all essentially one part of us attacking another part of us, and a feeling of having lost parts of ourselves, parts that have been exiled or rejected or abandoned along the way, parts that keep calling out to us from their hidden places through our suffering to be returned and re-integrated. We have, each of us, a divided soul that yearns to be reunited. External division and aggression is a corollary or mirror image of the divisiveness and strife that exists inside us. All of these are “hard” for God and for us; God yearns for us to be whole, connected and at peace, inside and out.
To sense this separateness as a divine hardship and suffering is to begin to understand that our work of connection and integration – whether internally or externally or in relation to God; all are intertwined so that working on one is always also working on the others – is holy, sacred work, the work we were put on this earth to do. To begin to draw together what has been dispersed and thrown apart and shattered, to begin to gather all the exiles from the far flung corners of the world and ourselves, this is the work of divine repair we are called to by our broken yearning hearts, hearts that mirror God’s own suffering over separation and God’s own deep desire for connection and unity.
There is a kabbalistic notion – which I do not pretend to properly comprehend – that God Godself is in some way fragmented, that different aspects of God are in exile from one another, and that part of our purpose in life is to help alleviate this separateness in God and bring about a re-unification within the Self of God. This understanding is reflected in the Hasidic custom to recite, before performing certain mitzvot: leshem yichud kudsha brikh hu ushekhintei, “for the sake of the unification of the Holy Blessed One and the Divine Presence.” God’s own reunification is, as it were, in some incomprehensible way affected by our actions. When we work to integrate and unite the disparate parts of ourselves and to cross the barriers and divisions that separate us from one another, we are helping to ease God’s suffering as well, truly doing God’s work.
Kashah alay preidatchem. Your separateness is hard for Me, says God, your separateness from Me, from each other, and from your own selves. We may struggle with the motivation for doing this work for our own sakes, but if we imagine God’s pain, the yearning of God’s heart for connection and unity in all of creation and in God’s own Self, perhaps this sense of alignment and clarity and purity of purpose can help energize us and propel us to continue the redemptive work of integration.
Bayom hahu yehiyeh Hashem ehad ushmo ehad. On that day God will be One and God’s name will be One. This is the future we are inexorably drawn towards, the redemption we are called to help bring about. Ahat sha’alti – One thing I desire (Ps 27:4), we say again and again this time of year. As the season draws to a close, perhaps we can understand the phrase slightly differently: Ahat sha’alti. Oneness is what I desire. Oneness – integration and connection, not without difference, but across difference – oneness is what I desire, inside and outside of me.
