Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

lev nishbar
or 
tsebrokhenkeyt
] in Habad, see Loewenthal, 
Communicating
, 195-8. 

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89 
world.
91
Thus the actions of Israel below prepare them and the world for the divine 
revelation. Rashaz takes their response to the giving of the Torah with “we will do” 
before “we will hear” [
na’aseh 
before 
nishma’
, see Ex 24:7] to be an indication of 
their perfect humility and the obliteration of their will before the will of God: 
Now, the Israelites merited the Giving of the Torah by dint of the sorrows of 
the Egyptian exile “in morter, and in brick” [Ex 1:14] […]. And their saying 
“we will do” before “we will hear signified their self-nullification, [namely, 
the state in which] the individual utterly nullifies his will, as if he had no will 
of his own rather, he wills whatever is willed by the Upper Will, blessed be 
He. And this is what “service” [
‘avodah
] means [in the verse] “and ye shall 
serve Him” [Dt 13:4], [namely,] that the servant [
‘eved
] has no opinion 
[
de’ah
] of his own but rather he does whatever his master tells him to do. 
And by dint of saying “we will do” first, which signified this nullification, 
“we will hear” will become possible, namely, [the Israelites] will [be able] to 
receive the revelation and the light of 
Ein Sof
, blessed be He.
92
The idea that the Sinaitic revelation was due to the Israelites’ complete trust in God, 
as expressed by their acceptance of the yoke of Torah before inquiring about its 
nature, appears already in the Talmud.
93
But Rashaz contributes to the Sages’ 
interpretation the idea that this acceptance of Torah was a gesture of complete 
submission, by which the Israelites eradicated their own will, making space for 
God’s will to descend upon them. Moreover, the Torah as God’s will [
ratson
], and 
the light of 
Ein Sof 
seem to be identical – a concept which Rashaz derives from the 
kabbalistic underpinnings of his doctrine.
94
Rashaz does not seem to limit the gesture of promising 
na’aseh 
before 
nishma’ 
to the actual act of receiving the Torah at Sinai. In the passage quoted 
91
TO 64d. On the notions of “arousal from below” and “arousal from above” in Kabbalah and in 
Hasidism, see Idel, 
Kabbalah and Eros
, 84. 
92
TO 98d [Appendix 15]. 
93
See 
b
Shabat 88a. 
94
See Hallamish, “Mishnato ha-‘iyunit,” 76-77, where he points to 
Kanfei yonah
by Menahem Azaria 
da Fano as a kabbalistic source that fully identifies the light of 
Ein Sof 
with the divine will; for an 
example of this identification in Rashaz, see T1, 41:56b. 

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90 
above, 
na’aseh 
directly follows the sorrows of slavery that the Israelites endured in 
Egypt, which paved their way to the Sinaitic revelation. This “doing” refers, 
therefore, to the experience of hard labour in exile, and the humility that preceded 
the revelation begins with the humiliation of servitude in Egypt. Just as the Israelites 
were employed by the Egyptians as a slave workforce, so they were redeemed to 
fulfil God’s will by becoming His servants. Notably, the Hebrew noun signifying 
divine service [
‘avodah
] is the same as the one that appears in Ex 1:14 in reference 
to “bondage” and servitude to the Egyptians during the exile.
Humility, that is, the eradication of the self, which makes place for the divine 
to dwell in the world, is only one redemptive aspect of the exile; the other is related 
to enslavement and the hard labour to which the Israelites were subjected in Egypt. 
In reply to the question why Israel received the Torah only after the enslavement in 
Egypt and not at the time of the Patriarchs, who were surely worthy of receiving it, 
Rashaz says: 
In truth, there are both an inner and an outer aspect [of Torah observance], 
and [Abraham's] observance was by way of the inner aspect [