האר״י הקדוש

The Holy Ari, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, is the man who changed the face of all Kabbalah in just three years. He came to Safed, the capital of the kabbalists, already a hidden giant, and in an astonishingly short time transmitted a new teaching on the secret of Creation, which became the heart of the world of the secret to this day: 'the Kabbalah of the Ari.'

In his teaching he taught the secret of 'tzimtzum,' that the Creator, as it were, contracted His light to make room for the world, and 'the breaking of the vessels' and 'tikkun': that the world was broken, and sparks of holiness fell everywhere, and the task of the human being in every deed and mitzvah is to raise them up and repair. The idea of tikkun gave immense meaning to every small act of a Jew.

The Ari wrote almost nothing. His disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital committed his teaching to writing, and without him it would not have reached us. Tradition tells of his immense holiness, that he understood the speech of the palms and the chirping of the birds, and that he died young, about thirty-eight, as if the world could not contain him for long.

What do we learn from him? That every small act of a person holds within it the repair of worlds. The Ari teaches that reality is broken and waits for us to raise its sparks, and that one person, even in a short time, can change the way an entire people sees Creation and its role within it.