The Cry of the Soul

A passage that is embarrassing to read

Michael Berg opens by admitting he does not usually speak about this passage. A betrothed young woman, a man who is not her betrothed, an attack, and a judgment that, read literally, is indefensible. He says it is almost embarrassing to speak of it.

The Rav always stopped at exactly these passages, and the Zohar repeats the same thing again and again: anyone reading the Torah literally is reading it wrong. The Torah is not a book of laws or a book of history. It is the Creator speaking to you, individually, about your inner life. When a passage looks absurd, that is the sign the secret in it is large.

The na'arah is your soul

The Ari makes clear that whenever the Torah says "a young woman", "a woman", it is speaking of each of our souls. The truly literal reading, Michael Berg says, is this one: the Torah is describing the battle between our soul and the negative force of this world.

The na'arah, the pure woman, is the soul. The ish, the man who finds her and attacks, is the Opponent. Not an ancient figure and not a demon: it is the force that has been attacking you for the last three hundred-odd days, and in every year of your life. Unfortunately, he says, it often succeeds.

The fault was not the attack. It was not crying out

The text gives two scenarios, and one single thing separates them. In the city, the verse asks what the woman's fault was and answers: that she did not cry out. In the open field, where there was no one else, she cried out and no one came to save her, and nothing happens to her.

Read as spiritual mechanics, the picture changes completely. The soul is attacked in both cases. What decides everything is whether there was a cry. Michael Berg notes that many of us have studied for years and may never have understood that the peak of the work of Elul is arriving at exactly this.

Three ways of speaking with the Light of the Creator

To explain the power of the cry, Michael Berg turns to the Zohar, in the portion of Shemot. Rav Yitzhak teaches that there are three ways of interacting with the Light of the Creator. Anachah is the pain felt in the mind, the thought of lack. Shav'a is when a person uses words, the prayer that asks for healing or blessing. And tza'aka is the primal cry of the soul.

Rav Ashlag adds the structure: thought, voice and speech, each corresponding to one of three Sefirot. And Rav Yehuda gives the verdict. Of the three, the most powerful tool a person can use is the cry. Meditation, prayer and primal cry, in that ascending order.

The most powerful cry is the one no one hears

There are kabbalists who instituted the practice of going out and shouting, sometimes into forests, based on this very teaching. Michael Berg does not call it a mistake, he says it has its place. But it is not what the Zohar is speaking about. The cry of the soul is in the heart, and it is not something you can hear.

Rav Ashlag explains why, and the mechanism is beautiful. The instant something is expressed outward, into this world, the negative forces can grab hold of it. A person can pray for teshuvah the whole month and get something, but not the complete transformation, because what went out can be seized. The silent cry reveals itself only inside the heart of the one crying. Nothing is left for them to hold.

The soul leaving the body cries out, and the whole world hears

The Talmud teaches that there are sounds heard throughout the whole world, and one of them is the outcry of the soul as it leaves the body. Michael Berg asks the obvious question: no one has ever heard that cry with their ears. So why do the kabbalists call it the loudest voice, the one that reaches everything?

Because in that moment a person has more desire against what is happening than at any other instant of an entire life, and no strength to shout. A physical shout travels a certain distance and stops. A cry that cannot come out is contained everywhere.

And there is a second reason, a harder one. It is the only moment of real clarity. The soul sees at once who she was, the life she lived, everything she could have done and how little she did. There is no greater cry than that one.

You left pieces of your soul crying all year long

Here the lecture comes down to the dinner table. You are with six friends. Someone is suffering, someone says something, and the thought comes: I have something to share that could help this person. Then the other thought comes: it may not be well received, they may find it strange of me to say it. And you do not speak.

In that instant, Michael Berg says, your soul is crying out. You left in that room an enormous package of unrevealed energy, a piece of yourself asking: why did you not reveal me? And it went like that all year, in hundreds, perhaps thousands of places where we revealed five percent and left ninety-five crying there.

The cry gathers it all back

This is why the tool is this one and not another. The cry of the soul is everywhere. It travels to every place you were and did not reveal what you were meant to reveal, and gathers it back. That, Michael Berg says, is how the year's negativity is removed, because the year's negativity is exactly that: all the Light you should have revealed and left in darkness.

The Zohar adds a guarantee. Rav Yehuda teaches that whoever reaches and keeps using this tool removes judgment not only from this year, but from an entire life and from all of its incarnations. Rav Yitzhak says this outcry rules over any kind of judgment, and that the person is lifted out of every difficulty.