Black as the Raven

First a story from the Talmud: This is what Rabbah Bar Bar Chana recounted: I myself saw this frog which was as big as the city of Hagrunia. And how large was the city of Hagrunia? Sixty houses. A serpent came by and swallowed it. A raven came by and swallowed the serpent, and then ascended a tree and sat there. Come and see how great was the strength of that tree! (Bava Batra 73b)


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"With whom is the Torah to be found? With the one who makes his face as black as a raven, and one who makes himself cruel to his children as the raven" (Talmud: Eruvin 22a)

So, what does it mean to make one's face "black as the raven"?

Taken from Likutei Moharan 15:5: it means that he prays without any concern for personal benefit. He does not consider himself as having any worth, so that all his selfhood and corporeality are eliminated. He is thus negated (me: invisible), as if he were not in this world.

And through this he can merit the hidden Torah, kabbalah. Called darkness because of its very deep concepts.

How does one make one's face "black as the raven"?

By praying for spiritual things rather than physical things.

Everything in the physical world has its counterpart in the spiritual world. Some are obvious some are not. For instance, it is taught that water represents Torah /instructions by God; rain =blessings or mercy; sun rays =harsh judgement; (and therefore rainbow = mitigated judgement), etc.

Since the physical is directly tied to the spiritual, one can pray for one and get the other. For example one can pray for blessings or mercy and get rain as well. Its a bit harder to do it in the reverse- praying for rain and hoping for blessings or mercy. Haven't figured out why yet but I have heard that the spiritual comes faster. At any rate, so the person who prays for spiritual gifts gets both spiritual and physical goods, the one who prays just for physical goods may get it, but not with peace -there is still an incompleteness going on.

Thus, when the "serpent" comes to swallow the sixty houses -i.e. prayer, it says, "why don't you pray for wealth? Money??"

The desire for money is very strong. its so strong, the soul is drawn after it. What do we do when we want money? We diversify. Put some money in this portfolio, and some more money in that portfolio,and more in yet another portfolio. This scatters our frame of mind because we are trying to keep track of many different interests and investments. The soul is scattered. The way to break this hold money has and gather back our frame of mind is by giving charity. As long as we continue to give charity, we are not in the grips of the lure of money. The "face black as the raven" has swallowed up the serpent.

Once charity is given, its like our mind is more restful. We give charity basically because we understand that the "manna" comes from God. It all comes from God and we are investing the rest of the money as a show of effort -so as to not make the miracle too miraculous. We cover things in nature/darkness so the way is made for the miracle of increased money to come to us.

With this faith/clarity/light shining in us, we feel confident we are doing the right thing. Thus, we have the boldness to turn to the Creator of the Universe and make our request. We are buky b'ratzo -expert /good at running. confident.

As we draw closer, we also gain more light/ more clarity/ more faith. This shines on the little parts of our soul that we have not yet rectified. Without letting it get us down, it is important to also be buky b'shov -expert at returning from a fall. We re-examine ourselves and return back to our confident selves running to God with our requests. In other words:

Once a person's face is black as the raven, he can swallow up the serpent. win over it. Beat the lust for money. then he gains clarity, faith and light and can ascend up the Tree of Life.

(this was just a test to see if I could "postify" a lesson from Likutey Moharan. I also want to add that I myself DO pray for both spiritual things as well as physical things. Maybe one day I'll be on the level where I only pray for spiritual things knowing full well that the physical will come, but til then, I'm not there yet.)