This lecture enters the text of Eshet Chayil (the “woman of valor”), the hymn that concludes Mishlei (the Book of Proverbs), and it begins with a question of method: what is this poem really about? Rav Raphaël Benizri refuses from the outset to read it as the portrait of an exemplary woman whose merits one might list. He sees in it a figure of the feminine as the axis of all things, and therefore a reading of what union, acquisition, faithfulness and transmission truly are. The question he poses is simple and formidable: does this woman of valor exist — and if she is not to be found, how is she acquired?
The Rav starts from the principle that everything in life is a parable, and that this poem comes in its rightful place, at the end of a book made entirely of meshalim (parables). He recalls his own definition of Judaism — a Jew is not; he becomes one — and applies it to the feminine: valor is not a set of virtues acquired once and for all, but a permanent struggle. From there he takes up his rejection of the word ba’al, the alphabetical structure of the poem, and the first words of the text, mi yimtza, who will find.
The lecture then moves verse by verse through the first elements of the hymn: the trust the husband places in her hands, the good she bestows all the days of her life — hers, not his — the refusal to mix wool and linen, the harmony between the hand and the mouth. It ends with a question from the audience concerning the house of Yaakov and the children of Israel, and with a dedication of the lecture to the memory of the Rav’s mother, of his brother, and of the victims of the attack that had just been suffered.
What this lecture teaches
Eshet Chayil concludes a book of parables, and it is its key. Everything in life is a parable: we approach a reality, but in the form of an image, in an unbroken film that passes through us, our children, our grandchildren. Without the feminine, which is its axis, nothing holds together anymore. That is why the ultimate tribute Shlomo wishes to pay his mother takes the form of this hymn to the woman of valor. The book thus ends exactly where it had to end.
The question “Does she really exist?” is the same as the question “Does the Jew exist?” A Jew is not; he becomes one. We are always in an embryonic state: we take up the genetic and spiritual inheritance that has been left to us, and we work on it. Out of the Written Law we make an Oral Law, which becomes the center of our discussions and our passions, and from it is born another light cast upon life. The Written, the Oral and the Zohar are the three elements of this reflection, and each person has access to it at his own level.
The feminine is what opens the way to fruitfulness and renewal, and that is why it cannot be compared to precious stones. The text says that her worth is far beyond pearls. Precious stones, however precious, are in a static state: they do not change once the joy of possessing them has passed; they belong in a safe, locked away for fear of theft, and they feed jealousy and the evil eye. That is not what we see through the feminine. What we see there is what multiplies, develops and renews itself.
The Rav rejects the word ba’al as a term for the husband. Rendered in plain language, ba’ali means my master, my possessor, my owner — and who would dare say that? The prophet sets things right: the day will come when you will no longer define him as your master, but will say ishi, my partner. The masculine of ishah is ish, not ba’al. It is already in this perspective that Avraham goes down to Egypt with Sarah: for him she is not an object, and he does not want to see her lowered to the rank of an object of outside desire.
Chayil denotes a set of virtues, but these virtues are never acquired once and for all. They arise from a multitude of situations in which we find ourselves and which we try to make our way through at the cost of great effort. It is a permanent struggle. Woman is the embodied revolution of a society: it is through her that finance, art, politics and spiritual becoming move — not only of a family but of a people. Yet she does not seek to put herself at center stage or to draw attention to what she does. This combat is inward, not frontal: we do not make her a soldier at the front, facing the enemy outside; we make her a figure of relentless combat within the home, within the country, within the family. She is a woman always on the alert, who leaves neither her husband, nor society, nor the family in a static and listless state. Nothing is ever attained for good: everything can be overturned by the unexpected — by a child, by an accident, by an illness, by a poor upbringing, by bad company, by harmful social pressure.
The hymn is built on the twenty-two letters of the alphabet, and this choice is not ornamental. The letters are the means of identification and the modes of song, of expression, of poetry. That is why, when the prophets wished to express a state of sublimation, they did so by running through all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There are different letters because there are different means of expression, and all of these means are needed to make a beautiful poem, just as all the notes are needed to make a beautiful symphony.
The poem opens with mi yimtza: who will find — and the question turns back on itself. Is a woman found? Having found her, has one truly found what one was looking for? And the woman — has she found her husband? What one found before the marriage is not what one discovers after it, and things must be adjusted: one may have found more than one expected, or much less. These are two beings who meet, coming from different backgrounds and different upbringings, each with a history of their own, and out of this a new couple must be made. It is a challenge that must succeed, because the children’s lives depend on it. We are taught that the daughter of so-and-so is destined for so-and-so, and so she must be sought. But did one search in the right direction, and how will one know that it is really her? To seek like for like is merely to feed one’s ego: if I seek only what resembles me, I might as well stay alone within four walls and develop separately, at lower cost and lower risk. In the meantime, each has changed and evolved, because each has free will. There is therefore a first union and a second: once the union has been consummated, one must face a reality that is constantly different, and man and woman alike will be judged by their conduct toward each other.
Shlomo says he found one man in a thousand, but no woman. One man in a thousand is enough to inspire the other thousand. This notion of adam stands at the summit of man’s development, at the end of a path that passes through enosh, gever and ish: the model of the human being, who is not reduced to his religious, national or social affiliation. The woman, however, is not said to have been found, and for a precise reason: a woman is not found; she is acquired.
This acquisition has nothing to do with a purchase. It is not the car, nor the career, nor what one can offer her. When one acquires a woman, one gives her a small ring, a symbolic sum — sometimes money given by one’s father. In truth it has no price, and it is precisely because her worth is beyond measure that it is called an acquisition. She is not found lying on our path: she must be won, and my own future is at stake. What I seek in her is neither wealth nor social standing, but the affirmation of what I am in the depths of my being — for, our Sages say, it is the woman who forges her husband’s will.
The feminine binds man to this world, and this attachment is a virtue. Even the love of gifts, jewels and adornments is a way of staying attached to the reality of things, of recognizing that something can still be added to the beauty of the world. The Rav connects this to a reading of the rope tied to the High Priest on Yom Kippur: the usual explanation is a grim one, but there is another — the fear that this man, discovering the realm of holiness, would refuse to come out of it. So he is told: take a breath there, and come back to us so that we may benefit from it. The feminine does this same work of returning to the real.
“The heart of her husband trusts in her”: the verse tells of a voluntary relinquishing. Here the text uses the word ba’al, which the Rav has just judged to be reductive. But what precedes sheds light on everything: the ba’al divests himself of his notion of possession and ownership; he places the keys of everything in her hands. And only in this way will what he has amassed — his spoils — not be lost. For these spoils, what we have stored up over a lifetime and a career, are not what we will take with us.
To the three crowns a fourth is added, which is not a crown of its own. There is the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, the crown of kingship: we seek consecration through moral and spiritual values, belonging to an elite, the capacity to serve as a model, and each of us wants to be king in his own home. We are told there is a fourth, the crown of a good name. But it is not added to the three: it is grafted onto them. It is good to seek to become a point of reference and the spokesman of these values, provided there is no condescension and everything is done in a spirit of humility. It is in this impulse of humility that the husband places his wife in her true position.
Our Sages warn, moreover, that Eshet Chayil is not only the woman. It is also the Torah; it is also Shabbat. What your Torah will be, what your Shabbat will be, how you will celebrate it, how you will savor it, how you will taste the Torah — all of this will depend on the Eshet Chayil. It will depend on this woman of combat acquired within the home, to whom you have given full credit because you trust her. It is not still water you were seeking, but one who brings the spirit of the home to life, in a permanent struggle, day after day.
“She bestows good upon him and not evil, all the days of her life” — of her life, not his. The text does not say the days of the husband’s life. Even beyond his death, she continues the task begun with him and brings it to completion. Death does not stop her; it is not a final stage. She carries on a formative, renewing work — through memory, through the children, through what remains ineffable in her husband’s being.
To bestow good without doing evil is by no means self-evident. One can bestow good while doing evil: it is enough that I seek to strip you of your identity, to tear you away from your family and your culture, considering that what I give you is worth more than what you had, and that I mold you in my own fashion. Then I have done nothing. We are not photocopies to be reproduced: each person has his own personality, his own way of living his Judaism. What matters is not to lead this Judaism astray, not to cheapen it, not to divert it from its beauty and its intrinsic worth. The feminine does not look at how her husband ought to appear in society’s eyes: she gives him the means to assert himself without distorting him, because she does not make of him a manufactured product.
There is in man an imperishable being, and it is this that the feminine works upon. There are two registers for speaking of G-d: the Name that expresses being, which no one can define, and the name through which He is perceived by what He has created and accomplished. The same is true of man. There is a difference between mah and mi: when someone asks who you are, answering “a lawyer,” “a doctor” or “the owner of such-and-such a shop” is answering with one’s function, one’s mah, not one’s mi. The mi is what you are, your own worth, your essence. Life unfolds between the two: through what I accomplish, people perceive me; in my being, I am in perpetual transformation, and that is what death does not reach.
The feminine does not mix wool and linen. It does not subject people to a single category of thought and outlook. Wool is the covering of the animal, linen comes from vegetation: these are two different worlds, that of nefesh and that of ruach. Yet in man there is the neshamah, which lies beyond both; the nefesh is the level of the biological and sensory functions of the being. The work of the Eshet Chayil is therefore not done at the level of a covering one changes with the seasons, out of opportunism. The verse says she does what she does be-chefetz, that is, according to what the other desires: not what she herself imposes, but what the other aspires to, and which she wishes to bring about as such. The verse also plays on an identical spelling: “her hand” and “her mouth” are written the same way, and what her hand does joins what her mouth says. What she says is what she does; what she does is what she says. The thing must become willed; man’s will must be able to express itself in it. These, says the Rav, are the first elements of the Eshet Chayil, the rest being left for the next lecture.
A final question concerns the two forms of address at Sinai. “Thus shall you say to the house of Yaakov and tell the children of Israel”: the house of Yaakov is the feminine, since it is she who founds the home, and our Sages teach that a man’s house is his wife. Priority is therefore given to her, and what will then be told to the children of Israel depends on it. The two verbs differ as well: the first is a persuasive language, a language of beauty and of attraction, and it is this that guides and binds the whole together. It is promised for the time to come that the nations will say: in the light of the families of Yaakov, let us follow the way of G-d.
Full transcript of the lecture
We now come to the heart of the matter, that is, the study of the text of Eshet Chayil. We said that this woman of valor concludes all the parables of life — for everything in life is a parable, everything. We approach a reality, but in the form of an image; it is an unbroken film running through us, through our children, through our grandchildren. But without this feminine, which is the axis of everything, nothing works anymore. And that is why the ultimate tribute that Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon) wished to pay his mother is the hymn to the woman of valor. So — does she exist in reality? Does the Jew exist? You know very well what my definition is: a Jew is not; he becomes one.
In the age we live in, we are always in an embryonic state. We take up the inheritance, both genetic and spiritual, that has been left to us, and we set about working on it. Little by little we develop it, and out of what was written — the Written Law — we make an Oral Law; it becomes the center of our discussions, of our passions. And in the end we bring forth another light, another way of illuminating life. These, then, are the three elements of reflection: starting from the Written, from the Oral and from the Zohar — from this illumination, which becomes a source of inspiration for everyone, each at his own level. And therefore the Eshet Chayil, the woman who is the foundation — the feminine, I would say — is the foundation of all this, because only the feminine opens the way to this fruitfulness, this proliferation, this development, this renewal. And so we understand why a woman is not compared to precious stones. However precious they may be, and however glad we are to own them, they are in a static state; they do not change once the joy of possessing them has passed.
They belong, more or less, in a safe. They are locked away because we are afraid they will be stolen. They feed a certain jealousy, the evil eye. No, that is not what we see through the feminine. The feminine — Avraham, of course. When he goes down to Egypt with his wife, he says to her: hinneh na yadati — “Behold, now I know [that you are a woman fair to look upon]” (Bereshit 12:11). As if to say: of course, for me you are already acquired; but now, in the eyes of others, you become an object of outside desire, and I would not want to see you lowered to that level. Because for me it is not a relationship of ba’al — of owner. There is something abhorrent about that word, ba’ali.
Ba’ali: what does ba’ali mean? If I had to put it plainly, it means my master, my possessor, my owner. But who would dare say that — ba’ali? No? So the prophet Hoshea sets things right: ve-hayah ba-yom ha-hu… — “And it shall be on that day… that you will call Me ishi (my husband), and you will no longer call Me ba’ali (my master)” (Hoshea 2:18). The day will come when you will no longer define him as a ba’al, as a master, but you will say ishi, my partner. As it is written: “This one shall be called ishah, for from ish she was taken” (Bereshit 2:23). So the masculine of ishah is ish, not ba’al. And so, to return to Eshet chayil mi yimtza — “A woman of valor, who can find?” (Mishlei 31:10) — what is chayil? Chayil is a set of virtues. But these virtues — are they acquired once and for all? No. They arise from a multitude of situations in which we find ourselves and which we strive to acquire at the cost of great effort. It is a permanent struggle. A woman is indeed the embodied revolution of a society. It is through her that finance, art, politics and spiritual becoming move — not only of a family, but of a society, of a people. Yet she does not want to put herself at center stage; she does not want to cast a shadow over all that she does. We have already seen that she goes about it quietly, on muffled steps: this combat is waged from within, not from without.
We do not make her a soldier at the front, facing the enemy outside; rather, we make her a figure of relentless combat within the home, within the country, within the family. And that is why, when he begins his hymn, it is built on the different modes of language — and these modes of language are the Hebrew alphabet, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are indeed the means of identification. As it is said: nagilah ve-nismechah bakh — “We will exult and rejoice in you” (Shir HaShirim 1:4): bakh, “in you,” whose numerical value is twenty-two — the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These are the modes of song, of expression, of poetry, if you like. And that is why, when the prophets wished to express a state of sublimation, they did so through all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
So the verse begins by saying mi yimtza (מי ימצא), “who will find.” Is a woman found? We are truly in search of her. And once we have found her, have we really found what we were looking for? The question can be turned around: has the woman found her husband? In truth, we have only approximate words for this. What one found before the marriage is not what one discovers after the marriage. Things have to be adjusted. It can go either way — one may have found more than one expected, or much less than one expected, isn’t that so? We must tell ourselves that these are two beings who meet, who come from different backgrounds, from different upbringings.
And indeed, with a history on each side, out of all this one must make a new couple, new combinations, new givens. It is a challenge, and one that must succeed, because the children’s lives depend on it. We often hear it said that one only gets the wife one deserves, or the husband one deserves. Is that true? If we start from the principle that already at birth — bat ploni liploni, “the daughter of so-and-so is for so-and-so” — we were already destined, at birth, for what would be our soulmate: wonderful! Now she must be sought. But did we search in the right direction? And how will we know that this is truly the soulmate?
Like for like? No — that is really just feeding one’s ego. If I seek only what resembles me, only what is myself, then nothing has been accomplished. One might as well stay alone within four walls and develop separately, at lower cost and lower risk. But if it is to be done, if it is to be done, then we are told […]. The first attempt at union is when it was decided for you, at birth, who would be your soulmate. But in the meantime, you have changed, you have evolved, because you have free will — because you were not placed under such conditioning that you would remain faithful to what was handed down to you and to the conditions in which you grew up and lived. And the same is true of the soulmate. So there is a zivug rishon, a first union, and there is a zivug sheni, a second union.
Now, do not misunderstand this. In reality, the woman destined for us in our first union turns out to be quite another than the one we rediscover little by little as we live with her. Because before knowing her, we were indeed conceived and destined for each other; but once the union is consummated, we must face another reality, one that is constantly different, and the woman and the man will be judged by their conduct toward each other. There is thus, in the development of a couple, an uninterrupted march with constant trials — but those trials are the leaven of this union, of this success, of this growth, which continues through our children. And that is what is meant by: “One man in a thousand I have found” (Kohelet 7:28) — among a thousand, I found one man worthy of the title adam. We have already brought out this notion of adam, which stands at the summit of man’s development, through enosh, gever, ish — and then, yes, adam, the model of the human being, who is not reduced to labels relating to his religious, national or social affiliation.
Adam stands above all these considerations. So Shlomo HaMelech says: yes, I found one in a thousand, and that is enough. It is indeed enough to inspire the other thousand. But a woman? “Among all these, I did not find” (ibid.). Why? Because a woman is not found; she is acquired — she has a price. Yet it is neither the car, nor the career, nor anything you can offer her. For when one acquires a woman, what does one give her? A few coins, a small ring — and sometimes it was one’s father who gave the pocket money to buy it, isn’t that so? And with that one consecrates the woman; it is entirely symbolic.
In reality it has no price, but it is an acquisition — an acquisition because she has a value beyond measure. I will get there, because it is through her that I will realize my life. So then […]? No, we will not find her lying on our path; and even if we did find her, we would have to acquire her. She must be won; my future is at stake. And I do not seek through her either wealth or the affirmation of what I am on the social plane, but the affirmation of what I am in the depths of my being. That is what our Sages expressed in the saying ishah osah retzon ba’alah: it is the woman who forges her husband’s will.
In other words, it is she who truly carries him. That is why everything depends on the credit we are able to extend to the other. If we approach the other with suspicion, contempt, condescension, and if we try to make of her our own double, our mirror, we have surely failed in our life. That is no longer Eshet Chayil. I repeat: she is a woman of combat. She is a woman who is constantly on the alert, who does not leave her husband — nor society, nor the family — in a static, listless state. “Well, we have reached our goal” — no, we never reach it. We remain with a certain anxiety, let us say, a determination at least to maintain the level we have reached, because everything can be overturned — overturned by the unexpected: by a child, by — G-d forbid — an accident, an illness, a false step, a poor upbringing, bad company, harmful social pressure.
Now the feminine is what brings everything back toward the inwardness of the being, toward the inside, and works it over again, giving it a state of permanent fermentation so that it can indeed face every difficulty, every problem […] — and that is its richness. So: yimtza, matza, “found” — in fact she is not found. She is not found; she is acquired. She is acquired when one invests in her. And investing in her is not investing in jewelry — although this tendency of the feminine to cherish gifts, jewels and finery is a way of staying attached to the reality of things, to the reality of this world. It means realizing that there is something that could add, even through this element of coquetry, a little more beauty.
It is wonderful! Well, the feminine is of this nature — this nature that binds it to this world, so that it does not want, as it were, to leave its own reality. That is what it means to set man on his feet. You know that on Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) who entered the Holy of Holies was held back by a cord tied to his leg. Why? What is generally accepted is that they feared he might die and that no one could go in to bring him out. But there is another idea, one that is not macabre: they feared that this man, upon discovering the realm of holiness, would renounce everything and not want to come out, that he would want to remain in that realm of holiness, of the Holy of Holies. So he is told: no, no, my dear friend — you are going to be in contact with the world of the infinite, where space takes up no room; but from there, take a breath of oxygen and then come back to us, and let us benefit from this spiritual gift you have breathed in — share it with us. Good?
That is the feminine; that is what the feminine is. In the end, the feminine must not be measured by its material, tangible contribution — whether financial, or domestic, or in terms of beauty — but by those intrinsic values which alone make the worth of a human being. Indeed, in the text we will see that when the man grants her betach bah lev ba’alah — “the heart of her husband trusts in her” (Mishlei 31:11) — the word ba’al is used to tell you “her husband,” her spouse. Yet I have just defined the word ba’al as rather reductive toward the feminine. But look at what precedes it: batach bah lev ba’alah, that is, the ba’al divests himself of his notion of possession, of ownership, of mastery. Batach bah: he gives it to her, he confers it on her, he shares it with her; he places the keys of everything in her hands — batach bah lev ba’alah. And it is in this way, precisely in this way — ve-shalal lo yechsar, “and he shall lack no spoil” (ibid.) — that what he has within him, his spoils, what he has amassed, what he has acquired, he will not lose.
For this shalal — shalal is the spoils, what we have stored up at the cost of effort and struggle over a whole lifetime, over a whole career. But that is not what we will take with us. […] And there are three ketarim, three crowns, say our Sages: Keter Torah, Keter Malchut and Keter Kehunah — the crown of Torah, the crown of kingship, the crown of priesthood. We move forward, we walk in the pursuit of consecration through the Torah, through moral values, through spiritual values. We seek these garments — careful! We seek to belong to an intellectual elite, if you like; we want to be able to serve as a model for others — Kehunah, Keter Kehunah. Yes, we consider ourselves in a position to give so-called lessons — it is dreadful to see oneself in that situation all the time.
There is a fourth: Keter Shem Tov. And Keter Malchut — each of us is a king in his own domain; we seek to impose ourselves on the unit in which we live. We are told that there is a fourth, and the fourth is Keter Shem Tov — the good name, the crown of a good name. What is it? The text does not tell me that there are three crowns and then four crowns. No: the crown of a good name is grafted onto the crown of kingship, onto the crown of Torah, onto the crown of priesthood. It is good to seek to become a model, a point of reference; it is good to seek to master many things, to have influence, to be the spokesman of these values. But careful: no condescension toward others — in a spirit of humility. That is how you should see your position in relation to others, and that is how our Sages see it. In short, batach bah lev ba’alah: the ba’al is the one who, in an impulse of humility, places his wife in her true position. Now, his wife — we said his wife. “Rav Benizri, you are exaggerating,” you will tell me. But our Sages said: careful — Eshet Chayil is not only the woman; Eshet Chayil is the Torah, it is Shabbat. Ah — so we are not speaking only of the feminine; we are speaking of learning, we are speaking of Shabbat, we are speaking of the Torah. Here too: what you will be in Torah, what you will be on Shabbat — the rest of Shabbat, how you will celebrate it, how you will truly savor Shabbat, how you will savor the Torah — all of this will depend on the woman of combat whom you have indeed acquired within the home and to whom you have given full credit, because you have this trust in her. It is on that basis that you acquired her; that is what you sought in her. You did not seek still water; on the contrary, you sought one who brings the spirit of the home to life, in a permanent struggle, day after day. And so it comes about that all I have — shalal, all I have set aside, all I have wrested by the sweat of my brow — lo yechsar: it will never be lacking. I will not regret it; I will not one day come to regard it as having contributed somehow to my defeat, to my failure. On the contrary, she knew how to give it value, how to make it worthwhile. And that is why the text then says what marks all this investment of the feminine at her husband’s side: gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra kol yemei chayehah — “she bestows good upon him and not evil, all the days of her life” (Mishlei 31:12). One might have expected the text to say […]. She bestows good upon him and not evil, all the days of her life — the life of whom?
The life of her companion, the life of the husband? No — it is her own life. Because beyond her husband, beyond the grave, she continues to serve him. She continues the task she began with him, to bring it to completion. Death does not stop her; it is not a final stage. She has not concluded — through the very memory of her husband, through their descendants, she carries on a formative, renewing work. And gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra: how can one bestow good without evil? Have you given some thought to this idea? Gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra — to bestow good. Of course, if I bestow good on you, I am not doing you harm. And yet — one can bestow good while doing evil.
You will ask me how. The answer is very simple. If, in the end, I try to strip you of your identity, of what you are, to take you away from your family, from your culture, considering that what I give you is worth more than what you had until now, and I set about molding you in my own fashion — then I have done nothing. And that is called bestowing good! Of course, the Torah gives you other means — and, forgive me for saying so, we are all converts, are we not? Starting from this point: we are not born Jewish. Through our birth, through our ancestry, we are Jews, but we must become Jews: we come to affirm it, we become it — or else we reject it. One may well say, “a Jew is a Jew.” Fine — he is, theoretically he is; but what do I care about his mere existence? Yes, his reality as a Jew is the one he works at every single day — every day according to his own measure. We are not here as photocopies to be reproduced, are we? […] Each person has his own personality, each has his own way of living his Judaism. But what matters is not to lead this Judaism astray, not to cheapen it, not to divert it from its majestic path, from its beauty, its art, its intrinsic worth. Rather, each Jew, in his own way of fulfilling himself — through the Torah, of course, through Shabbat — draws a new breath as he goes: whether through his study, or through his celebration of Shabbat, that fragrance of holiness he tastes and savors on the seventh day, looking toward the eighth.
And the feminine is the one who does not look at how her husband ought to be outwardly, in the image that society presents; rather: it is he, and I must bring him to fulfillment as he is, without distorting him, giving him the means to assert himself further. That is gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra. Why? Because she does not make of him a manufactured product, an artificial product, an overloaded product. No — it is the basic product, but with a better label, a better way of being. And that is why, if there are different letters, it is because there are different means of expression, and we need all these means of expression to create a beautiful poem, just as we need all the musical notes to make a beautiful symphony. Well, that is gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra kol yemei chayehah. Kol yemei chayehah — it is not his life, not only while he is here. Even when he is gone, she continues to care about what he is and what he will be — through her own person, through his children, his descendants, of course, but also through what he is in the ineffable. For just as there are two attributes of Hashem: there is Hashem as Being — who can define Being? No one can define it; Being cannot be defined; it is the essence of everything. But I can perceive Him by giving Him an image, by perceiving Him through what He has accomplished, what He has created, what He has formed: He is Elokim — eleh mi; eleh, “these”: here is what He has done, here is what He has accomplished; that is, through His works. And so it is with man — the same thing.
There is in him an imperishable being. This imperishable being is […]. And, as we have already said, the numerical value of adam is 45, which is the numerical value of mah. What does that mean? You know, there is a difference between mah and mi. When we seek to identify a person, we say mi, “who.” But when I say to you, mi atah, “who are you?”, you do not answer: I am a lawyer, or I am a doctor, or I am the owner of this shop. No — that is your function, that is your mah, not your mi. Mi is what you are, your own worth, your essence. Your essence is the Name Havayah, the Name of Being — it is your being. Your mah, whose numerical value is 45 — your mah is what you have accomplished.
So life unfolds between this mah and this mi. What I accomplish is how people perceive and recognize me; but in my being I am in perpetual transformation, and that is the ineffable in man, which death does not reach. And this, in sum, is what the feminine seeks to do in gemalat’hu tov ve-lo ra kol yemei chayehah, because this feminine is very sensitive. It does not mix things; it does not mix wool and linen — it does not mix. It does not subject people to a single category of thought and outlook, no. In the plant world there are a great many plants, each with its own virtues, its remedies, its vitality, let us say; and there is the animal realm. Wool is the covering of the animal; linen is the covering that comes from vegetation. These are two different worlds: the world of nefesh and the world of ruach. And in man there is the neshamah, and the neshamah is beyond the nefesh and the ruach.
The nefesh is the lowest level of man’s existence: the biological functions of the being. The ruach is the affective, sensory functions of the being. The neshamah lies beyond. So the work of the Eshet Chayil is not done at the level of the tzemer, the woolen covering, or of the linen covering changed according to the seasons, out of opportunism. No: va-ta’as be-chefetz kapeha — “she works willingly with her hands” (Mishlei 31:13). She does what she does be-chefetz — and be-chefetz means according to what the other desires, what he aspires to, what he strives for; and she wishes to bring it about as such. Be-chefetz kapeha: kapeha, “her hands,” and kefiha, “as her mouth” — it is the same spelling, כפיה.
Her hand joins her mouth. What she says is what she does; what she does is what she says, what she expresses. And all of this be-chefetz. The thing must become willed; man’s will must be able to express itself in it. These are the first elements of Eshet Chayil. I will stop here; if you have questions, I will gladly take them, and I will continue with the rest next time. — “Kevod HaRav, I wanted to ask you about the difference between tomar le-veit Yaakov and taggid li-vnei Yisrael.” — Yes. Well: ko tomar le-veit Yaakov — “thus shall you say to the house of Yaakov” (Shemot 19:3) — establishes that you will give priority to the house of Yaakov. And the house of Yaakov is the feminine, since the bayit — the one who founds it — is the feminine, and our Sages said: beito zo ishto, “his house is his wife”; his wife is his house.
And so everything will depend on ko tomar le-veit Yaakov — on what you say to the house of Yaakov and on what the house of Yaakov will do. Ve-taggid li-vnei Yisrael: you will then address the children of Israel. The children of Israel depend on the house of Yaakov. Indeed, in the prophecy of the time to come, the nations will say (cf. Yeshayahu 2): “In the light of the families of Yaakov, let us go forward in the way of G-d.” That is it. Beit Yaakov represents the women, and Bnei Yisrael the men. — “The men. Very good.” — And there are two forms of language. Tomar, from amar: it is a gentle language, a persuasive language, a language that seduces. I will not go so far as to link amar with amor.
Amor, as in Spanish. No — but still, this persuasive language, this language of beauty, of attraction, is what will make possible taggid — taggid from gid, “sinew”: it is what binds, the muscle that holds together all the limbs, the whole skeleton, and makes it function. So that is the taggid li-vnei Yisrael: it depends on the house of Yaakov. Another question? I forgot to say that this lecture was dedicated to the memory of my mother, first of all, whose yahrzeit (anniversary of passing) is today; of my brother Shalom; and of the victims of this attack we have once again suffered at the hands of our enemies. There it is. With that, I take my leave. I wish you a good week, and until next week. Todah rabbah — until next week.
Another question to ask? All well? We’ll think about it, yes? May G-d protect you all, may G-d protect you all in Israel. Amen. — Good evening, Madame Canet. — Good evening. — What we are going through is truly terrible. — Tired? — Well, there it is. — Thank you very much, Rav Benizri. Thank you very much. Until next week. Thank you very much.
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