Man And Animal - Part 4

Now that we have learned that the Torah has the ability to activate those "pleasure sensors" in the soul we will continue this line of thought. Chazal said a mashal about the giving of the Torah: A king made a decree that the residents of Rome should not enter into Syria and that the residents of Syria should not enter into Rome. In the same vein, until Har Sinai there had been a decree that people should not ascend to the upper realms and that the Divinne presence should not descend to our reality. But at matan torah it says that Hashem descended upon Har Sinai and the Moshe went up to Hashem ["umoshe alah el haElokim]. It is not hard to comprehend that this change was a general indication of a number of changes that transpired with the giving of the Torah. One of the changes whose inner workings can be explained by this removal of the mechitza between the upper and lower realms is the ability of the Rabbis to decide halacha. The Torah is the word of G-d yet rabbis have the power to decide what the word of G-d is in any given situation. The Torah was given "al da'atom shel chachomim" – based on the understanding of the sages. This is truly the removal of a mechitza. There is a parallel removal of mechitza in the spiritual world of man. A man's intellect corresponds to the lower world in contrast to the koach hataanug which is much higher, due to the fact that the activation of the intellect is dependant upon the effect of the koach hataanug. Here we discover the uniqueness of the sechel hatorah which breaks the barrier between the lower and higher levels of the soul and connects to the sublime koach hataanug. This power is rooted in the removal of the barrier between the higher and lower worlds at Har Sinai.