Chapter VI · 2 min read
“For My Name Is Within Him”
The Name inside the vessel, not the vessel as Source
The Torah speaks in Shemos of the angel sent before Israel:
כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבּוֹ.
Original text
“For My Name is within him.”
The Gemara connects this language with Metatron and says of him that his name is like the Name of his Master.
Later mystical literature becomes even more daring and speaks of Metatron as הוי"ה הקטן, הֲוָיָ״ה הַקָּטָןHavayah HaKatan“The Lesser Havayah.” A title from later Kabbalistic reception designating a garment through which governance is mediated to lower orders. Always read here through bittul and the Creator/created distinction.Glossary, the “Lesser הֲוָיָ״הHavayahThe customary respectful designation used in Chassidic writing for the four-letter Divine Name, avoiding its pronunciation and its decorative use.Glossary”.
This is the place at which precision becomes sacred.
The title cannot mean a second G-d.
It cannot mean a smaller specimen of Divinity.
It cannot mean another independent authority alongside HaKadosh Baruch Hu.
If it meant any of these things, the phrase would cease to belong inside Torah.
The word katan, lesser, is not an apologetic qualification.
It is the key.
Metatron bears a relation to the Name.
He is not the Essence to which the Name points.
This distinction is vast.
A name reveals and conceals at once.
When you call a person by his name, the person turns toward you. The name allows relationship. Yet the syllables do not contain his essence. You can know the name and still know very little of the person.
חֲסִידוּתChassidusThe Chassidic teaching, and in particular the Chabad discipline of bringing the highest concepts into a form that transforms the person contemplating them.Glossary takes this much further when speaking of the Divine Names.
Elokim.
Havayah.
Shakkai.
Adnai.
These names are holy beyond ordinary language, but they belong to revelation, relationship and modes through which Elokus is known within seder hishtalshelus.
עַצְמוּתAtzmusEssence. In Chassidic usage, the Divine as it is in itself, distinguished absolutely from every revelation of it, however exalted.Glossary is not another Name placed above the others.
Atzmus is not contained by the category of naming at all.
Therefore a created being can bear a Divine Name in a derivative, representative or revelatory sense without becoming Divine Essence.
This is what protects the mystery while allowing us to enter it.
Metatron can stand astonishingly near the Name precisely because no proximity within creation crosses the distinction between Creator and created.
The distance is not measurable.
The highest angel is not ninety-nine per cent Divine.
The lowest stone is not one per cent Divine.
Those percentages belong to the wrong grammar.
Both exist because HaShem brings them into being.
Neither becomes the One who brings being into existence.
There is no second source.
אין עוד מלבדו.
Original text
And therefore the mystery of Metatron becomes more beautiful, not less.
He is not almost G-d.
He is something more subtle:
a creature who has almost perfectly ceased confusing what passes through him with what originates in him.