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The human ability to give needs some further elaboration here. A contemporary reading of Kabbalah will insist that each human being has something unique to offer, something needed by the world and even by God. Y-H-W-H, the Source and Giver of all life, is also the One who calls upon us to become givers, our own lives being the gift. To become a giver is to fulfill our Godlike existence, to realize the divine image, as Heschel taught, through the medium of our entire selves. The divine voice, however transverbally we may understand that phrase, still makes a demand of each of us, a unique demand of each unique person. Each of us indeed has something that only he or she can supply, a contribution urgently needed to sustain the divine economy or the balance of nature.

In Hasidism, this idea that each soul has a special gift to offer is often expressed by the raising of sparks, which I discussed earlier. But in Hasidic thought this is part of a wider view of ha'ala'ah or “uplifting.” Everything in our lives can be raised to higher (or “deeper”) levels, ultimately to be restored to its source in the One. This uplifting applies to our thoughts (all thoughts, even those that turn to sin or evil, are rooted in the single thought of God), our words (for at the silent root of language there is only the single word “Y-H-W-H”), and our deeds. Life is then a series of opportunities, chances to discover and to give to life that which we uniquely have to offer.

That is why the characteristic form of Jewish prayer is a berakhah, or blessing. To bless someone is to offer something of value, to convey a certain strength. When a child asks for a parent's blessing, what he or she seeks is some combination of approval, support, and love. The child is fortified by that blessing, is “given” something in the course of it. When a member of the clergy blesses troops going out to battle, the intent is that some divine protection is invoked; something of “power” is conveyed that will help to protect them. But in our prayers we repeatedly offer blessings to God. What can this possibly mean? Blessing is not just praise. We assert over and over again (a hundred times each day, the rabbis suggest)53 that we have something to offer in the balance of the divine economy, something to give. God seeks our blessing, as it were, the strength of that which we alone have to offer, each of us uniquely. Of course, this act of giving to God really takes place deep within the heart, and the recitation of words is only its outer expression. The reality of our giving is ultimately vindicated only by our actions in the human world, where we are called upon to be engaged as givers as well.

Jewish Trinities, Male and Female

All of this language needs but little translation, I believe, to speak within the old/new evolutionary/Kabbalistic theological idiom I am putting forth here. We humans are participants in evolution, the ongoing process of divine self-manifestation, needed partners in that process. The greater the power we achieve over all the rest of existence, the more we are needed for this conscious partnership. The call to us is constant, echoing throughout our lives. As we stretch ourselves to become aware, to know the oneness of Being, and to live in response to that knowledge, we become givers to God. Torah is all that teaches us how to walk this path. Mitzvah, in its fullest sense, is the gift we have to offer.

“God, Torah, and lsrael are one,” the Kabbalists have long proclaimed. Translated into my own religious language, this means something like: “The deep inner oneness of all being, manifest in silence, but flowing into sacred speech, is accessible to the seeking human heart, leading us to transformative action.” The three are fully identified with one another. God is the silent inner Torah; Israel, rendering that silence into language, is the human heart struggling to uncover the hidden message (or “teaching,” or “Torah”) of existence, the fact that we are all one with God, the force of Being. As we