“He accosted her in the field. The maiden cried out, but no one was there to save her.”—Deuteronomy 22:27

The Torah speaks of a young girl, accosted and violated in a place where there was no one to rescue her, no one who even heard her voice as she screamed for help.

She is proclaimed innocent, as one who has been murdered.

That is rape, according to Torah: Murdering a person while leaving them alive.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, known as the Tzemach Tzedek, explained that, in a deeper, inner sense, this is every one of us. In our times, the Rebbe elucidated his words:

You Are the Maiden

The maiden is your divine soul, the G‑dpoint within you.

Who is this man that accosts your divine soul and abuses her?

It is the wild, impulsive beast within you. A beast that refuses to acknowledge any meaning or purpose to life. An impulse to destroy yourself. For in each of us is an Esau, “a man of the field,”

Raped and abused by that inner beast, captured by its brute force, your soul cries and screams for rescue. But no one is there to save her. No one even hears her voice. Even you do not hear the screams of your own soul.

Saved by Nothing

No one? But isn’t G‑d there? Doesn’t He hear?

Yes, G‑d is the No One who hears.

In the Hebrew text, “no one” is ayn. Ayn is a nothingness, an absence of structure, of boundaries. That is why we call G‑d the Ayn Sof-- “without end”--for He alone has truly no boundaries.

And it is there that her cry is heard. “Ayn moshia la.” The cry of the most hidden essence of your soul reaches to the most hidden essence of G‑d. To the ayin.

The lower a soul has fallen, the higher her cry reaches. As the desperate screams of a captive fair maiden stir her hero to rescue her at any risk, so the cries of your soul reach to the core of the Infinite Light.

Above, a chord is struck. G‑d says, “This soul, as deeply as she has fallen, she still cries out to Me! She can never be separated from Me! Nothing, not even Esau, the wild man of the field, can sunder her bond with Me!”

When love is awakened Above, love awakens below. Your soul gathers strength and overcomes that beast. Even if just for the moment.

Delight of the Beloved

If you could only truly know the delight of your Beloved Above! His delight in that moment—the moment you struggled to return. His delight in His bond with you that cannot be severed. In just you for who you are.

If you would only truly know, nothing would stop you, ever. You would break free from the clutches of the beast, cross every river, scale every mountain. To find Him. To embrace Him.

And He would reach down towards you, pull you by the hand, break every barrier before you, level every hill and mountain.

Until, once together again, you would discover that you were never truly apart.

Even as Esau accosted you in the field, even as you ignored your own screams, even then, your true, inner desire was only in Him.

Transforming Into Yourself

One who has truly returned, writes Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, is one who can say, “I am a different person. I am not the one who did those things.”

But how is that possible? To live is to invest yourself in life—and to bear the consequences. Each thing you do, each word you speak, each thought you think—you have invested yourself within that deed, that word, that thought. How can you ever divorce your past and claim that wasn’t you?

Because it wasn’t you. You were not you at the time. You were the beast. The inner, essential you was screaming. And no one heard.

That is what it means to return: To hear yourself. To uncover a pure essence within.

And to bring an abandoned soul back to life.

Maamar Ani LeDodi 5726, s'if 8. Maamar Bayom Hashmini 5740, s’if 4, fn. 67.