Middat Tzniut - sacred secrets

“You have been told, O mortal, what is good,And what GOD requires of you:Only to do justiceAnd to love goodness,And to walk modestly with your God;

The Gemara elaborates: “To do justly,” this is justice; “to love mercy,” this is an allusion to acts of loving-kindness; “and to walk humbly with your God,” this is an allusion to taking the indigent dead out for burial and accompanying a poor bride to her wedding canopy, both of which are to be performed without fanfare glorifying the doer. The Gemara notes: And are these matters not inferred a fortiori? If, with regard to matters that tend to be conducted in public, e.g., funerals and weddings, the Torah states “walk humbly” when doing them, then in matters that tend to be conducted in private, e.g., charity and Torah study, all the more so should they be conducted in private.

And Rabbi Yitzḥak says: Blessing is found only in a matter concealed from the eye, as it is stated: “The Lord will command blessing with you in your storehouses” (Deuteronomy 28:8), where the grain is concealed. The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught: Blessing is found only in a matter over which the eye has no dominion, as it is stated: “The Lord will command blessing with you in your storehouses.”

In this verse Solomon teaches that a person’s life span is extended or shortened in accordance with his merits or the punishment for which he has qualified. Such results are due to נס נסתר, intervention by G’d in a person’s fate by miraculous ways which are not visible to us. The various types of miracles are divided into two groups. 1) There are clearly manifest miracles; 2) there are miracles which are totally concealed from man as the onlooker. The miracles which are recognized as such are the extraordinary occurrences which have befallen people or which have occurred for the benefit of people such as the producing of water from a rock, the descent of bread from heaven, i.e. the manna; even the sudden appearance of the quails in large numbers after their appearance had been predicted was a clearly manifest miracle. When Avraham overcame the four mightiest kings and their armies in battle having with him only 318 men, this too was a clear miracle. Even though no specific supernatural event occurred at that time the victory was a נס נסתר, a “hidden” miracle, i.e. it became clear to everyone who knew what happened that G’d must have intervened in the outcome of that military encounter....

...The fact is that the addition of extra years or the cutting short of one’s life span is in the category of a נס נסתר, a “hidden miracle.” It proves G’d’s intervention in nature without giving us details as to what precisely caused the intervention and to what degree G’d intervened. In fact it is axiomatic to remember that a person is not a true believer, i.e. does not really have a share in Moses’ Torah unless he is absolutely convinced of the fact that G’d performs such hidden miracles all the time, that there is no accident and no coincidence in the universe. G’d is aware of all that occurs and has had a hand in it (See Nachmanides at the end of Parshat Bo.) The second part of this absolute faith that is required of each Jew is that he must be convinced that every one of his good deeds will qualify for reward and every one of his sins will be subject to punishment. The whole matter of blessings and curses which was already spelled out in Deut. 27,15-26 and some of which has been debated in Niddah 31, i.e. that the person who is subject to a miracle being performed for him is unaware of that at the time, is the reason our sages said in Baba Metzia 42 that when one enters one’s grain storage chamber in order to measure the size of one’s crop, one should pronounce a benediction asking G’d to bless one’s store....

(1) O Lord, who can comprehend Thy power? For Thou hast created for the splendour of Thy glory a pure radiance "Hewn from the rock of rocks and digged from the bottom of the pit."

(2) Thou hast imparted to it the spirit of wisdom And called it the Soul.

(3) And of flames of intellectual fire hast Thou wrought its form, And like a burning fire hast Thou wafted it,

(4) And sent it to the body to serve and guard it, And it is as fire in the midst thereof yet doth not consume it,

(5) For it is from the fire of the soul that the body hath been created, And goeth from Nothingness to Being, "Because the Lord descended on him in fire."