Word Prompt – ALIYAH – Michael Milgraum

To go up, to ascend, often with a spiritual connotation.

Why are physical heights used as a symbol for growing in spirituality? After all, isn’t “the whole world filled with His glory,” as recounted by Yeshayahu. Thus, shouldn’t the bottom of the ocean be as infused with the spirit of Hashem as a mountain peak? Nonetheless, the Torah was given to Moshe upon the mountain that he had ascended, the Beis HaMikdash was built on an elevation, and we associate the heavens with Hashem’s spiritual kingdom.

I think the most likely explanation is that the vertical is a dimension that takes us out of the day-to-day plane of existence. We, creatures made from clay, and thus, in a sense, belonging to the earth, live out our days bound by its gravity and by the mundane matters that consume our energies to such an extent that we can forget that we are not just formed from clay. The first man only became a living being after the first breath of Hashem flowed into his nostrils. Thus, we are also children of air, and the realm of air is from the ground upward.

It is the vertical that reminds us about our creator and that gives us a sense of proportion between our powers and His. The disparity between Him and us is also exhibited in the gesture of a bow, in which we acknowledge that His thoughts are beyond our thoughts and His ways are beyond our ways (to paraphrase Yeshayahu). As the poet Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”