Shmeleke of Nikolsburg (?-1778)

This passage, to me, ties greatly to the Hindu passage about the jewels. Its saying that we all are one and connected by god. That our consciousness is shared through Him. As humans we have a hard time grasping the infinity of God's reach. We are all a part of Him and Him a part in all of us. This is also a passage of forgiveness and understanding. Understanding that even though God is in all of us, that as humans we cloud our minds with Earthly thoughts. We can forget what we really are and look for glory in our worldly bodies, something that is rarely found and is always superficial. And a lesson to give forgiveness to those who may lose their way from God, those who have wrong us in some way. Wronging them in return is also a punishment for ourselves and a ripple of hurt and heartache are the only things to follow. That repeating that anger and sorrow creates only more anger and sorrow and the word of God gets ignored. Instead we should release ourselves of those burdens and forgive those who caused our suffering, because they are suffering to. Release the world from anger and hatred and we are able to embrace the love of God inside us, for we are all important, flawless entities in His eyes and if one link in His perfect chain is flawed, we all become flawed.

Dov Baer of Mezritch (?-1772)

Dov Baer seems to me to be a man of great conviction but not of ridged "religion". To me his words seem to radiate spirituality. He speaks of the self as something imaginary. When commenting on how to say Torah, he says, "You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the word is constantly saying within you. The moment you begin to hear what you yourself are saying, you must stop." I think that this is a very profound thought. What I think he is trying to get across is that people are not the themselves holy. That what God gave them is holy and to see that you must look past your own consciousness and be devoured by the magnificence of what God has given. Once they begin to see themselves as doing things or saying things, they have take the credit for what God is doing or saying through them. Dov Baer seems to have an understanding that God is working through everything and that if you let go yourself that everything will become clear and meaningful. People seem to complicate things and try to put things in man-made categorize that don't really exist. They try to derive a meaning that can not be understood by the human mind alone. Dov Baer says in he last passage, "...the masters who in their work disengage themselves from what is bodily and do nothing but meditate to God, actually see the universe as it was in the state of nothingness before creation. They change the something back into nothing. This more miraculous: to begin from a lower state." Again, I believe that he is trying to say that when you can disconnect for world realities, you are able to see the meanings of things and the messages behind them.