אלשיך — עשה לך שרף ושים אתו על נס

Q — The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah famously asks how a brass serpent could heal — and answers that lifting one's eyes upward is what healed. The Alshich asks more sharply: why this particular form? Why a *brass* (inert) serpent lifted up on a pole, while the actual snakes biting them are living and on the ground?

A — The contrast is the lesson. Two snakes — one alive and below, one inert and above. A person who looks downward — who sees the world as pure nature — is, by his denial of השגחה, *himself* infusing the snake with life-force and power to bite him ('אני נותן רוח חיות וכח בשרף ישכני'). A person who lifts his eyes upward — recognizing that all of this is nes, all is from above — finds that the upper snake, representing the destroying force, is rendered inert, dormant ('דומם'), and once the upper destroyer is silenced, the lower snakes lose their bite. The cure is metaphysical orientation: where you look determines whether the snake is alive or dead.