Likkutei Amarim Chapter 20 · 5781

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, tonight we’re learning chapter 20. As we’ve discussed a few times, we’re in the middle of a sequence of eight chapters that the Alter Rebbe builds up gradually, from chapter 18 through chapter 25. At first, in chapters 1 through 17, the Alter Rebbe explained how to serve Hashem by contemplating His greatness. The mind rules the heart, and anyone can awaken the feelings in their heart by contemplating Hashem’s greatness. But then, at the very end, he revealed to us that this is actually a little difficult. You need to know a lot of Chassidus, contemplate a great deal, and put in a lot of effort. Not everyone has a great mind, and not everyone has an expansive heart. So although it is within reach, although it’s possible, it isn’t very close. It isn’t very easy. What is very close, then? In chapter 18, he begins to explain how serving Hashem really is very close and straightforward for everyone. What’s the secret? What’s the method? Every Jew is born with a G-dly soul. Each of us is born with a neshamah, and that neshamah loves Hashem on its own. It doesn’t have to produce love. It doesn’t have to change something about itself. It doesn’t have to work on itself before it can begin serving Hashem. It loves Hashem; that’s how it was born. That is the essence of every Jew’s neshamah. It’s like the flame of a candle. He said that a flame always strives to rise upward. You don’t need to explain to it that its source and root are above and that it should therefore rise. No. The moment you light it, that is its nature, its desire, its instinct: it wants to cleave to G-dliness. That’s the neshamah

01:45 Speaker 1 of every Jew. Why don’t we feel it? Why don’t I ordinarily feel love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu? If I have a neshamah that loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu so much, why doesn’t that show in everyday life? And what do I need to do for it to show? In chapters 18 and 19, he explained that to understand this, we first need to understand what this neshamah is. So he explained its nature, its source, what it wants, what it seeks. And in chapter 19, he explained when it awakens—this faith, this extraordinary love of Hashem: when a Jew is backed against the wall and told, “Convert to another religion.” The moment a Jew is told to convert, to go worship an idol, that neshamah hidden deep inside, which we hadn’t even felt was there, suddenly awakens. Suddenly a person is ready to give up their life. In plain terms, that means being willing to forfeit their life in order to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in order not to be separated from Him even in appearance, even for a second, even for a moment. They’re ready to die—the opposite of life. For what? Even for something small.

03:12 Speaker 2 But he also has to take that in, doesn’t he?

03:13 Speaker 1 What?

03:13 Speaker 2 He has to take it in too, I mean, even when he gives up his life for it.

03:18 Speaker 1 So we discussed how mesirus nefesh—the willingness to give up one’s life—awakens not only in tzaddikim, scholars, or observant Jews. It can awaken even in the least observant Jew for the sake of preserving their faith.

03:30 Speaker 2 There’s also a story about someone who went mad.

03:32 Speaker 1 Huh?

03:33 Speaker 2 There’s a story about someone who went mad. They told him to either worship or die, and he chose to die, and afterward he was mad for a long time. It’s really awful.

03:42 Speaker 1 I don’t know that story, but yes. In all these stories, we see the tremendous power of that love of Hashem, of that G-dly soul. The moment it decides to come out—or something prods it and it comes out—nothing can stop it. So clearly, if that soul were active in me day to day, I wouldn’t commit any transgressions. If I’m willing to give up even my life to avoid a transgression, then surely that love of Hashem wouldn’t let me commit any smaller transgression. The question is: what actually awakens it? When does it emerge and become active? When it’s threatened with separation from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, it’s ready. But when it’s just some other transgression, a small transgression, that G-dly soul doesn’t feel that it’s being cut off—even though that is the truth. The truth is that with every transgression a Jew commits, they separate themselves from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But we have an animal soul and a body; we have needs and desires. The body and the animal soul obscure that G-dly soul, so it doesn’t feel it. What can we do so that, with every transgression, with every little thing, we really feel that doing it separates us from Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Then, obviously, we won’t commit any transgression. That G-dly soul will be active in us all the time, in everyday life. To explain this, the Alter Rebbe leaves aside the G-dly soul—leaves aside the whole discussion, as it were—and begins explaining, in our chapter, chapter 20, and then chapters 21 and 22, three chapters in all, what the unity of Hashem is and what idol worship is. For a moment—over the next three weeks, as it were—we forget the whole subject of Tanya and leave aside the subject of

05:57 Speaker 1 serving Hashem. We’re not talking here about the G-dly soul or the animal soul or the struggle between them, or about what we need to do. This is so we can understand the next two chapters, 23 and 24, the final two chapters. First, we need to know what the unity of Hashem and idol worship are. Then, once we understand that deeply, we’ll be able to understand how to use that hidden love in everyday life, how to awaken it all the time. So we begin chapter 20 by learning what the unity of Hashem is. “Now it is known to all”—everyone knows this; there isn’t a Jew who doesn’t—“that the commandment and prohibition concerning idol worship,” the first two of the Ten Commandments, “I am” and “You shall have no other,” “encompass the entire Torah.” Ask any Jewish child and they’ll know that “I am” and “You shall have no other” encompass the entire Torah, right? Everyone knows that, not just Chabad chassidim. “For the commandment ‘I am’ encompasses all 248 positive commandments, and ‘You shall have no other’ encompasses all 365 prohibitions. That is why we heard ‘I am’ and ‘You shall have no other’ alone from the mouth of the Almighty,” as our Sages say. All the other commandments, including the last eight of the Ten Commandments, we heard from Moshe Rabbeinu. The first two commandments, those and only those, we heard from the mouth of the Almighty, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. Why only those? Because they’re enough. They’re the overarching principle. How are they the overarching principle? “I am” encompasses all the positive commandments; “You shall have no other” encompasses all 365 prohibitions, “because they encompass the entire Torah. To explain this matter thoroughly.” Why does this need explaining? Everyone knows it. What is there to explain? Because on the face of it, “I am” means belief in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, right? And “You shall have no other” is a prohibition

08:18 Speaker 1 against denying one’s faith.

08:21 Speaker 3 That’s true.

08:22 Speaker 1 That’s true. So I understand perfectly why “I am” and “You shall have no other” are the foundation of the entire Torah: belief in Hashem. If a Jew doesn’t believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then what? Whose commandments are they going to keep? That’s the first thing. First you have to believe. So the two commandments that speak about faith are the foundation of serving Hashem, the foundation of Torah and mitzvos. That’s understandable. It’s obvious. Everyone really does know that. But what does it mean? We’re not saying they’re merely the foundation, just the basis. We’re saying they encompass everything. That means that within—

09:01 Speaker 3 Because if you’re saying you keep the commandments of “I am” and “You shall have no other” because Hashem is G-d, because Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded you, then you do it because—

09:08 Speaker 1 But that’s just the foundation. I believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded A, B, C, D. Why say that A, B, C, and D are part of “I am” and “You shall have no other”? What’s the connection?

09:19 Speaker 3 Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

09:21 Speaker 1 I believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so I do what Hakadosh Boruch Hu said.

09:25 Speaker 3 The mitzvos themselves are part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

09:29 Speaker 1 The mitzvos themselves are Hashem’s will.

09:31 Speaker 3 They are in the will of…

09:32 Speaker 1 Yes. But why, why do I need to say that faith in Hashem includes Hashem’s will? I believe—there’s a person I believe in, whom I trust. So I’ll do whatever he tells me, even if I don’t understand. But if he tells me, I don’t know, “Go buy me a popsicle at the store”—how is that connected to my trusting him? It seemingly isn’t. They’re two different things. So the Rebbe says we need to understand how faith in G-dliness is not only the foundation of all these mitzvos; it includes each and every mitzvah. Each mitzvah is actually a particular expression of faith in Hashem. Where do we see that? Take, for instance, the mitzvah of taking a lulav. Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded me to take a lulav, so I take the four species and wave them. Where is faith in that? I do it because I believe, but is there some content of faith in the mitzvah itself? No, there doesn’t seem to be. All right? That’s what he begins discussing on line seven, and he’ll continue with it until the end of the next chapter. To explain this matter thoroughly, we first need to briefly mention the nature and essence of the unity of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, whom our Sages call “one and unique” in the Midrash. There’s a piyut recited during Musaf on the High Holidays: “And all believe that He alone is He.” Right? What does “all believe” mean? Everyone believes that He alone is He. What does “He alone is He” mean? Just as it was before the world was actually created, when He alone existed. As it says, “You are He before the world was created; You are He after the world was created.” So the question is simple.

11:54 Speaker 1 “You are He before the world was created”—I understand that. When there was no world, You were He; only You existed. But why the repetition: “You are He after the world was created”? It should have said, “You are after the world was created.” Why does it say “He” a second time? It should have said, “You are He before the world was created, and even after the world was created, You still exist. Nothing about You has changed.” What’s being emphasized by “You are He”? The same “He” as before is also there afterward. What point is the Midrash making? The Rebbe explains, based on the Baal Shem Tov: Who is “He”? The same “He” who exists after the world was created as before the world was created. The second “He” means without any change. As it is written, “I, Hashem, have not changed.” “Have not changed” means exactly that: I did not change between before this world was created and afterward.

13:07 Speaker 4 Because this world.

13:09 Speaker 1 What’s that?

13:09 Speaker 4 Because this world.

13:10 Speaker 1 I can’t hear.

13:11 Speaker 4 Because this world. “I, Hashem, have not changed, because the world—because this world does not…”

13:17 Speaker 1 Okay, sorry. “I, Hashem, have not changed,” because this world and all the higher worlds bring about no change in His blessed unity when they are created from nothing into something. And that is very different from how it is with us. When a person does something, what he does changes him. He reviews a sicha of the Rebbe. He learns something he found difficult. He makes a drawing, some creative work. After he’s done it, he either enjoys it or doesn’t enjoy it. Right?

14:08 Speaker 4 Each time, it changed him.

14:10 Speaker 1 It changed him. When a person does something, it’s not just that he does it. The thing also changes him. That’s what it means for a person to become caught up in what he does. Not only does he do those things, but the things he does also take hold of him; they change him in some way. With Hakadosh Boruch Hu—

14:32 Speaker 4 Is that true of everything?

14:32 Speaker 1 What?

14:32 Speaker 4 Everything a person does?

14:34 Speaker 1 Try to think of something you do that doesn’t change you. Apparently, on a subtle level, everything does. I mean, if we think about it for a moment: I do what I do because I want to achieve something, and either I achieved it or I didn’t. If I achieved it, it gives me some pleasure, some satisfaction. If not, I’m disappointed.

14:55 Speaker 4 With someone.

14:55 Speaker 1 Then I’m upset. The act itself also—

14:58 Speaker 4 That we—that you’re lecturing. Thank you.

15:00 Speaker 1 Besides that—besides the feeling, even while I’m doing it, I’m no longer myself. Now I’m thinking about how to do it. I bring my mind, my feelings, my faculties down and narrow them into… I’m occupied with this thing. Someone looking at me would say, “I don’t recognize him at all. He’s not the same person now; you can’t talk to him.” He’s inside the—he’s caught up in it. When a person does something, he becomes caught up in what he’s doing. He narrows his whole being into it. But of Hakadosh Boruch Hu it says, “Blessed is He who spoke, and the world came into being.” He didn’t—He didn’t make the world. He spoke, and the world came into being on its own. He wasn’t occupied with creating the world. He didn’t bring Himself down. He didn’t constrict Himself in order to create. Right. So with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, it’s “I, Hashem, have not changed.” The very act of making the world does not require Him to constrict Himself in order to create it. He simply wanted it, and it came into being, as it were, on its own, without any involvement. And more than that: even after the world was created, it brought about no change in Him.

16:16 Speaker 4 Then what about the tzimtzum, when He did constrict Himself?

16:20 Speaker 1 That tzimtzum is for the creation of the worlds. It did not bring about a change in His Essence; it did not change Him. Just as He alone, blessed be He, was one and unique before they were created, so He alone is one and unique after He created them, because “all is considered as nothing before Him”—truly nothing and naught. So the first part of the explanation, what we’ve explained so far, is not an innovation of the Baal Shem Tov. The Midrash already says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one and unique. What does “unique” mean? That He wasn’t occupied with creating the worlds, that their creation brought about no change in Him. That’s already written in the Midrash and the Shelah, and in other places. The Baal Shem Tov adds something much more profound. What is the difficulty with this explanation? If we explain it this way, we still don’t understand why our Sages say, “You are He before the world was created; You are He after the world was created.” Why repeat “He” a second time? “You are He before the world was created, and after You created it, You are still there; it didn’t change You.” Why say “He” again? What does that second “He” add? The holy Baal Shem Tov explains that the second “He” tells us that it’s the very same “He.” Just as before the world was created there was no world, so too, after the world was created, there is no world.

18:00 Speaker 4 Is Micha coming?

18:01 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

18:02 Speaker 4 Yes.

18:03 Speaker 1 If I’d known you were coming, I would have brought you your theses.

18:05 Speaker 4 Really?

18:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

18:07 Speaker 4 They’re waiting for you. I’m waiting.

18:08 Speaker 1 Waiting patiently. Yes. Why, they’ve already been waiting three years. I think you took part in my Tanya classes about thirty years ago, when we started.

18:33 Speaker 4 That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right.

18:34 Speaker 1 It was on Sundays.

18:37 Speaker 4 No, I don’t come on Sundays anymore, but I came here just so I could finally—

18:42 Speaker 1 So, on Shabbos.

18:45 Speaker 4 What are you doing today?

18:47 Speaker 1 Huh?

18:48 Speaker 4 What are you doing?

18:48 Speaker 1 What, am I going to start all over again from the beginning? We’ll still have—

18:50 Speaker 4 I promise, I promise, I can summarize it.

18:55 Speaker 1 Right now we’re taking a bit of a detour. We’re learning Tanya. In the three chapters we’re dealing with now—20, 21, and 22—we’ve essentially stepped away from the usual discussion in Tanya, from serving Hashem, and we’re now learning what the unity of Hashem means. We won’t go back over how this relates to what comes before and after. Right now we’re learning what the unity of Hashem means. In the first section of this chapter, which we’ve learned up to this point, we began learning the Baal Shem Tov’s remarkable but difficult-to-understand insight, which the Rebbe is about to explain: our Sages say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one and unique. What does “one” mean? I know what one is. I’m one person, not two. Yes, but what does “unique” mean? What does it mean to be singular? It means He isn’t merely one in a sequence followed by a second, third, and fourth. Not a “one” made up of a head, body, legs, hands, eyes, and 248 limbs and 365 sinews. Singular means one who cannot be divided. Our Sages said that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not only one but also unique. We explained two levels of understanding this. The simpler understanding is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was one and singular before the world was created, and even after the world was created, He wasn’t occupied with creating it. The creation of the world brought about no change in Him. Even after the world was created, He remained the same Hakadosh Boruch Hu; He didn’t change. Unlike us, for whom doing something has an effect on the person. The Baal Shem Tov explains this more deeply: What does “You are He before the world was created; You are He after the world was created” mean? That even after the world was created, the world was not created. Just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu was alone in His world before He created it, so too, after He created the world, He is still alone in His world. There is nothing besides Him, nothing besides Him. According to the Baal Shem Tov, it means there is no existence in the world—no existence, none.

20:59 Speaker 1 The world—there is no reality apart from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What does it mean that there is no reality? What am I supposed to understand by that? Am I not real? Are my friends not real? Are you not real? Is the world not real? I see it, I feel it, I live in it. So what does it mean? Is everything just an illusion? If it’s an illusion, then what are mitzvos and reward and punishment for? Everything would just be an illusion. No. You can’t say it’s an illusion. It must be real. But wait—if it’s real, what does it mean to say it doesn’t exist, that only He exists? So he begins to explain in line six: “For the coming into being of all the upper and lower worlds from nothing into something.” Yes, they came into being. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created them. That’s what it means that they came into being. It says so in the Torah. And they came into being from nothing into something. That means they have a reality. They’re called “something.” The Torah calls them a reality. The Torah calls them worlds. The Torah calls them created beings. So they are a real reality. “And their life and continued existence, so that they do not return to being nothing and naught as they were before, are only the word of Hashem and the breath of His mouth clothed within them.” That’s the point. It’s true that the worlds exist, that they have a reality. But what is the substance of their reality? Even after they’ve been created, their entire reality is only the word of Hashem. There is nothing here apart from the word of Hashem. Why? “By the word of Hashem the heavens were made.” It says so explicitly. What is this word of Hashem through which the world was created? The Ten Utterances through which the world was created. As it says in the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, they remain standing in the heavens at all times, giving them life. The entire reality of the world is Divine speech, so to speak. Of course, it isn’t literally like that. He has no mouth or vocal cords; He doesn’t speak. It’s only an analogy. As it says

23:15 Speaker 1 in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, we call that Divine flow which gives life to the worlds and brings them into being from nothing into something “speech.” We don’t have a word in our language for it, so we call it speech. Say I want to tell my friend what I’m thinking. How will you know what I’m thinking? I’ll tell you, right? Yes. So just as my speech reveals what I’m thinking to the listener, Divine speech is a kind of flow whose function is to reveal G-dliness to the created beings, to create them. It’s an analogy. It doesn’t mean that He says letters or sentences or words. It’s an analogy—but it’s an analogy the Torah gives us, a true analogy. So it turns out that the entire reality of all the worlds and all created beings—what is that reality, really? It’s the word of Hashem. And what is that word of Hashem? He continues with an analogy from the human soul: “For example, in the human soul, when a person speaks one word”—meaning a single word—“that utterance alone is considered as nothing at all, as though it were nothing and naught, even in relation to the whole of his speaking soul.” A person has the faculties of thought, speech, and action—the three garments of the soul. The faculty of speech is called the speaking soul: the soul’s potential to speak. There’s no limit to how much it can speak. It can speak without stopping. It can speak endlessly. As long as a person is alive, give him another ten years to live and he’ll keep speaking. In terms of potential, the capacity for speech contained in the speaking soul is infinite. At some point, when it ceases to exist, it no longer speaks. But as long as it exists—and suppose its existence were infinite, as it will be when Moshiach comes—then in terms of its capacity, it can produce an infinite number of utterances, an infinite number of sentences. What significance does one word have in relation to

25:45 Speaker 1 the whole speaking soul? It isn’t even nothing and naught. It’s nothing. Now, it says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the worlds: “With the letter yud the World to Come was created, and with the letter hei this world was created.” That means this entire world, with all its creatures and everything in it—including heaven and earth and everything between them, the spiritual and the physical—was created with a letter. Not with one word; with one letter. So it’s true that the world is a real reality, because Hakadosh Boruch Hu created it. But He didn’t simply create it; He created it with Divine power. What is the nature of that Divine power? One letter. And like one letter in a person, in relation to the whole speaking soul it is truly nothing and naught. That is in relation to its intermediate garment, the faculty of speech, which can speak words without end or limit. And all the more so, one word, one utterance, is nothing and naught in relation to its inner garment, which is thought. If one word is nothing and naught in relation to speech as a whole, then surely it is nothing and naught many times over in relation to thought, from which the words are drawn and which gives the words their life. Needless to say, it is nothing and naught in relation to the essence and being of the soul, with its ten faculties mentioned above—Chochmah, Binah, Daas, and so on—from which the letters of this thought, clothed in this speech when one speaks, are drawn. Yes, when a person... We said, when we discussed this in chapters four and five, that we were talking about the garments of the soul. A person has the garments of the soul, and the soul itself—the essence of the soul. What is the essence of the soul? Intellect and emotion. It was a little difficult to explain the difference between intellect and thought, but I think we managed in the end. The essence of the soul, the essence of a person’s soul, is intellect and emotion. Certainly, there are no thoughts in a person’s emotions. And when you look a little more deeply, you understand that there are no thoughts in the intellect either. More than that: it’s not just that there are no thoughts in the intellect. If there are no thoughts in the emotions, and the intellect is far, far higher than the emotions, then all the more so there are no thoughts in the intellect. Thought is an external garment. Thought is part of the body; it belongs to the animal soul, to the side of the soul’s garments. The soul itself, the very essence of the soul, has no thoughts in it. Certainly no speech.

28:16 Speaker 1 Thought is an external garment. Thought is part of the body; it belongs to the animal soul, to the garments of the soul. The soul itself, the very essence of the soul, has no thoughts in it. Certainly no speech.

28:36 Speaker 5 Is that true of the G-dly soul—that it has no thoughts?

28:39 Speaker 1 The animal soul too, yes. The soul itself—

28:45 Speaker 5 It gets very confusing in the end.

28:47 Speaker 1 Right.

28:49 Speaker 5 So it could be that the G-dly soul also has thoughts.

28:53 Speaker 6 I hope it doesn’t have thought in it.

28:55 Speaker 1 It reveals itself in thought. Its first revelation to us is in thought. Thought is already operating [unclear].

29:08 Speaker 5 Yes.

29:08 Speaker 1 Just as a person reveals something to someone else through speech—speech reveals my thoughts to someone else—thought reveals my intellect to myself.

29:27 Speaker 5 Abundant thought.

29:29 Speaker 1 Thought—

29:29 Speaker 5 It isn’t the essence, but it is there.

29:30 Speaker 1 Thought reveals the essence—the intellect—to myself.

29:38 Speaker 5 It isn’t the essence, but it is there.

29:39 Speaker 1 What?

29:40 Speaker 5 Like the faculty of speech. Speech is what we said it would not be. It isn’t the essence of the soul, but it is there.

29:48 Speaker 1 It’s a garment.

29:49 Speaker 5 Okay.

29:51 Speaker 1 A garment, like shoes. Like a shirt, like any other thing. It isn’t part of the soul.

30:00 Speaker 5 It isn’t. I’ve grasped the idea of the garment.

30:06 Speaker 1 We see that a person... Anyone can see this in practice. I’m thinking and talking with someone right now, without realizing it. Suddenly I notice that what we’re talking about isn’t appropriate. Right? At that very moment I can start thinking differently, and also tell my friend, “Listen, this isn’t appropriate. I don’t want to hear it. Let’s talk about something else.” Right? Where did that decision, that realization, come from? It didn’t come from thought. I hadn’t thought about it beforehand. Before, my intellect was clothed in those thoughts; now I’ve caught myself, and my intellect is clothed in different thoughts. It’s the same intellect. Thought is only a revelation of the intellect.

31:00 Speaker 5 Is it like a ray? They say there’s a ray in this matter.

31:03 Speaker 1 Mm?

31:04 Speaker 5 And revelation is present, and it isn’t—it isn’t thought. It’s a different kind of speech.

31:11 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

31:12 Speaker 5 I have a comment. It isn’t thought, like... a revelation... I don’t know what.

31:18 Speaker 6 I didn’t understand.

31:19 Speaker 1 When some...

31:21 Speaker 5 Thought—to do it on its own. Right, it’s given to...

31:24 Speaker 6 But that isn’t the soul. The soul uses thought to express itself, but thought itself isn’t part of the soul.

31:33 Speaker 1 I don’t know. We need to study the Frierdiker Rebbe’s maamarim here again. What did he say? What was he talking about? Let’s accept it as an axiom for now, okay? Thought, speech, and action are not the essence of the soul. They aren’t even part of the soul. They’re garments: “Like a garment You will change them, and they will pass away.” They really are like clothing. Just as clothing isn’t part of a person at all—he can change it, put it on, and it still isn’t part of him—so too, thought is not part of the soul. The essence of the soul is intellect and emotion. Thought is body. It’s something else. The intellect... The soul is clothed within a body. The body—what is the body? Thought, speech, and action. Thought is part of the body. It isn’t part of the soul. All right, how did we get here? Oh, okay. Because we wanted to say that if one utterance is nothing, nothing and naught, compared to the whole faculty of speech, then all the more so it is nothing and naught compared to thought. And certainly it is nothing and naught in relation to the soul itself. The soul itself is not a garment at all.

33:00 Speaker 7 So what’s the answer? Where does it come from? From where the faculty of speech itself comes from.

33:03 Speaker 1 What?

33:03 Speaker 7 Where does it come from, this ability a person has to control what he says?

33:05 Speaker 1 That a person...

33:06 Speaker 7 Controls what he says.

33:07 Speaker 1 From the soul itself.

33:08 Speaker 7 From the soul.

33:09 Speaker 1 Yes. From the soul’s will, from the essence of the soul, from the soul’s feelings. Yes, simply from the soul itself. Here, the Rebbe wants to show us just how utterly insignificant a single word is compared to a person. First of all, it is utterly insignificant compared to the faculty of speech. It is certainly utterly insignificant compared to the faculty of thought, and all the more so compared to the soul itself, its intellect and emotions. He explains, beginning on line seventeen, that thought, too, consists of letters, like speech, except that they are more spiritual and subtle. These are letters in thought, in the mind. But the ten faculties of Chochmah, Binah, Daas, and so on, are the root and source of thought, and they do not yet contain letters, before they become clothed in the garment of thought. And here the Rebbe lays out for us how this generally works. For example, when does a person begin to think? When does thought appear?

34:22 Speaker 7 All the time.

34:23 Speaker 1 Hmm?

34:23 Speaker 7 All the time.

34:25 Speaker 1 No. At what stage is it no longer called the soul itself, no longer called intellect and emotion, but called thought? When does it... when...

34:33 Speaker 7 When does it separate from the soul?

34:36 Speaker 1 For example, when a certain love and desire arises in a person’s heart. Now, until today, he... this thing wasn’t in front of him. But now she walks past a shop window, and there’s a dress there. How beautiful! Until now it wasn’t on her mind. She never dreamed she’d suddenly want dresses. She was walking somewhere, I don’t know where. It wasn’t, no, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t even a concept. It wasn’t on her mind; it wasn’t there at all. Before it rises from the heart to the mind, to think about it and consider it—should I go in and buy it? Shouldn’t I? Do I have the money or not? Is it worth it? Do I need it or not?—before it rises from the heart to the mind to think and reflect, it does not yet have letters. There is only a simple desire and longing in the heart for that appealing thing. There are no letters here yet—not letters of speech, and not even letters of thought. And that is already after she has seen the thing and desired it. All the more so before that desire and longing arose in her heart for that thing, before she passed the shop window. The fact that when we walked past, saw it, and felt this desire, this longing, this wish arise within us—where did it come from? It was born, as it were, from nothing. If a cow walks past the same shop and looks at the dress, no such desire will arise in it. Why? Because cows don’t desire dresses. What can you do? It wasn’t born with a desire for dresses. In us, the wish for something like that, the sense that it’s something I want, comes from knowing that such a thing is good. That’s built into my soul. It’s part of my soul. I have a soul of a kind that likes such things. It hasn’t been revealed; it

36:54 Speaker 1 hasn’t found expression. I don’t feel it. I’m not living with it. It’s there, and when the eyes see, the heart desires, and then the faculties of action follow. Then the person begins to think. But before she saw it, not only was there no thought, there was no feeling either. It was somehow contained within the essence of the soul. It existed only as a potential in her wisdom, intellect, and knowledge: she had the capacity to know that this thing was pleasant, appealing, good, and beautiful to acquire. She knows it’s good and beautiful and wonderful, but she hadn’t thought about it or considered it. It wasn’t apparent to her. Or take a desire to attach oneself to something, such as studying a particular subject. Yes, I know perfectly well that it’s wonderful to know English. You can study English here or there; it helps. I really need it for my profession. So now I’m going to study it and take a course. But perhaps until now it wasn’t... it wasn’t part of my... I knew it was a good thing. Or take eating a particular food. Because I know that there’s some—I don’t know, whatever food each person likes—and I know that food tastes good to me, I now think about how to cook it, how to buy it, how to make it. That knowledge is there, but I’m not living with it. It isn’t on my mind at all right now. So when does thought actually begin to appear? When is thought born? After desire and longing have already arisen in the heart through a person’s wisdom, intellect, and knowledge. She saw it, and it awakened within her. Once it awakened, she began to want it, and it descended into the heart. Then it rose again from the heart to the mind, to think and consider how to bring that desire from potential into actuality,

38:57 Speaker 1 to obtain the food or actually study the subject. At that point, letters are born in the mind—[unclear]. So when are they born? The garment of thought is born somewhere around there, at the very end of the process. First there is this desire, this longing. It exists in the soul, hidden and contained within the essence of the soul. You don’t feel it. When something awakens it, it first emerges in the mind. Then it descends to the heart, and longing awakens. Then that longing rises back to the heart—or rather, from the heart back up to the mind. Now the mind begins producing letters of thought: how do I put this longing into words that will let me direct the body? Now the mind begins to direct the body. The first stage of that is the highest garment, the garment of thought. Afterward it can descend into speech and action, and so on. So we find that the soul itself is incomparably higher than any level of thought. The entire phenomenon of thinking is utterly insignificant compared even to the lowest levels within the soul itself.

40:24 Speaker 8 But that’s difficult. They say thought creates reality.

40:26 Speaker 1 Hmm?

40:27 Speaker 8 They say thought creates reality. So doesn’t it begin to descend...?

40:32 Speaker 9 That’s not a contradiction.

40:33 Speaker 1 The first sicha in Likkutei Dibburim, volume one. It’s worth looking at it.

40:42 Speaker 9 Afterward he’ll live. Mazel tov.

40:45 Speaker 1 When my oldest daughter, Chani—how old is she? Thirty-five today—was in kindergarten or first grade or something like that, I studied that sicha with her. About the alef-beis. What a wonderful sicha. Good. So what have we learned so far? Ah. Right, so this chapter—sorry, this is already today’s chapter. What does it mean? We wanted to explain something. We said that we were setting aside the subject of serving Hashem, because to understand how to awaken that mysterious love and how to use it in our everyday lives, we need to understand something that doesn’t seem related. So we left aside serving Hashem and the G-dly and human souls, and now we’re going to understand what the unity of Hashem means. What does the unity of Hashem mean? The first part of Hashem’s unity—we’ll see later that there’s a second part too—is “I, Hashem, have not changed”; “there is nothing else besides Him.” What does “there is nothing else besides Him” mean? Not as people generally think. It doesn’t simply mean, as the words of our Sages explain, that there is no other deity besides Him, no other ruler besides Him. Rather, there is nothing else. It means that only He exists. What does it mean that only He exists? After all, He created the world. The world exists too, and the world contains a multitude of details. So what does “there is nothing else besides Him” mean? The holy Baal Shem Tov explains that the entire reality of the world—yes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created it, but how did He create it? Through speech. What speech? One word. What is one word? One word is utterly insignificant compared to the faculty of speech, certainly compared to the faculty of thought, and certainly compared to the soul itself. So the Divine power that brings all the worlds into being is insignificant compared to what is itself insignificant compared to what is itself insignificant compared to His Essence and Being. So yes, they exist, but they are considered nullified

43:04 Speaker 1 In reality. Yes, their reality—their existence—is not an existence. Their existence amounts to nothing at all. Their existence brings about no change in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Therefore, “You are He before the world was created,” and even after the world was created, there is no change whatsoever. It’s not that some tiny little thing was created that you could see under a microscope. He is the very same One; after the world was created, there is no change. But that still isn’t enough. That is the aleph of Hashem’s oneness. Why only the aleph? Because even after we explain that all the worlds have no existence, that they are utterly nullified and have no importance or value, someone could still come along and say: Okay, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s perspective, yes, the worlds are hidden; to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, they are clearly nothing at all. But as far as I’m concerned, how can you say they have no existence? To me, the worlds are very important. I want things to be good for me. I want children, health, a livelihood, money, wealth, honor. I want material things. I want spiritual things, and they matter to me. You say the worlds are nothing from Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s perspective—fine, but I’m not Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In other words, something might have no existence and yet still be important. So we also need the next chapter, chapter 21, which, with Hashem’s help, we’ll learn next week. It will explain that not only do the worlds have no importance; they also have no actual existence whatsoever.