Likkutei Amarim Chapter 39 (Part 1) · 5785

00:00 Speaker 1 At first, I was like that all the time.

00:03 Speaker 2 All right, I’m dedicating this class, at least on my part, to the elevation of my father’s soul. Today is his yahrzeit.

00:09 Speaker 1 Wow.

00:09 Speaker 2 Moshe b— Moshe, uh, Dov ben...

00:14 Speaker 1 Tova[unclear] and Moshe.

00:16 Speaker 2 Moshe and Tova[unclear], yes. Today we’re learning chapter 39. Chapter 39 of Tanya is a relatively long chapter. It’s one of three chapters that are really a preparation for the end of Tanya. The book of Tanya is structured, as we’ve discussed many times—and we need to go over it again each time—as the Alter Rebbe says on the title page, as guidance for beinonim on how to serve Hashem. A beinoni is an ordinary person. He doesn’t have a lofty soul, but he isn’t wicked either. A Jew who wants to serve Hashem, who is observant, who has kabbolas ol. He doesn’t commit transgressions and he performs all the mitzvos. An ordinary Jew. And the Alter Rebbe teaches him how to serve Hashem. Already at the beginning of Tanya, in the very first chapters, the Alter Rebbe explained this. In fact, already in the middle of chapter 1, the Alter Rebbe lays down a principle that stays with us throughout Tanya: serving Hashem isn’t about how many mitzvos you do. A Jew can perform many mitzvos—all the mitzvos—and commit no transgressions, and still not be serving Hashem. There can be a Jew who is constantly struggling with himself. What is the point of serving Hashem? The point is that avodah, service, involves effort. Why is it called avodah?

02:09 Speaker 1 Energy.

02:10 Speaker 2 “Work,” in today’s language.

02:12 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:12 Speaker 2 In the language of our Sages, there’s the processing of hides. The process is called ibud, tanning. Why is it called ibud? It comes from the word avodah, work. Why is tanning hides, specifically, called work? Carpentry, metalwork, farming—none of those are called that. Only tanning hides is called work. No other trade is. Why? Torah sources explain that tanning hides is hard work. The hardest work is tanning hides. It’s physically demanding, the smell is terrible, and it’s simply very, very hard work. I don’t know if you know how they used to tan hides. They would make pits of lime—pits of water with lime in them—and throw the hide in. But the lime sinks. The lime tans the hide, but it sinks. So every hour or two you have to take the hide out of the water, lift it up and put it back in, lift it up and put it back in. A hide is heavy to begin with, and when it’s wet and soaked with water—and if you want to do it commercially, you need to handle a quantity of hides—it’s simply very, very hard physical work. That’s why it’s called ibud oros, tanning hides. What is called avo—

03:27 Speaker 1 Today machines do that.

03:28 Speaker 2 What?

03:28 Speaker 1 Today machines do that. Back then it was...

03:32 Speaker 2 Ask how they tan hides when the tanning has to be done lishmah—for tefillin, where it has to be done by hand.

03:40 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:41 Speaker 2 Wow. There are—well, that isn’t for today—but there are hide-tanning factories with the most stringent Badatz certification, and there’s also the question of how much can be done by machine. But when they do it with the greatest hiddur, according to the highest standards of the Landau Badatz or other stringent kashrus standards, they put tens of tons of hides into a drum with water and lime. Tens of tons. It’s a drum about, I don’t know, eight meters across and about this high, like a concrete mixer but much bigger. They fill it with tens of tons of hides, and the drum has a crank—meaning a belt that goes around the drum, with a small wheel at the end—and a Chassidic avreich works there—

04:34 Speaker 8 Turning it.

04:34 Speaker 2 And he turns that whole enormous drum. They pay G-d-fearing Chassidic avreichim simply to turn the drum for fourteen days until the hides are tanned.

04:45 Speaker 8 Wow. Does it have to be done at night too? Because you can’t rinse the thing.

04:50 Speaker 2 When you don’t mix it, the lime sinks.

04:53 Speaker 8 I see.

04:53 Speaker 2 Of course they don’t do it on Shabbos, but they don’t take the hides out; the lime sinks. And that’s actually one reason tefillin straps with the most stringent certifications cost what they do. Ordinary tefillin straps cost something like, I don’t know, a hundred or a hundred and fifty shekels. Mehudar straps cost two hundred and fifty or three hundred, and the very most mehudar tefillin straps can reach five or six hundred shekels. There’s a reason for that. Anyway, that was a digression. So serving Hashem is called avodah because it takes effort. What kind of effort? The effort isn’t performing lots of mitzvos. The effort is overcoming the yetzer, overcoming a person’s natural attraction to this world. Why is that work? Because a person can decide to perform a mitzvah: “I’m doing it, and that’s that.” Right? He doesn’t have to change his essence; he doesn’t have to change himself. He decides, and he does it. I may be drawn to other things, interested in other things; other things may feel pleasant and good to me. But I’ve decided that I’m a G-d-fearing Jew, so I do it, and that’s that. That isn’t called serving Hashem. It isn’t really called serving Hashem. Serving Hashem means that a person changes his inner essence. He actually changes himself. Instead of loving and being drawn to worldly matters, he begins to love and be drawn to matters of holiness. And the more he develops his love of Hashem, the less worldly matters interest him—“G-d created one opposite the other.” There are great tzaddikim of whom it is actually written that they never recognized the form of a coin. Such a person sees a coin and simply doesn’t understand what you do with it. Some people have reached such levels. But even people like us, beinonim—and Tanya was written as a book for beinonim—

06:55 Speaker 2 We aren’t expected to... He explains precisely what is expected of us and what isn’t. And throughout the fifty-three chapters of Tanya, he explains how to attain the love of Hashem that is expected of us. That is what Tanya is about: serving Hashem. How can a Jew develop love of Hashem within himself—in other words, change his inner essence as far as possible? He also tells us how far that is possible and where it isn’t. And the closer we get to the end of Tanya, the more the Alter Rebbe goes into detail about this side of avodah. How so? Throughout the first part of Tanya, his emphasis is on why I need to love Hashem and why I need to fear Hashem. If I don’t love Hashem, I won’t keep the mitzvos. If I don’t fear Hashem, I’ll commit transgressions. In other words, throughout the first part of Tanya, the love and fear under discussion are love and fear that bring a person to perform mitzvos. The second part of Tanya isn’t only about bringing a person to perform mitzvos. It’s about the mitzvos he already performs being permeated with feeling, so that feeling is what drives him. Not that he thinks, “I love Hashem, therefore I have to...” Not that it’s some intellectual conclusion, but that he truly feels an inner need. When a person is hungry, he doesn’t need to explain to himself, “Now I have to eat.” He’s hungry; he wants to eat. That’s what he wants, and it burns inside him. That is called love like flames of fire. The ultimate aim of avodah is for a person to reveal within himself a love like flames of fire, a burning love. Just as, when he’s hungry, he can’t hold himself back, he should feel compelled from within when performing mitzvos

08:44 Speaker 2 and learning Torah. That is what it’s about. Now, by way of introduction to this subject—how does a person actually reveal this love within himself? As an introduction, we have these three chapters, 38, 39 and 40. In them, before the Alter Rebbe begins to explain how to reveal and awaken that love, he first explains what it is. What is love of Hashem in the first place? What are we doing? What are we talking about? What—

09:15 Speaker 9 Are the blows you dealt us still there?

09:17 Speaker 2 What?

09:17 Speaker 9 The blows from all those chapters—are they still there?

09:19 Speaker 2 Of course they’re still there.

09:21 Speaker 9 Yes, the blows. Do you remember the blows?

09:23 Speaker 10 Yes, but we have them at home.

09:25 Speaker 2 Look, I heard one thing. If you can remember, remind me and I’ll take care of it. All right, so these three chapters are simply talking about what this love is. First of all, what are we talking about? Why do we need three chapters for that? Love means I love, and that’s it—I love. First, he says that everything in the world has what it is and what it’s good for, what you use it for. This cup is made of plastic. This is also made of plastic, right? Its physical reality is plastic, but its purpose, its essence, is to hold a drink. This is for talking with friends, and so on, right? Everything has its physical reality and its essence. Then there’s also what you do with it, what it does. So with everything there’s what it is, its essence, its purpose, and then its effect, right? The Alter Rebbe divides this among the three chapters, 38, 39, and 40. Chapter 38 we learned last week—last time. When was that?

10:36 Speaker 9 Two weeks ago.

10:36 Speaker 2 Two weeks ago. There the Alter Rebbe explained the reality of kavanah, intention. Here he explains the essence of kavanah. In the next chapter he’ll explain what it does. All right? So let me say one more thing here, just as a reminder for those who weren’t here. What was the first chapter about? The first one, chapter 38. What is the reality of kavanah? Kavanah—when I say “kavanah,” I mean love and awe. Often, when people say someone prays with kavanah, they mean the kavanos of the Arizal: he’s making yichudim, he has all sorts of thoughts about a word having a certain gematria and certain numbers, and he concentrates on the Names of Hashem. That’s not the kind of kavanah we’re talking about. The kavanah discussed here in Tanya is simple intention: that he prays for its own sake, that when he fulfills a mitzvah or learns Torah, he simply intends it for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The most basic intention. That’s what “kavanah” means here. And in our terms, the kavanah discussed here is called love and awe. Why love? When does a person do something for his friend?

12:02 Speaker 9 When he loves him.

12:02 Speaker 2 Either he loves him or he’s afraid of him.

12:05 Speaker 9 Or he’s doing something for him.

12:08 Speaker 2 That too is a kind of love. It’s not nothing; it’s love too. Here he loves himself, but there’s a motive. Right. The love we’re talking about is this: what motivates him to fulfill the mitzvah? Love. He loves Hashem, so he does it because that’s what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants from him. So in the previous chapter he explained the reality of love. Chazal said—and he based his explanation on this teaching of Chazal—that mitzvos without kavanah are like a body without a soul. In other words, the relationship of kavanah to the mitzvah—the kavanah is the soul of the mitzvah. Right? A body has its physical form, while the soul is spiritual; they’re entirely different. But what does the soul do? It gives life to the body. So too, a mitzvah is a physical thing, while kavanah, love of Hashem, is spiritual. And the soul—the kavanah, the love—gives life to the mitzvah. So right away, at the beginning, we asked: A body without a soul? A body without a soul is dead; it isn’t alive. So did Chazal mean that if a person fulfills mitzvos without love of Hashem, they’re dead? They’re worth nothing? Certainly that isn’t what they meant. On the one hand, Chazal said a mitzvah without kavanah is like a body without a soul. On the other hand, clearly they didn’t mean that a mitzvah without kavanah is worth nothing. So what did they mean? Why did they use this particular analogy? He explained that it’s not because the mitzvah is worth nothing, but because kavanah is so much higher. The difference in level between the kavanah and the mitzvah is like the difference between soul and body. You can’t compare them: the soul is lofty and spiritual, while the body is

14:24 Speaker 2 lowly and physical. The distance between them is so great that you can’t even compare them. In the same way, the love of Hashem, the kavanah in a mitzvah, is so much higher than the mitzvah itself—like a soul compared to a body. There’s a lengthy discussion of several other points. We won’t go over the whole chapter. It raises many questions and gives explanations. All of that was in the previous chapter. No, we can’t. Why is this relevant? Why did I go back over this subject? Because when he discusses the mitzvah—no, the kavanah, I’m mixing up the words—when he says that kavanah is like a soul, he asks: They could have used a different analogy. After all, Chazal didn’t mean that a mitzvah without kavanah is worth nothing. So why choose this particular analogy? They could have used some other analogy for things that are on entirely different levels. Why?

15:34 Speaker 9 We didn’t answer his question.

15:36 Speaker 2 What?

15:37 Speaker 9 We didn’t give the answer.

15:38 Speaker 2 We did, we did.

15:40 Speaker 9 I don’t remember it, but yes. But—

15:43 Speaker 11 The answers make it sound like a bonus, as though kavanah is a bonus, like if kavanah is a bonus.

15:47 Speaker 9 Ah, the answer. Right.

15:51 Speaker 2 Why? If you want to make one point and bring an example, an analogy, from something else, it has to fit. Chazal chose their words precisely. Why this analogy? Because just as there are different kinds of souls, there are different kinds of kavanah in mitzvos. What kinds of souls are there? There’s the soul of a plant, the soul of an inanimate object, the soul of an animal, and the soul of a human being. Each has a soul. How could it live without one? Even an inanimate object—the very fact that it exists means there’s something sustaining it. If it had no soul, what would sustain it? It has the soul of an inanimate object, but it does have a soul. Clearly, though, there’s no comparison between the soul of a plant and the soul of an animal, or between the soul of a cat and the soul of a human being. Both are souls, yes. Similarly, when we speak of love of Hashem, there are four levels of it, corresponding to the four levels of souls in the world. Just as the world has souls on four general levels—inanimate, plant, animal, and human—so love of Hashem has those same four general levels. One person’s love of Hashem is like the inanimate level; another’s is like a plant, an animal, or a human being. He discussed that in the previous chapter. Then he explained when we say that a person’s love of Hashem is like one level or another. It’s very simple; we already learned this in earlier chapters. The Alter Rebbe said there, as we learned earlier, that when someone’s love of Hashem is intellectual—after all, what defines a human being? Intellect, right?—then if his love of Hashem is

17:54 Speaker 2 intellectual love, as we learned earlier, his love of Hashem is on the human level. But if his love of Hashem is natural love, a hidden love, and he serves Hashem without intellectual love—why? Because his understanding is limited. It says there in chapter 16, “one whose understanding is limited.” He can’t do it. He has a lower soul; his intellect is like ours. Even when he contemplates, learns, knows, thinks, and makes an effort, the love isn’t born. What can he do? Nothing awakens. He contemplates the greatness of Hashem. He desperately wants to have love of Hashem. He’s a religious Jew who keeps mitzvos and is G-d-fearing. He wants it. He contemplates, looks in a sefer, learns, knows, and thinks about it, and he understands the greatness of Hashem—he really does understand. But it doesn’t reach his heart; it doesn’t penetrate. What can he do? Nothing awakens. That’s called “one whose understanding is limited.” So the Alter Rebbe says: “One whose understanding is limited” shouldn’t worry; he too can serve Hashem. How? With his natural love. You’re a Jew; you have it, because you inherited love of Hashem from the Patriarchs Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. How that works isn’t relevant right now; he explains it there. So, all right, you can’t bring love of Hashem into being? Don’t. Awaken the love you already have. Look, there are several chapters there on how to awaken love of Hashem, and then the whole Tanya goes on to address this, including our chapter: the service of Hashem of the beinonim really isn’t so— Of course, you also have to contemplate and try to bring love into being, to have a love that burns like flames of fire. Certainly you do. But if you can’t—and most of us can’t; he says that most of us don’t—most

19:41 Speaker 2 Most beinonim also can’t do it, or can do it only to a limited extent. So serve Hashem with hidden love. Then, in chapter 27, he says something else that’s very important: Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants this. Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves it. It’s something very important, very lofty. Very much so. But if a person serves Hashem with his natural love, then he isn’t serving Him as a human being. He’s serving Hashem with his natural faculties, the way a cat serves Hashem with its natural faculties. That’s what he explained in the previous chapter. As soon as someone hears that, he says, “Wait, wait, wait. So all my service of Hashem is like an animal’s?” There’s a story about a chossid who went in to the Alter Rebbe for yechidus and heard this idea. This was—I think it was even before the Tanya was printed. But the Rebbe told him in yechidus that his service of Hashem was like an animal’s. Well, he was apparently a Jew on a somewhat higher level... It struck him deeply. It struck him so deeply that he fainted. Think about it: someone is told that his service of Hashem isn’t what it should be, and he faints. That’s how deeply it affected him. Someone could tell me my service of Hashem isn’t right. I might get angry with him, or feel insulted. I wouldn’t faint over it. Not even close. But this man took it to heart. Right? And to a person on such a level, someone who took it so deeply to heart, the Alter Rebbe says, “Your service of Hashem is like an animal’s. You haven’t reached that level.”

21:25 Speaker 12 So he tried to correct it?

21:28 Speaker 2 When you tell a person, “Listen, you can’t be a tzaddik. A fiery love of Hashem isn’t possible for you. What can you do? That’s how Hakadosh Boruch Hu created you. You’ll have to make do with that”—well, that doesn’t sound... It’s a bit disheartening, as they say. Right? The Alter Rebbe comes to answer that in chapter 39. Listen, it’s not what you think. True, your service of Hashem really is based on natural love, hidden love, but it isn’t what you think. It’s something else.

22:03 Speaker 12 Does natural love mean love without effort? Service without effort?

22:12 Speaker 13 It’s service without intention, isn’t it? Service without intention.

22:16 Speaker 12 No, no. With natural love, there is intention.

22:19 Speaker 2 No.

22:19 Speaker 12 And there’s effort too. There’s some effort involved in awakening it—

22:22 Speaker 2 No. No. I’ll try to say it, to explain it briefly, because we’ve spoken about this many times already. Every Jew has two souls, unlike a non-Jew, who has only one. One soul is similar to the soul of a non-Jew: the soul that gives life to the body. With that soul, a person grows, eats, thinks, feels, wants, understands, speaks. Everything a person does comes from the soul that gives life to the body. Exercising, whatever it may be—right? The soul that gives life to the body. And he has another soul. The second soul is literally a part of G-d above, a G-dly soul. What does it do? The G-dly soul can’t move anything in the body. It’s G-dly; it isn’t connected to—it doesn’t understand bodily matters. Right? Show it food, and it looks at it like a donkey looking at vegetable soup. It means nothing to it. Right? All the desires of this world, all its pleasures, even ordinary life in this world—it simply doesn’t understand what any of it is about. It isn’t its language. So what is it doing here? The G-dly soul also has an intellect, just as the other soul does. What is my soul? My personality. A soul is a personality. I have an intellect, feelings, things I want—a will. The G-dly soul is also a soul, so it too has an intellect, feelings and a will. It has all of that, but its intellect and feelings—its personality—aren’t the same personality. It’s a different personality. What interests it is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The only thing it wants is to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to delight in His light and draw close to Him. And because it knows that as long as it’s here, the only way to draw close to Him is to keep mitzvos, learn Torah and daven, it wants nothing else. As far as it’s concerned,

24:33 Speaker 2 a person doesn’t need to eat, doesn’t need to sleep, doesn’t need anything else. That’s what it wants. But both souls are in the body, and each wants the opposite of what the other wants. One isn’t interested at all. I could tell it about Gan Eden; that Gan Eden of the other soul doesn’t interest it. It doesn’t understand what it is. It isn’t its language. They don’t speak the same language. They have only one body, so they’re constantly fighting each other. It’s a war. Natural love is the love of the G-dly soul. Its nature is to love G-dliness. That’s what it is. So you’ll say: If I have a G-dly soul, and that’s its nature, it doesn’t need to be taught to love Hashem. Just as you don’t need to teach a frog how to jump into water. Right? You don’t need to teach a person how to eat, or how to... I don’t know. It’s what he wants. It’s his nature. Right? So I have such a thing. Why don’t I love Hashem? If I have a G-dly soul, its nature isn’t something that can change. That is its nature. That is what it looks like. Look at the G-dly soul. What do you see? You see Hashem. That’s its essence, its very form. That’s what it is. It can’t change. So why am I not like that? I have it; it’s inside me. Why don’t I feel it? The explanation is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu hid the G-dly soul within the person, but wrapped it in the animal soul, and uncovering it is no simple task. Yet because it’s already there, the work is much easier than bringing it into being. Bringing a love of Hashem into being means taking my animal soul, which wants this world, and explaining

26:23 Speaker 2 to it, “You should know, there are better things, there are things beyond this.” It means changing it so that it begins to love. You have to bring something new into being. It really is difficult to change the essence of the animal soul so that it begins to love Hashem. Not every mind can bear that. Not everyone can do it. It’s hard; it’s work; it’s a project, as they say. Right, good. Natural love—yes, it’s hard to bring it out of concealment into the open, but here you don’t have to bring it into being. You only have to draw it out, release it from there. And there are many chapters about that, with many explanations of how to release it, how fully it can be released, and how fully it can actually be revealed. And even if it isn’t revealed, that too is a form of service. So that’s the natural love we’re talking about. Now, if in the end a person does reveal it and does have a love of Hashem—but what kind of love of Hashem? Natural love. Well, big deal. So you serve Hashem like an animal. That’s what he now comes to explain: in that case, it’s a very lofty animal. Not just any animal. All right, let’s start reading inside a little. Let’s learn some of the chapter. It’s a long chapter.

27:35 Speaker 14 Not everything that ends begins.

27:39 Speaker 2 But we started late, didn’t we?

27:41 Speaker 14 No, but you’re usually better than this.

27:46 Speaker 2 Chapter 39. “And for this reason, the angels are called chayos and behemos”—wild and domestic animals. It’s astonishing. The Rebbe asks this, and everyone asks it: Why does the Alter Rebbe suddenly start talking about angels? We’re in the middle of Tanya, talking about the beinoni’s service of Hashem. And now: listen, angels serve Hashem in this way and that way; there are these kinds of angels, other kinds of angels. What’s going on? Where did this come from? So let’s put that question aside for a moment. We’ll answer it later in the chapter. For now, we’re leaving the beinoni, leaving the tzaddikim, leaving the discussion of serving Hashem. Now we’re talking about angels and tzaddikim, all sorts of things that seem unrelated. All right? It’s a sort of aside, an explanation. When that explanation is over—turn ahead a little so you can see where the chapter’s introduction ends. Yes, on page 53. Look at page 53. See page 53? On the left side, toward the end, there’s a colon with square brackets. “For those who know”—yes, the colon. Right? That’s the end of the introduction. From there the chapter itself, the explanation, begins. So we’re learning the introduction now. This too is something we need to know. “And for this reason, the angels are called chayos and behemos.” As it is written—where do we see that angels are called animals? As it is written: “The face of a lion on the right,” and so on, “the face of an ox on the left.” These are verses in Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine Chariot. Yechezkel saw the Supernal Chariot, and there he saw the face of a lion, the face of an ox, the face of an eagle and the face of a man. What does it mean that he saw the face of a lion? He saw the angels of the Supernal Chariot. He says they looked like a lion, like an ox. So here, angels too are called animals. Why? Why call an angel by the name of an animal? An angel? Who knows Hashem better, people or angels?

30:05 Speaker 15 Angels.

30:05 Speaker 2 A person is limited by a body. Right. Who else has more love of Hashem, more fear of Hashem? You wouldn’t think to call angels “animals.” You’d find something more fitting to call them—tzaddikim, perhaps? I don’t know. It’s because they have no free choice, and their fear and love are natural to them. Angels serve Hashem with natural love. They have a love of Hashem and an immense fear of Hashem that we can’t even dream of. We can’t dream of it because we have no idea what it’s like. But the virtue of that love of Hashem isn’t so great, because it’s natural love. It’s their nature. They didn’t work to attain it; that’s how they were born. That’s what they are. Just as the G-dly soul doesn’t have to do anything to love Hashem, neither do they. On the one hand, that’s something remarkable. On the other hand... What is gold’s virtue? Gold is very valuable; everyone chases after it, right? But looking at the gold itself—did it do anything to become gold? That’s how it was born. It was born gold. That doesn’t detract from its value, right? But when we speak of avodah, their avodah isn’t really avodah. They truly are very lofty, but not because of a choice they made. Now, what does it mean that it isn’t a matter of choice? What, does an angel have no free choice? If a person has free choice, doesn’t an angel?

31:55 Speaker 15 I think they do. There’s choice, but...

32:03 Speaker 2 Every—

32:04 Speaker 15 They have—

32:04 Speaker 2 Every spiritual being. What is spirituality? What is something spiritual? A spiritual thing isn’t air; it isn’t nothing. It’s something with substance, but its substance isn’t physical. Right? What has substance without being physical? Love, fear, intellect, desire. Right? But without a body? An angel is a face without a body, a soul without a body. So it has intellect and emotion. On the contrary, its intellect is many times greater than ours, and its emotion isn’t just many times greater—it’s beyond comparison. Both its intellect and its emotion. Right. It has intellect and emotion; otherwise it wouldn’t be a spiritual being. So clearly it has an intellect that it uses. Why does it love Hashem? It contemplates Hashem’s greatness, and that brings it to love. So why do you say it has no choice? It can choose to look at that, to contemplate it. There are infinitely many angels, and every angel has a different character, just as every person has a different character. Every angel has a different character. There are many people who are all kind people—good people—but each one is different. Not in appearance, but in character, in the way they think, the way they perceive and understand things, both intellectually and emotionally. Each has a different character. Now, you could say: What distinguishes one person from another? This one’s body is here and that one’s body is there. They aren’t one because they’re two, because each is in a different place. But angels have no bodies; for them, there’s no question of place. What makes this one angel and that one another? What distinguishes them?

33:56 Speaker 2 What distinguishes one angel from another?

34:04 Speaker 15 But in what way are they—

34:04 Speaker 2 Each has a different character. Each is something different.

34:07 Speaker 15 But what can they choose? There’s nothing for them to choose. They’re there, and everything there is good.

34:12 Speaker 2 Think of cakes: there’s sweet cake and savory cake and so on. Dough, whatever—not necessarily cake. Among sweet cakes, there are a thousand different recipes, and each has a different taste. They’re all sweet, but each is something different, a different flavor. If in the physical world there are endless flavors and textures even within what’s sweet, how much more so in the spiritual world, where the recipe is made up of chochmah, binah, and daas. There are many, many ingredients in the recipe, and this can combine with that, with one thing inside another. Endless combinations, and each kind of combination is an angel. Like human beings: each is slightly different from the next. Just as their faces differ, so do their opinions. With people, the difference is most apparent in the body. With angels, it’s most apparent in their very nature.

35:18 Speaker 15 So what can they choose? What—

35:20 Speaker 2 Just as a person can choose to study Torah or do something else, and within Torah can choose to study nigleh or this subject or that one. Each time he studies something, it will arouse a different feeling in him.

35:29 Speaker 15 Okay, so that’s what—

35:58 Speaker 2 And even when he studies nigleh, he can choose to study one tractate or another. There’s room for choice there... The Gemara tells of an angel who sinned and was punished. They gave him lashes with whips of fire.

36:18 Speaker 15 Wow.

36:19 Speaker 2 Things like that happen too, but I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

36:23 Speaker 15 Matters—

36:25 Speaker 2 I didn’t see it.

36:28 Speaker 15 And I didn’t see what went on with the exceptions there either.

36:30 Speaker 2 Right. In any case, what was I trying to say? When we say an angel has no free choice, what does that mean? It has no free choice to choose evil.

36:39 Speaker 15 Exactly.

36:40 Speaker 2 But more than that: not only can it not choose evil, it also can’t change itself. A person can, through his intellect... Someone may be born with a cruel nature. He enjoys seeing another person suffer. That’s how he was born. What can you do? There are people like that. A person can change his very nature. An angel cannot.

37:11 Speaker 15 He can change—

37:12 Speaker 2 More than that. More than that. There’s a person whose love of Hashem, whose service of Hashem... By nature he’s a kind person. “Avraham, who loves Me”—a man of kindness. Yet Avraham can take a knife and slaughter his son. That doesn’t come from kindness; it comes from gevurah. Right. Through his intellect, a person has free choice not only between good and evil, but also to change his middos, his emotions. He can bring himself to feel what he needs to feel, rather than what he naturally feels. That is a human being. That is avodah. A Jew can do that; an angel cannot. That’s why they are called animals. An animal has intelligence too; it understands things. But it can’t change its nature. An angel can’t change its nature. That’s what it means that it has no free choice—not that it has no intellect. It has intellect and can choose, but it can’t change its essence. “Their fear and love are natural to them,” as it says in Raya Mehemna, Parshas Pinchas. Raya Mehemna is a long section of the Zohar called Raya Mehemna, like chapters within the Zohar. “And therefore the virtue of the tzaddikim is greater than theirs, for the dwelling place of the souls of the tzaddikim is in the World of Beriah, while the dwelling place of the angels is in the World of Yetzirah.” The dwelling place of the souls of the tzaddikim doesn’t mean in this world. In this world, they dwell in a soul and body. But after a hundred and twenty years, when a tzaddik receives the reward for his avodah, where does he receive it? In the World of Beriah. And where are the angels? In the World of Yetzirah. So although the tzaddik does his avodah here, in this physical world, after his passing, after a hundred and twenty years, where does he receive his reward? In a world higher than the world of the angels. Why? What does that tell us? What—

39:24 Speaker 2 What’s the point here? We won’t study the gloss. The difference between them is that in the World of Yetzirah, only the middos of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, shine. What does “only” mean? Only the middos! In the World of Yetzirah, only the middos of Hakadosh Boruch Hu shine. What doesn’t shine there?

39:53 Speaker 15 The world of the angels?

39:56 Speaker 2 We’ll talk about the angels in a moment, but first—

40:01 Speaker 15 What is the world—

40:02 Speaker 2 When we say that in a certain world, a certain place, there are only middos, only emotion, what isn’t there?

40:09 Speaker 15 Intellect.

40:10 Speaker 2 Intellect. The world of Yetzirah is the world of emotion. Whose emotion? Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s. In the world of Yetzirah, His middos shine—the middos. Whose middos? Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s middos. Only the middos, not Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s intellect. We’ll explain more in a moment. But first, the basic point: What are Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s middos? His love, awe and fear. That is what shines in the world of Yetzirah. As it says in Tikkunim and Eitz Chayim. Tikkunim is also part of the Zohar. Eitz Chayim is already from the writings of the Arizal. That’s a thousand or fifteen hundred years after the Zohar. Well, less than that. At any rate, as it says in the Kabbalah texts, “The six sefirot nest in Yetzirah.” “Nest” is like a bird having a nest, right? So the six sefirot nest in the world of Yetzirah. Yetzirah is their nest. That’s what it says in the Kabbalah texts. Let’s pause for a moment. What are we talking about? We’ve spoken several times about how Hashem’s name has four letters: yud, hei, vav, hei. And those four letters correspond to four levels in the world of Atzilus: chochmah, binah, emotion and speech. Chochmah, binah, middos and malchus. The yud of Hashem’s name corresponds to the sefirah of chochmah. The hei corresponds to the sefirah of binah. The vav is the middos, six middos. And the final hei is malchus, the last sefirah. Why? What’s the connection? Before we see how it relates to this: Yud is the smallest of all the letters. A dot, right? So it illustrates chochmah, because chochmah is about bittul: a person sets himself aside, sets aside his own sense of being. And now what is there? Only the thing itself. He himself doesn’t exist, right? It’s like the moon when it’s close to the sun. After all, when do we see the moon? When it moves away from the sun. Do you

42:40 Speaker 2 know how the moon and sun work? Right? The farther it moves away, the more of it we see. And when it approaches the sun at the end of its orbit—it completes its orbit and moves away—when it stands between the earth and the sun, we don’t see it, because the sun is shining on it from behind. Right? So then it receives from the sun. It’s reduced to a tiny point. What does “point” mean? Nothing. You can’t see it; it doesn’t exist. Now it receives; it doesn’t give. Right? So the Rambam writes that around every Rosh Chodesh there are about two days, forty-eight hours, when the moon can’t be seen—from when it gets very close until it moves far enough away to be seen again. That’s called the molad, the precise moment when it’s at exactly that point of zero. So that’s yud; that’s the sefirah of chochmah. Moving on—there’s much more to this, but that’s the general idea. Hei corresponds to binah. Why does hei correspond to binah? In the language of Kabbalah, binah means grasping, understanding. When a person understands something, it isn’t a point; it’s the exact opposite of chochmah. Chochmah is entirely about his becoming nullified. He isn’t present, he isn’t there; only the thing itself is there. He is, so to speak, thinking about it, contemplating it, and he has lost his own sense of being. It has disappeared; it doesn’t exist now. Understanding is the exact opposite: Wait, how do I understand this here? How does it work here? How does it fit together? What about in this situation? What about here, and what about there? Right? That’s binah, understanding. So chochmah is all about a point, bittul, contraction. Binah, understanding, is all about expansion: understanding, looking at it from every angle. Right? So that is hinted at in the letter hei, which has

44:20 Speaker 2 length and width. It spreads out in different directions, with three lines in particular. There are many explanations of that too. Then come the middos. Apart from the fact that the numerical value of vav is six, like the number of middos—chesed, gevurah, tiferes and so on—

44:35 Speaker 3 Isn’t malchus considered a middah?

44:36 Speaker 2 What?

44:38 Speaker 3 Isn’t malchus considered a middah?

44:39 Speaker 2 It depends what you’re discussing. Right now, no.

44:46 Speaker 3 Because it receives from all of them and has nothing of its own.

44:50 Speaker 2 Malchus is the moon; it receives. It’s also connected to chochmah, but we haven’t discussed that. The shape of the vav starts with a yud at the top and then descends. Right. That’s emotion: it penetrates, it descends. So the vav alludes to the middos. And the final letter, hei, is also a hei. It too has expansion, right? But this is no longer the expansion of thought; it’s the expansion of speech. Thought expands within a person himself. Speech expands outward, to someone else. All right? That’s the general idea. We’ve spoken about it many times, and we’ll probably need to return to it again. How does it relate to this? Why bring it up here? It says in Kabbalah that, broadly speaking, in... in the world of Beriah—in the world of Atzilus, Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s chochmah shines. In detail, within the world of Atzilus itself, there are yud, hei, vav and hei. But broadly speaking, all of Atzilus—what is the world of Atzilus? It is Him. It is His chochmah, His binah, His chesed; it is all Him. So, broadly speaking, all of Atzilus is yud. And the world of Beriah—what is Beriah? The world of Beriah is, so to speak, Divine thought, the garment of Divine thought. Thought is expansion. So, broadly speaking, all of Beriah is hei. In the same way, all of Yetzirah is vav and all of Asiyah is the final hei. That’s what it says. He cites the Kabbalah texts here, which say that in the world of Yetzirah, only Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s middos shine. In other words, the general character, the substance of the world of Yetzirah, is middos, emotion. Right? And because that is the kind of world it is—what is its nature, what is it about? Chesed, love, emotion, netzach, feelings—so all the beings there generally have that character, a character of emotion. Right? That’s why Yetzirah is the world of angels, because the defining quality of angels,

47:13 Speaker 2 generally speaking—what is an angel? An angel is a spiritual form. In some places they’re called “separate intellects,” meaning a form without a body. They do have a body too, but that’s not for now. In other words, angels are a form without a body. And what is the defining quality of that form? Love and awe. Generally speaking; in detail, there are all six middos. All right? And because their main quality is emotion, love and awe of Hashem, they don’t have free choice. That’s what they are. They are living creatures. Even the very loftiest angels, the chayos hakodesh, are—

47:51 Speaker 3 Living creatures.

47:52 Speaker 2 All right? Their defining quality is emotion. We often see that animals have very developed emotions. It isn’t so customary among us to keep animals in the yard or at home, but anyone who has seen them and knows them—when an animal is happy, you can see—

48:11 Speaker 3 I have a dog.

48:13 Speaker 2 When you see that it’s happy, you see that it’s happy. And when it’s sad, it’s sad.

48:16 Speaker 3 You can feel when it feels good.

48:18 Speaker 2 And when it’s offended, it’s offended. You can see it on the animal much more than on a person.

48:22 Speaker 3 A person. Like a little child.

48:27 Speaker 2 No, that’s fine. But the point we’re trying to make, the point we’re talking about, is that an animal really does have intelligence. It’s not that it has none. A dog has intelligence too.

48:39 Speaker 3 Yes, certainly.

48:40 Speaker 2 But its essence isn’t intellect. Its essence is emotion. It has the intelligence it needs to know how to eat, how to manage, how to use its emotions, what to get excited about, what to take offense at. Fine, it has intelligence, but its essence isn’t intellect. Its intellect serves its emotions; it doesn’t lead them. So these are living creatures—very holy living creatures, with very lofty emotions. That’s what it... So that’s the world of Yetzirah. What are we trying to say? That tzaddikim and their avodah are higher than angels. Right? Why are they higher? We’ve spoken about the angels. What did he say earlier? That tzaddikim are higher than angels, and after their passing they receive their reward in the world of Beriah. Why Beriah? What do tzaddikim have that angels don’t? Ah, in the world of Beriah, the chochmah, binah and daas of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, shine. We spoke about that earlier, right? Intellect—chochmah, binah and daas—shines in the world of Beriah. They are the source and root of the middos. There are middos in the world of Beriah too. Every world has all ten sefirot, but in the world of Beriah it’s the other way around: there, intellect is primary. And the middos that exist there are guided by intellect. As it says in Tikkunim, “The supernal mother nests in the throne, in three sefirot.” The world of the throne, the world of the kisei, is the world of Beriah. Beriah is called the world of the throne because there the Divine light descends. When a person sits on a chair, he becomes lower; he sits down. Beriah is called the world of the throne in the Kabbalah texts because there the Divine light has already descended and settled within keilim. This is no longer G-dliness as it is in itself. There is already—it is no longer Him as He is. It’s no longer the person himself; it’s already...

50:36 Speaker 3 Contracted.

50:37 Speaker 2 It isn’t just limited. We explained this at length. It’s much more than that. Yes, it is limited, but there’s much more to it. So all three of the intellectual sefiros dwell in the world of Beriah. There are more details to this, but... I’ll mention one point anyway, even though no one will remember it. The three intellectual sefiros—no, this is a detail, on the one hand.

51:16 Speaker 3 No, that’s fine.

51:17 Speaker 2 Yes, I need to say this so people know that here we don’t mean the intellectual sefiros of Chochmah, Binah, and Daas. The sefiros discussed here in the Kabbalah texts are Keser, Chochmah, and Binah. But we are still talking about intellectual faculties. No, it was important to me to mention that in passing. Yes, as a parenthetical point. But the idea is the same. So because Hashem’s Chochmah and Binah shine in the world of Beriah—the place where Divine intellect shines, the yud of Hashem’s name and the Binah of His name—it is the dwelling place of the souls of tzaddikim. Why tzaddikim? Tzaddikim serve Hashem with fear and love. What kind of fear and love? Fear and love that come from understanding and knowing the greatness of the Infinite One, blessed be He. The tzaddikim’s love and fear are not natural love and fear. They are love and fear born of contemplating the greatness of the Infinite One, blessed be He. Because their service was intellectual, with emotions born of intellect, and they changed their nature, their reward, too, is in the world of Beriah,

52:43 Speaker 4 which is the world of intellect.

52:45 Speaker 2 Yes, above the world of the angels. This love of the tzaddikim is called re’usa deliba, the desire of the heart, as mentioned above. And from re’usa deliba, a garment is made for the soul in the world of Beriah. Why does the soul need a garment?

53:14 Speaker 4 Something...

53:15 Speaker 5 To express it. The answer is expression.

53:19 Speaker 2 What? Why does a person need clothing? Clothing is... He doesn’t have a shirt and pants, right?

53:25 Speaker 4 To conceal himself.

53:26 Speaker 2 Huh? What is a garment for the soul?

53:31 Speaker 4 Something that holds it, something that...

53:31 Speaker 2 Why do I need clothes?

53:33 Speaker 4 To protect.

53:34 Speaker 2 To protect—that’s the point.

53:35 Speaker 4 A covering.

53:36 Speaker 2 A person can’t go outside without clothes. Well?

53:40 Speaker 4 Naked, for heaven’s sake.

53:41 Speaker 2 It’s unthinkable. A person simply can’t go outside without clothes, right? Clothing is the garment through which he can appear in the world. He can receive from the world, function in it, speak to other people, right? You can’t live in the world without clothing. In physical terms, a person needs something to come between him and the world. He can’t just go around like that. There has to be some kind of barrier. You can’t do without it.

54:25 Speaker 4 Protection.

54:26 Speaker 2 Protection. Why does a soul need that kind of protection, something between it and...? It has worked hard. And yes, we work hard. Now it’s over. Thank G-d, we’re done with that. We’ve reached the higher world, Gan Eden. Even there, something has to come between the soul and its surroundings. Why? The explanation is simple: the Divine light, the revelation of G-dliness there, is so great that you could simply be burned up. You can’t absorb it. A person can’t live inside a fire. Fire gives warmth and energy, and you can use it to run a home and all sorts of things, but you can’t live inside it.

55:19 Speaker 4 What kind of garment?

55:19 Speaker 5 Oh, I didn’t catch that.

55:21 Speaker 4 What kind of garment is it? Is that written somewhere? Do we know?

55:24 Speaker 2 Yes.

55:25 Speaker 4 What?

55:25 Speaker 2 That’s what we’re discussing.

55:26 Speaker 4 Oh.

55:31 Speaker 2 So the soul above—sometimes they’re called ships. Just as a person can’t sail across the sea without something that floats, the mitzvos are the garments the soul wears when it ascends above. They are what enable it to receive the Divine light.

56:03 Speaker 4 So the mitzvos accompany the soul above and remain with it there?

56:07 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s why it says in the Zohar that if one day is missing, one garment is missing. If, during a person’s life, one day is missing—one mitzvah that his soul needed to fulfill and he didn’t fulfill—he’ll have to come back in another incarnation. He can’t ascend above. But that’s over; it no longer applies to us. We’ve finished with that. The Rebbe said our generation is already the last generation. This is already our final incarnation. All the major rectifications are complete; we just need to finish the details, the little things.

56:41 Speaker 6 Something that never ends.

56:43 Speaker 2 Something that...

56:43 Speaker 6 Everyone needs to... Fine, the Rebbe said this is the last time, but there’s really no such thing as a person going through an entire life without missing anything.

56:53 Speaker 4 No, but...

56:54 Speaker 2 No, but he didn’t come down for that. He may live here for 120 years just so that, at age sixty, he’ll give tzedakah to a particular person on a particular day. He lives his whole life for that.

57:06 Speaker 6 And everything else he missed?

57:09 Speaker 2 That’s a bonus. The rest is a bonus; it isn’t directly connected to his mission.

57:19 Speaker 7 Like a person’s days can be difficult when they’re...

57:22 Speaker 6 My mother’s days are difficult.

57:23 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. That’s in Hayom Yom. That’s the whole story there.

57:27 Speaker 6 [unclear]

57:30 Speaker 7 A person. Whoever [unclear]

57:33 Speaker 6 [unclear]

57:34 Speaker 7 Stories like that, that’s why.

57:36 Speaker 2 All right, let’s move on a little. A few more lines and we’ll finish this point. At least we’ll know that we’ve started the chapter.

57:43 Speaker 6 [unclear]

57:48 Speaker 7 [unclear]

57:52 Speaker 6 What date? Enough.

57:58 Speaker 2 So this love of the tzaddikim is called re’usa deliba—the desire of the heart, or, more generally, the innermost point of the heart. From re’usa deliba, a garment is made for the soul in the world of Beriah. The desire of the heart that the tzaddikim have becomes their garment in Beriah. Why? Because that is the nature of their service of Hashem; it corresponds to the world of Beriah. This is the higher Gan Eden, as we’ll learn later, and as it says in the Zohar, Vayakhel. But he qualifies this: this applies specifically to the souls themselves. He was talking about tzaddikim. Which tzaddikim? The great tzaddikim whose service of Hashem is intellectual love and fear, and this re’usa deliba, this desire of the heart. Right? Even for those great tzaddikim who merit this, not every part of them ascends there—only the soul itself, the neshamah of the tzaddik. The ruach and nefesh of the tzaddik do not reach the world of Beriah. Let’s see it inside: “This applies specifically to the neshamahs themselves, which are an aspect of the expansive intellectual faculties of the Infinite One, blessed be He. But the ruach of the tzaddikim”—of those same tzaddikim—“and likewise all the other souls of the Jewish people who served Hashem with the fear and love hidden in the heart of every Jew, do not ascend there,” to the world of Beriah, “except on Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh alone.” All right, given the time, we’ll stop here. Next time we’ll explain what this ascent is, why souls that never served Hashem with intellectual love and fear can nevertheless ascend to Beriah, and why, for the tzaddikim, it’s only the neshamah and not the ruach or nefesh. There are several things we need to understand. We’ll stop here and, with Hashem’s help, continue next week—or whenever our next session is. And we should keep in mind that all this, as everyone understands,

1:00:09 Speaker 2 does not yet seem relevant to serving Hashem—all the explanation we’ve had here about angels, tzaddikim, the higher Gan Eden and the lower Gan Eden. We need to understand all these things as an introduction to what he’ll explain at the end of the chapter.

1:00:24 Speaker 4 Thank you very much. [unclear]