Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah Chapter 2

00:02 Speaker 1 Okay, we’ll begin.

00:04 Speaker 2 One moment. Sorry.

00:11 Speaker 1 We’re up to chapter 2 of Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. At the end of the previous class, we said that chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah are the foundation of all of Chassidus, both in general and in its particulars. Here the Alter Rebbe explains the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. What is the foundation of faith? Faith in Hashem’s oneness does not mean only what people thought it meant before the Baal Shem Tov: believing that there is no other deity, that idolatry is false, that there is only one Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as the Rambam writes in halachah and in many other places. The Baal Shem Tov taught something new: faith in G-d means not only that there is no other deity, but that there is nothing else—He is the only reality that exists. In the first chapter, the Alter Rebbe explained this approach. He explained what the Baal Shem Tov means when he says, “There is nothing else besides Him.” What does that mean? After all, I can see a world here, a reality, created beings. How can you tell me there is nothing else besides Him? Look, there is! The Baal Shem Tov says that created beings have no independent existence. Rather, Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates them anew from nothing at every single moment. And if Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates them from nothing at every moment, then the reali—then there isn’t a world here in its own right. In other words, it isn’t as though there is Hakadosh Boruch Hu and, opposite Him, a world. There is only Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He creates beings, but these are not two separate things. There is nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So if, for even one moment, Hakadosh Boruch Hu were to stop creating them—if He stopped speaking the utterances through which He creates the world—the world would instantly return to nothingness, just as it was before

02:35 Speaker 1 it was actually created. And the Alter Rebbe places great emphasis, if you remember, on what “actually” means. Good evening. The Alter Rebbe emphasized that if Hakadosh Boruch Hu were to stop creating the worlds, they would return to absolute nothingness, just as before the world was created. Because the entire existence of created beings is from nothing... We need to get into this. What does it mean that created beings come from nothing? Nothing means nothing. When you take something and make something else out of it, you change its form. But when you take nothing and make something out of it, you haven’t taken anything at all. How did something come to be here? The something created from nothing—what was it taken from? Its true reality is that it is nothing, that it does not exist. That is why it must be created anew at every moment. So if its creation stops for even a moment, if the letters withdraw from the worlds, then at that instant the world and its created beings return to what they were before. What were they before? Before the world was created, it could not exist. It isn’t only that there was no world; there could not have been a world. When there is nothing, can we imagine that something will suddenly appear? Where would it come from? There is nothing from which it could be formed. If, G-d forbid, the utterances were to withdraw and the world cease to exist, it would return to that original state, when its existence was impossible. It would once again be impossible for it to exist. It isn’t even that it once existed and now doesn’t; its entire existence would simply be nullified. That was the content of chapter 1: the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching that “there is nothing else besides Him.” Meaning that Hakadosh Boruch Hu, G-d, is the only reality in the world. But the Alter Rebbe left this as a matter of faith. What does the whole

04:57 Speaker 1 explanation, the whole idea, rest on? There is a Midrash on Tehillim, a saying of the Baal Shem Tov, and several verses from the Torah that he cites. On that basis, he builds the entire idea. So as a Jew, I now have to believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What am I relying on? It says so in the Torah. The Baal Shem Tov said so. It says so in the Midrash. It isn’t something I understand. It’s something I was told, and I accept it because I’m a Jew, I have a soul, and I have the power of faith. I was told this, and I accept it—but not through reason or understanding, and certainly not through feeling. I don’t feel that the world is G-dliness. Right? None of us feels that the world is G-dliness. I accept it because I already accept that everything written in the Torah is absolute truth. Well, then this is absolute truth too. But I don’t understand it intellectually, and I certainly don’t feel it in my heart. It’s written in the Torah, so it’s true. That’s chapter 1. The Alter Rebbe begins chapter 2 with very interesting words: “And from this.” What does “from this” mean? From what we learned in chapter 1—that there is nothing else besides Him—“comes the answer to the heretics.” The answer to the heretics. Now, that’s very interesting. Suddenly, the Alter Rebbe is concerned with what heretics think. The Tanya is a guide for a Jew who is a beinoni, who is looking for a way to serve Hashem. Why does the Alter Rebbe suddenly see fit to address this? Listen, there are some heretics who don’t believe in the Torah, and I need to answer them. What does that have to do with Tanya? The Alter Rebbe devotes a whole chapter to this, a whole explanation. More than that, there are different kinds of heretics and unbelievers. There are some who do not believe that Hakadosh Boruch Hu exists at all. They believe the world has always existed, that it is eternal. The Alter Rebbe does not address them or give them an answer. There are other unbelievers who believe that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, but do not believe that the Torah is from Heaven. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, and after He created it, that was it. Perhaps He runs the world, but He does not speak to human beings; no information comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu to people. To them, the Alter Rebbe says nothing. He isn’t speaking here to heretics who do not believe in prophecy. There are unbelievers who believe in prophecy but not in the Torah. The Alter Rebbe isn’t speaking to them either. Whom is he addressing? Those heretics and unbelievers who deny individual Divine Providence. That is what interests him. Why deal with heretics at all? That isn’t your concern or ours. And second, if you already want to answer non-Jews and unbelievers and so on, why focus specifically on that particular kind of unbeliever? The point is what we said at the beginning: in the first chapter, the Alter Rebbe left faith as faith. It had not entered the intellect. The whole approach of Chabad Chassidus is to take faith and bring it into the intellect. Chabad stands for chochmah, binah, and daas: to grasp it through chochmah, understand it through binah, and connect it to myself through daas. The whole purpose of Chassidus is to bring faith into intellect and feeling. But why? Why was it so important to the Alter Rebbe to turn everything upside down? To change the entire way of learning that the Jewish people had followed for thousands of years? Why is faith no longer enough, and now it has to be brought into the... What changed? What did the Alter Rebbe want

07:07 Speaker 1 to achieve here? There are two reasons, as we discussed at length a long time ago, when we began learning Tanya, in speaking about why Chassidus was introduced in the first place. Chassidus came for two purposes. First, to illuminate the darkness of the world. Because of the long exile, the darkness has grown, and it needs to be illuminated. Second, as a preparation for the coming of Moshiach. The light of Moshiach is already beginning to glimmer, and Chassidus is that first glimmer, the beginning of the illumination of Moshiach’s light. For both purposes—what does it mean to illuminate the darkness? That G-dliness should penetrate the world and the person. What does it mean for Moshiach to come? That G-dliness should penetrate the person—and, likewise, the world. How do we bring that about? What is a person? We’ve spoken about this many times: a person is not just faith. A person is not just the essence of the soul. A person is a soul in a body. And the soul as it is in the body has an intellect and has feelings. So if the Torah remains within a person only as faith, something is missing. It has not penetrated the person’s actual being. Something I merely believe in but do not understand does not compel me to do anything. We’ve repeated here several times a saying from Chassidus that the Rebbe quotes countless times.

09:35 Speaker 1 To grasp it here? So there are two reasons, as is understood and explained. We spoke about this at length a long time ago, when we began Tanya: why was Chassidus introduced in the first place? Chassidus came for two purposes. First, to illuminate the darkness of the world. Because of the long exile, the darkness has grown, and it needs to be illuminated. Second, as a preparation for the coming of Moshiach. The light of Moshiach is already beginning to shine, and Chassidus is that first glimmer, the beginning of the revelation of Moshiach’s light. For both purposes—what does it mean to illuminate the darkness? That G-dliness should permeate the world, permeate a person. What does it mean for Moshiach to come? That G-dliness should permeate a person; it’s the same thing—it should permeate the world. How do we do that? What is a person? We’ve spoken many times about how a person is not just faith. A person is not the essence of the soul. A person is a soul in a body. And the soul, as it is in the body, has an intellect and has feelings. So if the Torah remains with a person only as a matter of faith, something is missing. It hasn’t penetrated the person’s lived reality. Something I only believe in, but don’t understand, doesn’t obligate me to do anything. Right, we’ve repeated here several times a saying from Chassidus that the Rebbe repeats countless times.

11:09 Speaker 7 “A thief at the mouth of a tunnel calls upon the Merciful One.”

11:12 Speaker 1 A thief standing at the entrance to a tunnel, about to steal—just before he goes in and breaks down the door, he prays to Hakadosh Boruch Hu to help him not get caught. If you believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, how can you pray for help stealing? Yes, it’s a contradiction, a built-in contradiction. So what is it? He believes, but it hasn’t penetrated his personality. And it’s not just the thief; it’s every one of us. If I only believe that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, but I don’t understand it and it hasn’t penetrated my mind, then I... what’s the difference between me and the thief? He’s a big thief; I’m a small thief. That’s why the Alter Rebbe sees a need not to leave belief in the oneness of Hashem dependent on faith in the verses of the Torah, but to bring it into the mind. And what kind of mind? One where even a person who doesn’t believe, who rejects it on intellectual grounds, will come to accept this belief intellectually as well. In other words, in our chapter, the Alter Rebbe wants to take belief in the oneness of Hashem and bring it down into the mind so that it becomes one with us. The truth is... well, this needs a longer discussion, but there’s another, deeper point here. I’ll mention it too, because it’s important. If it’s so important for the entire Torah to penetrate our minds and feelings, how much more important is it when we’re talking about the oneness of Hashem. What does the oneness of Hashem mean? It means that Hashem, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is everywhere. Right? What is the oneness of Hashem? Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is throughout the world. Really? What does the oneness of Hashem mean? That there is no place without Him; He is in every place. “Blessed are You, Hashem...” Right, everything comes from the Creator

13:33 Speaker 1 Boruch Hu. What does the oneness of Hashem mean? It means that there is nothing besides Him. So if I grasp belief in the oneness of Hashem only through faith, and it doesn’t penetrate my mind, then the oneness of Hashem isn’t present in my mind. Is that clear? We need to say a few more words here. The Alter Rebbe has to... No, he doesn’t just want to bring the matter of faith that we discussed in the previous chapter down into the mind in this chapter; he has to do it. Why? Because belief in the oneness of Hashem has something different from, or beyond, the rest of the Torah. With the rest of the Torah, if a person only believes but it doesn’t penetrate his mind—fine, he believes, he acts, he observes; everything is all right. But with the oneness of Hashem, if it doesn’t penetrate the mind as well, that detracts from the oneness itself. The meaning of the oneness of Hashem is that Hashem is everywhere. If, for me, Hashem is present only in faith and not in my mind, then, for me, there is no oneness of Hashem. It hasn’t penetrated me. For me, it isn’t there. So when we speak about the oneness of Hashem, that there is nothing besides Him, it is precisely here that it’s absolutely necessary not to leave it at faith, but to bring it down into the mind. And what kind of mind? Even the minds of those who are heretics, who deny it. This also explains why the Alter Rebbe addresses specifically those heretics who deny Divine providence. Because this isn’t... the answer to the heretics isn’t an answer for them. It’s an answer for us: when belief in Divine providence doesn’t reach our minds, or we don’t feel it in our hearts—when the matter hasn’t penetrated us—then, for me, something is lacking in the oneness of Hashem; something is lacking in my faith.

15:56 Speaker 8 Welcome. She’s been here two months. We started the...

16:11 Speaker 1 So that’s why the Alter Rebbe opens—and all of that was an introduction, of course—that’s why the Alter Rebbe opens chapter 2: “And from here comes the answer to the heretics.” So the Alter Rebbe is now going to give an answer to the heretics, even though the purpose of Tanya isn’t to provide answers to non-Jews and all sorts of deniers. Why this and why that? Tanya comes to guide us in our service of Hashem, because this really isn’t an answer for the heretics, for non-Jews; it’s an answer for us. It shows us how to bring faith into our minds. The Alter Rebbe goes on to say that we’re now going to uncover the root of their error—the root of the heretics’ error. In other words, the heretics are mistaken, and their mistake has a root. Once we understand the root of the mistake, we won’t fall into their error. What is the mistake, and what is its root? Their mistake is that they deny Divine providence and the signs and wonders of the Torah. What is the root of the mistake? That “in their false imagination, they mistakenly compare the work of Hashem, Who makes heaven and earth, to the work and methods of a human being.” A person thinks—this is how he understands it—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is all-powerful and can take nothing and make something from it. And He did it. He created the world. But after He created the world, well, He already created it. Why would He have to create it again? He already created it. That’s it; it exists. When a person has this fixed in his thoughts, in his understanding, in his mind—how does he look at the world? He sees the world as something independent. True, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created it at the beginning, but after that, that’s it: it already exists as an entity in its own right. What does that immediately lead him to think? Wait, if the world is an entity in its own right, who says Hakadosh Boruch Hu continues to run it? He created it and... He

18:31 Speaker 1 enjoyed creating it, and then “Hashem abandoned the earth.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu isn’t watching. These are lowly things, physical things. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is all-powerful, not infinite. He wanted to make something for Himself for some reason—I don’t know. He wanted to create, so He created, but afterward, well, He created it. The world doesn’t interest Him. What would He be looking for here in this world? He left it. So their mistake in thinking that the world is an entity in its own right leads them to the further mistake of denying Divine providence: Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t watch over the world. And if Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t watch over the world and doesn’t care what happens here, then what does He do—miracles? Miracles? That would mean Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees that something here didn’t work out, something wasn’t right, so He breaks the laws of nature and changes things because He wants to... Is He even watching the world? So if there’s no Divine providence, then there certainly aren’t any miracles. Ah.

19:35 Speaker 9 Miracles.

19:35 Speaker 1 Hmm?

19:37 Speaker 9 Miracles.

19:37 Speaker 1 Yes. Ah, but the Torah says miracles happened? Fine, let’s explain that. Something happened; there was a high tide, a low tide. How do I know what happened? People find some explanation. The explanation doesn’t quite fit the reality, doesn’t quite fit the story. Well, maybe the story isn’t accurate; maybe we can find a better explanation. But once a person feels that the world is an entity in its own right, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created it and then left it, that leads him to deny Divine providence. And if he denies Divine providence, that leads him to deny the signs and wonders of the Torah. So the root of the heretics’ error is that they hold that the world is an entity in its own right, and from that follows their error of denying Divine providence and the signs and wonders of the Torah. Why is that a mistake? Who says it’s a mistake? Maybe they’re right? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is all-powerful, and He created the world. And the Alter Rebbe says: Come, let’s prove to you—let’s prove to ourselves, let’s understand intellectually—why it must be so, why Hakadosh Boruch Hu must be creating the world anew every moment, from nothing into something. But first let’s see where those who err go wrong. “In their false imagination, they mistakenly compare the work of Hashem, Who makes heaven and earth, to the work and methods of a human being.” That is their mistake. What do they think? “For once a craftsman has made a vessel, the vessel no longer needs the craftsman’s hands.” Once the craftsman has made some vessel, he doesn’t have to keep holding it and working on it all the time for it to exist. “For even though the craftsman’s hands are removed from the vessel” and the craftsman goes off to the market, “the vessel remains in its form.” Yes, the silver candlestick he made remains in the display cabinet even while the craftsman is out at the market, shopping for Shabbos. The vessel remains in its form and appearance, exactly as it was when it left the hands of

21:59 Speaker 1 From the silversmith’s hands. Nothing changes when he finishes making the vessel; the vessel is completely independent. That is how these foolish people imagine the creation of heaven and earth. They think Hakadosh Boruch Hu made it the way a person makes a vessel. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu made a great, sophisticated vessel. He made the worlds, heaven and earth, and once He made them, He no longer needs to keep working on them, creating them anew every moment. And at first glance, their reasoning is very logical, right? Yes or no? According to our own reasoning, our initial reasoning before the Alter Rebbe’s explanation in Chassidus. According to our simple logic, once Hakadosh Boruch Hu made the world, that’s it—He made it. Where is the flaw in the reasoning of these heretics, of those who are mistaken?

22:54 Speaker 10 Because Hashem created the world from, like—

22:57 Speaker 1 From nothing into something.

22:58 Speaker 10 Exactly. So that’s why He still has to sustain the world, because He created it from nothing.

23:02 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, that’s the answer. The Alter Rebbe explains the answer: “But their eyes are too blind to see the great difference between human work and its methods, which make something from something, merely changing its shape and appearance from a piece of silver into a vessel.” And they compare that to the creation of heaven and earth, which is something from nothing. But we’ve already discussed this at length several times: the entire existence of something—what is “something”? Something is nothing. It is nothing that Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes into something. But what is its actual state? Take a stone. A stone’s natural state is to be on the ground. When you throw it, it’s now a stone flying through the air. Yes, there’s a stone flying here. Is it because I threw it into the air, and now it has become a different kind of stone?

24:14 Speaker 10 No.

24:16 Speaker 1 Did I change any property of it? It remains the same stone. Rather, there is a force holding it in the air right now. The moment that force stops, ends, it will... It hasn’t stopped being a stone. Right? As long as it’s flying through the air, what is this picture we’re seeing—a stone flying? It isn’t a flying stone. The stone remains the same stone. There’s a force holding it in the air. What is the reality of the world? The reality of the world is nothing. Not empty space—not even empty space exists. Nothing. There’s nothing at all. Now it is being made into something. So that puff with which Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes it into something—that G-dly force, that puff, that breath, that Divine speech—is what holds it in the air right now. It is what keeps it in existence right now. The moment that stops, it will return to what it was before. What was it before? It was nothing. Just as the stone did not change while it was in the air. Its actual state did not change. When you see a stone flying through the air, that isn’t the stone itself; it’s the force holding it in the air. Nothing about the stone itself has changed. The same is true of the world. As long as Divine speech is here holding it in the air, keeping it in existence, then it exists. And when that Divine speech stops... While it exists, there is Divine speech keeping it in existence. What exists? Nothing exists. Just as the stone’s actual state has not changed, the world’s actual state has not changed even while it exists. What is its actual state? That it does not exist.

26:15 Speaker 10 But Hashem can do anything. He could also create it and then, like, I don’t know—even if it’s something from nothing...

26:23 Speaker 1 That’s an excellent question, and we’ll come back to it later. The Alter Rebbe addresses it explicitly. I deliberately don’t want to get into it or explain it now. So they compare the creation of heaven and earth to human work, which makes something from something, and that’s why they mistakenly think the world has an independent existence. And because they think the world has an independent existence, they think there is no Divine providence over each particular thing, and so they deny the signs and wonders of the Torah. The Alter Rebbe says that the creation of heaven and earth is something from nothing, a greater wonder than the splitting of the Sea, for example. At first glance, it seems the Alter Rebbe is saying: What’s the greatest miracle we know? The greatest miracle is the splitting of the Sea—as our Sages said, “As difficult as the splitting of the Sea.” At first glance, it sounds as though the Alter Rebbe wants to say that the wonder of creating something from nothing is even greater than the splitting of the Sea. But that isn’t the point. The point here is much deeper.

27:38 Speaker 10 It seems that—

27:42 Speaker 1 That’s another matter. The nature of creating something from nothing is a greater wonder than the nature of the splitting of the Sea. The Alter Rebbe is now going to analyze what happened at the splitting of the Sea, and from that we’ll understand two things: first, why something from nothing is a greater miracle than the splitting of the Sea, and second, the answer to your question, which is the main point. What happened at the splitting of the Sea? “Hashem drove the sea back with a strong east wind all night,” and “the waters split” and stood “like a heap” and like a wall. In the Song at the Sea, near the beginning, it says, “The flowing waters stood like a heap,” and later, “The depths congealed in the heart of the sea.” So what is the difference between flowing waters standing like a heap and the depths congealing? “The flowing waters stood like a heap” means that these are still flowing waters. Ordinarily, they flow; they don’t stand like a heap. The miracle here was that although they were liquid, they nevertheless stood. Then, in the second stage, there was an even greater miracle: the liquid waters did not merely stand while remaining liquid; they congealed. They became solid, like a wall.

29:13 Speaker 11 Even if someone pours water like this, it kind of stands, and then, uh, kind of...

29:19 Speaker 1 In the first stage, the waters stood. Why? Because the wind—true, an ordinary wind doesn’t hold water up like a wall. Fine. The east wind there did hold the waters up like a wall, but even as the wind held them up, they were still water. It’s like putting water in a vessel: it doesn’t spill. Why doesn’t it spill? Not because it has stopped being water. It doesn’t spill because a vessel is holding it. Right? If the vessel breaks or you pour the water out, it’s still liquid. Right? But in the second stage, that same east wind brought about another miracle—a miracle within a miracle, a greater miracle. The waters not only stood because the wind was holding them up; they changed their nature and became—congealed. Not congealed in the sense of turning to ice. Not because the wind cooled them. It was an east wind. The waters congealed because the wind changed them: ordinary water is liquid, and this water became, what’s the word, solid. Like stone, like a wall of stones—“like a heap” and “like a wall.” This is the precision of the Alter Rebbe’s wording. He doesn’t write that “the waters split and stood like a heap and a wall,” but “like a heap and like a wall.” In other words, there were two distinct things, two stages. In the first stage, the flowing waters stood like a heap, and afterward they congealed and stood like a wall. The Alter Rebbe continues: “Had Hashem stopped the wind for even a moment, the waters would have flowed downward again according to their usual way and nature.” What was the miracle? The miracle was that the wind held the waters up all night, both in the first stage and in the second. “Hashem drove the sea back with a strong east wind”—a strong east wind all night, from beginning to end. And here the questioner asks: Fine, in the first stage, when the waters were still liquid—

31:50 Speaker 1 Then you need the east wind constantly to hold them up so they won’t spill. But in the second stage, when the east wind had changed the nature of the waters and they had become solid, had become like a wall, why did the wind need to keep blowing all night? The east wind had already brought about the miracle, changed them, and instead of being liquid water they had become solid water. They had become like stone. So their nature had already changed. If their nature changed, why do you still need to hold them up? Is the question clear? And yet we see that although their nature changed, the east wind was still needed all night. The explanation goes like this: everything that exists has properties that are inherent to its very existence, and properties that are added to it. For example, flint. I don’t remember if we talked about this once. I think we did. Flint—you strike it and fire comes out. Right? There’s a stone. Have you ever seen a stone like that? I used to play with it.

33:26 Speaker 12 You can hear it.

33:27 Speaker 1 Have you ever played with it?

33:28 Speaker 12 No.

33:29 Speaker 1 Huh?

33:29 Speaker 12 Not for lighting a fire.

33:32 Speaker 13 There are still stones like that.

33:33 Speaker 12 I only smelled the fire.

33:35 Speaker 1 There are stones like that scattered all over the yard here.

33:38 Speaker 12 We tried it once. We took some out and tried it with the stones, but—

33:42 Speaker 1 Yes, when we were children, we actually played with them a lot.

33:45 Speaker 12 Really?

33:46 Speaker 1 We didn’t manage to light an actual fire, but we saw plenty of sparks.

33:55 Speaker 12 Yes.

33:55 Speaker 1 The property of a stone that produces fire is something additional to the stone itself. Not every stone produces fire. There are stones you can strike as much as you like—you won’t get fire. This stone produces fire. There are stones harder than flint that don’t produce fire. A diamond is much harder than flint. Yes, strike it as much as you like; no fire will come out of it. Even though a diamond originally comes from carbon, compressed carbon—but that’s another matter. In other words... But sorry, before the “in other words”: there are properties of a created thing that are essential to it. Every physical thing occupies space. Can there be a physical thing that doesn’t occupy space? The whole reality of physicality involves space. Once something is physical, it cannot fail to occupy space. Whether large or small, it occupies space. That means every created thing has two aspects: its very existence, the substance itself, and its properties. Water, too, has its very existence. Hashem created water; water exists, and it has its properties. Water’s properties are that it is transparent and liquid, that it naturally flows downward, and so on. Those are properties of water. The properties of water are not inherent to the existence of water itself. Water could exist without those properties. We can’t separate them, because Hashem created water with these properties. But by the definition of water itself, it doesn’t necessarily have to have precisely these properties. Hashem could have given it different ones. What did the miracle of the splitting of the sea accomplish when the water became a wall? The miracle of the splitting of the sea did not change the essence, the existence, of the water. It changed the water’s property of being liquid. Right? The Alter Rebbe says: all the more so, the miracle of the splitting of the sea

36:25 Speaker 1 did not change the very existence of the water; it changed only a property of it. And even though the change was only to a property, the east wind had to keep blowing, continuously, without stopping. Otherwise... How does the wording go? Ah: “Had Hashem stopped the wind for even a moment, the waters would undoubtedly have flowed back down as is their way and nature, and would not have stood like a wall.” In other words, in the first stage of the miracle, when the water was still liquid, if the wind had stopped, obviously the water would have flowed back down as is its way and nature. Right? After all, its existence hadn’t changed. The Alter Rebbe says that even in the second stage, when the water had already become like a wall—because... What had the miracle done? It had changed a property of the water, and that property is part of what defines water. Water standing like a wall isn’t within the definition of—it's not water. Water is something liquid. So if something has temporarily changed its nature, that state cannot endure. The moment the change stops, the force causing the change stops, it will go back to being ordinary water. That is why the wind had to continue all night. Now we’re—this brings us to your question. A question came up earlier; I’ll explain it more fully so everyone understands it. This is a very fundamental point. Your explanation is very good: Hashem creates something from nothing, and because it is something from nothing rather than something from something, it has to be renewed constantly, without interruption. Excuse me, are you trying to fit Hashem into human logic? Just as Hashem created something from nothing in a way that requires Him to renew it every moment, Hashem is all-powerful. He

38:42 Speaker 1 can create something from nothing that doesn’t need to be renewed. That’s the question. Understood? So your whole explanation is very, very good, but we’re talking about Hashem, not human beings. Let Him create something from nothing that doesn’t need to be renewed, that will exist on its own. What’s the problem? That is why the Alter Rebbe immediately brings proof from the splitting of the sea. The Alter Rebbe could have brought a much simpler proof. From what? From a stone that, when you throw it, falls back down the moment the force stops acting on it. That analogy is given in Chassidus, and the Alter Rebbe uses it in Chassidus. Why does the Alter Rebbe go to the trouble of bringing such a complicated analogy from the splitting of the sea? You want to prove that something newly brought into being from nothing needs the force to sustain it constantly? Bring the analogy of a stone thrown into the air: when the force is spent, it falls to the ground. Why bring me an analogy from the splitting of the sea, with two stages? What for? It’s a complicated analogy, hard to explain and hard to understand. The Alter Rebbe wants to tell us how Hashem acts. If I brought the example of a stone being thrown, well, a person threw the stone, and that’s how it behaves. But in this miracle, we see how Hashem acts. When Hashem performs a miracle, how does He do it? He does it this way: He sustains the miracle with a strong east wind all night. From the Torah’s account, we see that when Hashem creates something from nothing, changing reality, He does so in a way—in what way? In a way that renews it at every moment. From this we understand that whenever Hashem performs a miracle, He sustains—He, uh, does it in that same

40:47 Speaker 1 way. So why is the miracle of creation from nothing far more wondrous than the miracle of the splitting of the sea? It’s essentially the same thing. Here Hashem brought existence into being from nothing, and there He brought a new property of the water into being from nothing. So what’s the difference? Why is this so much more wondrous? It’s very simple. In the miracle of the splitting of the sea, what did Hashem bring about? Only a change in the water’s property. He changed its nature. So if even a change only in the nature of water, in one of its properties, must be sustained without interruption, how much more wondrous is it to take nothing and turn it into something? Certainly it must be renewed at every moment.

41:42 Speaker 14 The question still stands.

41:44 Speaker 1 Hmm?

41:44 Speaker 14 The question still stands.

41:46 Speaker 1 Which question?

41:47 Speaker 14 That He can create it, but He Himself decides how.

41:50 Speaker 1 And what’s the answer? The question stands, but what’s the answer? The answer is that this is how Hashem—

41:55 Speaker 14 Because He decided to do it that way.

41:56 Speaker 1 Because that is how He decided. Yes.

41:57 Speaker 14 Something else.

41:58 Speaker 3 Isn’t it to give non-Jews the sense that this is something they can use to bring about a change in creation, or something like that?

42:09 Speaker 1 It may have an application in serving Hashem that’s discussed elsewhere, but here we want to understand—to understand intellectually the concept of creation from nothing, of Hashem’s unity—not creation from nothing. We want to understand intellectually why there is nothing besides Him.

42:26 Speaker 14 After all...

42:31 Speaker 1 Now I have a question. I know no one will be able to answer it, but I’ll ask anyway. Maybe... Uh, the Alter Rebbe’s entire proof from the analogy was that Hashem used the east wind to transform the water, giving it the property of a wall. Right?

42:51 Speaker 14 But the heretics don’t believe in that anyway.

42:53 Speaker 1 What?

42:54 Speaker 14 They don’t believe in that miracle anyway. So if they don’t believe in the miracle, what good does it do to give them a proof from it?

43:02 Speaker 1 Well, that’s... We discussed this at the beginning, before you arrived. When the Alter Rebbe says, “This provides an answer to the heretics,” is the Alter Rebbe concerned with the heretics? This is part of Tanya. Tanya is guidance in serving Hashem for a Jew who wants to serve Hashem. The Alter Rebbe is not dealing with non-Jews or with all of that. Rather, the whole purpose of Chassidus in general is to bring faith into our understanding. And this is especially relevant to Hashem’s unity, because the whole point of Hashem’s unity is that it is the same everywhere. So it cannot be that Hashem’s unity exists only in faith and not in our understanding. That is why the Alter Rebbe says: let’s bring faith into our understanding so thoroughly that even the heretics who deny Divine Providence will have to believe it. So the answer is for us, not for the heretics. We discussed that in the introduction to this entire chapter. Now, back to my question. The Alter Rebbe’s entire proof from the miracle is that at the splitting of the sea, the east wind made the water stand like a wall, and nevertheless, even though the water’s property changed so that it became solid, the east wind was still needed. Why does the Alter Rebbe mention at the beginning that the waters stood like a heap and like a wall? If he wants to prove only that the east wind changed the water’s property, then for our purposes only the wall matters. The heap of liquid water is not relevant to the proof or the explanation. Why mention it?

44:54 Speaker 4 Maybe they’re stages of the miracle.

44:58 Speaker 1 They are stages of the miracle, but why does the Rebbe mention them?

45:01 Speaker 4 Even when we are created, he says that we are created, first of all we have...

45:06 Speaker 1 What? I didn’t understand.

45:08 Speaker 4 First of all, there’s the matter.

45:13 Speaker 1 Yes.

45:13 Speaker 4 And then we’re created. The water, too, was moving before, and then it...

45:13 Speaker 1 I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say, but there’s a sicha of... The question is one the Rebbe asks. I wouldn’t have asked such a question. There’s a wonderful sicha of the Rebbe. The Rebbe explains that the miracle of the splitting of the sea happened in stages. At the first stage, the miracle still took the nature of the world into account. Yes, there was a miracle, a wind like that... An ordinary wind doesn’t hold water up. And if a wind were strong enough to hold water up, how could the Jewish people pass through it and walk in such a wind? Right? An ordinary wind doesn’t do that. There was a miracle here, but a miracle with a foothold in nature: a strong wind pushing the water upward. The second stage was a miracle with no foothold in nature at all: the water suddenly changed, turned into... I don’t know what sort of thing, something completely different. Water that wasn’t water. So the kal vachomer is much stronger. If the miracle of the splitting of the sea, which happened in stages and took nature into account—if a miracle like that needed a mighty east wind to sustain it without interruption—then all the more so, many times over, the miracle of creation from nothing, which happened all at once, with a bang. Nothing, then something. Surely it needs an east wind to sustain it constantly. In other words, there are two points here. The first explanation emphasizes...

46:53 Speaker 4 But it wasn’t as though it happened in a second. There was something—like, something created the world. It wasn’t in a second.

46:59 Speaker 1 Everything that is created did not exist before, and then, all at once, it came into being. The miracle of the splitting of the sea happened in stages. That applies to each individual created thing, and also to existence as a whole. At first there was nothing; then there was primordial matter, from which everything was subsequently created. Before, it wasn’t there; suddenly, it is. What was that just now?

47:26 Speaker 4 One hundred and ninety-five.

47:28 Speaker 1 We’ll explain what primordial matter is another time, at greater length. Not now.

47:32 Speaker 4 Wait.

47:40 Speaker 1 Now, where were we? Yes. So we have two explanations here concerning the splitting of the sea. One explanation concerns the wind holding the water up like a wall, and from that we learn a kal vachomer. The other learns a kal vachomer from the fact that the miracle happened in stages. What’s the difference between the two explanations? According to the first explanation, the creation of heaven and earth is compared to the miracle of the splitting of the sea because of their similarity. Just as the miracle at the splitting of the sea brought about a change in reality, so too, with creation from nothing, the miracle brought about a change in reality. Only here, the miracle changed a property of the water, while there it changed the very essence of the nothingness. Right? The second explanation is just the opposite. It emphasizes the difference between the miracle of the splitting of the sea and the creation of heaven and earth. At the splitting of the sea, the miracle happened in stages, gradually—a miracle clothed in nature—whereas there it was a miracle not clothed in nature. In other words, the two explanations complement each other. According to the first explanation, the miracle of creation from nothing is indeed far more wondrous than the splitting of the sea, but it resembles the splitting of the sea. According to the second explanation, it doesn’t resemble it at all. The greatness of the miracle lies in the fact that it is utterly beyond comparison: the miracle of creation from nothing is not clothed in nature at all. Up to this point, that’s the intellectual explanation, the reasoning the Alter Rebbe gives concerning creation from nothing, to bring this belief into our understanding. He continues in the next passage, here on the page, in line eight: “And all the more so, how much more so, in creation from nothing, which is above nature and far more wondrous than the splitting of the sea: surely, if the power of the Creator were to depart from the created thing,

50:04 Speaker 1 G-d forbid, the created thing would return to absolute nothingness. Rather, what is needed? For a created thing to exist, the power of the actor must constantly be present in what is acted upon, to give it life and sustain it.” So that is the conclusion: for there to be a created thing, something acted upon—there is an actor, the one who performs the action, and what is acted upon is the thing the action is performed on. Right? So, for there to be a created thing, the power of the actor must constantly be present within it: a Divine power that always gives it life and sustains it. From here...

50:45 Speaker 5 …

50:46 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe begins explaining, through the end of the chapter, what that acting power is. What have we discussed until now? There is a Divine power... For the world to exist, there must be a Divine power within it that creates everything anew from nothing at every moment. I want—before we continue in the chapter to explain what that Divine power is, which we actually already hinted at in the previous chapter—he returns to it and clarifies it, and will discuss it further in chapters 11 and 12. But before we discuss what the Divine power is, I want to emphasize a subtle point that many people get confused about. When you speak to a Chabad chossid who has learned Tanya and studies Chassidus, and ask, “What does ‘There is nothing else besides Him’ mean?” you often hear the answer that the world is G-dliness. “There is nothing else besides Him”—even the table is G-dliness. Right? That’s what you hear. It’s a mistake, and a serious one, though the distinction here is very subtle. The world is not G-dliness. The Divine power that creates the world is G-dliness. But when that Divine power created the world, the world became an existence, a something. Where did that come from? As for the root of its existence, the world is not G-dliness. The world has no root. The world’s existence is nothingness; it does not exist. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made something that does not exist. Do you understand the difference?

52:44 Speaker 6 No. When people say that everything is G-dliness and G-dliness is everything, they mean something that gives the world life.

52:50 Speaker 1 More than that. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made an existence. I can see it; there is an existence here. What is that existence? It isn’t an existence. The existence of that existence isn’t an existence. Even while the world exists, it does not exist. There are two opposites here. On the one hand, who sustains the world, brings it into being, gives it life from nothing at every moment? The Divine power. Is the world the Divine power? No, of course not. The Divine power made an existence here. What kind of existence? One of nothingness, of nothing at all. Even while it exists, it is nothing. Take the stone: even while it is flying through the air, the—not the stone itself, but the stone’s flight—is not something real. Even while it is flying, that flight isn’t real. There’s a force keeping it in flight. Is the force that keeps it there the flight itself? Is it the hovering? The force causes it to hover. Is the hovering the force? No. There’s the force that throws it, and there’s what results from it: the stone’s flight through the air. Is its flight through the air the force? No. The force caused it to fly, but is the fact that it is flying an existence? It isn’t an existence. Its whole existence is only... Yes, these are the two opposites, the two contradictions in the world’s existence. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made an existence whose existence is nothingness. All right. The Alter Rebbe continues. What is that power? Until now, we’ve spoken of a power, a Divine power, the power of the actor within what is acted upon. What is that power? “They are”—in line eleven—“they are the letters of speech of the Ten Utterances through which they were created.” So those letters, the twenty-two letters of the Torah that we discussed in connection with the Ten Utterances in the previous chapter, are themselves the Divine power. And of this it is said, “And You give life to them all.” Do not read it as “give life” but as “bring into being.” In general, there’s a rule in studying the Gemara: when it says “Do not read it as...” it doesn’t mean what it sounds like in ordinary speech—“Don’t say that; it’s wrong. Say this instead.” Rather, the opposite. “Do not

55:08 Speaker 1 read it as” means both things: this and that. “Do not read it as ‘give life’ but as ‘bring into being’” means that the twenty-two letters of the Torah not only give life to existence, but also bring it into being—from nothing. What does “And You give life” mean? The word “You,” atah, represents the letters from alef to tav, and the hei represents the places in the mouth where speech is formed, the source of the letters. The word atah is made up of alef, tav, hei. Alef through tav are the letters, and hei is the five places where speech is formed: the lips, teeth, throat, palate. The source of the letters. Ah, so that means Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t just speak; suddenly He also has... He doesn’t just have letters; suddenly He also has places where speech is formed, and He has a mouth, a throat, teeth, lips, a palate and a tongue. How... where did that come from? Huh?

56:12 Speaker 6 He has no body and no bodily form.

56:13 Speaker 1 He has no body—not only does He have no body, He does not even have the form of a body. The Rebbe says: That is true, but Scripture states it explicitly. The Torah itself says, “And Hashem spoke.” The Torah says He spoke. “And Hashem said”—the Torah says He said something. So what does that mean? On the one hand, Hakadosh Boruch Hu has neither a body nor the form of a body, and the organs of speech and letters certainly do not apply to Him. On the other hand, the Torah itself says that He does speak, and that this is how He creates the world. How do these two things fit together? The Rebbe says: Yes, it is a metaphor. It refers to the revelation of the twenty-two supernal letters to the prophets. There are Divine forces with which Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates the world, as explained in these two chapters. The Torah calls these Divine forces “speech.” Why? Because they bear a certain resemblance to human speech. What does speech do? It reveals to listeners what I am thinking. What do the Divine forces do? They reveal Hakadosh Boruch Hu to the worlds, to the created beings. That is why they are called speech. Hakadosh Boruch Hu truly has neither a body nor the form of a body. He certainly does not utter sayings and letters. But when the Torah speaks of the speech of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—of sayings, letters, words, and sentences—it means the Divine forces that descend to bring created beings into existence from nothing. And those twenty-two supernal letters are revealed to the prophets and become invested in their minds and understanding in the prophetic vision. So when a prophet prophesies, what does that mean? He refines himself to such a degree that the Divine force that creates the beings, those twenty-two letters, becomes invested in his thoughts and is fully revealed to him. And also in their thoughts and speech, as it says, “The spirit of Hashem spoke through me, and His word was upon my tongue.” When the prophet speaks, he says: It is not I who am speaking; it is

58:36 Speaker 1 the spirit of Hashem; it is His word. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is speaking now. He is using the organs of speech in my body to... It is not I who am speaking. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is speaking now. As the Arizal wrote in Shaar Hanevuah. And something similar to this investment in the prophets’ thoughts is the investment of the letters in created beings. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates beings, it is all the same process. Why are the Divine forces called speech? Because this is the way Hakadosh Boruch Hu reveals Himself to created beings. At the higher level, in the higher worlds, which the prophets can perceive, they see the essence of the letters and the sentences, and understand what they mean. Then, through a descent from level to level, lower and lower, those same Divine forces descend and bring created beings into existence from nothing, as it is written: “By the word of Hashem the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their hosts.” It says explicitly that the heavens and the earth were made by the word of Hashem. It is just that, although these are the same letters, they pass through many immense stages of descent until they reach physical action. The prophets’ perception, by contrast, is in Atzilus and becomes invested in the world of Beriah. But the essence of the letters—the Divine forces invested in the world to create beings from nothing, to bring them into existence, give them life, and sustain them—is the same essence as the Divine forces invested in the prophets’ minds and understanding, and at levels far above that. So that was chapter two. Chapter two brought a rational proof—or, more precisely, explained the reasoning behind the declaration in chapter one that “there is nothing besides Him.” But it does not end there. The Alter Rebbe is not satisfied with that. In the next chapter, the Alter Rebbe will also bring an analogy for this. We need to understand it properly, so that it becomes something we can relate to. So the Rebbe will bring an analogy for this whole matter of creation from nothing, drawn from something physical that we see

1:01:06 Speaker 1 with our own eyes every day.