Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah Chapter 12

00:00 Speaker 1 Twelve. We’re up to chapter 12 of Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, which is the last chapter of Tanya. Why is it the last chapter?

00:15 Speaker 2 Why is it so short?

00:16 Speaker 1 It’s very short, and it’s also easy. But why is it the last chapter?

00:21 Speaker 2 Because when Tanya was first published, there was only Likkutei Amarim.

00:26 Speaker 1 Right, very good. In the first edition of Tanya, in 5557, when the Alter Rebbe prepared Tanya and it was completed on 27 Kislev, there were only two parts: Likkutei Amarim and Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. That was the whole Tanya. And then there was tremendous demand for it. They printed an enormous quantity. Today, when you publish a book, a textbook or a sefer, if it’s a Chumash, however many you print, people will eventually buy them—no problem. But if you’re printing a book by some author, how many do you print? What quantity? A thousand copies, two thousand copies, so you don’t get stuck with the inventory.

01:08 Speaker 2 I’d like to order the Tanya booklet that the Rabbi printed. If that booklet is available again, they should make another edition.

01:13 Speaker 1 Oh, no problem.

01:13 Speaker 2 It’s sold out.

01:14 Speaker 1 We’ll get it. So, in the first printing of Tanya—I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think they printed five thousand in the first run—and then, in no time, it was gone from the shelves, as they say. They printed another fifteen thousand, then another twenty thousand. Within just a year or two, they printed tens of thousands upon tens of thousands, and they all sold out. That was in 5557. In 5559, two years later—I think it was the eighth printing, if I’m not mistaken—that was the first time the Alter Rebbe included Igeres Hateshuvah as a third part.

01:55 Speaker 2 By heart, was that in [unclear]?

01:58 Speaker 1 In [unclear], yes. I think so.

02:03 Speaker 2 With all the warnings and...

02:07 Speaker 1 The warnings? Not the warnings. If I don’t remember right now, I don’t want to say something without being sure. Anyway, chapter 12, at the end of Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, is therefore the conclusion of Tanya.

02:21 Speaker 2 A preparation for what?

02:23 Speaker 1 What are we still missing in our understanding of Hashem’s unity and faith in the oneness of Hashem? We’ve already learned that created beings don’t add anything; they don’t constitute multiplicity, because they are utterly nullified. They have no existence of their own. They are completely nullified to the G-dliness that brings them into being from nothing at every moment. And the Divine powers, the sefiros, don’t constitute multiplicity within G-dliness either, because they are merely His revelation. To us, that looks like chochmah and chessed and so on, but from Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s perspective, it isn’t someone else; it’s a revelation of Himself. We learned a number of details about this, but the main point is that the sefiros are not created beings or independent entities. They are only an emanation and extension of Himself, a radiance of Him. Then we asked: Fine, that explains the sefiros, but Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates the world not with sefiros but with utterances, and an utterance—speech—is something separate. So he says: No. The powers with which Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates the world are called “utterances” in relation to the created beings. But from the perspective of their inner dimension, of the intent within them, what are those utterances? They are those same powers, the same Divine power that was previously revealed in the sefiros. It itself descends and becomes revealed in a particular way through an extension called an utterance or speech. Once again, it’s the very same One. So the utterances, too, are not separate from G-dliness. Not only are they nullified to G-dliness; they are a simple unity. They are He Himself. Then he went even further. Not only the utterances: every utterance, every word of speech, is made up of letters. He says it isn’t only the utterances, but the letters too. Right? Even though, when we speak about letters in our physical experience,

04:38 Speaker 1 for us, a letter is something inanimate. So it would seem that the very fact that they’re called “letters” shows that they’re inanimate, not G-dliness. He says: No. They’re called letters and inanimate because, relative to the utterances and the sefiros, that’s what those Divine powers are called: letters and inanimate. But relative to us? Even the letters are far above all created beings. They, too, are actual G-dliness; they, too, are only a revelation of Himself. So the sefiros, the utterances, and even the letters are all just a simple unity, and there is nothing besides Him. There’s no element of multiplicity there, no question of several powers. It is He Himself. He reveals Himself this way; He reveals Himself that way. He wanted to reveal Himself this way, and He wanted to reveal Himself that way. It’s all Him, and there is no one else here besides Him. It’s just One—a simple One, an indivisible One. But that still isn’t enough, because everything we’ve said about all the Divine powers being, in truth, just a simple unity is about the powers themselves. They are a simple unity. But when they create beings, those beings aren’t a unity. Created beings have an existence of their own; they’re actually separate from G-dliness. We learned that at the beginning, right? You see the distinction. So, seemingly, we might say that when the Divine powers actually invest themselves in creating beings, there is now a Divine power that has left the realm of G-dliness and become invested within a separate created being, giving it life and sustaining it. Where does that separate created being come from? So what is that power? It’s inside something separate, so it too is separate—seemingly. Right? That was the question we ended chapter 11 with. He comes to answer it in chapter 12. Chapter 12: “It is only that created beings are divided into their kinds, both in general and in particular, through changes in the combinations

07:05 Speaker 1 and substitutions and transpositions, as explained above.” What we said about the creative power being a simple unity doesn’t stop at the sefiros, utterances and letters. No. It remains a simple unity even when it is within the created beings and actually creates them. And although they are different created beings, it still remains a simple unity. How can that be? If it’s a simple unity, there’s no multiplicity at all. So how is there a multiplicity of created beings? Right? Before he answers that, in the very next lines, he first gives a little more detail about something we already learned in chapter 1: how the life-force descends and becomes differentiated “through changes in the combinations, substitutions and transpositions of the letters, as explained above.” We’ll go into that in a moment, and it will become clearer then. “For each letter is an extension of a distinct, particular life-force and power.” There are twenty-two letters, and we already said in the previous chapter that the letters are channels for the powers and life-force that create the world. Why are there twenty-two? Because each of the twenty-two Divine letters—not our letters, right?—has a creative power of a particular kind, operating in a particular way. One letter is a power of chessed, another a power of gevurah, and so on. “And when many letters, many Divine letters, are combined to form a word, then, besides the many kinds of powers and life-forces drawn down according to the number of letters in the word”—for example, in the words “Let there be a firmament,” the word “firmament” has four letters, right? So besides the four kinds of Divine powers there, corresponding to its four letters—“over and above all this, there is the drawing down of a higher power and an encompassing life-force that includes and is equal to all the kinds of particular powers and life-forces of the letters, surpasses them, and joins and combines them together.” That’s the point of this entire chapter. It’s like physical speech, our own speech. So, seemingly, one could ask: When a person

10:10 Speaker 1 Say a word—why do the letters join together? Okay, so I know how to say alef and beis and tzadik and so on. What connects them into a word? After all, with those same letters you could form one word or another, right? And why take these particular letters for this word? We have to say there is some force here that joins and combines the letters. In other words, besides the content of its letters, every word contains something else that isn’t letters. Or to put it more explicitly, more clearly: we said that each letter has its own particular content. We said that a vav is a yud and an extension downward, and so on. Right. A hei has length and width. But the overall meaning of the word seems to contain nothing of the content of any of its letters. Nothing. The word rakia, “firmament”—is its meaning connected to the reish? To the kuf? To the yud? No, it isn’t connected to any of them. Right. That means there’s something in the overall meaning of the word that cannot be divided into details; it is above details. The Rebbe Rashab explains here, in connection with this chapter of Tanya, that it isn’t only that this combining force, which is above the particulars of the word, is also above the intellect expressed in the word. That is, when a person wants to express some idea, an idea condensed into a single word, right? There are the letters he uses, there is the idea he wants to express through those letters, and there is another force called the combining force. This combining force tells the intellect: Now, to express yourself on this matter, use precisely these letters. Right? This is called the combining force. It is what connects the letters, because the intellect on its own does not connect letters. After all, one person can... Right, when people want to explain an idea—

13:02 Speaker 1 One person will explain the idea using one set of words, and another will explain it using different words. Even the same person will explain the same idea in different words each time. The intellect itself does not require a particular combination. The combination doesn’t come from the intellect. So where does it come from? From something above intellect. What is above intellect? The yechidah of the soul.

13:25 Speaker 3 In short, speech is the loftiest thing.

13:28 Speaker 1 Huh?

13:28 Speaker 3 Speech is the loftiest thing in a person.

13:31 Speaker 1 That is why speech is the loftiest thing, and why a human being is called “the speaking species,” not “the thinking species.” Because the power of speech... First of all, the letters themselves precede intellect, but the power that combines the letters into speech is even above what precedes intellect. It comes from the very yechidah of the soul.

13:53 Speaker 3 A hold. A hold.

13:55 Speaker 1 And why is it this way with us? Because we were created in the likeness of what is above; it is this way with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So, just as with us, every word, every combination, has the letters and their content. Once they join to form a word, they express a certain meaning, which corresponds to the created being that will be created from those letters. And there is also the combining force, which is present and joins them together. It is what determines what will now be created from these letters.

14:35 Speaker 3 I think we need to explain this to children.

14:37 Speaker 1 What?

14:37 Speaker 3 We need to explain this to children in first grade. The meaning.

14:41 Speaker 1 And it is... it is what ultimately creates everything. So just as in a person this force comes from the yechidah of the soul, what is its counterpart in G-dliness? The very Essence and Being of Hashem. Simple oneness. What follows from this? That even within created beings as they are created—even as the Divine force descends to create them in every detail, with infinitely many different kinds—what is present within them? That same simple oneness. There is no multiplicity here. And the explanation is just the opposite: Because He is simple oneness, there is infinite multiplicity. Only from simple oneness can there be infinite multiplicity. Why? The analogy given for this in Chassidus—this is the harder point to understand; after this it gets much, much simpler—is a person who is kindhearted. How do I know he is kindhearted? He saw a poor man in the street and gave him a coin for tzedakah. Well, who says he is kindhearted? Maybe he just felt sorry for him, and happened to be having a good day? He was in the mood, he felt like it—what do I know? Right, but say this person didn’t do it only this once. I saw him yesterday morning too, and he also gave to someone else. I see this same person every day. Fine, but he also... No, no, this person doesn’t only give to poor people. I know him more generally. He helps out here and he helps out there, and he makes an effort in this area too. The more you see, across his life as a whole, that he is kindhearted in this respect and in that respect, and that it is expressed here too—the more different areas in which it is expressed—

16:50 Speaker 4 The more you are a person—

16:51 Speaker 1 The more it reveals his essence. So it is the same here. Only what is the essence of the essence of the essence can reveal itself in infinitely many different matters, in infinitely many different created beings. So it turns out that the very infinite multiplicity of created beings—which, at first glance, until now, until chapter 12, we thought posed a question about Divine oneness—is just the opposite. It is precisely the infinite multiplicity of created beings that points most powerfully to simple oneness. All right? As for what you mentioned, about why they don’t teach this in...

17:51 Speaker 4 First grade.

17:51 Speaker 1 In first grade. There is a long sicha by the Frierdiker Rebbe in which he explains how the way his father, the Rebbe Rashab, explained Chassidus developed: what it was like before the yeshiva was founded, then after they founded it, and within the yeshiva itself. He describes the early maamarim, which were relatively easier and shorter, suited to the first students, and how the maamarim became more and more difficult and profound. This entire explanation is in Hemshech 5672. That was not for first-grade students.

18:28 Speaker 4 Wow, wow.

18:31 Speaker 1 A remarkable maamar. Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word all things came into being.

18:35 Speaker 4 Amen.

18:39 Speaker 1 Anyone who wants to see this briefly, the essential point in about a page and a half of explanation, can find it in Rabbi Yoel Kahn’s Biurim B’Tanya. There he sums it all up in our own words. Very beautifully, very easy to understand. You need time to read it. There’s a lot there; it’s long, but—

18:59 Speaker 4 Rabbi Yoel Kahn is easy to understand? I thought he was profound. Isn’t he? Rabbi Yoel Kahn.

19:04 Speaker 1 No. Exactly the opposite. I don’t know if this is the place for it. It belongs more at a farbrengen than in a class. There is something called essential letters. A Rebbe’s words are like the Written Torah. Why is it called the Written Torah? A maamar—it is G-dliness. It brings G-dliness down. What does it mean to bring G-dliness down? It is the essence. It reveals the Essence, G-dliness. The essence isn’t necessarily... I can’t grasp the essence. The essence is not something you can grasp. So when a Rebbe explains something, I may suddenly see that in another maamar he explained exactly the opposite. The same Rebbe. Why? Is he contradicting himself? He isn’t contradicting himself. He is bringing down the essence, the essential point of the matter. Here it took the form of these words, and there it took the form of other words, but the essence is within the words, and the essence cannot be grasped. Sometimes that is very, very... That is when a Rebbe says Chassidus, or teaches in general. When a chossid teaches Chassidus, he teaches what he understands. That is on our level.

20:17 Speaker 4 Really? A chossid—what does he have?

20:19 Speaker 1 So he may explain it in greater depth, at greater length, with more... But what he explains—he understands more of it than I do, quantitatively, but it is of the same quality. It isn’t something else. A Rebbe speaks G-dliness. It isn’t always possible to understand. And even when we do understand, we can’t be sure we understood correctly. Rabbi Yoel Kahn’s explanations are very long, but sometimes they can be understood. It is human intellect, not Divine intellect. And not only his—there are many, many people who explain Chassidus and know how to explain it. That is where I would place this. Good.

21:00 Speaker 4 Rabbi Yair Frid[?]—what did he give?

21:04 Speaker 1 A Rebbe—he said maamarim.

21:06 Speaker 4 So that is Divine intellect?

21:08 Speaker 1 Yes. In his maamarim, yes, definitely. And people quote them.

21:13 Speaker 4 That is also from the fourth half.

21:17 Speaker 1 In Chabad, no, they don’t study them that much. People do study his maamarim extensively, but there are quite a few topics in Chassidus that are explained there and nowhere else. All right, so we understood this idea that דווקא multiplicity points to unity. And why? Because we have to say that in every word there is a power that joins the letters together. In line eight: “And that general life-force, which encompasses and is equal in weight to all the individual kinds of power and life-force of the letters, and transcends them, joins and combines them to impart power and life-force to the world created by this word, both as a whole and in its details.” The Rebbe adds in a note: “Since each of the twenty-two letters of the Torah draws down a distinct, particular life-force and power that is not drawn down through any other letter”—we’ve discussed this several times already—“therefore, each letter also has its own distinct form in writing, indicating the form in which the light, life-force, and power revealed and drawn down through that letter flows and becomes revealed from the attributes of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, His will and His wisdom, and so on.” So now, after learning what is drawn down into Divine speech, into each word of the Ten Utterances—a Divine power and life-force is drawn down to create the world—how is it drawn down? Through the word. And how through the word? Through the letters. And how through the letters? Each letter in its own form. To the point that it is written that way in the Written Torah. So that light and power, which is simple unity, descends lower and lower and is drawn down in one form or another through each individual letter. “For example”—and now the Rebbe gives an example of how—

23:36 Speaker 4 When do they put parentheses around a note, and when don’t they?

23:42 Speaker 1 Aren’t all the notes in parentheses?

23:44 Speaker 4 Let’s see.

23:44 Speaker 1 I’ve never noticed. If they aren’t all in parentheses, that’s a good question.

23:55 Speaker 4 Well, what do you make of this?

24:00 Speaker 1 He gives an example. “For example, in the words of the utterance ‘Let there be a firmament,’” right? How were the firmaments created? Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,” and the firmament was created through the words “Let there be a firmament.” And not just one firmament. Seven firmaments were created through them. In the Gemara, Tractate Chagigah, there is a dispute about whether two firmaments or seven firmaments were created. There are other opinions there too. The bottom line is that the accepted view is that seven firmaments were created. So all seven firmaments were created through the words “Let there be a firmament.” That means the word “firmament,” or the words “Let there be a firmament,” are a certain drawing down, a general life-force through which seven different kinds of firmaments were created. From that same drawing down. And not just the seven firmaments, but also all the hosts of heaven within them. Each firmament contains a multitude of details, as our Sages said: Shechakim, where millstones stand and grind manna for the righteous, and so on. Zevul, where Jerusalem, the Beis Hamikdash, and the altar are, and so on. Machon, where the storehouses of snow and the storehouses of hail are, and so on. There’s a note explaining why he specifically brings these details from these firmaments: they’re what matters for this chapter. All the firmaments as a whole were created—and live and exist—through the words of the utterance “Let there be a firmament,” and so on, as a whole. And each individual creation in the seven firmaments was created, and lives and exists, through some combination of the letters of these words. So the utterance “Let there be a firmament” created all seven firmaments as a whole at once. And the different combinations of what? Of the words “Let there be a firmament.” That’s it.

25:59 Speaker 5 It comes to four hundred.

26:00 Speaker 1 Huh?

26:00 Speaker 5 It comes to four hundred? Yes.

26:03 Speaker 1 It comes to four hundred? It comes to infinity.

26:05 Speaker 5 No, I’m calculating. How do you work out the permutations? [unclear], right?

26:12 Speaker 1 For example, the Hebrew word for “firmament,” rakia, and the word ikar, “main thing,” have the same letters. They’re just combined in a different order.

26:20 Speaker 5 No, really. Okay, you’ve got five letters here. You’ve got five letters.

26:25 Speaker 1 Wait, we’re not finished yet. We’re going further. Just a second, we’ve only started. First there are the simple combinations. But then a letter can appear several times through substitutions and permutations. That’s possible too.

26:44 Speaker 5 And also when, say, a yud is made up of a vav and a daled—does that count too?

26:50 Speaker 1 I don’t know. I’m not familiar with all the 231 combinations in which the letters revolve forward and backward. They’re written down, but I really haven’t studied them. So each individual creation was created, and lives and exists, through some combination of the letters of these words, or through their substitutions and permutations. What’s the difference between a combination and a substitution? In a combination, you only change the order. In a substitution, you replace one letter with another. For example, according to the Atbash, Gardak cipher: alef is replaced by tav, right? Beis by shin, gimel—right? There are these kinds of substitutions too. That’s aside from the 231 combinations. The 231 combinations are just combinations. Why? How do we arrive at 231? The 231 gates. There are twenty-two letters, right? So each letter can be paired with any of the other twenty-one.

28:06 Speaker 5 Twenty-two times twenty-two.

28:07 Speaker 1 Yes, twenty-two times twenty-two is...

28:12 Speaker 5 I’m not familiar with it.

28:12 Speaker 1 Four—huh?

28:14 Speaker 5 Four hundred.

28:14 Speaker 1 Four hundred and sixty-four. Yes, but then, for example, “vav-beis” and “beis-vav” get counted twice. Every combination is doubled.

28:26 Speaker 5 You have to do it according to the pairs—

28:27 Speaker 1 So you take half. Four hundred and sixty-four divided by two gives you 231 gates, corresponding to the ways the letters are combined, substituted, and permuted according to the nature of the life-force of that particular creation. Because every change in the combination is a different composition and weaving together of the powers and life-forces: whichever letter comes first in the combination predominates and is primary in that creation, and the others are secondary to it. So if in the first combination chesed came first and gevurah last, in the second combination it’s the other way around. The same letters therefore create a different creation. That creates something new. And not only combinations of letters: substitutions and permutations of letters also create new things, which are of a lower level than creations made from the letters themselves. In other words, when you replace the letters—not just change their order, but replace them with other letters—the resulting creations are of a lower level. For example, the word va’ed is substituted for the word echad. You substitute va’ed. We talked about this, right? Do you remember talking about it?

29:42 Speaker 5 Probably.

29:43 Speaker 1 There’s something... That’s how we began Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. The whole of Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah clarifies the verse—higher unity and lower unity. The Zohar says that the first verse, “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” is higher unity, while “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever” is lower unity.

30:04 Speaker 5 That’s not a verse.

30:05 Speaker 1 Hmm?

30:05 Speaker 5 “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom.”

30:06 Speaker 1 It’s called a verse. All right? So what did we explain there? Why is it called higher unity? There are two ways to recognize the oneness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There are two ways of looking at how Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one within the world. One way is to see the world as completely nullified, while Hakadosh Boruch Hu governs and brings the world into being at every moment. That’s the perspective of open miracles, or of how the Ark’s place took up no space—how Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed within the Holy of Holies. So yes, there’s a world here, but what kind of world? Can you call that a world? It’s Hakadosh Boruch Hu; it’s not really a world at all. Right? That’s one way. It’s called higher unity: a person openly sees and feels G-dliness within the world. The second way is lower unity. A person lives amid his own concerns, in his own world, with his business and his own reality. But he bends himself to Hashem’s will. He knows he has to daven; he knows he has to eat kosher food. Yes, he doesn’t feel G-dliness or see G-dliness, but he is still affirming Hashem’s unity. It’s still called unity. He does everything he needs to because he is G-d-fearing. He recognizes that unity, right? But it’s called lower unity. So there’s higher unity and lower unity. The Torah alludes to this in the words echad and va’ed. What’s the difference? The alef of echad is replaced by the vav of va’ed. The letters alef and vav are substituted for each other. Why?

31:50 Speaker 5 I forgot.

31:50 Speaker 1 Because both are letters of the alef-hei-vav-yud group, they can be interchanged. The ches of echad is replaced by the ayin of va’ed. Why? Because both are guttural letters, so they can be interchanged. And the large daled of echad is replaced by the small, ordinary daled of va’ed. So echad has changed through a substitution and transformation: in its place we have va’ed. Clearly, in the unity expressed by echad, the Divine light is openly perceptible. Once the letters have changed, it is still a Divine unity, but in a completely different way, at a lower level. In G-dliness, the original combination creates loftier beings, the spiritual heavens. The more substitutions and transformations a combination undergoes, the lower the beings created from it. He explains on line ten why these substitutions mean a reduction in the intensity of the Divine power that creates the world: “The substitutions and transformations are like the light that shines on the earth at night from the moon, while the moon’s light comes from the sun. Thus, the light on the earth is light from the light of the sun.” When someone looks at the ground on a moonlit night, he can see where he’s going. He doesn’t fall, right? But—

33:37 Speaker 6 I’ve never tried it, but...

33:38 Speaker 1 Hmm?

33:39 Speaker 6 I’ve never tried it, but...

33:41 Speaker 7 No, I [unclear], but, like...

33:43 Speaker 6 [unclear]. No, no, no.

33:46 Speaker 7 No, you do feel—yes, you feel like it’s not... Once I [unclear], and I could see, but they couldn’t see me.

33:54 Speaker 1 There was no moon. So, from a lot of experience, when there is a moon—even if it isn’t full, even if there’s only a little bit of moonlight—you can walk outside in the fields and see. You can see perfectly well.

34:07 Speaker 6 Except on Rosh Chodesh.

34:08 Speaker 1 Hmm?

34:08 Speaker 6 Except on Rosh Chodesh.

34:09 Speaker 1 Yes. No, when there’s just a tiny sliver of moon, obviously not. But when the moon shines, you can see.

34:13 Speaker 6 Right.

34:14 Speaker 1 But clearly, the light you see on the earth is as nothing compared with the light you see when you look at the moon. And the moon’s light—the moon has no light of its own; it only has what the sun shines on it—is as nothing compared with the sun’s light. Now the Alter Rebbe is saying something more here. It isn’t just as nothing. It isn’t merely weaker; its nature has changed. Even when sunlight shines through clouds, it’s still clear to you that it’s sunlight. Even if it comes into a house through a window, you won’t think it’s moonlight. Even if it comes through a tiny hole, it’s sunlight. It’s weaker, it’s smaller—call it what you like, it’s sunlight. That’s clear; no one would mistake it, right? In other words, once sunlight strikes the moon and lights it up, what do we see now as moonlight? What came from the sun has changed in its very nature. It has been transformed into a different kind of light. It isn’t merely weaker; its nature has changed. And the same thing happens when moonlight shines on the earth. I look at the ground lit by the moon, and there has been another transformation: it isn’t just weaker, it’s a different kind of light. That’s the analogy. “Thus, the light on the earth is light from the light of the sun. And precisely so, by way of analogy, the letters in the utterances themselves—‘Let there be a firmament,’ reish, kuf, yud, ayin—are the general flow of vitality, light, and power from Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s attributes to create worlds from nothing, and to give them life and sustain them for as long as He wills.” Those are the letters of “Let there be a firmament.” By the way, a parenthetical point: I don’t know if you noticed, he says here “light, vitality, and power.” Sometimes he said “power and vitality,” sometimes “vitality and power.” In Shaar—hmm? Every—

36:25 Speaker 1 Every time he plays around with those words. Did you notice that each time it’s a little different from the beginning of the chapter? So... that means... hmm? There’s a point to that too. We’ll say it very briefly, and afterward everyone can look inside and try to see how it fits in each place. Light, vitality, and power are three stages of Divine illumination. Light is bound to its luminary, like sunlight: it’s a revelation of the sun. The light is its revelation, not something else. Light is simple. You can’t divide light into—into—into... It’s the light, right? It’s the luminary itself; it has no parts, no different features, no this and that. It shines, and that’s all. Vitality is already something that enters and gives life to something else. Light isn’t looking to illuminate something. It shines. It encounters something, and that thing becomes illuminated, but the light itself isn’t looking for a way to illuminate it. Vitality, on the other hand, is entirely about giving life to something. There we’re already talking about something with different elements, a source for faculties, and so on. Powers are already things like the power of sight, the power of hearing, the power of touch, right? These are actual powers that become invested in a created being. On that basis, you can look inside and see that the Alter Rebbe is really precise each time. When he speaks about the flow from above downward, it’s “power and vitality”; when he speaks about how it is received from below, it’s “vitality and power.” If he’s saying that the letters draw down even this, and even this, and even this, then he starts from below: power, vitality, and light. It all follows this pattern. All right, that was a parenthetical point. We’re going back inside. What line are we on? Line fourteen,

38:39 Speaker 1 right? So “the letters in the utterances are the general flow of vitality, light, and power from Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s attributes to create worlds from nothing, and to give them life and sustain them for as long as He wills. From this general flow and great illumination of ‘Let there be a firmament,’ of the utterances, Hashem shone forth and drew from it offspring like it”—these are the combinations—“and its branches”—these are already the substitutions—“which are the offspring and the flow of light from the letters, namely the letters’ substitutions and transformations. And with them He created the individual beings in each world.” So the general creations—the worlds and the heavens—come from the general utterances and their combinations, while the individual beings in each world come from the substitutions and transformations. And even that wasn’t enough to create a physical world. So Hashem shone forth again, drawing down and lowering an illumination of an illumination of an illumination—a third illumination, already from the illuminations of the letters. And even that wasn’t enough. So He continued drawing it down, lower and lower, through a chain of descent, until actual inanimate matter was created, such as stones and earth. And their names, “stone” and “earth,” are substitutions of substitutions and so on, transformations of transformations and so on, as explained above. So it turns out that the simple Divine unity of “there is nothing besides Him” means not only that there is no created being besides Him, but that He Himself is one—one in a way that is an absolute, simple unity. After all, there are sefiros; the sefiros are only He Himself. But then he speaks of utterances: they are an extension of Himself. Yet the utterances have letters. The letters are only a revelation of Him. And still, He gives life to individual created beings. All the more so, we see here that He Himself is the simple One, who is not divided at all. We have completed Part Two, with Hashem’s help.

40:50 Speaker 8 Boruch Hashem.

40:56 Speaker 1 Ah, Igeres Hateshuvah, which we’ll begin—do you want to start Igeres Hateshuvah next week?

41:05 Speaker 8 Next week, repentance.

41:06 Speaker 1 Two weeks, it doesn’t matter.

41:10 Speaker 8 What’s the alternative?

41:11 Speaker 1 Yes, of course. The alternative is either, or, uh—

41:15 Speaker 8 No, I’m doing it in order.

41:16 Speaker 1 Either that, or starting over from the beginning. I don’t know. There are classes that study only this part; they go through it again—

41:23 Speaker 8 No, it’s nice to move forward. It’s enjoyable to see the progress.

41:26 Speaker 9 What do you think about...

41:28 Speaker 8 Nice.

41:29 Speaker 9 Maybe all of this—

41:30 Speaker 1 So let’s say one more thing to conclude: where is Igeres Hateshuvah mentioned in Tanya? We’ve spoken about this once, twice, even three times. Hmm?

41:43 Speaker 8 Maybe chapter one.

41:45 Speaker 1 No. When the Alter Rebbe begins to explain serving Hashem—the first part explains how to serve Hashem. How should a Jew serve Hashem? Right? You aren’t asked to do great and wondrous things; you’re asked to keep the mitzvos. That’s all. You can’t do it without love of Hashem. You aren’t asked for some lofty, heavenly love, just the kind of love that leads to keeping the mitzvos. How am I supposed to achieve that? First, he says: listen, these are the powers of your soul. You have a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara, and they fight each other. To be able to stand your ground in that battle, you need to develop confidence that you can succeed, faith in that, and an understanding that you shouldn’t think more of yourself than you really are. After he finishes all the preparations there, up to chapter sixteen—so all the preparations are fifteen chap—sixteen? Fifteen? Sixteen.

42:46 Speaker 8 Sixteen.

42:47 Speaker 1 S-sixteen chapters of—

42:49 Speaker 8 Fifteen.

42:50 Speaker 1 Hmm? Fifteen, sixteen. Through the end of chapter sixteen, it’s about who is there, what is there, and where we’re headed. Chapter seventeen is about how to serve Hashem. That’s where it begins: how serving Hashem starts, what you need to contemplate, and how to awaken love. What does he explain in chapter seventeen itself before getting started? There’s one more line there. You should know, the Alter Rebbe says there, that everything we’re discussing from here on, from chapter seventeen onward—if a person hasn’t done teshuvah, he can’t begin to serve Hashem.

43:26 Speaker 8 What are the exact words?

43:28 Speaker 1 Huh?

43:28 Speaker 8 What are the exact words?

43:29 Speaker 1 The exact words? Oof. The wicked can’t serve Hashem because their hearts control them, and their minds don’t—among the wicked, the mind doesn’t rule the heart. The whole idea of serving Hashem is that the mind rules the heart. When a person commits a sin, something there gets damaged. What gets damaged is that the mind no longer rules the heart. So wait—stop, do teshuvah, then come back to chapter seventeen and start learning Tanya. Now, since the Alter Rebbe apparently considers everyone beinonim, with no one needing to do teshuvah, it’s only at the end, after he’s explained all these matters and added Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, explaining everything from beginning to end, that he says: Wait, wait, wait. There are still some people who need to be sent a letter. Did you notice the name? The first section isn’t called a letter to—

44:32 Speaker 10 To unity.

44:33 Speaker 1 Why is this section—after all, that’s what Reb Yosef [unclear]. Why did the Alter Rebbe call it a letter? It’s a maamar of Chassidus in exactly the same style as Tanya. Yet it’s called a letter. What’s the difference? It’s a letter to someone who has gone far away.

44:49 Speaker 10 There is—

44:49 Speaker 1 So, with Hashem’s help, we’ll do that next time.

44:53 Speaker 10 How are you?

44:54 Speaker 1 I won’t forgive. Bless the Omnipresent. A working soul.