Concepts in Chassidus - Part 2

00:00 Speaker 1 On the subject called igulim and yosher—circles and straight lines. I hope that at the beginning I’m [unclear] putting things in order as well. Yes. In Chabad Chassidus, there are two concepts that constantly go together. Whenever you see them written, notice: igulim and yosher. These are two forms of influence. There is influence in the form of circles, and there is influence in the form of a straight line. First, let’s look at circles. As the name suggests, they’re circles, like wheels. That is, you have round layers. You could take an onion as an example: one circle inside another. You take one layer, and then there’s another inside it. Yes, that’s the idea of circles: a circle within a circle within a circle. That’s how the circles relate to one another. What does that mean? There is another concept called yosher. Yosher is like a line. Instead of one circle within another within another, it goes in a chain—yes, a straight line, running from top to bottom. That is called yosher. It goes straight, like a straight line. So, say there is a void that forms something like a circle: all of that is called a circle. By contrast, what we call yosher is a line extending from top to bottom. What’s the difference between a circle and a line? Well, obviously one is a circle and one is a line. But what’s the difference in what they represent? The difference is that a circle has no top and bottom. All its sides are the same. Take a ball: I can’t say, “This is the top of the ball, and this is

03:00 Speaker 1 the bottom of the ball.” On a ball, all sides are equal. So there is no top and bottom, no beginning and end. It conveys something endless, the same all the way around. Nor can we say, “It begins here and ends here.” Another point is the distance from the circle to its center. From every direction, the distance to the center is the same. Whichever side you take—from above, below, or either side—it is always the same distance from the center point to the circle. All this expresses how a circle represents something unlimited: it has no beginning or end, no higher or lower, no more or less. Everything is equal. A line, by contrast, is the opposite. It has an upper part and a lower part, a higher part and a lower part, a beginning and an end. You can’t say that every point is the same distance from the center. No. One is closer to the center and another is farther from it—or from the source, whatever it may be. So a line and a circle are opposites. Yes? We’ll soon talk about this in the soul, about how all these things exist within the soul. Both of these—circles and yosher—exist in the soul. In Chassidus, they are called encompassing faculties and inner faculties. Take the faculty of will, for example. Will is a circle. Why? It is analogous to a circle: it has all the characteristics we described. With will, you can’t speak of a beginning or an end, or of

05:18 Speaker 1 higher and lower. Why? Because within will, there’s no such thing as a higher will and a lower will. With will, it’s black or white: either you want something or you don’t. If I want it, I want it. If I don’t, I don’t. It’s not that I want one thing in a “higher” way. What would that mean? Will means either I am drawn to something—the soul is drawn to it—or I am not. If you say one thing is higher and another lower, one more elevated and another less so, one more important and another less important, you’re already talking about intellect. Those are terms of intellect. Intellect says, “This is high, this is low; this is above, this is below; this is the beginning, this is the end; this is less important, this is more important.” Those are matters of intellect, not the measure of will. Will says, “I want it” or “I don’t want it.” Why do you want it? That’s no longer will; that’s intellect. So from the standpoint of will itself, everything is equal. Look: if a person wants ten things, all ten are equal in his will. If one of them is missing, then he hasn’t gotten what he wanted. You can’t say, “But you got most of it.” No. With will, it’s all or nothing. You can’t say that, of the ten things he wants, one is higher and another lower. They are all equal, all the same. All of this is to help us understand the idea of circles as it exists in the soul. Will is an example of a circle. Yosher is intellect—the inner faculties we mentioned earlier. Intellect is yosher because it is the opposite of a circle.

07:07 Speaker 1 With intellect, there’s no such thing as “everything is equal.” Each thing is different. Some things are more important and some less important. Everything has a beginning and an end. Yes, there are distinctions. That’s the whole nature of intellect. So in a person, circles and yosher correspond to encompassing faculties and inner faculties. Now let’s explain the matter in Sefer Yetzirah. It’s a pity I don’t have a pen today to draw diagrams here. But the Kabbalah texts—the writings of the Arizal—use the following language concerning the chain of worlds. They say that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the void, it was in the form we described: a circle. Yes, there is a circle here. As we said, this is the void, and the light surrounding it is encompassing light. There is an encompassing light, the great circle surrounding the entire chain of worlds—the great circle we discussed in the previous class. From its perspective, the entire chain of worlds is equal. That is why it is called the great circle. What does “the great circle” mean? It means a light within which there is no difference between the highest world and the lowest world. From the perspective of the great circle—the Ein Sof light that surrounds all the worlds—all the worlds are equal. With regard to the great circle, which Chassidus identifies with the Ein Sof light before the tzimtzum, you cannot say that Atzilus is more important than Asiyah. Atzilus, Asiyah, Adam Kadmon—all the worlds are equal; everything is equal. It’s like the analogy of the circle we gave earlier. From the perspective of the great circle, everything is equal. Why? As we said in the analogy from the soul, from the perspective of will, everything is equal. So it is here too. From the perspective of the circle of the Ein Sof, all the worlds are equal. That is why, speaking by way of analogy in our limited terms,

09:10 Speaker 1 we call it “the great circle.” The kav, by contrast, is called yosher—a straight line, the opposite of the great circle. Chassidus also uses other names for them: or makif and or pnimi, encompassing light and inner light. The great circle is called or makif; the kav is called or pnimi. That is, the encompassing light—the great circle—relates to all the worlds equally. They are all the same from its perspective. The kav, the inner light, by contrast, relates to each world in its own particular way. The light revealed in Atzilus is not like the light revealed in Beriah, nor is that like the light revealed in Yetzirah or the light revealed in Asiyah. A different light, a different level, a different quality is revealed in each world. And so—

10:03 Speaker 2 Interaction.

10:04 Speaker 1 So that is why we call this level the great circle. It is called the great circle, and it is the level of makif light—encompassing light. Yes, this level is called the great circle, and it is also called makif light. By contrast, this level, the kav—the line—is called inner light, sorry, inner light, and it is called yosher, the straight configuration. In other words, this is a circle and this is yosher. Now, this is still the tzimtzum, the contraction. But when we come to the explanation of the worlds, that is where the subject of circles and yosher begins—the subject I wanted to explain from its very root. When the order of hishtalshelus, the chain of descent, begins, the writings of the Arizal say the following. They say that when it came to the complete Geulah, then after the tzimtzum we discussed last week, after the first tzimtzum, Atzilus came into being, and then the kav continued to extend the order of hishtalshelus. This is how it happened: there is the great circle, and then a line extends, followed by another circle. Another line and another circle, another line and another circle. And so it goes. In the language of Kabbalah, this is called “the kav descends and extends.” What exactly is the wording? I don’t remember. “The kav extends and then curves around again, extends and then curves around again.” That is how it is phrased in the writings of the Arizal. The way the light—the kav—descends into the worlds is that it extends and curves around, extends and curves around, extends and curves around. In other words, the two forces—the makif light, which is the makif light we discussed here in connection with the levels and the tzimtzum, because relative to the inner light and the kav, both are called makif—work together. It does not mean that this makif light stays outside while the inner light works on its own. There is constant interaction. There is a joining of forces; the two work together, the makif light together with the inner light. That means that at every level that unfolds in the order of hishtalshelus, yes, there is an influence of makif light, and along with it inner light; makif light together

12:42 Speaker 1 with inner light. What does this mean? Let’s explain it a little in simple terms. We can understand it from the soul as well. We said earlier that the power of will is a makif power: when you want something, within the will all the faculties are equal, everything is the same, and there is no higher and lower. But when a person begins to do something—begins to buy something, arrange something, do something—there is clearly a certain order to it. For example, I want to buy a car. Yes, I want to buy a car. That is a desire. Will is makif; it is only general. I want a car. Now, buying a car involves many details. You want a car? Go to the shop on the corner that sells cars, walk in and buy one. No. First, I need money. Second, I need a license. Third, I also need to learn to drive. In Argentina you can have a license and not know how to drive, so you also have to know how to drive. Then I need to investigate which car suits my needs, so that it really fits what I need—not too big or too small, and so on—and that it is a good one. There are things I need to check. After that, I need to go to dealerships and start looking. There is a whole chain of steps here. In every single thing, at every single stage, there is the makif and the inner dimension. In other words, there is the will. At each stage I need the will to get money, the will to obtain a license, the will to buy a car, and the will to find out what kind of car to buy. There are many desires here, and we said that will is always general and makif. But here the desires have many details, and each desire must also be expressed inwardly. Besides the will, you also need intellect. Yes, in everything—

14:41 Speaker 1 I want money. Fine, so now how do I get the money? And how do I spend it? How much money should I invest? That is already intellect. Intellect gives me the details: how much money to invest and how to obtain it. I want to learn, learn, learn to drive. Yes. Where should I learn? How can I do it? So there is always—there always has to be, in every action a person takes, the makif, which is the desire to perform that action. And there must also be the inner intellect that enters into the action so it is done properly. Yes, and we can understand the inner workings of this in the order of hishtalshelus as well. We said that the great circle, in brief, means Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s general will for a world. Essentially, there is a general will. Hashem desires a world; through a general will, He wants a world. That is the great circle. But afterward there are details: a physical world. As we said, there is hishtalshelus: Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, and there are more levels. Right now we are talking about four things, or about the ten sefiros. So there is Chochmah, Binah, Daas. At every level there are two things: the will for that level, and the level itself. The will for Chochmah and the form of Chochmah, the qualities of Chochmah. The will for Binah and the form of Binah. The will for Atzilus and the content of Atzilus. That is what it means when we say that, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the order of hishtalshelus, they work together. The inner light, which is the kav, provides the content, qualities, and defining parameters of each world: what qualities it will have, what will be higher and lower in each world, what its virtues will be, how its form will be expressed, and how Atzilus will differ from Beriah. That is the inner light of the worlds. But there also has to be a will

16:36 Speaker 1 for Atzilus. It is not enough for there to be a general will for the light to act; afterward there must be particular desires for each level—the particular will for Atzilus. That is why we depict it here as an inner light with a circle belonging to it. In other words, there is the will for the level and the level itself; the will for the next level, and then that level. This is always present. This is the structure of the order of hishtalshelus; this is how it works. That is one point: the need for a circle together with yosher. Now I want to add another point within this. The order is that, as it is written, the circle of the lower level is always found within the inner dimension of the preceding level. In other words, let’s put it this way. Say this is Chochmah: this is the will for Chochmah, and this is Chochmah itself. Yes, the makif of Chochmah and then—[unclear]. Yes, this is the will for Chochmah, and this is Chochmah itself, its inner dimension. And in what we might call the very lowest part of Chochmah, the will for Binah begins to emerge. In other words, within the inner dimension of the higher level, the makif, the circle of the lower level, begins. So the will for Binah begins within Chochmah. We can understand this in the human soul as well. A person reaches one stage in something. Yes, and when he reaches that stage, that very stage awakens the desire to continue to the next one, and then he moves down to the next stage. This does not actually mean that the will, the circle, comes from the kav. All the circles come from that same great circle. We need to understand it as we do in the soul: we see that all desires come from the general power of will, but the order in which they unfold is such that first there is the circle of

18:46 Speaker 1 The first level, and then it becomes internal. In other words, there is the level itself, and then a desire arises to bring about the second level, Binah, and then Binah comes into being. Then a desire arises to bring about Daas, and Daas comes into being. And then there is a desire. So that is the idea. That is why the structure of seder hishtalshelus is depicted this way: it is called circles and straight lines. In the language of Chassidus, too, when we speak of circles, we mean this aspect. And straight lines are this aspect, yes. These terms are also used in another way. The circles are also called crowns—or, more precisely, crowns in the plural. The circles are called crowns. That is why we often see statements that one level becomes a crown for another. Binah becomes a crown for Atzilus, for example. Or Malchus of Atzilus becomes a crown for Beriah. You see? It becomes a crown for Beriah. Do you see the relationship? Yes. Or Tiferes of Imma becomes a crown for Ze’er Anpin; Tiferes of Ze’er Anpin becomes a crown for Malchus. There are many expressions like this, where a particular level becomes a crown. That is the crown: it refers to these circles, to the encompassing lights. In other words, every level has its own encompassing light, and then it has its inner dimension, which is the inner dimension of that level. Yes, so that is the idea. In the overall seder hishtalshelus, this is what we spoke about: the great circle and the line. Then the same pattern exists within each level. As we say, every level has its own particular encompassing light, its particular desire, its particular crown, and afterward its inner dimension, which is the level itself—the content and qualities of that level. Yes. Since we are now at 9 Kislev, and Kislev is associated with salvation and Geulah, let’s connect this to 9 Kislev. We know that the Alter Rebbe and the Maggid of Mezritch are both associated with a birthday and a yahrzeit. This is what the Maggid of Mezritch said—he said [unclear].

20:54 Speaker 1 [unclear]. For the Maggid of Mezritch, 19 Kislev was the day of his passing. For the Alter Rebbe, it was the Geulah. Of course, the distinction between the Maggid and the Alter Rebbe is well known, as is the distinction between the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid, and the Alter Rebbe. In general Chassidus and Chabad, general Chassidus is called “circles,” while Chabad is the aspect of “straight lines.” In other words, with the... The sichos also say that the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid were associated with circles. That means they reached... they revealed the secret of the encompassing light. That is what “circles” means. In essence, they revealed a Chassidus of encompassing light. What was missing was an orderly approach to avodah. They revealed very lofty ideas; they revealed essential points, but not in the form of a Shulchan Aruch. So the Baal Shem Tov, as is known, is associated with the period before the year 5521, and the Maggid of Mezritch with the period after 5521. We will discuss those periods later. So, broadly speaking, the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid are associated with 5521. And secondly, if the Alter Rebbe represents Chabad, the inner dimension, then the Maggid in relation to the Alter Rebbe is also considered a matter of circles and straight lines. The fact that 19 Kislev encompasses both the Maggid and the Alter Rebbe brings together the circles and the straight lines, the encompassing and the internal. It joins these two things, each of which has its own special advantage. Circles have the advantage of being unlimited, a much higher light. Straight lines, on the other hand, have the advantage of penetrating inwardly, into the vessels; that is what brings all the lower realms to completion. So both are needed together: the general tzaddik together with the Chabad tzaddik. The circle together with the tikkun—the joining of circles and straight lines. And that will be in the next class. As we also discussed last week, they will be joined in a special way.

22:36 Speaker 1 There is this special joining on the overall level, but at every individual level, too, there is a unification of the circle and the straight line, the encompassing and the internal—and that is the idea of Chabad and the general tzaddik. Yes.