The dispute between Rav Chisda and Rava in Tractate Gittin in the teachings of the Rebbe's father zi"e

00:00 As everyone knows, Reb Levik’s teachings are based to a great extent on Kabbalah, and he explains matters in the revealed dimension of Torah through Kabbalah as well. There is a letter Reb Levik writes to the Rebbe saying that when you study a matter in the revealed dimension of Torah, knowing how it relates to the other matters in its hidden dimension helps you understand it more deeply, even on the level of the revealed dimension. It takes on an entirely different meaning and gives you a special depth of understanding of the revealed dimension too. You can see this wonderfully in Reb Levik’s way of learning. Since we’re talking here about Tractate Gittin, let’s discuss another teaching of Reb Levik’s, on a broad topic in the tractate. But first we’ll introduce a particular point that is also connected to the passage we’re learning now, the Gemara in the chapter Hazorek. So we’ll start with the passage in the Gemara and move from there to Reb Levik’s teaching. At the beginning of the chapter Hazorek, on page 77 of Tractate Gittin, the Mishnah says: “One who throws a get to his wife while she is in her house.” A man throws the get to his wife, and she doesn’t receive it in her hands; she receives it in her house. It’s the woman’s house, but as long as she’s married, whatever a woman acquires belongs to her husband. So the house isn’t hers now; it belongs to her husband, and the get has to reach the woman’s domain. Yet the Mishnah says she is divorced. The Gemara explains that the Torah says, “And he shall place it in her hand,” and we learn that “in her hand” means not only her hand, but also her roof, her courtyard, and her enclosure. In other words, when the Torah says the get must be placed in her hand, that includes her courtyard. But, the Gemara asks, the courtyard isn’t hers now. So

02:22 the Gemara says the same thing is true of her hand. Her hand isn’t hers either: the work of her hands belongs to her husband. Nevertheless, we say, “Her get and her hand come together.” The moment the woman acquires the get, she acquires her hand along with it. The two happen at once. Her get and her hand come together. Similarly, her get and her courtyard come together. At the same moment that the courtyard becomes hers, she also acquires the get. Her get and her courtyard come together; her get and her hand come together. That’s the passage, and with Hashem’s help we’ll examine it more closely as we go on. What exactly is the reasoning? Why do we say that her get and her hand come together? Seemingly, the woman still doesn’t have her own hand. How does it work in practice? She isn’t yet independent; she’s still married. A moment before the get, her hand isn’t yet hers, and the same is true of the house, the courtyard. Seemingly, it still isn’t hers. How can it work that the moment she receives the get, her get and her hand—or her get and her courtyard—automatically come together? When he gave her the get, her hand wasn’t yet hers, and her courtyard wasn’t yet hers. How does this work? The Ketzos HaChoshen, in siman 200, explains that this is a law unique to divorce. Since a full act of acquisition isn’t required—because, the Ketzos says, according to Torah law a woman can even be divorced against her will—we don’t need her to acquire the get through a full act of acquisition. The whole matter of a get

04:36 can take effect against her will. Since that is so, her hand or courtyard doesn’t have to be entirely hers through a full act of acquisition, and we can say that her get and her hand come together. A full act of acquisition isn’t required. He says this has a practical halachic implication. What if we weren’t talking about a husband and wife, but about two ordinary people, Reuven and Shimon? Reuven owns a house and wants to give it to Shimon as a gift. He writes a gift deed, but instead of handing it to Shimon, he places it inside the house. Do you see? It’s the same example as with a get. Would we say that the house and the deed come together? With a woman, we say that her get and her courtyard come together: the moment she acquires the get, she also acquires the courtyard, making it a valid get. Would we say the same here? He didn’t put the deed in Shimon’s hand; he put it in the house, in the courtyard. Could we say that his deed and his courtyard come together, and that when he acquires the deed, he acquires the house along with it? The Ketzos says certainly not. We say this about a get, but not about a gift deed or a deed of sale. Why? Because a get doesn’t require a full act of acquisition. A get requires that it be given, but the giving doesn’t have to result in complete acquisition. The woman doesn’t need to acquire it fully, because the divorce can take effect against her will.

06:42 That is why, in that case, you can say that the get and the hand come together, or that the get and the courtyard come together. A full act of acquisition isn’t needed. But with an ordinary gift deed or deed of sale, the recipient must acquire it fully. He has to take possession of it. It isn’t his yet; he hasn’t acquired it. There we cannot say that his deed and his courtyard come together. There is no full act of acquisition here. He hasn’t taken possession of it yet. The courtyard isn’t his, so we can’t apply that principle. That is what the Ketzos says. He brings a proof. What proof does he bring? A good one. He says: I’ll bring a proof from the Gemara on page 20, concerning a get written on something from which benefit is forbidden. What is the law in the Gemara? Have you learned the case of betrothal with something from which benefit is forbidden? Is it permissible to betroth—or, sorry, to divorce? A person writes a get on something from which benefit is forbidden. Is it a valid get or not? The Gemara says it is valid, right? But if benefit from it is forbidden, there is no acquisition here. How can that be? He can’t derive benefit from an item whose benefit is forbidden. So how can one divorce with it? What’s the answer? A get doesn’t require a full act of acquisition. It has to be given, but the giving doesn’t have to result in full acquisition. So even if the get is written on something from which benefit is forbidden, there’s no problem. Why? For the same reason we gave here: a divorce can take effect against her will. This is a law unique to divorce. Only the husband has to give the get; the fact that the woman cannot acquire it or take possession of it because benefit from it is forbidden does not prevent

08:34 the divorce from taking effect. From the husband’s side, he has fully given it, and it counts as a get. The same applies to the passage we’re studying. That is why we say that the get and the courtyard come together. That’s the Ketzos. The later authorities discuss this at length—Reb Shemesh Cohen[?] and others have various detailed arguments that, with Hashem’s help, we’ll discuss another time. But this brings us to a very interesting explanation of the passage by Reb Levik, and here we return to page 20. So please, if you have a Gemara, open to page 20a of Tractate Gittin. We’ll see how to learn this passage, which really raises a broad issue throughout Tractate Gittin. The Gemara on page 20a says, “Rav Chisda said: I could invalidate all the gittin in the world.” Rav Chisda says, “I could invalidate every get in the world.” Wow. Rav Chisda comes along and says he could make all the gittin in the world invalid. Rava said to him, “On what grounds?” Why do you want to invalidate every get in the world? What would be your reason? Rava challenges him: “If you mean because it is written, ‘And he shall write’”—the verse says that the husband must write and give the get to the woman; it must come from the husband—“whereas here she writes it.” It isn’t the husband; it’s the woman. We all know that the laws of a get include a special rule about who pays for the document and for all the work of writing it. The woman has to pay. There is a rabbinic enactment, discussed in Tractate Bava Basra, that when a husband divorces his wife, she has to pay the cost of the get. Why does she have to pay? The Sages instituted this to prevent women from being left unable to remarry. They were concerned that if the husband had to pay, he might refuse to divorce her. After all, we’re trying to

10:53 To do everything possible so that the husband will want to give the divorce and won’t make trouble. Since the husband has to give the get, it has to be of his own free will. If they tell him it also costs money, he’ll make trouble and won’t want to give the divorce, and the woman will remain an agunah. So, to help agunos, the Sages instituted that the woman pays for it. But then the woman is the one—so if that’s the case, it isn’t a get; it isn’t a valid get. If the woman pays for it, it can’t be called “and he shall give.” It isn’t his; it’s hers. This would seemingly be grounds to invalidate all the gittin in the world: since the law is that the woman pays for the get, the document is considered hers. So then it isn’t—“and he shall write” would apply, but she is the one writing. Not that she actually writes it; the point is that it is considered her get, not his, because she pays for it. That’s one argument. Rava answers Rav Chisda that this is no reason to invalidate it: perhaps the Sages transferred ownership to him. True, she provides the money, but the Sages made it as though it belongs to the husband. “What a court declares ownerless is ownerless,” as Rashi says. So the Sages take the money out of the woman’s ownership, and it is considered the husband’s property. Consequently, there’s no problem: it isn’t considered that she writes it; it’s considered that he writes it. That’s one point. Rava then says to Rav Chisda: Rather, will you give me another reason, based on the verse “and he shall give”? Yes? Another verse says “and he shall give,” but here he isn’t giving her anything. It says “and he shall write,” and afterward it also says “and he shall give.” There has to be a giving, but here he isn’t giving her anything. Because here it says

12:59 “and he shall give,” “and he shall give”—there has to be enough substance for it to count as giving. In other words, why does Rav Chisda want to invalidate the get? Because the Torah says “and he shall give,” which means it must have sufficient value to count as a gift. It has to be worth a perutah, as Rashi says, capable of being given. Generally, when the Torah says “and he shall give”—when giving gifts to a kohen, or in various other cases—a gift has to have some minimum value. Here, though, he gives her a little piece of paper with no value, not worth a perutah. So there isn’t enough here to count as giving, and therefore this, too, is a problem: it isn’t considered a get. Rava tells him that this isn’t a good argument either. Perhaps it means the giving of a get. “And he shall give” doesn’t mean giving a sheet of paper that must be worth a perutah. It means giving a get, not giving something of value. What’s the proof that it doesn’t need to have value? Consider what they sent from there: If he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, it is valid. So here he cites the ruling we mentioned earlier. See, what’s the proof that the giving need not be a gift of value, something worth money? We learn it from the ruling they sent from there—“there” means Eretz Yisroel, yes? We received a halachic ruling from Eretz Yisroel that even if he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, which has no value because the woman can’t do anything with it, it is still valid. So we see that “and he shall give” doesn’t require it to have monetary value. What’s required is the giving of a get, not the giving of something valuable. Rava thus rejects Rav Chisda’s position: Why do you want to invalidate gittin on these two grounds? Neither of these is a good reason

14:55 to invalidate gittin. The Gemara continues and says: To return to the matter itself, they sent word from there that if he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, it is valid. They sent word from Eretz Yisroel that such a get is also valid. Rav Ashi said: We don’t need that proof; I have another proof. Didn’t we also learn this in a Mishnah? In the Mishnah here, earlier on page 19a, it says that a get may be written even on an olive leaf. An olive leaf has no value, so we can bring proof from there. The Gemara goes on to say that an olive leaf isn’t sufficient proof, because it could be combined with other leaves, yes? Whereas the other proof is a good one. Up to this point, the Gemara tells us that this is the halachah. That’s the Gemara. Now Reb Levik comes along and asks several questions we need to understand. Why on earth does Rav Chisda want to invalidate all the gittin in the world? What’s troubling him? For Reb Levik, the names are very, very important: who says what? That’s one of the remarkable things. And we’ve seen that the Rebbe adopted this approach to learning. It’s one of the things we see in the Rebbe’s sichos: he always pays close attention to a name and learns a great deal from it. According to his approach—and we see this in the revealed dimension of Torah as well—the identity of the person making a statement matters. Who says what? Why does Rav Chisda want to invalidate all the gittin in the world? That’s one question. And second, why on the particular grounds, the two reasons the Gemara gives here? Why is Rava specifically the one who argues in their favor? Why is he the one who disagrees with Rav Chisda and says that the gittin can be used? Also, what is the proof from writing it on something from which benefit is forbidden? Why does he bring precisely that proof? What does it show? And also, what is the proof from an olive

16:55 leaf? Every detail here is precise. It’s interesting. The Mishnah says, “He wrote it on an olive leaf.” That’s unusual. Why would he write it on an olive leaf? Imagine such a thing. Who writes a get on an olive leaf? And if we’re going to speak of a leaf, why specifically an olive leaf? Why not, say, a fig leaf? What’s special about an olive leaf? Reb Levik explains all of this in a wonderful way. So listen carefully. The central idea is as follows. First, there are two general points concerning a get. One general point is that a get is about severance, separation. The separation involved in a get is connected with gevurah. Where is the idea of separation first mentioned? We have “and He separated”—actually, there is “and He separated between the light and the darkness,” but that isn’t separation in the fullest sense, as explained in Chassidus. The main instance of separation is on the second day, yes? “And G-d separated between the waters”—the upper waters and the lower waters—which happened on the second day. The second day is the day of gevurah. That’s when the separation between the upper and lower waters came about. According to Chassidus and Kabbalah, the upper waters are called masculine waters, the giver; the lower waters are feminine waters, the recipient. And separation, gevurah, creates a division between giver and recipient, between husband and wife, male and female. That is the definition of a get: it brings about severance, separation, between husband and wife. So gevurah is the root of the get. We’ll see more details about this shortly. The second point is that get is a word associated with breaking. One interpretation of the word get, brought in the commentaries—we learned about this at the beginning of the tractate—is that it means breaking. They bring proofs from Tanach that get means breaking. What does breaking mean?

19:01 Breaking is connected with the breaking of the vessels, which took place in the World of Tohu. In the World of Tikkun, by contrast, there must be unity. As we all know from the maamar Heichaltzu, the difference between Tohu and Tikkun is that Tikkun is characterized by unity. In Tikkun, all the sefiros join together and are integrated with one another. There is unity. In the World of Tohu, by contrast, there was the breaking of the vessels. Why did the vessels break? Because there were abundant lights and too few vessels. With the powerful lights of Tohu, each one wants to be king, with all its force and assertiveness. Chessed cannot tolerate gevurah, and gevurah cannot tolerate chessed. This produces division and breaking. That’s the root of the matter—and indeed, it says that Tohu is associated with gevuros. Essentially, Tohu and Tikkun correspond to gevuros and chassadim. The World of Tikkun is a world of chassadim, which is why there is integration and unity there. The World of Tohu, by contrast, is a world of gevuros, and that is why the breaking of the vessels occurred there. So the get has its source in the World of Tohu and in the realm of gevuros. Now let’s look at a few more details. He says: “The firmament that separates.” Reb Levi Yitzchak says that the numerical value of “mavdil,” “separates,” is eighty-six, the same as the name Elokim. That is the name associated with the attribute of gevurah. The name Elokim is the name associated with gevuros. So that is the source of the whole concept of a get. What other name do we know that is connected with gevuros? The 42-letter Name. We spoke about this in another class as well. The 42-letter Name, the name of Ana Bekoach. It has forty-two words. Ana Bekoach is associated with gevurah. It has forty-two words, and we say Ana Bekoach at times

21:03 Of gevurah. We say it in davening—in Shacharis, in Minchah, in Krias Shema before bed, and on Friday night. Whenever there is an ascent, a time when the worlds ascend—which is an aspect of gevurah—we say the 42-letter Name. That is why there were 42 journeys when the Jewish people traveled to Eretz Yisroel. The 42-letter Name is a name of gevurah. If you make a calculation with the word get: gimel, daled, hei, vav, zayin, ches, tes—all the letters from gimel through tes. Add three plus four plus five plus six plus seven plus eight plus nine, and the gematria is 42. In other words, the word get alludes to the 42-letter Name, a name associated with gevurah. So a get is connected with the attribute of gevurah and with the world of Tohu. Reb Levi Yitzchak says: According to this, consider Rav Chisda. What does “Rav Chisda” mean? His name tells us that he was a man of chesed. That is what the name Rav Chisda means—not just chesed, but abundant chesed. Ordinary chesed is limited chesed, chesed of holiness, where there can also be conduct characterized by gevurah. But there is also unlimited chesed, rav chesed. As we say in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, “G-d, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in kindness.” At the level of rav chesed, of the attribute of mercy, there is no room for gevurah. More than that: the gevurot are transformed into chasadim. That is what we say in davening, “Elokim, in Your abundant kindness.” On account of rav chesed, even Elokim is transformed into chasadim. There is no room for gevurah at all, because all the gevurot become chasadim. Rav Chisda was also known to be a kohen, a man of chesed—that is the quality of a kohen. So Rav Chisda

23:06 is rav chesed, abundant chesed—not just ordinary chesed. That is why he says, “I want to invalidate all the gittin in the world.” Gittin are gevurot. He wants to do away with gittin so there will be no gevurot, but rather to unite husband and wife—not to break them apart or separate them—and thereby also repair the shattering of the world of Tohu. That is why he wants to invalidate all the gittin in the world: to bring about tikkun, the opposite of Tohu and of shattering, and bring harmony between husband and wife. The Gemara actually says this in Gittin, page 7b. The Gemara on page 7b—it’s here in Gittin. The Gemara says that they said to Rav Chisda—7a. Where is it? There, page 7a: “Chisda is your name, and your words are kindness.” Your name is chesed, and all your words are chesed. In other words, Rav Chisda was associated with chesed, and that is why he wants to break and abolish all the gittin in the world. He wants there to be a bond. Reb Levi Yitzchak also cites the verse in Parshas Acharei: “If a man takes his sister ... it is chesed.” That is, the root of union—“if a man takes his sister”—according to Kabbalah and the Zohar, refers to the union of man and woman Above, and that is chesed. In other words, it is specifically through chesed that a bond is formed, the opposite of separation. Reb Levi Yitzchak also explains on this basis that when a man and woman become betrothed, the ring is placed on the finger. Why put the ring there? Kiddushin is effected with money, and money is chesed. As is known, money is associated with chesed; the word kesef, “money,” is related to “nichsof nichsafta”—you longed intensely. Kesef

25:21 is an expression of chesed, of love. And where is the ring placed? On the finger. What is the significance of a finger? He says that the Hebrew word for “finger,” etzba, contains the letters of 91 and 72. Ninety-one is the gematria of Havayah and Adnai together, the two Names that express their union—the union of Havayah and Adnai, a union of G-dliness. That is where the focus of union is, between man and woman. So Havayah and Adnai have a combined gematria of 91, and 72 is the gematria of chesed. Thus, the finger alludes to the union of Havayah and Adnai brought about through chesed. In any case, Rav Chisda comes to abolish the whole institution of gittin; on the contrary, he wants chasadim. Then Rava comes and tells him that he cannot. Why is Rava the one who disagrees with him? Reb Levi Yitzchak says: Look at the name Rava, and at Rav Chisda. They have three letters in common, and three letters are missing, right? Which letters are missing from Rava? The letters spelling chesed. In other words, Rava lacks the chesed. So Rava is associated with gevurot: he is Rav Chisda without chesed. All that remains is “Rava,” without the chesed. That is to say, Rava’s spiritual root is connected with gevurot. He also explains this according to Kabbalah. The writings of the Arizal say that the root of Rava’s soul is from Naamah the Ammonite. It says that when Avraham Avinu went to—there is the whole account in Parshas Vayeira, Avraham and Lot, [unclear]. There is a passage in the writings of the Arizal about the people of Avraham’s household—it says, “And they took Lot.” He takes the wording of a verse there whose initial letters

27:57 or final letters, the Arizal says, spell Rava. From that we see that Rava’s soul came from Naamah the Ammonite. That is what the Arizal writes. In other words, the difference between Abaye and Rava is that Abaye is on the right side, the side of chesed and chochmah, associated with Moav, while Rava is on the left side, gevurah and binah, associated with Ammon. Moav and Ammon correspond to chochmah and binah. The name Moav suggests “from the father,” associated with chochmah; Ammon is associated with binah. More generally, this distinction between chochmah and binah is reflected in Abaye and Rava, and Rava, in any case, belongs to the side of gevurot and binah. Be that as it may, it is enough to say that Rav Chisda without chesed is Rava. That alone helps us understand that Rava represented the opposite attribute. Interestingly, the entire discussion in Gittin [unclear]. But the whole tractate of Gittin begins with a dispute between Rabbah and Rava concerning someone who brings a get from overseas, and why he has to make a declaration. So we see that Rava is specifically the one who supports the get. Because Rava comes from gevurot, he does support the get. Now, how does Rava explain why it is valid? What is his reasoning? Here we come to what we learned. First, the verse says, “And he shall write.” Who writes? Rav Chisda’s argument is that the husband has to write it. Here the woman writes it, so it does not count. What does Rava tell him? Even if the woman writes it, that is also fine. What is the spiritual explanation? Listen closely—this is geshmak, the delight of learning Chassidus, the geshmak of [unclear]. He says: Chesed is the giver. The whole concept of chesed is connected with the giver. Rav Chisda is not merely chesed; he is

30:14 rav chesed. He says: Who has to do it? Who writes? Who gives? It has to be the giver; it has to come from the male, the giver. But here the woman—what is the woman giving? This is connected with the woman. It does not count as writing. What does Rava tell him? That is also fine. Why? One of the distinctions mentioned in Chassidus between Tohu and Tikkun is that the world of Tohu is associated with the Name Ban, while the world of Tikkun is associated with the Name Mah. Mah and Ban correspond to Tohu and Tikkun. The Name Mah belongs to the world of Tikkun; it is the giver, the male aspect. The Name Ban is the recipient, the female aspect. So, on the contrary, from the perspective of the world of Tohu, even if the woman writes it, it counts. That is fine—that is what Rava tells him. So it is a valid get. That is one point. But then there is your second argument, about “and he shall give.” There has to be a giving, something of value, and here there is no giving. That is Rav Chisda’s condition. Rava tells him that it does not need to have value; even giving something from which one is forbidden to derive benefit is valid. What is the difference here? Here too, it is the difference between Tohu and Tikkun. Reb Levi explains it this way: There is giving as it is in Tohu, and giving as it is in Tikkun. In the world of Tikkun, when does something count as giving? The thing given must have some... One of the differences between Tohu and Tikkun is that Tohu does not take the vessels into account. Tohu gives abundant lights. Why did the vessels shatter? Because the lights were beyond what the vessels could contain. In other words, it was giving without reception. That kind of giving caused the shattering of the vessels. That is giving as it is in the world of Tohu. By contrast,

32:32 The giving. In other words, from the perspective of the world of Tohu, it does not matter to me whether the recipient receives it or not; what matters is the giving. In the world of Tikkun, though, it is the opposite: the giver wants the recipient to receive it. So that is what he is saying here. Rava, who comes from the world of Tohu and wants to uphold the get, says that even something from which benefit is prohibited is good enough. Rav Chisda’s argument comes from the world of Tikkun: there has to be a recipient. It has to have some value. The woman has to benefit from it. If she receives nothing, then there is no giving here; it is not worth a perutah to her. The recipient has to receive something. That is the argument of the world of Tikkun. Rava comes along, wanting to say that the get is valid, and says: What difference does it make? What matters is the giving, even if the item has no value. Even something from which benefit is prohibited, so that no one can benefit from it, still counts as giving. That is the essential difference between Tohu and Tikkun. In Tikkun, the giving has to be a giving of Tikkun, something one can benefit from. In Tohu, it can be a giving from which one cannot benefit; that, too, is a form of giving. And that is why he said, “Know this, for they sent word from there.” What does “Know this, for they sent word from there” mean? They sent word from Eretz Yisroel that a get written on something from which benefit is prohibited is also valid. So he gives a whole explanation that the meaning of “Know this, for they sent word from there” is the world of Tohu. He explains at length: “Know”—there is daas of the world of Tikkun, and there is daas of the world of Tohu. Bela ben Beor, the first king of the world of Tohu—“Bela ben Beor” has the numerical value of daas, the daas of Tohu. That is the difference between the daas of Tikkun and the daas of Tohu. What is the difference? In Tikkun, daas means attachment, as in “And Adam knew Chava.” There, the meaning of daas

34:37 is the opposite: to unite, to connect. Attachment and connection are daas in holiness, and there the connection has to be as it should. But in the world of Tohu, daas has the meaning of breaking. The word daas is used in the sense of breaking: “And he made the men of Sukkos know.” Chassidus often cites that verse from Shoftim, where “he made them know” means breaking. So daas can mean attachment and connection, and it can also mean breaking. The daas of the world of Tikkun is one kind of daas: there, the aim is the union of husband and wife. But in the world of Tohu, daas means breaking, and that is the idea of a get. “Know this”—the “know” here is the daas of the world of Tohu, the daas of breaking. “They sent word from there”—from the level of the world of Tohu, a get can indeed be possible. And this is also connected to the olive leaf. What is the connection to the olive leaf? He offers this insight: What do we see? There is an olive, and there is an olive leaf. In Kabbalah, the olive represents Yesod. It symbolizes the sefirah of Yesod because, among the seven species, the olive is the sixth. The seven species correspond to the seven middos. There are wheat, barley, grapes, figs, and pomegranates—the first five, corresponding to Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach, and Hod. “A land of olive oil and honey” corresponds to Yesod and Malchus. So according to Chassidus, the olive corresponds to the sefirah of Yesod. Yesod is about connection between giver and recipient. The whole idea of Yesod is the bond between husband and wife. So the olive symbolizes the bond between husband and wife. That is the olive. But the olive leaf is the opposite. The leaf is the opposite of the olive itself, which produces the oil. The olive represents connection; the leaf represents severance. The Gemara says that the leaf is not joined to

36:59 the olive. In the laws of tumah and taharah, the leaves are not considered part of the olive. In other words, the leaf represents the opposite: it brings about severance. Where do we see that the leaf represents severance? Look at the olive leaf. What does the dove say? When a husband and wife are married, the husband is responsible for her sustenance. He has to provide for her. So the dove says to Noach, “Let my sustenance be bitter, from the hand of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” Now that I am divorced, I will not receive my sustenance from the husband; I will receive it directly from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the whole idea of divorce: the woman no longer receives sustenance from her husband. She receives it directly from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So this is the allusion in the olive leaf. There is this law we learn, that it does not need to have a minimum size and that a get can be written on an olive leaf. Why did the Sages choose an olive leaf, specifically, as their example of something on which a get can be written? Because the entire idea of a get is alluded to in the olive leaf, in the story of the dove and the olive leaf. So that—and particularly in light of everything we have explained until now. It follows, then, that this is the disagreement between Rava and Rav Chisda. Rav Chisda represents Tikkun and chesed—and not just chesed: Rav Chisda. He wants the opposite. He wants to put everything right so that there will be no gittin, so that everyone will live together. He wants to bring people together, to bring about their union. Rava, by contrast, is associated specifically with gevurah, and so on. He argues that, on the contrary, a way can be found for the gittin to be valid. That is Rava’s position. And he says, in conclusion, why Rav Chisda did not change his mind. The Gemara implies that after all this, Rav Chisda did not retract his view. As far as Rav Chisda is concerned, he still thinks the gittin are invalid. He cannot accept them.

40:06 Rabbi Levi Yitzchak concludes: Why? Because the Gemara says in Sotah that Hakadosh Boruch Hu said His name should be erased to make peace between husband and wife. In the case of a sotah, the name Havayah is erased—the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is erased—in order to bring about the union of Yud and Hei. Ish, “man,” is eish, “fire,” plus Yud; ishah, “woman,” is eish plus Hei. Then, if husband and wife are worthy, the Shechinah rests between them: the union of Yud and Hei. So the name Havayah is erased to preserve the union of Yud and Hei. Why? Because the union of Yud and Hei is even higher than the union represented by the name Havayah. The name Havayah is erased so that husband and wife can be united. That is what we are saying: if we see that, in the case of a sotah, the name Havayah is erased so that the union of Yud and Hei can take place, because that union is higher than the union represented by the name Havayah—as explained in Pirkei Seder, the union of Yud and Hei is a union of the intellectual faculties, and so on; it is a higher union—then certainly all the gittin that would separate husband and wife should be invalidated, so that husband and wife can remain united in the union of Yud and Hei. This is also the place to add something, since we are speaking here about the letters of this union. In a note to one of his letters connected with 20 Menachem Av, the Rebbe writes about the allusion in the fact that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak passed away on 20 Menachem Av and Rebbetzin Chana passed away on 6 Tishrei: 20 and 6 add up to 26, the numerical value of the name Havayah. The Rebbe connects this with the idea that when husband and wife are worthy, the Shechinah rests between them. The 20 and the 6 make 26, the name Havayah, alluding to the Shechinah resting between them. Although here we are speaking specifically about Yud and Hei, while there the discussion is of the name Havayah, it is also an allusion connected with Rabbi Levi Yitzchak. In any case, that is the inner meaning of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s answer. It relates to the entire tractate and helps us understand how much effort we must make. This is Rav Chisda’s approach:

42:07 we must make every effort to prevent gittin, whereas Rava argues in favor of their validity. By the way, we saw this plainly with the Rebbe. You can see it in his letters: there are dozens and hundreds of letters in which the Rebbe, always, in every situation and whatever the circumstances, did everything in his power to ensure there would be shalom bayis, so that a couple would not reach the point of a get. Even in very, very difficult situations, the Rebbe always tried with all his strength to bring about shalom bayis and prevent matters from reaching the point of a get. And if matters had already reached the point where that was no longer possible, the Rebbe would refer them to rabbis. The Rebbe himself, as he wrote several times, said that in the household of our Rebbeim, the Nesi’im, they were careful not to have any part in it. When a get had to be written, they did not want to be involved in that. According to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s explanation, this is understandable. The Rebbe’s approach is connected with Rav Chisda, with chesed, with the idea of Tikkun: the idea of unity, of making peace between husband and wife. So the Rebbe never wanted to be involved in anything contrary to that. In any case, we conclude on a good note.