Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 6 - Part 1

00:02 Up to this point, through chapter 6, the Alter Rebbe has mainly explained what the G-dly soul is and how it works: its faculties, its garments, its qualities, and its purpose. He has explained various matters concerning the G-dly soul, and how it fulfills its purpose, which is to engage in all matters of G-dliness and unite with G-dliness, and so on. Now that we have explained the nature of the G-dly soul and its role, the Alter Rebbe comes, in the next three chapters, to explain the nature of the animal soul. What is the animal soul? That we understand a little better. What is it? What is it made up of? What does it want? And, more generally, he will explain what the whole subject of the sitra achra, the kelipos, and that entire side is. We need to understand the negative side so that we can fulfill our role in serving Hashem and in the struggle. In chapter 9, the Alter Rebbe will begin explaining the great struggle between the two souls, so first we need to explain what each soul has, what its faculties are, and how it works. So here, in chapter 6, he begins explaining the side of the animal soul. The Alter Rebbe says: “Behold.” Yes. What happened? There’s a Tanya missing here. “G-d made one opposite the other.” The Alter Rebbe quotes the wording of a verse, “one opposite the other.” It is a verse in Koheles. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made everything; He made one opposite the other so that there could be a struggle between evil and good, so that “you shall choose life”—so that a person could choose between

02:25 two things. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made holiness and kelipah as opposites. Every faculty and every aspect found on the side of holiness has a corresponding faculty and aspect on the other side, the side of kelipah. This is what is meant when it says that kelipah, in relation to holiness, is like an ape in relation to a human being. Look at an ape: on the one hand, it closely resembles a person. An ape—a monkey—has all sorts of features like a person. It has five fingers, it can stand on two legs, and it can do all kinds of things. It can even perform all sorts of clever tricks. People stand for hours watching all the clever things an ape does. It has all those features, but there is one essential point: it is not a human being. It is an ape. So too here: kelipah has the whole form, all the faculties and aspects, corresponding to those in holiness. There are counterparts to practically everything found in holiness. The difference is that it is not holiness; it is kelipah. It is the other side. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made it that way precisely so that there could be this service of Hashem, so that a person could choose between holiness and kelipah. “You shall choose life”—there can be free choice, and consequently reward and punishment, and all of that. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made everything with one thing corresponding to another. But the Alter Rebbe says: “G-d made one opposite the other.” The G-dly soul comprises ten holy sefiros. We said earlier, in chapter 3, that the G-dly soul comprises ten holy sefiros, and that it clothes itself in three holy garments. That same

04:12 subject—the garments of the G-dly soul, and how it clothes itself in three holy garments—we discussed in chapter 4. So too the soul of the sitra achra: it is the same, but on the opposite side, the sitra achra, in kelipas nogah. After all, we are speaking here about a Jew. And we said in chapter 1 that a Jew’s animal soul does not come from the three completely impure kelipos, G-d forbid. A Jew’s animal soul comes from kelipas nogah. That is why the Alter Rebbe emphasizes that he is speaking here about the soul of the sitra achra in a Jew. Kelipas nogah is not absolute evil. Nevertheless, it is called sitra achra because it is not holiness; it is the other side. It is called kelipah. Kelipas nogah is clothed in a person’s blood. This is what we said in chapter 1: the primary point about the animal soul, the first thing, is that it is clothed in the blood. We explained there what it means that the animal soul is clothed in a person’s blood. It means that even before bad character traits arise, before all the problems arise, there is the very fact that a person feels himself to be alive, that he feels himself to be an independent existence, unconnected to G-dliness. That is the root of the whole matter, the root of all evil. That is where the animal soul begins. So the Alter Rebbe says that this soul too, the animal soul, comprises “ten crowns of impurity.” The animal soul also has these ten elements. But the Alter Rebbe changes the term: he says “ten crowns of impurity”—ten crowns. Instead of calling them sefiros, he calls them crowns. Crowns, in the sense of a crown. And what does the Aramaic term for “impurity” mean? It is an Aramaic expression for tumah, impurity. Why does the Alter Rebbe change the name? Why, regarding holiness, does he call them ten sefiros, while here he calls

06:11 them ten crowns? And a second question: why does he use the Hebrew word for “holy” when speaking of holiness, but here use an Aramaic word for impurity? Why doesn’t he write “ten crowns of tumah” in Hebrew? He writes the Aramaic equivalent of tumah. First, regarding the distinction between sefiros and crowns: the Arizal and other texts explain the difference between holiness and kelipah. In holiness, the influence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is inward. The G-dly life-force is present inwardly. After all, everything has a G-dly life-force. The difference between holiness and kelipah is that the G-dly life-force invested in holiness is present inwardly, openly, clothed within it and united with it. In other words, the G-dly light becomes completely united with it. That is the meaning of the ten sefiros. Sefiros is related to sapphire: revelation and light, clarity and brightness. It is also related to “the heavens tell,” to telling a story: the sefiros of holiness reveal G-dliness. G-dliness is present in them openly and inwardly, clothed within them. That is why they are called sefiros. Kelipah, by contrast, does not have the G-dly light within it in that inward way. The G-dly light—after all, Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not love kelipah; on the contrary, He hates it. Therefore, He gives it life in an encompassing way, “like one who throws something over his shoulder.” As the Alter Rebbe says in the analogy, all the influence given to kelipah comes only from the external aspect. That means it comes from the external aspect of the will. Nor is it clothed within those things inwardly. If it were clothed within them inwardly, they would not be kelipah. It remains encompassing; it remains external, hovering above and not uniting with the thing. That is why it is not called a sefirah but a crown. “Crown” is related to

08:11 Encompassing. A crown is encompassing, like a crown above the head. It becomes their life-force and covering, but its main presence remains in the crown, where it encompasses them. The difference between kedushah and kelipah goes so far that—Tanya does not say this, but some sefarim explain that kelipah actually has eleven. There are eleven, eleven crowns. Several sefarim explain that the eleven ingredients of the ketores correspond to the eleven crowns of impurity. They actually have eleven, not ten. What is the eleventh? The Midrash explains that it is the general encompassing force. You see, because in kelipah the G-dly life-force does not unite with the sefirah, it remains encompassing. That is why there are eleven: the ten crowns of impurity and the force that encompasses them. This is also the pure frankincense, as it is called among the ingredients of the ketores. The ingredients of the ketores came to refine that spark within kelipah, within the three impure kelipos. That is why the ketores had eleven ingredients, one of which is called pure frankincense. Pure frankincense is the encompassing force of kedushah from which they receive life. That is why the number of ingredients is sometimes given as eleven. But here in Tanya he is not discussing that. He wants to explain this point, these matters. So you see that here he emphasizes only the ten. So he says that there are—now we can understand the first distinction. Why does he call them “crowns”? Because they are encompassing. The G-dly life-force and the kelipah. Now why does he write it in Aramaic? The simple reason is along the lines of what we explained in chapter 2. In chapter 2, we explained why the Alter Rebbe says, “from the head of all levels to the end of all ranks.” There, too, the question is asked: Why does the Alter Rebbe begin “the head of all levels” in Hebrew

10:14 and end “the end of all ranks” in Aramaic? It is explained that, broadly speaking, the difference between Hebrew and Aramaic parallels the difference between kedushah and kelipah. So when speaking about the head of all levels, which is kedushah, he writes in Hebrew. But when he writes “the end of all ranks,” he is speaking about kelipah, so he writes in Aramaic, indicating a descent. Aramaic, the seventy nations, the seventy languages—these are associated with kelipah. Along these lines, that is also the simple reason he writes it in Aramaic here. Since he is speaking about the side of kelipah, he uses Aramaic, the language associated with it: “crowns of impurity.” There is a very wonderful explanation from the Rebbe’s father. Actually, the explanation in chapter 3 is also from the Rebbe’s father, at any rate. But here the Rebbe’s father, Reb Levik, explains why the Alter Rebbe writes “mesa’avusa,” impurity. He explains it according to Kabbalah, and it is very interesting. In the plain meaning of Tanya, of course, it is understood. He explains: What is the root of “mesa’avusa”? The letters of its root are samech, alef, beis. Samech, alef, beis is the root of “mesa’avusa.” Samech, alef, beis—that is the root. Samech, alef, beis has the numerical value of 63, sag. What is sag? Sag is—first of all, this relates to the Divine Name Sag, one of the four forms of the Name Havayah: Av, Sag, Mah, Ban. The Name Sag corresponds to the world of Tohu. The sefarim explain that, among the four expanded forms of the Divine Name—Av, Sag, Ban, and Mah—the Name Sag corresponds to the world of Tohu, which is the root of kelipah. So samech, alef, beis equals sag. Sag is the letters

12:03 of gas, “coarse,” which describes kelipah, since the whole nature of kelipah is coarseness. Also, sag is related to sig, meaning dross. Look, sig is like sigim. Sigim, dross, is waste. Yes, altogether dross. That is the idea of sigim. Dross is waste, and it points to kelipah. So that is the significance of samech and gimmel, the Name Sag. Samech and gimmel are the letters of gas, and the whole point is that this indicates the kelipos and [unclear]. That is why, why, why the Alter Rebbe writes “mesa’avusa”: it alludes to its connection with the kelipos. In any case, what does the Alter Rebbe go on to say? That there are ten sefiros on the side of sitra achra as well. It too has “ten sefiros of impurity, which are the seven evil middos arising from the four evil elements mentioned above.” What are these ten sefiros made up of? The Alter Rebbe says they are the seven evil middos arising from the four evil elements mentioned above. There are the seven evil middos, which arise from the four elements. After all, we learned in chapter 1, when the Alter Rebbe began explaining the animal soul, that it contains four evil elements from which all the evil middos arise. There he discussed four things: water, fire, air, and earth. Pride and anger come from fire. The desire for pleasures comes from water. Frivolity, mockery, and boasting come from air. Laziness and sadness come from earth. There he divided them according to the four elements. But there is another way of dividing the evil middos, according to the seven middos: the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, the Girgashite—the seven evil middos, corresponding to the seven nations. Chesed, gevurah, tiferes, netzach, hod, yesod, malchus of kelipah. Broadly speaking, that is

14:07 the matter of chesed. Chesed is, is, is, is love: a bad love, or a love of the desires of this world. That is why it is called the Canaanite. The Canaanite relates to desires. Yes, “the Canaanite holds deceitful scales in his hand.” The Canaanite is associated with commerce. Being immersed in the desires of this world is called Canaan. And the Hittite is gevurah of kelipah. “Hittite” is related to fear—yes, “the fear of G-d fell upon the cities,” using a word for fear. This is fear on the side of kelipah: being afraid of a non-Jew, or afraid of other people. He is afraid of someone else, afraid of a shadow—fears of this world. Then there is the Amorite, associated with beauty and tiferes. “Amorite” is related to—the aspect of tiferes, tiferes of kelipah, the desire for fine clothing. And in this way there are all seven evil middos, each with its expression in kelipah, in this world. So that is what the Alter Rebbe says here: “the seven evil middos arising from the four evil elements mentioned above, and the intellect that gives birth to them.” As we discussed regarding kedushah, there are the middos, and here too there is the intellect that gives birth to them: chochmah, binah, and daas are the source of the middos. Here, once again, we see in Tanya—and when we look a little more deeply, we see—that there are two main differences between what the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 3 about the G-dly soul and what he explains now about the animal soul. One very noticeable difference is that when the Alter Rebbe discussed the G-dly soul, he explained the intellect first and then the middos. First the Alter Rebbe introduces the three “mothers,” chochmah, binah, and daas, and then the seven “doubles”: intellect and middos. First intellect, then middos. Here the Alter Rebbe reverses the order.

16:15 First the Alter Rebbe explains the seven middos, and then he explains the intellect that gives birth to them. He goes in the reverse order: middos before intellect. And the second difference is that earlier, in chapter 3, when speaking about kedushah, he said that the intellect “includes” chochmah, binah, and daas. He used the word “includes,” whereas here the Alter Rebbe uses the word “divided”: “the intellect that gives birth to them, which is divided into three.” There he says “includes”; here he says “divided.” So let us start with the second question, which is easier to explain. It is simple: kedushah is unity, while kelipah is separation. In kedushah, all the faculties, all the middos, are integrated with one another. There is unity: each receives from the other and unites with the other. “I have everything,” Yaakov Avinu said. “Everything” means integration. There, everything exists in a state of unity. That is why he says “includes,” pointing to integration. When we speak about kelipah, we say “divided.” Kelipah is separation. That is why he uses the term “divided.” That is one difference. The second difference—why earlier the Alter Rebbe puts intellect before middos, whereas here he puts middos before intellect—is also, of course, simply the difference between kedushah and kelipah. With kedushah, with the G-dly soul, intellect is primary. The G-dly soul’s principal mode of being is understanding and comprehension; it tends toward intellect. The mind rules over the heart. The G-dly soul is intellectual. Its essential nature is intellectual. It seeks the truth. It does not seek what is comfortable for it, what feels good to it, or what it happens to want—that is, what comes naturally. The first thing it seeks is what is true: chochmah, binah, daas. What is true? And then its middos follow its intellect. In other words, the intellect is the source of the middos. That is why, for the G-dly soul, it begins with the intellectual faculties, with effort and understanding, with contemplating without

18:19 Intellect, and afterward the middos come to him. The middos are born in accordance with the intellect. He contemplates what Hashem wants, and that takes shape within him. He does not look at his own nature. That is the point of the G-dly soul. The G-dly soul does not first look for its natural tendencies and then plan itself around them. Even in holiness, a person might be naturally inclined toward kindness. He is naturally a kind person, so he loves doing acts of kindness; discipline is not for him. Another person is naturally inclined toward discipline, so kindness is not for him. That is not the G-dly soul. The G-dly soul does not look to its nature—even a nature directed toward holiness can be at odds with it. When a person’s middos are only a matter of nature, that is called Mitzrayim. It is Mitzrayim within holiness. He is in Mitzrayim: he is not serving Hashem, but following his nature. He has a natural tendency and uses it for a holy purpose, but he remains within the confines of his nature. Those are not the middos of the G-dly soul. The G-dly soul’s true middos come from intellect. First, it begins with the question: What is true? Not what do I love, what do I feel like doing, or what suits my nature. First of all, what is true? What is demanded, what should be, how should one be attached to Hashem? If he concludes that the appropriate response is love, love will be born within him. And if he concludes that the appropriate response is awe, awe will be born within him. That is the point: with the G-dly soul, intellect comes first, and the intellect gives birth to the middos. That is why, there, in the wording of Tanya, the Alter Rebbe puts intellect before middos. When he speaks about the animal soul, its whole reality is middos. That does not mean it has no intellect; the animal soul is a complete soul.

19:53 It has intellect too. We are talking about a human being’s animal soul. In a person, everything also involves intellect; even for his animalistic concerns, he uses his intellect. But the animal soul is primarily middos. It begins with middos: What do I feel like doing? What do I love? What is my nature drawn to? Everything begins with middos. The middos come first, and then, to obtain what he desires, to satisfy that desire fully, he needs his intellect to help him fulfill what his middos want. It begins with middos, and from the middos it then reaches the intellect. You will see this later in chapter 9 as well, because I will discuss it at length. So we also see it in the wording of Tanya, where every word is precise: regarding holiness, the Alter Rebbe puts intellect before middos, while regarding kelipah, he first explains the middos and then the intellect. Because the middos are commensurate with the intellect. The middos are commensurate with the intellect; they follow its level. Here, too, we see the difference. There is another difference between chapter 3 and here. In chapter 3, speaking about holiness, he says that the intellect, called Chabad, is the mother of all the middos, because the middos are offspring of Chabad. Regarding holiness, the Alter Rebbe says that the middos are offspring of Chabad: they are the children of the intellect. Here, when the Alter Rebbe speaks about the middos, he does not say they are offspring of the intellect. He only says they are commensurate with the intellect. What is the difference? The explanation is this: With the G-dly soul, the whole point of its intellect is to understand these matters, and through that understanding, through

22:08 it, middos are born within him. In other words, at first there is only intellect. He begins with intellectual study. He learns, understands, and contemplates, and from that understanding and comprehension, middos are born. They are offspring: the middos’ entire existence comes into being, so to speak, solely from the intellect. That is not the case with the animal soul. Its middos are not born from the intellect; they do not come from the intellect. They come from its natural feelings. He loves pleasures because he has grown accustomed to them, not because of his intellect. He has become used to enjoying things, and he enjoys them—he feels good about them. It is natural. He is drawn to them by his nature. The middos are not born from the intellect. They are natural feelings: a natural attraction to animalistic things and an aversion to things that interfere with his desires. That is natural. So what does the intellect affect? There is a difference between a child and an adult in what they desire. The middos are commensurate with the intellect only in their scale, in whether the desires are greater or smaller. Will his whole desire be for some ice cream, a candy, or a sweet, or will he desire money and more substantial things? The difference is only in what he desires. That is what it means for the middos to be commensurate with the intellect: it determines the scale of the desire, how far it goes and how it develops. But with the animal soul, you cannot say that the middos are offspring of the intellect. They are only commensurate with its level. A child is drawn to small things; he does not yet grasp greater things. Because he is small, he becomes enamored of small things. That is why small things make him angry and upset: his anger is aroused, and he gets angry and upset over small things. The same applies to pride and the other middos. So that is

24:04 all because the middos are commensurate with the intellect. We see here in Tanya how, through his precise choice of words, the Alter Rebbe distinguishes and explains fundamental differences between the G-dly soul and the animal soul. It is all in the precise wording. We have discussed several differences here. As a summary, then, there are four differences between holiness and kelipah. One is called sefiros, and the other is called crowns. That is the first difference. The second difference is that one is described in the language of holiness and the other in the language of evil. The third difference is that, with the G-dly soul, he puts intellect first and then middos, while with the animal soul, middos come first and then intellect. The fourth difference is that here he says the middos are commensurate with the intellect, while regarding holiness he says they are its offspring.