Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 6 - Part 5

00:08 Speaker 1 The kelipos are divided into two levels, one lower than the other. We’re talking here about the kelipos, and the Alter Rebbe says there are two levels among them. But wait—we spoke about the three unclean kelipos, which are complete evil and contain no good at all. There are three kelipos that are entirely unclean and evil, with no good in them at all. These are the three unclean kelipos. In Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine Chariot, they are called “a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire.” As we explained in the previous class, there are three kelipos. In his vision of the Divine Chariot, Yechezkel describes what he saw outside the Chariot. That means it is outside holiness as well. There are three things: a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire. We explained that they correspond to the expression of the attributes of chesed, gevurah, and tiferes, or fire, wind, and water—the elements, the three lines that are the sources of all undesirable things. That is why there are three unclean kelipos. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to explain what comes from them. What do they do? What is their role? The Alter Rebbe says: “And from them flow and are drawn down the souls of all the nations of the world, and the sustenance of their bodies.” The souls of all non-Jews, all the nations of the world, come from the three unclean kelipos—as does the sustenance of their bodies. In other words, he says two things here: the souls of the nations of the world come from the three unclean kelipos. The Alter Rebbe already explained at the beginning of Tanya, in chapter 1, that the souls of the nations of the world come from the three unclean kelipos, which contain no good at all. And this applies to the body too: he says “the sustenance of their bodies.” The body of a non-Jew also comes from the three unclean kelipos. There is a difference between a Jew and a non-Jew even in the body. The Alter Rebbe did not say that there, but it follows that just as there is a difference between the souls of a Jew and a non-Jew—the animal soul of a Jew comes from kelipas nogah, as the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 7, while the animal soul of a non-Jew comes from the three unclean kelipos—therefore

02:42 Speaker 1 for a non-Jew, the idea of doing good for its own sake does not apply. Any good he does, any element of good in him, is in order to gain something, and so on. In other words, with him everything also has an undesirable element mixed in. That is regarding the soul. Here the Alter Rebbe says that the body of a non-Jew also receives its vitality from the three unclean kelipos. This relates to what the Alter Rebbe says later in Tanya, in chapter 49. There the Alter Rebbe quotes, “And You have chosen us from every people and tongue,” and says that this refers to the physical body. That is, Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose the Jewish people in the material substance of their bodies. So He chose not only the soul; He chose the body. That is why the body of a Jew differs from the body of a non-Jew. The Rebbe points out that the Alter Rebbe says “in the material substance.” The Alter Rebbe does not say “in the physicality.” Physicality is still just physical; it is not necessarily coarse. Something physical is physical. There are physical things with which we do good. Prayer is physical too, and tzitzis are physical too. There is physicality that belongs to holiness, the physicality of a mitzvah, the physicality of holiness. But material substance is more than that. It refers to material things, to the material aspects of life and of the body. So the Alter Rebbe emphasizes that it is in the material substance of the bodies of the Jewish people: even the material substance of a Jew differs from that of a non-Jew. Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose specifically the body of a Jew, who is different even in his material substance. That is what the Rebbe emphasizes here as well: regarding the sustenance of the body, the body of a non-Jew comes from the three unclean kelipos. A Jew’s body is more refined and more delicate; it comes from kelipas nogah. “And the souls of all animals that are unclean and forbidden to eat.”

04:49 Speaker 1 That was regarding people. Now he moves on to animals: “And the souls of all animals that are unclean and forbidden to eat, and the sustenance of their bodies.” Among animals too, there are animals that are unclean and forbidden to eat. Their souls come from the three unclean kelipos, and so does the sustenance of their bodies. Here too, the Alter Rebbe distinguishes between soul and body. After all, animals also have a body and a soul. So both the animal’s soul and its body come from the three unclean kelipos. Here we need to pay attention to the precise wording of Tanya. Every word in Tanya is precise, as in the Written Torah. We need to examine exactly what each word means. The Rebbe points out that, when speaking about animals, the Alter Rebbe says “unclean and forbidden to eat.” Why the double expression? “Animals that are unclean and forbidden to eat.” It would have been enough for the Alter Rebbe to say “animals that are forbidden to eat.” Why emphasize that they are unclean and forbidden to eat? The Rebbe explains that with the word “unclean,” the Alter Rebbe wants to stress that he is speaking about animals that are forbidden because of their inherent impurity. In other words, they are intrinsically forbidden. There are other animals that are not intrinsically unclean. They are intrinsically kosher animals, but for some reason they may become forbidden to eat. For example, there is the case of a treifah. The animal itself is a kosher animal, but it is forbidden to eat. So you cannot say that it draws its life from the three unclean kelipos. It draws its life from kelipas nogah, since it is a kosher animal. You can have a chicken that is a treifah. What does that mean? That it is sick? It has something missing, a problem, a defect—something that means you cannot eat it, so you throw it out. You cannot say that it belongs to the three unclean kelipos. There are other such cases involving animals: intrinsically, they are kosher. Here he is speaking about unclean animals. In other words, the prohibition against eating them is intrinsic to them, unlike the others, which intrinsically belong to kelipas nogah. Only after a prohibition takes effect do they enter the three unclean kelipos. That is what the Rebbe wants to emphasize with “unclean and forbidden to eat.” On the other hand, why does he not say only “unclean”? He could have said just “unclean.” Why did he need to add “forbidden to eat”? Because “unclean” could also make us think of another kind of impurity, not necessarily impurity connected with eating. There are different kinds of impurity, such as impurity conveyed by touch. He wanted to emphasize that the impurity meant here is one connected with eating, whose source is therefore in the three unclean kelipos. So that is what he means here by “all animals that are unclean and forbidden to eat, and the sustenance of their bodies.” All these things receive their vitality from the source of the three unclean kelipos. That is regarding animals. Now he speaks about plants. “And likewise, the vitality of all forbidden foods from the plant kingdom.” The Alter Rebbe says the same thing regarding plants: “And likewise, the vitality of all forbidden foods from the plant kingdom.” There are forbidden foods among plants. Some plant foods are forbidden to eat, such as orlah and kil’ei hakerem. The Alter Rebbe gives two examples of forbidden foods from the plant kingdom. One is orlah: fruit that grows on a tree during its first three years. And kil’ei hakerem is the prohibition against mixed planting. Mixed planting is when you grow two—two kinds of plants,

07:04 Speaker 1 To eat it, so he threw it away. You can’t say that it belongs to the three completely impure kelipos. There are other cases that come to mind—animals and all sorts of things that are, in themselves, kosher. But here you’re talking about non-kosher animals. In other words, the prohibition against eating them is inherent to them, whereas other things are essentially from kelipas nogah. Only after a prohibition applies to them do they enter the three impure kelipos. That is what the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize: that they are impure and forbidden to eat. On the other hand, why doesn’t he just say “impure”? He could have said only “impure.” Why did he need to say “forbidden to eat”? Because even there, “impure” could make us think of a different kind of impurity. It could be another kind of impurity, not necessarily one connected with eating. There are kinds of impurity, such as impurity conveyed through contact. He wanted to emphasize that the impurity meant here is one connected with eating, and that, accordingly, its source is in the three impure kelipos. So this is what he says here: all non-kosher animals, which are forbidden to eat, derive their life-force from the source of the three impure kelipos. That is regarding animals. Now he speaks about plants: “And likewise, the life-force of all forbidden foods from the plant kingdom.” The Alter Rebbe says the same thing regarding plants: “And likewise, the life-force of all forbidden foods from the plant kingdom.” There are forbidden foods among plants. There are things from plants that are forbidden to eat, such as orlah and kilayim of the vineyard. The Alter Rebbe gives examples of forbidden foods from plants—two examples. One is orlah, the fruit that grows on a tree during its first three years. And kilayim of the vineyard is the prohibition of mixing species. Kilayim is when you plant—two, two kinds of plants,

09:19 Speaker 1 Pl—how do you say it? Two plants together. So he says that every forbidden food, such as orlah and kil’ei hakerem, and so on, also receives its life from the source of the three impure kelipos. Why does the Alter Rebbe bring this here? Why specifically the examples of orlah and kil’ei hakerem? What does he want to emphasize with them? They are not just examples. Precisely here, he needs examples like orlah and kil’ei hakerem. The explanation is that the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize that we are speaking about an issur cheftza—a prohibition inherent in the object. These are things that, for as long as they are forbidden, are completely forbidden. In halachah, there are several kinds of forbidden foods. Some are forbidden only at certain times. For example, chametz on Pesach. Chametz itself is not forbidden; you can eat it all year. On Pesach it becomes forbidden because of the time. There are other examples, too. These are called time-dependent prohibitions. Eating on Yom Kippur is forbidden only because it is Yom Kippur. So you cannot say that bread eaten on Yom Kippur comes from the three impure kelipos. The food is food; it does not come from the three impure kelipos. It is just that a person is not allowed to eat it at that time. Regarding chametz on Pesach, there is some discussion among the later halachic authorities about whether it is an issur cheftza or an issur gavra—a prohibition on the person. It is a whole subject. The Rebbe brings the story with Rabbi Shimon Saidan [?]. When the Frierdiker Rebbe was a little boy, three years old, they brought him into cheder and threw candies, telling him they were candies from the angel Michael. The Frierdiker Rebbe said he kept the candies until Erev Pesach, and on Erev Pesach he had to eat them because... because they could not be kept, and they did not want to sell them to a non-Jew. So one of the explanations the Rebbe gives for why they did not want to sell them to a non-Jew—

11:23 Speaker 1 Is that they would no longer have their holiness.

11:41 Speaker 2 What?

11:42 Speaker 1 What does it matter if you sell them to a non-Jew and then take them back? Go on.

11:47 Speaker 2 That they would no longer have their holiness.

11:49 Speaker 1 So the Rebbe explains that their holiness would be diminished. One of the explanations in that sicha—I do not know whether the Rebbe ultimately accepts it or not—is that if we say the prohibition of chametz is an issur cheftza, right? It is not only an issur gavra. That means the object itself changes. So when you sell it to a non-Jew, you have to sell not just your rights to it but the object itself. You sell the actual candy; it passes into a non-Jew’s possession and becomes part of what belongs to him. The candy itself becomes a non-Jew’s possession, and then it loses its holiness. Whether that is also true from Heaven’s perspective, yes or no? But in any case, this whole discussion concerns chametz. There are things, though, where the object itself is not forbidden; the prohibition applies only for a certain time. That is what the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize here: since we are talking about the three impure kelipos, this applies only to things that are inherently forbidden. What are orlah and kil’ei hakerem? They are things that, while forbidden, are forbidden as objects in themselves. It is even forbidden to derive benefit from them; they are completely forbidden. Incidentally, orlah is a striking case. Orlah is a time-dependent prohibition—it lasts three years. After the three years, you can eat the fruit of the tree. So the prohibition lasts only three years. Nevertheless, he says it is an issur cheftza. That means that during the three years of orlah, it has the legal status of an object that is itself forbidden. Somehow, the impurity becomes part of the thing itself. There is another interesting point here in Tanya: he does not say “the existence of its body.”

13:37 Speaker 1 Did you notice? He speaks—and we will get to this—of “the souls of all the nations of the world and the existence of their bodies,” and “the souls of all living creatures and the existence of their bodies.” But when we get to forbidden foods, to the plant kingdom, he does not say “the existence of their bodies.” He does not even use the word “soul.” He says, “the existence and life of all forbidden foods.” Now, the fact that he does not say “the souls of all forbidden foods” is straightforward: plants do not have a soul in that sense. You can use the word “soul” for a human being. A person has a soul. An animal also has a soul. There you can use the word. It eats and drinks and feels, and it wants things or does not want them. It has faculties of the soul. In particular, as explained in the sefarim, the meaning of nefesh, “soul,” is connected with wanting. So certainly with a person there is a nefesh, a capacity to want, and an animal, too, has a capacity to want. With a plant, by contrast, this whole idea of feeling or wanting does not apply. That is why he does not say “soul.” We understand why he does not say “the souls of all forbidden foods.” But why does he not say “the existence of their bodies”? The Rebbe explains that the reason is that the body of orlah—and this also addresses the earlier question—is not itself impure. Only the life of orlah comes from the three impure kelipos. The body of orlah—

15:32 Speaker 1 Does not come from the three impure kelipos. Why? Because after three years its fruit will be permitted to eat. So you cannot say that the body of orlah is an impure body. You can say that the life force sustaining it during those three years is impure, which is why you may not eat it. But as for the fruit itself, if you wait three years, you will be able to eat it. So in the case of orlah, its body is not an impure body; it does not come from the three impure kelipos. The same applies to kil’ei hakerem. What are kilayim? You mix wheat with grapes, for example, in a vineyard. Are the grapes themselves impure? The grapes themselves are fine. The wheat itself is also fine. What is the issue? The life force in them: because you caused them to grow together through planting, the life force that makes them grow together is contrary to Hashem’s will. That comes from the three impure kelipos. But the actual body of kil’ei hakerem is not an impure body. That is why the Alter Rebbe is precise here and does not say “the existence of their bodies.” We see how every word in Tanya is exact. Let us continue inside, in chapter 6: “And likewise, the existence and life of every act, utterance, and thought connected with all 365 negative commandments and their offshoots, as stated there at the end of chapter 5.” Now he adds something else. Until now, he has been speaking about things outside the Jew, things in the world. He spoke about inanimate things—actually, no, he did not speak about inanimate things. What about them? He spoke about forbidden things in the human realm, about animals, and about plants. Concerning those three, he—

17:39 Speaker 1 Spoke about the three impure kelipos. What about inanimate things? Why does the Alter Rebbe not mention them? Simply because there is no such thing as an inanimate object that inherently belongs to the three impure kelipos. There is no concept of an inanimate object that is inherently evil. Try to think of one; you cannot find one. Of course, if a person takes a piece of wood and makes an idol out of it, it then becomes associated with the three impure kelipos. But that is different: he took something that belonged to kelipas nogah and brought it into the three impure kelipos. Here the Alter Rebbe wants to explain which things belong to the three impure kelipos in and of themselves. There is no such thing in the inanimate realm. There is water, earth, stones—all these things belong to kelipas nogah. There is no prohibition in the Torah concerning an inanimate object in and of itself. Only if someone uses it for a forbidden purpose does he take it from kelipas nogah. The thing itself is not inherently forbidden. Now the Alter Rebbe begins to explain the case of a person. In a person, too, there is something connected with the three impure kelipos: “And likewise, the existence and life of every act, utterance, and thought connected with all 365 negative commandments and their offshoots, as stated there at the end of chapter 5.” This means that even in a person, in a Jew, there is something connected with the three impure kelipos. What is it? The existence and life of every act, utterance, and thought connected with all 365 negative commandments and their offshoots.

19:25 Speaker 1 When a person thinks an improper thought, a thought forbidden by the Torah, or says something forbidden by the Torah—lashon hara or some other forbidden speech—or does something forbidden, the Alter Rebbe says that all 365 prohibitions and their offshoots are involved. That means both Torah prohibitions and rabbinic prohibitions. All these things, he says, belong to the three utterly impure kelipos. They receive their vitality from them. In other words, when I think a forbidden thought, I’m alive, but at that moment the thought receives its vitality from the three impure kelipos. When I say something forbidden, at that moment my speech receives its vitality from the three impure kelipos. This helps us understand what the Alter Rebbe said at the beginning of the chapter. What is he trying to explain in chapter 6? What is the whole point? As we discussed regarding the side of holiness, when a person does a good deed, performs a mitzvah, it elevates the soul. The garments bring about an elevation in the soul. When a person acts, speaks, and thinks in Torah and mitzvos, he rises toward G-dliness and unites with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In chapter 4, we learned that the garments bring about an elevation in the soul. The reverse is also true: the garments of kelipah bring the soul down, because a Jew’s soul, in itself, is from kelipas nogah. By thinking, saying, or doing something undesirable, he descends into the three impure kelipos. So the garments bring about a descent. That’s what we mean by garments. Their great power is that, on the one hand, they can lift a person to a height he could not reach without them, but on the other hand,

21:34 Speaker 1 they can bring a person down to a level that his soul, in itself, does not occupy. In itself, it is nogah; through the garments, it enters the three impure kelipos. There is another point here. The Alter Rebbe says that not only the 365 prohibitions receive their vitality from the three impure kelipos, but their offshoots do too. What are their offshoots? Matters that are not prohibited by the Torah itself—the details the Sages added to those prohibitions. And he says that these, too, belong to the three impure kelipos. In other words, even if a person commits an offense that is forbidden only by rabbinic law, or says something forbidden—lashon hara or speech of that sort, forbidden only by rabbinic law—or even thinks such a thought, it too is connected to the three impure kelipos. This is connected to a well-known dispute that the Rebbe explains in one of his sichos. Regarding a rabbinic prohibition, is it an issur gavra, a prohibition on the person, or an issur cheftza, a prohibition inherent in the object? Presumably we have many yeshivah students here who learn a great deal of Torah, so you probably know about this. The question is whether, in a rabbinic prohibition, the object itself becomes forbidden. With a Torah prohibition, the prohibition is certainly inherent in the object, right? It is forbidden to eat pork. The pig itself is a forbidden thing; it is kelipah. The pig itself belongs to the three impure kelipos. It is not merely that a person may not eat it; the prohibition applies to the thing itself. What about a rabbinic prohibition? Here there is a dispute. One view is that the Sages cannot make the thing itself forbidden. In itself, it remains nogah. Rather, the Sages prohibited a person from using it. The prohibition applies entirely to the person. Another view says no: a rabbinic prohibition, too,

23:26 Speaker 1 is an issur cheftza. The thing itself becomes forbidden, even when the prohibition is rabbinic. When the Sages declare something forbidden, they have the power to make the object itself a forbidden object. This is reflected in the Alter Rebbe’s words here, “the 365 prohibitions and their offshoots.” If we understand “their offshoots” to refer to rabbinic prohibitions, we see that a rabbinic prohibition, too, is an issur cheftza. The Alter Rebbe says here that they receive their vitality from the three impure kelipos. That implies that when a person thinks a forbidden thought or does an act forbidden by rabbinic law, it becomes part of the three impure kelipos—which means the prohibition applies to the thing itself. In fact, this is stated more explicitly later, in chapter 8. There the Alter Rebbe says that when a person eats food forbidden even by rabbinic law, he descends into the three impure kelipos. It says more explicitly there that a rabbinic prohibition is an issur cheftza. The Rebbe gives an extensive analysis of this. This isn’t the place for it; we’re not studying topics in the revealed dimension of Torah here. But the Rebbe has a lengthy sicha that addresses this whole subject. In any case, this is the point of chapter 6: the Alter Rebbe explains the other side, the counterpart to holiness—the animal soul. The animal soul, too, is a counterpart: it has the faculties of the soul and it also has three garments. And just as we explained on the side of holiness that the garments have an advantage even over the faculties—that it is specifically the garments of thought, speech, and action that bring about the change—so too, conversely, on the other side, the main thing is the power of the garments and the need to guard them. We have to be careful with the garments, because the garments of thought, speech, and action can bring the soul down even lower than—