Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 18 - Part 5

00:00 Speaker 1 We’re in chapter 18, after the colon near the top of page 24, on the third line. Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking about the hidden love. At the beginning of chapter 18, the Alter Rebbe began explaining that every Jew can be a beinoni by awakening the hidden love in the heart of every Jew, which we inherited from our forefathers. He began to explain that because our forefathers were a chariot for Hashem’s will, each of us received an inheritance. That inheritance is that every Jew has a soul that comes from Chochmah. The Or Ein Sof rests in the sefirah of Chochmah, and so the Or Ein Sof shines within every Jew, in the Chochmah of the soul. This is the special quality of a Jew. He explained that earlier. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to spell it out: What exactly is this? What is the Chochmah of the soul? We say that what is special about a Jew is that the Or Ein Sof, blessed be He, shines in the Chochmah of the soul, and that is why a Jew has this unique connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So here, in the second part of chapter 18, the Alter Rebbe will explain it in terms we can understand. He will explain how a Jew’s special quality is expressed in practice, what defines Chochmah and why the Or Ein Sof, blessed be He, shines specifically in Chochmah, and how this relates to the two special qualities of a Jew: emunah and mesirus nefesh. So let’s read where we left off. The Alter Rebbe says, “Behold.” Again: To understand what is special about a Jew—what it means that a Jew’s soul has the Chochmah of the soul, in which the Or Ein Sof shines—the Alter Rebbe explains: “Behold, Chochmah is the source of intellect.”

02:30 Speaker 1 First, then, the Alter Rebbe will explain what is special about Chochmah, and why we say that the revelation of the Or Ein Sof is found specifically there. What is special about Chochmah? The Alter Rebbe says, “Behold, Chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding.” The faculty of Chochmah in the soul is the source of intellect and understanding. “And it is higher than Binah.” Chochmah is on a higher level than Binah, “which is”—meaning Binah—“the understanding and grasp of an idea.” Binah means understanding an idea and grasping it. A person understands something and gets hold of it. That is called Binah. But “it”—going back to Chochmah—“is their source.” We need to pay attention to how we read these words. The Alter Rebbe moves from Chochmah to Binah and then back from Binah to Chochmah. He begins by saying that Chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding. “And it is higher than Binah.” What is Binah? Binah is understanding and grasping an idea. But Chochmah is above understanding and grasp, “and it is their source.” It is their source. “And this is the meaning of the word Chochmah”: koach mah, the power of “what.” The word Chochmah is made up of those two words. On the one hand, we call it a koach, a power. But what kind of power? The power of “what”? The Alter Rebbe explains what mah means: “That which is not grasped.” We say “What?” when we do not understand something. It expresses a kind of bittul; it indicates a lack of comprehension. It is koach mah—something not yet grasped or understood, not yet caught hold of through comprehension. So what is the Alter Rebbe explaining here? He goes on at length, apparently repeating himself. We need to understand what he wants to explain by speaking at such length. In the Rebbe’s notes on Tanya, which were published after Gimmel Tammuz, the Rebbe even writes that the length and repetition of the wording require examination...

04:42 Speaker 1 In those notes on Tanya, we see that the Rebbe writes that the length and repetition of the wording require examination. There is also a letter from the Rebbe that was published later, in the book of the Rash[i][?], where the Rebbe offers some explanation to help us understand what the Alter Rebbe is saying here. It comes out as follows. If we look at the Alter Rebbe’s wording, we see that he keeps presenting two sides. On the one hand, he explains how Chochmah is above understanding and comprehension. He emphasizes how Chochmah transcends intellect and understanding, how it cannot be grasped or understood. At the same time, the Alter Rebbe emphasizes the other side: Chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding; it is their source. That is what the Alter Rebbe is coming to explain. Some wanted to say that these are two separate levels, two different aspects of Chochmah: one in which Chochmah is above understanding and comprehension, and another in which it is their source—as though the Alter Rebbe were describing two levels here. The Rebbe rejects this in his letter. On the contrary, the Rebbe writes, the Alter Rebbe puts the two together to emphasize that they are one thing. The level of Chochmah—the Chochmah of the soul, which is what we are discussing here—has two sides. They are not two levels, but two sides of the very nature of Chochmah. On the one hand, Chochmah has an aspect that transcends: it is above intellect and understanding, beyond the bounds of comprehension. That is the element of “what” in Chochmah. At the same time, Chochmah also includes the other side: it is the source of intellect and understanding.

06:35 Speaker 1 It is precisely these two points together that make up the nature of the sefirah of Chochmah. This connects to everything we want to understand about a Jew when we come to the practical avodah. We will soon see how it relates to what the Alter Rebbe wants to explain in the following chapters. Before we get into the explanation, we should also note that the Alter Rebbe has already spoken about Chochmah. This is not the first time he explains what Chochmah is. We encountered it earlier, in chapter 3 of Tanya. There, too, the Alter Rebbe discussed Chochmah, Binah and Daas, and explained what Chochmah is. Looking at chapter 3, we see that he explains Chochmah there too, and says that Chochmah is koach mah. So we need to understand the difference between what the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 3 and what he adds here in chapter 18. If it is the same thing, why does he need to repeat it? He already explained it; he could have said, “as mentioned above.” Clearly, the Alter Rebbe adds something here. What does he add, and how does it differ from what we discussed earlier? Why did he explain one aspect of Chochmah there, and a different aspect of the sefirah of Chochmah here? Let’s try to understand it. First, we’ll speak about the subject in general. When we speak about Chochmah—and the Alter Rebbe discussed this at the beginning of Tanya—we speak about Chochmah and Binah as two levels of intellect. We are speaking about the human intellect. Chassidus says that the human intellect has three components: Chochmah, Binah and Daas. Here we are not discussing Daas; here

08:23 Speaker 1 We’re talking only about chochmah and binah. So today we won’t discuss daas; we’ll discuss chochmah and binah. How does a person’s mind work? First comes chochmah, then binah, and afterward daas. That is what the Alter Rebbe discussed in chapter 3 of Tanya. There, the Alter Rebbe explains the structure of a person: every soul has intellect and emotions. There is an order in the soul. First a person grasps something through chochmah; from chochmah it comes to binah, from binah to daas, and from daas come love, awe, and the other emotions. That is chapter 3. There the Alter Rebbe was discussing serving Hashem through intellect and emotions. A person wants to attain love and awe of Hashem, and the Alter Rebbe says that these come through contemplation. You have to study and contemplate—using chochmah, binah, and daas—and from that, love and awe of Hashem are born within a person. That is what we discussed in chapter 3. Here, in chapter 18, the Alter Rebbe comes to explain something entirely different. Here he explains the hidden love. He is not talking about contemplation or about developing love and awe through contemplation. On the contrary, he is talking about an essential love, the hidden love, a love of mesiras nefesh. We’ll discuss the G-dly part of the soul. That is the point of

10:17 Speaker 1 chapter 18. So here, chochmah and binah are explained in an entirely different way. What is the difference? In chapter 3, we were speaking about a person’s intellect. What is the difference between chochmah and binah in the human mind? Simply put, chochmah is the point of an idea, and binah is its explanation. When a person studies an intellectual subject, or wants to contemplate a G-dly matter—to contemplate the greatness of Hashem—the order is that chochmah comes first. What is chochmah? It is the central point of the idea: the insight, the discovery, the concept. What point am I going to contemplate? I’m going to contemplate the point that creation from nothing takes place at every single moment. I have the central idea. Then binah comes and tries to explain and expand on it: How is there creation from nothing, and why? Why at every moment? How do we explain it? There is one analogy, then a second analogy, and another: an analogy from the sun, an analogy from throwing a stone. Why do we need both analogies? What is the difference between them? Why does one work, or not work? All that breadth and detailed explanation is binah. It takes the point and expands it. So chochmah is the point of the idea, and binah is its breadth and explanation. That is the order of contemplation. We see this all the time in Chassidus. Chassidus often speaks of “the central point of the explanation,” followed by “an explanation of the subject.” First you contemplate the central point, and then its explanation. After that comes daas, and from there are born the love and awe of Hashem that come through contemplation. So chochmah and binah are two stages in understanding. That is one subject, which we discussed in chapter 3. Here,

12:21 Speaker 1 in chapter 18, the Alter Rebbe is talking about something entirely different. Here he speaks about the Ein Sof shining in chochmah. So here chochmah is not an intellectual insight; it is something much deeper than intellect. What is the soul’s faculty of chochmah? It is not merely the point of an intellectual idea—that is one particular expression of it. When we speak about intellect, chochmah is where the central point arises. But the soul’s faculty of chochmah is something else entirely, something much deeper and higher. It is a special power a Jew has: the power to become nullified, the power of being nothing. It is an extraordinary power—the ability to be in a state where he is not there, as though “I don’t exist here.” Nothing at all. I am nothing; I don’t exist. Only what shines here exists. There is something G-dly here, something higher, utterly beyond my own bounds. And a person has this ability. That is the soul’s faculty of chochmah: the ability to be zero, to be nothing, to be transparent, and to let the G-dly truth dwell within him. That is Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

13:46 Speaker 2 I see.

13:46 Speaker 1 Now, this power is on an entirely different level from the faculties that come after it. Every faculty of the soul from binah downward is a defined self. Each faculty is a way in which a person feels and takes things in. There is my own self: I grasp chesed. I’m a kind person, so I love good things and am drawn to things connected with the attribute of chesed. So let’s start with the highest level, binah. What is the faculty of binah? It means the way I understand things. The difference between chochmah and binah is not just that one is a point and the other an expansion, one is brief and the other lengthy, one is a concept and the other its explanation. No. It is a much more fundamental, much deeper difference. Chochmah is bittul, self-nullification; binah is a sense of self. Chochmah is nothingness; binah is somethingness. The soul’s faculty of chochmah is its power of nothingness, its power of bittul. It is where a person becomes nothing at all, and therefore the Ein Sof can shine within him. Binah, by contrast, is the way I understand things. That is where a sense of self begins. Yes, what did you ask? Do you understand? So that is the point when we speak about the soul’s faculty of chochmah. This is what the Alter Rebbe says: in this respect, there is a wondrous quality found only in a Jew. This ability to become nothing is a wondrous power that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Jewish people. It is the power of bittul, of having no sense of self, which is why we say that the Ein Sof shines in chochmah. When a non-Jew believes in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, his faith in G-dliness, his connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, comes from his own sense of self. It comes not from his nothingness, but from his own being, from his intellect. That is, he understands

15:56 Speaker 1 —we’re talking about a religious non-Jew, a, uh, a Christian [unclear], an ordinary non-Jew. What does faith mean to him? It means he understands that there must be a Master. There must be someone... The world is not a jungle; the world is not a jungle, it is not a mess. There is a Master of this world. Reasoning from the world leads him to the conclusion that if you want a normal life, there has to be some kind of master. The world does not operate in chaos. So there is a Master, someone who created it, who made this whole reality, and therefore he believes and serves Him. But what does G-dliness mean to him? Something founded on the world, on reality. From reality he arrives at Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Through his intellect he arrives at Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So his entire conception of G-dliness rests on intellect, on the world, on reality. Consequently, that conception of G-dliness is also bound up with reality. It is not G-dliness as it truly is—not the truth of G-dliness as it is infinite and without limit. As it says in the sefer, non-Jews believe only in the name Elokim. Non-Jews believe only in the Divine light that fills all worlds. And we learn in many maamarim—yes, various maamarim that discuss this subject—that a non-Jew’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with Hakadosh Boruch Hu as He relates to the realm of the world. His conception of G-dliness is based on reason. With a Jew it is entirely different. For a Jew, G-dliness does not begin with his own sense of self. For a Jew, it begins because the Ein Sof shines in the soul. There is the soul’s chochmah, the power of bittul, and through it the Ein Sof shines. So the illumination comes from above, from G-dliness, because the Ein Sof shines. And if it comes from the shining of the Ein Sof, then what shines there is the truth of G-dliness, all the worlds, the very essence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—the truth of genuine faith. That is what shines in a Jew, and that is our soul.

17:53 Speaker 1 This is the explanation the Rabbi gives here of what we said. As we said, every Jew has chochmah in the soul, and this chochmah is present in every Jew. What does that mean in words? Here is the point, the understanding: A Jew has this power, the power of chochmah in the soul, the power of bittul. Because of that bittul, the truth of G-dliness shines within him, because the Ein Sof shines in a person’s soul. But what is the Alter Rebbe saying here? On the one hand, there is a much deeper point here than what we said in chapter 3. In chapter 3, we spoke about chochmah as intellect. Here we are speaking about chochmah as the Ein Sof that shines within chochmah. That is something altogether different. But the Alter Rebbe adds here that chochmah has two sides. On the one hand, we say that chochmah is above intellect and understanding. As we said, it is bittul, and the Ein Sof shines within it. On the other hand, chochmah is the source of intellect. Why does the Alter Rebbe want to emphasize that chochmah is the source of intellect? In other words, as we said, on the one hand chochmah is a person’s bittul, the place where truth shines in the soul. On the other hand, that is where the soul’s faculties begin. It is the source of intellect and understanding, from which binah subsequently develops. Why does that matter? It matters for everything the Alter Rebbe is now going to explain in Tanya. What does the Alter Rebbe want to explain to us now on page Kuf? That every Jew has a connection to G-dliness expressed in mesirus nefesh. The mesirus nefesh, the faith we have deep inside, comes from the Ein Sof shining within us. It does not come from me. It comes from the truth of Hakadosh Boruch Hu shining within us. That is why it emerges directly as simple faith and mesirus nefesh, and every Jew has it. On the other hand, it is

19:48 Speaker 1 not something disconnected, detached up above. It is the source of intellect and understanding. In other words, it is the source of all the faculties that come afterward, so it affects the intellect, it affects the emotions, and it reaches all the way to thought, speech, and action. That is what the Alter Rebbe will explain in the following chapters: A Jew has the ability to bring his faith—his simple faith, the essential connection at the foundation of his soul, stemming from “Abba founded the daughter”—down into everyday life, into thought, speech, and action, and to actually be a beinoni in practice. This follows from the two aspects of chochmah: Because of the bittul in chochmah, we are vessels for the light of the Ein Sof; and because chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding, it takes hold of a person and permeates his entire being, down to thought, speech, and action. Now, when we look at the wording of Tanya, we can see what the Alter Rebbe intended with his extended phrasing here. Let’s read it again inside. He says: “Chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding”—the source of intellect and understanding. That means it relates to the person. On the other hand, it is above binah; it is higher than binah. So we can understand why it is a vessel for bittul: “Binah is the comprehension and grasp of an intellectual concept. Chochmah is above comprehension and grasp, and is their source. This is the meaning of chochmah, koach mah”—the power of “what”—“that which is not yet grasped or understood, and has not yet been apprehended. Therefore, the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is enclothed in it, for no thought can grasp Him at all.” So it is specifically in the soul’s chochmah that the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is enclothed, because of the mah within it, its bittul. That is why the light of the Ein Sof, which no thought can grasp at all, is enclothed in it. On the other hand, because chochmah is the source of intellect, this bittul, this faith, also subsequently penetrates a person’s own being,

21:52 Speaker 1 so that even his own being becomes a vessel for it. He can therefore bring this simple faith into his intellect and emotions, all the way down to thought, speech, and action, by working on himself.

22:06 Speaker 3 My openness. That is what a Jew’s chochmah is all about. What does it say about me?

22:15 Speaker 1 That is the definition of chochmah. That is the quality of chochmah.

22:18 Speaker 3 It was there before, as a foundation.

22:20 Speaker 1 What kind of power is chochmah, by definition? A power in the soul, a power of transparency. An inner power we have that enables a person to be in a transparent state. It is not about me; it is about Him. There is a power in the soul, something within our abilities, through which we can step outside our own sense of self and let the truth shine within us. Now, when we discuss this subject—when we discuss chochmah and binah—we see that in Chassidus generally, this is essentially the difference between chochmah and binah. In Tanya as well, even when we are speaking about intellectual understanding, what is the difference between... between the ways a person grasps something? In Chassidus, they always give the familiar analogy of a person studying an intellectual concept: There is that flash of insight. A lightning flash. Look at the way that flash works in the mind. You say, “Ah, I’ve grasped something here.” You grasp a point that lights up for you. That flash of insight—what is it in the soul? So let’s talk about it. When a person studies a subject, he toils over it. You study a sugya and struggle with it. You do not understand it, and you try to understand. You work hard at it, and so on. You have questions and contradictions you cannot resolve, and the sugya seems untenable from every angle. You do not just go to the maggid shiur to have him solve your problems; you try on your own. “I want to understand this Tosafos, this Gemara, this subject, on my own. I want to arrive at an understanding of it.” You struggle and struggle and struggle. What does it mean that you struggle? What is happening? And then suddenly—ah!—there is a certain clarity. Wow. Something has lit up for me. That is chochmah. What happened here? At first glance, it is hard to understand. After all, the words of the Gemara or Tosafos are the same words. They have not changed. I knew what the words meant before, too. So what caused it? What happened? Through effort, another question and another question and another

24:45 Speaker 1 obscurity, and more of the same, you reached the point where you were almost ready to give up—and then suddenly there was light. What happened all of a sudden? What was revealed here? Chassidus explains that this is the idea of bittul. Toil means setting yourself aside. The power to toil is a faculty of the soul through which a person steps outside his own sense of self. That is what toil means. If you think about it, what happens when I struggle with something? Struggling means that I tell myself, “Stop thinking about how you want to understand it. Stop looking for easy ways out. Stop. What is he saying? Wait—what does Rabbi Yotam[?], or the Arizal, or the Rosh want to say? Not what I want to understand, or what would be more comfortable for me to understand. Step outside yourself a little.” That is what toil means. Toil is the work I do to set aside the ego in my own understanding. Then, at a certain point, I say, “Now I get what Tosafos was thinking, what Tosafos meant.” So it turns out that this is bittul. The idea itself, the light of truth, the point he is making, shines and shines in the soul. That is why [unclear]—there is light. Suddenly he grasps the idea. That happened because he set himself aside. That is what happened: He set himself aside, and as a result, the idea—the light of the truth of the subject, what the author or the author of Tosafos was thinking—shone within my soul. After that comes the work of binah: How do I now bring this insight down into my own words, my own explanations, my own world? These are the two faculties of the soul. This is the difference between the faculty of chochmah and the faculty of binah. Chochmah is the power to move from yesh to ayin, a movement beyond oneself. Binah is the power to take the ayin and clothe it in yesh. Once you have grasped the truth, how do you clothe it, how do you bring it down into your own words? So that is why I say, I say,

27:07 Speaker 1 That’s why Chassidus says that the way we explain chochmah and binah in intellectual terms—that there is the point of an idea and then its explanation—is really an expression of chochmah and binah in the soul. It comes from the same place. Chochmah in the soul is truly a matter of the truth shining forth. The light of the Ein Sof shines in the soul. And that is why Chassidus compares it to the power of sight. Chochmah is called sight. [unclear] Chochmah is called sight, and binah is called hearing. What is the difference between sight and hearing? It’s the same idea: sight is not about what I want; it’s about how the thing reveals itself. When you see something, you see it not according to your own understanding, but as it reveals itself. That is the power of sight. I might not understand it. I might have thought it was the opposite, but I saw it—that’s how it is. It revealed itself. And why [unclear]? There is some kind of [unclear] here. So a person becomes nullified here. It isn’t your reality; it isn’t how you understand it. You don’t understand it. That’s how it is. You saw it. Our connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is a connection of sight. Here we come to “[unclear].” You see that the soul sees G-dliness there, and that is what the Alter Rebbe is discussing here in Tanya: chochmah in the soul. It is a connection of sight. The soul sees a revelation of G-dliness, and therefore it has this bittul. And the Alter Rebbe will go on to explain how this is expressed in faith and in self-sacrifice, as we will explain, with Hashem’s help, later.