Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 19 - Part 5

00:00 Yes, so we’re here in chapter 19, at the top of page 25. The Alter Rebbe is in the middle of explaining the hidden love—the hidden love that every Jew naturally has for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He brings out two points here. We spoke about the first: What does “hidden love” mean? This love does not come with an overt surge of feeling. It is a natural love, hidden by its very nature. In other words, it does not necessarily come as an emotion or excitement. It is a love inherent in the soul, like a son’s love for his father. You don’t necessarily see the feeling, the love, openly; it is something inward in the soul, something a person does not ordinarily feel. It reveals itself at special times. It comes into the open when there is some concealment or obstruction. But in any case, it is hidden by nature. The Alter Rebbe adds, though, that there is another aspect here: it is also hidden beneath a sackcloth garment of kelipah. This love a Jew has for Hakadosh Boruch Hu—the love of mesirus nefesh, the desire to be absorbed in the light of Ein Sof, in the Life of life, and to become utterly nullified—is in a state of exile. That is the main point. Let’s go over the first lines again. “And therefore it is called”—the first line at the top of page 25—“And therefore this love in the G-dly soul, whose will and desire is to cleave to Hashem, the Life of life, blessed be He, is called ‘hidden love.’” Why is it called hidden love? Because it is hidden and covered by a sackcloth garment of kelipah in the sinners of Israel. It is there, but it is covered by that sackcloth garment of kelipah in the sinners of Israel. That is another reason it is called hidden. It is not only hidden by the very nature of this love, which does not come openly with a surge of feeling; there is also something concealing it. There is the kelipah, the sense of self of this world and of the animal soul. There is

02:36 what he spoke about earlier—that they are called dead. That is the exile the animal soul creates. It puts the soul into a state of exile and rules over it, as in exile. We discussed in the previous class that exile means you cannot do what you want. Others rule over you and take you places you would not choose to be. That is how the animal soul takes the G-dly soul and uses it for undesirable things. That is the sackcloth garment of kelipah. “And from it a spirit of folly enters them.” This sackcloth garment brings about the spirit of folly. A spirit of folly, “leading them to sin, as our Sages said, ‘A person does not sin, etc.’” There is a teaching of our Sages there, relevant to those now learning Tractate Shabbos, where this whole idea of “A person does not commit a transgression” is explained. But the Alter Rebbe’s wording here is “A person does not sin.” It is interesting that he changes the wording of the Gemara. The Gemara says, “A person does not commit a transgression.” The Alter Rebbe writes, “A person does not sin,” because he wants to emphasize that this applies not only to a deliberate transgression but also to one committed inadvertently. As is known, “sins” can refer to inadvertent acts. The Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize that even when a person sins inadvertently, it comes from a spirit of folly. The spirit of—meaning, one might think: All right, a deliberate transgression makes sense. To deliberately transgress is a spirit of folly: a person loses his senses and wants to do something against Hashem’s will. But if he transgresses inadvertently, it was a mistake. He did not really intend to do it. So why is that called a spirit of folly? The Alter Rebbe is saying that even an inadvertent transgression comes from the spirit of folly of the kelipah, from the sackcloth garment that makes him forget. We know how the Alter Rebbe explains this in Tanya, Igeres Hakodesh, section 28. There too, the Alter Rebbe writes that even an inadvertent sin

04:35 comes from kelipah. What kind of kelipah? Kelipas nogah. But it is still kelipah. Why? The Rebbe explains this in several places in Likkutei Sichos: a normal, healthy person of sound mind will not inadvertently do something that is harmful to him, either. We see this plainly. A person does not jump into a fire by mistake. A person does not accidentally fall off a building. No one does. There are things a person will not do even inadvertently. More than that, as they say, “A person is always liable for his actions, whether awake or asleep.” Even in his sleep, a person will not do things that harm him. That is the idea of “a person is always liable for his actions.” A normal person does not fall out of bed in the middle of the night. Presumably, that happens when someone is in a very unusual state. Small children can sometimes fall out in the middle of the night, or someone sleeping in some unusual way—I don’t know, something happened, G-d forbid. But an ordinary person sleeps without needing someone to guard his bed. He does not fall, because his nature leads him to protect himself even while asleep. He remains in control enough to protect himself. That is why the halachah is that if you break something in your sleep, you have to pay for it: a person has a measure of control even while asleep. All the more so when he is awake. A person will not inadvertently do things that harm him, because he understands that they are harmful. If he does, it is because something really is wrong. He has a disorder, as it is called; something is not right. The same is true in spiritual matters. The fact that a person can commit a transgression even inadvertently shows that his animal soul has gained the upper hand. And because the animal soul has gained the upper hand

06:19 he does not feel it, and so he can even forget. There can even be an inadvertent transgression. So when we say, “A person does not sin,” even an inadvertent sin comes from a spirit of folly. It is all part of that same sackcloth garment of kelipah that the animal soul places over a person—the kelipah, the sense of self, the stubbornness. Because of it, he feels himself but does not feel his bittul, his soul, or the chochmah of the soul. And because he does not feel these, he can stumble into a transgression inadvertently, all the more so intentionally and deliberately. That is the idea of “A person does not sin,” the idea of a spirit of folly. The Alter Rebbe will explain it further in the chapters ahead. It is very interesting to notice a detail in Tanya: everything is precise, every word and every letter. The Alter Rebbe writes, “A person does not sin, etc.” He does not even write “and so on.” Seemingly, the Alter Rebbe wants to bring the end of the teaching of our Sages: “A person does not sin unless a spirit of folly enters him.” So he ought to quote the whole teaching. Perhaps he does not need to quote all of it because he has already used the phrase “a spirit of folly” just before this. He says earlier, “a spirit of folly enters him.” But then, after “A person does not sin,” he should write “and so on.” We know there is a difference between the Alter Rebbe writing “etc.” and “and so on.” “And so on” emphasizes the continuation, that the main point also lies in what follows, or that the continuation is relevant. “Etc.” emphasizes the opposite: the main point is the first part. That is why he does not add the “and.” The “and” points to what follows. Without it, the main point here is specifically the opening words. So the question arises: In this teaching of our Sages, isn’t the part relevant here specifically the continuation, “a spirit of folly”?

08:09 So the “and” is missing from “and so on.” In any case, the Alter Rebbe writes, “A person does not sin, etc.” We could say that by choosing precisely this wording and this form, the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize the first part of the teaching of our Sages. What does he want to emphasize? When our Sages use the formulation “It is not that such-and-such happens, except when such-and-such,” they are emphasizing a negation. If he had written, “They also said that a spirit of folly enters him,” there could have been several reasons for it. But “A person does not sin” stresses that, in essence, sin is unthinkable. A person does not sin. The first thing we are told is that a person cannot commit a transgression. For a Jew, a transgression is something utterly unthinkable. “A person does not sin”: there is no way a Jew would commit a transgression. It is contrary to what is normal; it is madness. It is not normal. But then what are we seeing here? We have to find an explanation. It is a spirit of folly. The Alter Rebbe wants to draw precisely this point from the wording of our Sages, from the Gemara in Sotah saying, “A person does not sin.” We see that sin itself is utterly unthinkable for a person, and so if we do see a sin, we have to explain it. The explanation is that there is a spirit of folly, something that covers over the truth. That is what is abnormal; it is exile. It is not—it is not. But a Jew by nature—and this is what the Alter Rebbe wants to explain here in this chapter of Tanya, the main point he wants to emphasize—is the greatness of a Jew, the greatness of the soul: a Jew has this point of connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu so strongly that, from that standpoint, sin is contrary to what is normal, contrary to his nature

10:00 his. “A person does not sin...” Rather, that is the idea of the Shechinah being in exile, of the spirit of folly. “And this exile of the faculty of chochmah applies only to the aspect of it that extends throughout the entire soul to give it life.” Now the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain. Here is the Alter Rebbe’s new point: when we say that the soul is in exile, that the Shechinah is in exile, we are speaking only about the soul’s extension, not the essence of the soul. The essence of the soul is not in exile. When we speak of a spirit of folly and a sackcloth garment and all these things that conceal and obscure, allowing a person to come to the point of committing a sin, that applies only to the outer dimension, to the extension, to the soul’s revealed light. But the essence of the soul never falls. The essence of the soul is not in exile. The Alter Rebbe now explains why: “And this exile of the faculty of chochmah”—when we say that the power of bittul is in exile—“applies only to the aspect of it that extends throughout the entire soul to give it life.” It is only the soul’s extension, which is revealed in all the conscious faculties and gives them life. We said earlier that the soul’s chochmah—we learned in chapter 18—“Wisdom gives life to its possessor.” Yes, in chapter 18 he cited the verse, “Wisdom gives life to its possessor.” There is chochmah as the faculty of chochmah, the power of bittul, the essence of the soul, which exists in a state of bittul and connection, as the essential point. That is the essence of the soul. And there is chochmah as it enters binah and, through binah, enters all the faculties. That is “Wisdom gives life to its possessor”: chochmah extends into all the faculties, throughout the person. That is the extension of chochmah. So when we speak of the spirit of folly, what does it cover, and what does it bring into exile? The extension of chochmah, which reaches all the faculties from binah downward. There, a state of exile can exist: a person, as long as he has

12:15 a spirit of folly, can even become one of the sinners of Israel and do all sorts of things that run contrary to reason. All of that is in its extension. But the root and core of the faculty of chochmah in the divine soul, in the mind—chochmah itself, bittul itself, the chochmah of the soul that resides in the mind—does not become clothed in the sackcloth garment of kelipah in the heart. There, kelipah cannot put it into actual exile. It is not in a state of actual exile. In other words, the exile is in the heart. The mind is not in exile. Exile applies to the heart. There is a difference between the mind and the heart. What is the difference? In simple terms, the Alter Rebbe said earlier in Tanya, in chapter 9, that the divine soul’s place is in the mind, while the animal soul’s place is in the heart. What is the difference between mind and heart? The mind seeks the truth. That is its nature. By nature, the mind is more objective, more drawn to ideals. Not subjective—objective. It wants to know what is true, what things really are. The heart has more of a sense of self. It is more egocentric, more focused on “me”: what is good for me, what is comfortable for me, what I like. That is what it keeps seeking. That is why the center of the animal soul is the heart. That is where the sense of self and yeshus are found. After all, what did we say? What is the difference between holiness and kelipah? What is the fundamental distinction between them? The Alter Rebbe said earlier that the whole foundation of holiness is bittul, while kelipah is yeshus. It follows that the difference between holiness and kelipah, in general, is the difference between mind and heart. The mind has more of a natural tendency toward bittul: it seeks the truth and tries to move beyond its own perspective—not “what is good for me,” but “what is true.” The heart is more focused on itself, on what is good for me, on its own yeshus and sense of being. That is why we say that the sackcloth garment of kelipah,

14:24 the sense of self that is the kelipah concealing the truth, is in the heart. In the mind, by contrast, it is not present to the same degree. But he does not say it is completely absent; he says “actual” exile. There is no actual exile there. That does not mean the mind is entirely holy. The mind also needs to be guarded. But everything here is relative, right? We are speaking about the difference between mind and heart. The heart is more “me,” more self-centered, more caught up in itself. That is where the sackcloth garment of kelipah is found. The divine soul extends into the heart too, and in that extension there can be a spirit of folly and the concealing sackcloth garment of kelipah. That can bring a person to a state contrary to his dignity, to commit sins, may G-d protect us. But when it comes to the mind, where the essence of chochmah resides—bittul itself—the Alter Rebbe says it is not in a state of actual exile. What, then, does happen? The Alter Rebbe says: “It is only in a state of sleep.” With regard to the mind, to chochmah, there is no state of exile, but there is a state of sleep. What is the difference between exile and sleep? Exile means you are doing things, but you are acting for the opposing side. Exile means you are somewhere you do not want to be. You are active: you act, you do things, but you do them in a place that is not yours. In other words, you act for the animal soul instead of the divine soul. That is exile. So exile is an active state. Sleep is passive. Sleep is a condition. On the contrary, when one sleeps, the soul ascends. It is detached, somewhere else. It is not doing anything wrong, but it is in a state of unawareness, somewhere else. That is the difference when it comes to chochmah. The chochmah of the soul is always there, and it never deceives

16:23 itself. There is no folly there; it is not fooled. There is no way to deceive the chochmah of the soul. The soul’s chochmah is chochmah, it is bittul. There the truth is felt, and there are no mental twists or distortions. But what can happen? There are times when it is there but is not conscious. In other words, a person does not sense it through his conscious faculties. It is asleep. The soul is asleep. The soul is there, but it is asleep, and so he does not feel it. But chochmah, in its own place, remains entirely intact. That is what the Alter Rebbe says here: “It is only in a state of sleep in the wicked.” The chochmah of the soul is there, but it is asleep. As our Sages said, “I sleep in exile.” This is well known. “And it does not have its effect on them as long as their daas and binah are occupied with the desires of the world.” As long as daas and binah, the faculties below chochmah, are immersed in the desires of this world and are in exile, the chochmah of the soul is asleep. So that is the difference between the extension of chochmah and chochmah itself. The extension of chochmah is its effect on binah and daas, and that can be in exile. The light of chochmah that enters binah, then passes from binah to daas and onward, can be in a state of exile. It can be subject to a spirit of folly, so that a person thinks everything is fine, that he can go on sinning and nothing will happen. All the effects of the spirit of folly conceal the truth and confuse him. They lead him to think there is no problem, that his relationship with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—that he remains a Jew, and so on. All the reckonings he fails to make, and that is why he sins. But chochmah itself does not do these things. It knows the truth; it recognizes the truth. What happens, though? As long as binah and daas are caught up in kelipah, chochmah is there, but asleep. It does not, it does not,

18:18 No, no, it isn’t active. It’s there in a passive way. That’s the point. But what happens when there’s a test? The moment a test arises, you reach a situation where you can’t lie anymore. The animal soul, the soul... I don’t know what to call it, finds itself in a place, in a situation where it can’t pretend. It knows: There’s no more nonsense here. This is a moment of truth. So that’s what the Alter Rebbe says now: “But when they face a test in a matter of faith”—the moment a person is touched at the point of faith, which is beyond understanding and reaches the soul through the faculty of chochmah within it, he comes to a moment when his faith is tested. A non-Jew comes and tells you to bow to an idol, or there’s a transgression that you know will destroy your life. You know that here there are no excuses. You’re cutting yourself off from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You know there’s no way around it. So at that point, the chochmah in the soul awakens. “Then it rouses itself from its sleep and acts with the power of Hashem vested in it.” The chochmah in the soul is revealed, and when chochmah is revealed, Hashem’s power is vested in it. What did we say? What is special about the chochmah in the soul? It isn’t simply a faculty of the soul. If it were just a faculty of the soul, a person’s desire to live might become so strong that he wouldn’t have mesirus nefesh. But what is special about chochmah in the soul is that it isn’t just a faculty of the soul. The Infinite shines within it; a light shines there through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed. And when Hakadosh Boruch Hu shines in the soul, a person will go forward with mesirus nefesh. There are no more calculations, no more reasoning. That’s what it means, “with the power of Hashem vested in it”: the Infinite shines in the chochmah of the soul, the Infinite Light shines within it, and wherever His light

20:32 is found, all concealment falls away, and a person will have actual mesirus nefesh. As it says, “Hashem awoke like one asleep.” Who is awakening here? Hashem is awakening. What does it mean that Hashem awakens? The presence of Hashem within the soul, the Infinite vested in the soul’s chochmah—that is what awakens in a person. He stands firm through a test of faith in Hashem without any reason, understanding, or intellectual grasp. At that point, a person faces the test with firm faith in Hashem, without calculations: no more excuses, no more calculations. He overcomes the kelipos and the desires of this world, whether for permitted or forbidden things, to which he has become accustomed; he despises them and chooses Hashem as his portion and his lot, giving his life for the sanctity of His name. At that moment, a person’s yechidah awakens. But notice, the Alter Rebbe calls it chochmah, the presence of Hashem within chochmah, which illuminates the G-dliness in his soul. When the G-dliness in the soul awakens, this person who a moment earlier was among the sinners of Israel—we’re talking about a person whose everyday conduct placed him among the lowest of the sinners of Israel—had been in a state of rebellion. But that was only his outward self. His neshamah was never in rebellion. His neshamah remained strong. This whole matter of G-dliness was merely asleep. The moment you touch the neshamah, it comes out—it bursts forth. And when the neshamah emerges and is revealed, and the Infinite Light shining in chochmah is revealed, what does the Alter Rebbe say? This is the point: all the desires and everything else vanish and become repulsive, as though none of the kelipah had ever been there. Then the person chooses Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to the point of actual mesirus nefesh. And really, this is the history of the Jewish people. These words that the Alter Rebbe says here are the story of our entire people. They are very powerful words, but they express the full depth, the central point, the entire essence of a Jew. What is it? What is

22:45 the essence of a Jew? There are dozens, thousands of stories about this from every generation: Jews whose lives had been immersed in kelipah and sitra achra. But the moment someone touched that point in them, the sensitive point of their faith, of their Jewishness, it brought them completely out of exile and awakened the chochmah in their souls. And then they did teshuvah. It starts with the stories in the Gemara. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a situation where someone is going to kill you. There are all kinds of stories and situations that touch a place in my soul where I feel... Look, I can’t lie anymore. I’m stuck where I stand, as they say. You’ve reached a place where you know you have to decide which direction to take, and then your neshamah awakens. There you can’t fool yourself anymore. So what happened in that story? Elazar ben Durdaya, who for eighty years committed every transgression in the world. He was a Jew, as steeped in transgression as a person could be, [unclear]. And what happened? At a certain moment, what did they tell him? In the story in the Gemara, what did the woman say to him? She told him he could never do teshuvah. That’s all she said: that there was no way for him to make things right. And when she said that, it brought about his entire... A person who for eighty years had been immersed in every desire and every kelipah of sitra achra—he was living in the kelipah of sitra achra up to his neck, through and through. But the moment they told him there was no way for him to make things right, it touched the point of chochmah within him. And then he... There’s the well-known story they tell about Yossel the Thief. There was once a Jew who was a thief, the thief of the shtetl, and he went into a place, into a house of idol worship,

26:28 and stole there. They caught him, imprisoned him, and wanted to kill him. Then the priest told him that if he decided, rachmana litzlan, to convert and change his faith, he would pardon him and give him all kinds of good things. And then, in the well-known story, Yossel said: “I lived as a thief, but I was born a Jew and I’ll die a Jew.” A thief—but when the moment of faith arrives, it awakens within him. The point the Alter Rebbe is making here, though, is that when it awakens, he doesn’t awaken only in that particular matter of faith—and we’ll come to that point. When his faith awakens, he comes to despise all the evil he had throughout his life, and so it transforms his entire being. That’s what the Alter Rebbe says: he despises it, despises all those desires and everything else, and then he chooses Hakadosh Boruch Hu as his portion and his lot. He devotes himself to G-dliness; his entire being becomes devoted to G-dliness. It becomes a fundamental change in the whole person.