Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 22 - Part 2

00:01 We’re learning Tanya, chapter 22, page 2, in the middle of the chapter. Lesson 47 is about the descent in level. “And therefore they are called ‘other gods.’” The Alter Rebbe is speaking here about the sitra achra. At the beginning of chapter 22, the Alter Rebbe explained that since the Torah speaks in human language, it uses the term “speech”—and speech produces something that appears separate. So we say the same thing with regard to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: from the recipient’s perspective, creation is experienced as something separate. So how does that happen? The Alter Rebbe explains that through numerous, immense contractions of many different kinds, the inner Divine vitality becomes concealed within the speech. This brings about created beings that conceal G-dliness. The Alter Rebbe continues: “And therefore they are called ‘other gods.’” That is why, when the verse in the Ten Commandments speaks about kelipah and sitra achra, it calls them “other gods.” What does “other gods” mean? The Alter Rebbe explains it in two ways: one here, and another later in the chapter. So what does he say “other gods” means? “Because the sustenance and vitality they draw are not from the aspect of the face, but from the aspect of the back of holiness.” “Other” is related to “back”: the vitality that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives to kelipah, to sitra achra, comes from the back, not the face. In other words, both holiness and kelipah receive from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Kelipah, too, needs sustenance and vitality. The difference is that holiness receives in an inward way, face to face,

02:44 as in “Hashem spoke” and “May Hashem shine His face upon you.” In holiness there is the radiance of Hashem’s face, whereas kelipah receives from Hakadosh Boruch Hu from the back. That is the meaning of “other gods”: they receive from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but as “other”—from the back. What does “from the back” mean? The Alter Rebbe explains it through an analogy from the human soul, and from there we’ll understand. What does it mean to give from the back? The Alter Rebbe gives an example: “Like a person who gives something to his enemy against his will.” A person has to give something to someone he hates. He gives it to him, but without wanting to, without any desire. For some reason, he has to give it to him. He doesn’t like him and doesn’t want to give him anything, but for one reason or another he has to. There could be all kinds of reasons. He doesn’t really want to give it to him, but he needs the result for some other purpose. So although he does give it, how does he give it? From the back. “He tosses it to him over his shoulder.” He throws him the gift, physically, over his shoulder. “For he turns his face away from him because he hates him.” Yes. What the Alter Rebbe is saying is that face and back exist in the physical world too. A person has a face and a back, and the physical reflects the spiritual. Physically, the difference between face and back is that the face reveals

04:42 a person’s inner self. That’s why it’s called panim, a word related to pnimiyus, inwardness; it’s what you turn toward another person. That’s where the inner self is revealed. So when you relate to someone and look him in the face, face to face, it means you’re interested. You have an inner desire, you have a connection, you’re interested in him, and that’s why you look at him. When you give him something, you give it with a pleasant expression—with your face, with your inner self. The back is a place that doesn’t reveal the inner self; you see only the exterior. You know, from behind you can’t tell whether someone is happy or sad, pleased or displeased. You can’t tell anything. From the back, it all looks the same. And this is expressed in the physical act of giving too. That’s the difference between looking someone in the face when you give him something and giving it to him from behind, with your back turned. It expresses what’s going on inside: am I interested in giving this, or not? In the language of Chassidus, these are called the inner dimension of the will and the outer dimension of the will. We see in life that a person does things for different reasons. Some things I do because I’m interested, because I want to—I want the thing itself, and that’s why I do it. Other things I’m not interested in and don’t want to do, but I have no choice. I have to do them because I want to earn something. A person wants to earn money; he’s interested in the money. If I could get the money some other way, I’d prefer that. I don’t like working; I don’t like this job. I like what I do, but I need to earn a living, don’t I? I have no choice. The only way I

06:21 can earn a living is by doing this work. So that is called the outer dimension of the will: he wants something that, in itself, he really doesn’t want. He wants it as a means, a resource, a way to reach his goal. That’s what it means here. If I have to give something to someone I don’t like, but I have to give it because doing so will bring me something I do want, then I don’t actually want to give to this person. I give it to him from the back. And this explains how vitality is given to this world. Now he explains how. But look, the same principle applies to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What does it mean to give from the face, from the inner dimension? It means His true will and desire. The face—where is the inner dimension of Hakadosh Boruch Hu? What does Hakadosh Boruch Hu really want? His inner will, His true desire—where is that found? Chassidus explains that there is will and there is desire. The difference is that desire implies pleasure; it is the inner dimension of the will. “His innermost will and true desire.” It isn’t just a matter of wanting; it goes deeper than that. It involves pleasure, and that is what “true desire” means. There are things I want. I can want many things, but desire is when the will is connected with pleasure. When is the will connected with pleasure? When it’s something inward, something that touches the soul. So His innermost will and true desire are “to give life to all who are close to Him, from the side of holiness.” What does He really want? What is Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s true desire? He wants and desires to give

08:13 to those who are close to Him—the side of holiness. As we learned earlier in Tanya, holiness means bittul, self-nullification. Someone who has bittul receives from Hakadosh Boruch Hu from the face, in the way He truly wants to give. “But the sitra achra and impurity are an abomination to Hashem, which He hates.” Now we’re talking about kelipah. Kelipah and sitra achra are something Hakadosh Boruch Hu hates. So does He give them vitality from His innermost will and true desire? Since Hakadosh Boruch Hu hates kelipah—it is the opposite of bittul, and therefore the opposite of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—He hates it. “It is an abomination to Hashem, which He hates.” So He gives them vitality not because He wants to, “but like one who tosses something over his shoulder to his enemy, against his will.” That is the analogy for giving from the back. It’s as though He gives it to him by tossing it over His shoulder. He gives him vitality from the aspect of the back, against His will, “only in order to punish the wicked and give a good reward to the righteous, who subdue the sitra achra.” So what follows from this? What do we understand? We understand that Hakadosh Boruch Hu hates kelipah. If He hates it, why does He give it vitality? Why keep it alive? Because it serves another purpose. What purpose? What is the inner objective? Why does Hakadosh Boruch Hu want kelipah and sitra achra to exist? What is gained by it? To overcome the yetzer hara. No, but overcoming the yetzer hara is for the sake of something else. So what is the goal? The Alter Rebbe says two things. First, to punish the wicked. Second, to give a good reward to the righteous.

10:05 Who subdue the sitra achra. Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu make it so that kelipah and sitra achra exist in the world? For two reasons. One is punishment; the other is reward. What does that mean? Simply put, we understand that one of the foundations of faith is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted there to be free choice. Why did He want free choice? Because He wanted there to be reward and punishment. When a person does something, it should be something he earned through his own effort. If the world were only holiness and only G-dliness, free choice would not be possible. The whole concept of free choice would not exist, and neither would reward and punishment. As is known, “to do good to His creations” is one of the explanations for creation. The Midrash says this is one of its fundamental purposes. Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu create the world? Because He wanted to do good to His creations. He wanted to do good for us. He loves us and wants to do good for us. But He does not want a person to have, as Chassidus calls it, “bread of shame.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants a person to receive things through effort, because otherwise the person feels ashamed: “What did I do? I just received gifts.” A normal person cannot bear being given things he has not earned. “A person prefers one measure of his own to nine measures belonging to his fellow.” A person would rather have a little that he worked for than a lot that he did not work for. That is the better way. So this is the whole idea behind Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s system of reward and punishment. Therefore, to make it possible for a person to attain things through

11:55 his own work, and thus deserve reward when he chooses good—and, conversely, deserve punishment when he chooses evil—Hakadosh Boruch Hu made kelipah and sitra achra exist. A person then has two paths and can choose good or evil, making the whole concept of reward and punishment possible. So this is what the Alter Rebbe means when he says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu hates the sitra achra itself. Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not want kelipah to exist in the world. As the Gemara famously says in Maseches Sukkah, there are things Hakadosh Boruch Hu regrets every day. There is such a Gemara, yes: He regrets the yetzer hara, the exile, and other things. They pain Him. It is not that He loves them. They are an abomination, and Hashem hates them. I remember once the Rebbe cried out at a farbrengen: “And when the Ark traveled, Moshe said: Arise, Hashem, and let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You.” On Simchas Torah the Rebbe spoke with tremendous force, and he cried out: “And Moshe said”—Moshe Rabbeinu, and the Moshe of every generation, cries out—“Arise, Hashem, and let Your enemies flee, and let those who hate You flee.” Who is Your greatest enemy, the one who hates You most? It is the exile. It is the greatest adversary of a Jew, preventing him from drawing close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is what the concealments of exile are. Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself regrets it. Why did He make it? He made it so there could be service of Hashem and free choice, so that we could attain all those things—the revelations brought about through our deeds and our service. That is called a hidden desire. So although Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives it life and sustains its existence, from where does He give it? From the aspect of achorayim, “the back,” because

13:43 He does not inherently want the exile, chas veshalom. He does not inherently want the sitra achra. He wants the result: that a Jew will overcome it and refine it. As the Alter Rebbe says, “who subdue the sitra achra.” A Jew takes the sitra achra, breaks it, and subdues it. That is His goal. This is why it is called “other gods,” receiving from the aspect of achorayim. It is an aspect of achorayim, of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s will. That is what it means when kelipah and sitra achra are called achorayim. We see this very clearly in the weekly parsha, with Bilam. It says, “Vayikar”—yes, “vayikar.” What does “vayikar” mean? Rashi says it was an encounter by chance. That is the difference between the righteous and the wicked. Hakadosh Boruch Hu hates Bilam. Although He bestowed prophecy on him, gave him spiritual inspiration and all sorts of things, He revealed Himself to him in the manner of “vayikar,” by chance. That is the aspect of achorayim. It is as though He finds them repugnant. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu also determined that Bilam should exist, because He wanted the greatness of the Jewish people to be revealed through Bilam. That is the whole story of the weekly parsha. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him a place and all that, but He does not love Bilam. He wanted the result: that through Bilam, the greatness of the Jewish people would be revealed, along with all the blessings and everything else—turning darkness into light. As the Rebbe explains in summing up why Bilam, specifically, uttered the greatest blessings. But to say that He loves Bilam? Chas veshalom. It was “vayikar,” by chance. By contrast, with Moshe it says “vayikra,” an expression of affection. There, the revelation itself expresses affection

15:22 and a loving will, an inner desire. But that’s the point. Just an interesting observation: here the Alter Rebbe puts the negative before the positive. The Alter Rebbe says: Why does Hakadosh Boruch Hu give life to the sitra achra? To punish the wicked and to give good reward to the righteous. First he mentions punishment, and only afterward reward: “to punish the wicked,” and then “to give good reward to the righteous.” That raises a question. People asked the Rebbe this question for many years: Why isn’t it written the other way around? First mention the positive—reward. There is also punishment, but the primary purpose of the sitra achra is to give reward to the righteous. I was reminded of a sefer. So the Rebbe said: First of all, that is how it is written in Pirkei Avos, isn’t it? That is the Mishnah’s wording. What does the Mishnah say? “The world was created with ten utterances, though it could have been created with one utterance.” Rather, it was so “as to exact punishment from the wicked”—yes?—“who destroy the world, and to give good reward to the righteous.” So the Mishnah, too, puts exacting punishment before reward. By the way, that Mishnah itself is also difficult to understand. What does it mean? Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world with ten utterances. He could have created it with one. Why did He use ten? So there could be reward and punishment. What is the connection? What does that mean? And how does it connect to what the Tanya says here about the same thing, reward and punishment? The whole matter of the revelation of the ten utterances. This is explained in the Siddur, and the Rebbe also brings it from earlier sources. I think the students here studied 5659; those who studied that subject know—Kislev. So it is explained there that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world through ten

17:24 utterances. That is a matter of division. If Hakadosh Boruch Hu had created it with one utterance—one utterance is thought—and the world had been created through that single utterance of thought, then the world would have been nullified, as we learned earlier in chapter 21. That is the difference between thought and speech. Thought involves bittul; speech involves a sense of independent existence and division. If the division had existed only in thought, it would still have been one utterance. It is like this in the physical world: a person thinks of something as a single point, but to say it, he has to divide it into many words. Similarly, division within one utterance is division within thought. Division within thought retains bittul and closeness. All created beings would therefore have been nullified to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And if created beings were nullified, there would be no choice: we would do Hashem’s will out of bittul. Neither reward nor punishment would apply. There would be no effort, no choice, no service and no new achievement. So essentially, the point made in the Mishnah is what the Rebbe is saying here in Tanya. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made ten utterances. Ten utterances mean division, a sense of independent existence, separation. Because the world was created through distinct speech, through the many, many contractions—as the Rebbe says here, the great multitude of tzimtzumim—the world became a separate existence. Once there is a sense of independent existence, reward and punishment become possible. That is what the Mishnah says, and it is likewise what the Rebbe says here. That is one point. But the question itself remains: Why does the Mishnah really put punishment first? Why, in both the Mishnah and Tanya, do they speak first of exacting punishment from the wicked and only afterward of giving good reward to the righteous? Simply, because that is always the order: “Turn away from evil and do good.” That is what it says.

19:12 In the parsha too, the order is “turn away from evil and do good.” As the Rebbe explains in this week’s Likkutei Torah, in Balak, he gives an analogy: When you build a house for a king, you first have to clean it, remove the dirt, and only afterward bring in the furnishings, the furniture, the beautiful things. You can’t bring in the furniture first and then clean. That’s not the order. The order is to clean the house first, take out all the trash and dirt, and then you can bring in the good. So it is in our service of Hashem: first comes “to exact punishment from the wicked”—the negative side, removing what is not good, turning away from evil. After that comes “to give a good reward to the righteous,” which is doing good. That’s one point. But there’s a deeper point that the Rebbe makes in Likkutei Sichos in several places. The Rebbe says there is also a special virtue in exacting punishment from the wicked. There is something deeper in that, specifically, than in giving a good reward to the righteous. What is it? The Rebbe says that there are two aspects to a king’s rule. One is that the country conducts itself as the king wishes, and everyone must act as the king wishes. Whatever the king says, that is how things must be. When people behave well, the king rewards them and provides what they need. Then there is something else: when there is opposition, a concealment, someone who opposes the king, and the king punishes him. There, the king’s power is revealed even more than when people behave well. When people behave well and the king provides them with everything, what do we know? That there is a king, that people must do what the king wants, and that when they do so, they receive

21:30 what the king wishes to give them. But when there is an opponent and the king punishes him, nullifies him, fights him and rejects him, something is revealed. What is revealed? That it is impossible to act contrary to the king’s will. Something deeper about the power of his kingship is revealed: something that does not accord with the king’s will, an opponent of his will, has no place. In this way, the king’s greatness, power and authority are revealed even more than when people who do good receive a reward. When people behave well and receive a reward from the king, it shows that he is a good king, but it doesn’t show that things cannot be otherwise. Perhaps they could be otherwise too. When an opponent arises and the king nullifies him, something much deeper about the king’s greatness is revealed: what is not in accordance with the king, what is not on his side, has no place. The negative brings out something more inward, something deeper about the king’s greatness, than the positive does. The Rebbe says the same applies here to exacting punishment from the wicked. We are talking about the unity of Hashem. There is the unity of Hashem in the sense that you say Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one because everything is nullified to Him. So He is indeed one. Then there is the unity of Hashem in the sense that you say nothing incompatible with Him can exist. Not only that, in actuality, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is present everywhere and therefore everything is nullified to Him. Anything contrary to Hashem’s will is rejected; it is out of the question. In exacting punishment from the wicked—when someone who acts contrary to His will receives punishment—this aspect of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s unity is, to a certain extent, expressed even more than the unity revealed through the path of doing good,

23:32 the positive path. This is relevant, incidentally, to Amalek, for example. With Amalek, the whole point is that we must break it: “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek.” It is a negative task. Amalek must be rejected, nullified, broken. We must not elevate it. The question is: what is the virtue in that? In the work of birurim, refining the world, we need to elevate and refine things. Yet here we are told that sometimes what is needed is precisely blotting out, nullification and breaking. That is the point of “their breaking is their rectification.” Sometimes it is precisely through breaking that the depth of the King’s unity is expressed even more than through refinement by means of elevation and purification. This is one point the Rebbe makes in one of the sichos, and it also explains why, here in Tanya, the Alter Rebbe put “to exact punishment from the wicked” first. Similarly, the Mishnah puts it first, because this expresses the unity of Hakadosh Boruch Hu more deeply, even more than the ascendancy of goodness and the righteous does.