Tanya Igeres Hateshuvah - Chapter 5 - Summary

00:02 Speaker 1 Okay, today we’ll discuss chapter 5 of Igeres Hateshuvah. In the previous class we mainly discussed chapter 4 and its central point. Now let’s turn to the point of chapter 5. There’s something interesting here. In these chapters, chapters 4 through 6, the Alter Rebbe comes to explain the connection to teshuvah. What does the Gemara say about teshuvah? We need to understand that connection. So he explains what a soul is. He explains that the Zohar says teshuvah means returning the hei, the hei of the Name Havayah, the lower hei. What a person does is not just a matter concerning that person. Something happens in G-dliness; something happens in holiness. By doing teshuvah, by returning the lower hei, you bring about a certain repair, something on the side of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as the Zohar puts it. Teshuvah, the lower hei—it’s about the lower hei. Teshuvah is returning the hei. To understand this, the Alter Rebbe explains the connection of the soul. This is on page 208. The soul is connected with the four letters of the Name Havayah: “For His people are a portion of Havayah.” Then he explains what sin is. Once we understand what the soul is, we can understand what happens when a person sins. A separation takes place in the soul, and consequently a separation takes place in G-dliness, because the soul and G-dliness are one. Teshuvah, then, means returning, restoring. It repairs the separation you caused in G-dliness, the separation that came about in the four letters of the Name Havayah. And it’s not only that a separation came about; there is also the exile of the Shechinah. Because through your transgression you entered the kelipos and received life from the kelipos, you caused an influence from the Name Havayah to reach this world, the realm of the external kelipos. That is called the exile of the Shechinah. And therefore teshuvah is needed, which means

03:08 Speaker 1 returning the hei, and through that bringing the Shechinah back from exile. That is the whole subject of chapters 4 through 6: the Alter Rebbe explains the inner essence of teshuvah, its secrets—what is happening, what the essence of a Jew is, what the essence of a transgression is, and consequently what the essence of teshuvah is. Now we see something very interesting here. In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe comes primarily to explain the essence of a Jew. We see that when the Alter Rebbe begins explaining this in chapter 4, on page 186, at the bottom of folio 63b, he brings two verses. One verse is “For His people are a portion of Havayah,” from which we learn that the soul is a part of the Name Havayah. Then he brings a second verse, “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” From there we learn the idea that “one who blows, blows from within himself”: unlike all other created beings, which come from speech, an expression of externality, the soul comes from breathing, an expression of inwardness. So that is chapter 4: two verses to explain the essence of the soul. One verse is “For His people are a portion of Havayah”; the second is “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Here’s something interesting, as an aside: in chapter 2 of Likkutei Amarim, the Alter Rebbe discusses the same subject. There, too, he speaks about the soul, the G-dly soul. But there the Alter Rebbe does not bring the verse “For His people are a portion of Havayah.” He does bring “And He breathed into his nostrils,” but not “For His people are a portion of Havayah.” There is also a sicha of the Rebbe about this. The Rebbe explains the difference between Likkutei Amarim and Igeres Hateshuvah. In Likkutei Amarim, the Alter Rebbe primarily wants to explain the essence of the soul. The soul is like a son

05:09 Speaker 1 who comes from his father’s brain. But in Likkutei Amarim, the Alter Rebbe does not intend to speak about the Name Havayah. He does not discuss the Name Havayah there; rather, he discusses the basic idea that the soul is a part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is why the Alter Rebbe does not bring the verse “For His people are a portion of Havayah” there. He brings another verse: “A part of G-d above.” That verse does not emphasize the Name Havayah. It emphasizes the essence of the soul and where it comes from. Here in Igeres Hateshuvah, though, he wants to clarify the four letters. That is his purpose, because here in Igeres Hateshuvah the letters involved in “returning the hei” matter. In other words, the four letters matter. That is why the Alter Rebbe brings the verse “For His people are a portion of Havayah.” In any case, there are two verses here: “For His people are a portion of Havayah” and “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” On that basis, the Alter Rebbe explains all of chapter 4—the four letters, all the details, and so on. Then we reach chapter 5 and see something interesting. In chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe brings these same two verses again. You can look at chapter 5: the Alter Rebbe brings them again, but this time he brings the complete verses. They are the same verses, but he brings them with all their details. You see, at the beginning of chapter 5 he says, “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” He brought this verse earlier, but earlier he brought only half of it. Here in chapter 5, he brings the verse again, this time in full—not just the first half, but the continuation too. What? Why would that be? If he needed to bring it, why didn’t he bring it at the beginning? When he

06:52 Speaker 1 brought the verse the first time, he could have brought the whole verse. Only now he remembers to bring the whole verse? That is the first question. A second question concerns the other verse as well. The verse “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—it’s the same thing. The Alter Rebbe later brings the verse, “For behold...” Where is it? No, sorry. “For His people are a portion of Havayah”—where is that second verse? “For His people are a portion of Havayah.”

07:28 Speaker 2 Hey, here—we can go there.

07:32 Speaker 1 Where’s the verse?

07:34 Speaker 2 It’s here, next to the verse.

07:35 Speaker 1 Ah, yes, yes. Yes, on the fifth line—yes, the sixth. “And this is what is written: ‘For His people are a portion of Havayah; Yaakov is the lot of His inheritance.’” So here, too, it’s the same story. It’s the same verse he brought earlier. Earlier he brought half of it; here he brings the whole verse. It’s the reverse: the first time he brings only half the verse, and now, the second time, he brings the whole thing. Besides, he already cited these verses. Why repeat them? What is going on here? So we need to understand that in chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe comes to introduce a very significant new point about the whole subject, beyond what he discussed in chapter 4. In chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe says something new that he did not say in chapter 4. And we see this immediately at the beginning of chapter 5. The Alter Rebbe begins: “Now, the drawing down and descent of the G-dly soul into this world, to be clothed in the human body, is drawn from the inwardness and source of speech, which is, as it were, the breath of His blessed mouth.” The Alter Rebbe begins chapter 5 by saying: when the soul becomes clothed in the body, where does it come from? It comes from within, from the source of speech, which is the breath of His blessed mouth. What is happening here, everyone? It’s hard to understand. The Alter Rebbe has just finished saying in chapter 4 that there are four letters in the Name Havayah and that the soul is a portion of Havayah. So the soul comes from all four letters. The Alter Rebbe then explained that there is a yud, a hei, a vav, and a hei, and all four of these are found in the soul—in chochmah, in binah, in Torah, and in mitzvos, everything he discussed at the end of chapter 4. So the soul has all four letters, not just the lower hei. Suddenly, here in chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe speaks only of the lower hei. Why the lower hei? There are all four letters.

09:50 Speaker 1 So what’s going on here? What—what’s the difference between chapter 4 and chapter 5? What’s the explanation? The point is that in chapters 4 and 5, the Alter Rebbe is speaking about two entirely different things. In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe speaks about the essence of the soul at its source. In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe speaks about the essence of the soul at its source. The soul’s source is the Name Havayah. This is the soul’s distinction in its very essence: the soul is not like all other created beings. All created beings come from the Name Elokim; the soul comes from the Name Havayah. The Name Elokim is externality; Havayah is inwardness. There’s another point: “And He breathed.” The difference between all created beings and the soul is that all created beings come from speech, while the soul comes from—breathing. The difference between speech and breathing is a difference in their very nature. Speech is external; breathing comes from within. So in chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe explained the distinction of a Jew by virtue of his essence, by virtue of his soul. What is the soul? It is a part of Havayah, a soul of “And He breathed.” This is where he explains that all four letters of the Name Havayah are present in the soul. That is the point of chapter 4. But that’s the soul above. What happens when the soul descends below? The soul descends below and enclothes itself in a body. So the Alter Rebbe said earlier that when the soul descends below and enclothes itself in a body, it has to become enclothed in speech. Right? In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe says that the soul, too, must become enclothed in speech—in “And Elokim said”—so that it can become enclothed in a body. So “And Elokim said, ‘Let us make man’” is speech. The soul, too, has this aspect of speech, so that it can become enclothed in a physical body down here. It follows, then, that the soul has two aspects. The soul in its essence, at its source, as it exists above, is the Name Havayah, “And He breathed,” the four letters—all those distinctions. That is the soul in its very

12:11 Speaker 1 essence. But when the soul descends below to become enclothed in a body, it becomes entirely external—speech. And then, seemingly, in this respect the soul is like all created beings: all created beings come from speech, and this, too, comes from speech. The soul, too—“Let us make man,” like “Let there be light”—comes from speech. Then, in chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe comes to add a remarkable insight that matters to us in our service of Hashem—to us, to every one of us. It is really the foundation of the whole of Igeres Hateshuvah: even when the soul has descended below, is enclothed in a body, and must become enclothed in speech—the hei of Malchus—even there, the soul remains on the level of inwardness. It does not mean, as you might mistakenly think, that at its source the soul is connected with “And He breathed,” with Havayah, but that by becoming enclothed in a body and descending through speech, it becomes external. No. Even when the soul descends below and becomes enclothed in a body, and this must pass through the realm of speech, or its letters, even there it is inwardness. It is the inwardness of speech, the inwardness and source of speech. It is not external speech like that from which angels and other created beings come. There is inwardness in speech as well. In other words, this concerns the soul even at the level where it becomes enclothed in a body and in Hashem’s utterance, “Let us make man.” All of that is only from the standpoint of externality and its connection to the body. At that very level, in that very place, the soul itself remains a part of Havayah. There, it remains connected with “And He breathed,” with the very essence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, even on the level of speech. Where do we learn this? That is why the Alter Rebbe once again brings the two verses at length. Now we understand why the Alter Rebbe brings the two verses here, and quotes not just the first half but the second half as well. What does the verse say? “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” From “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—the first part of

14:21 Speaker 1 the verse, “And He breathed,” on its own, without the continuation—you learn that the soul comes from the innermost essence. [unclear] Just as “And He breathed” comes from within, so too the soul comes from within. That is what you learn from the words “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” So far, we know only the soul’s source: the soul comes from a higher source than all created beings, from “And He breathed,” from inwardness. But what happens down here? What does the second half of the verse say? “And man became a living soul.” What is the second half of the verse speaking about? The soul down here. “And man became a living soul”—plainly speaking. What is it talking about? The soul as it has descended down here and become enclothed in a body. Here, “man became a living soul.” And it is all in the same verse. So from this verse we learn that even when “And He breathed” reaches the point of “And man became a living soul,” even when the soul has descended below and become enclothed in a body, it still remains a part of Havayah. That is the whole addition of chapter 5 over chapter 4. That is why in chapter 4 he quotes only the first half of the verse, while in chapter 5 he quotes the second half. In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe wants to explain the soul’s source. What is the soul? Compared with the angels, the soul’s source is higher than theirs. So he quotes only the first half of the verse, “And He breathed.” In chapter 5, he wants to explain that even down here, the soul remains connected. Even when it becomes enclothed in a body, it remains, in essence, a part of the holy G-dliness. And we learn this from the second half: “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” This also helps us understand the Alter Rebbe’s wording. The Alter Rebbe says: “For the plain meaning of the verse, where it says ‘And He breathed,’ is…” That is, there is a very interesting expression here. The wording is… drawn out

16:18 Speaker 1 in a way that seems completely unnecessary. When you read the wording in Tanya, you wonder: What happened here? He already explained “And He breathed” earlier, in chapter 4, right? And here the Alter Rebbe returns to it and adds an explanation: “For the plain meaning of the verse, where it says ‘And He breathed,’ is to teach us that, by way of analogy, when a person blows toward a certain place, if there is something intervening…” What is he trying to say here? Why the words “to teach us”? Why “the plain meaning of the verse”? Why this lengthy wording? It seems completely unnecessary. The Alter Rebbe adds more and more here concerning “And He breathed,” right? Earlier, in chapter 4, he spoke about “And He breathed”—that breathing comes from deep within. Now he wants to add another point: “And He breathed” also means that there can be no interruption, right? When a person blows, if you blow from here and there’s a barrier, your breath won’t reach the other side. Speech can be heard through a partition, but breath cannot pass through it, because breath requires a connection. So he wants to say that the soul is connected in the same way. But why does he need to say, “For the plain meaning of the verse, where it says ‘And He breathed,’ is to teach us”? What does all this wording add? But that is precisely the point here. If you look at the plain meaning of the verse, at the straightforward meaning of the words, what is the verse talking about? “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—what is it talking about? Is it trying to explain the soul’s source, or is it speaking about how the soul became enclothed in a body? What is the verse about, according to its straightforward meaning? Take the verse. A young child learns, “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” What does he learn from the verse? The nature of the soul and its source? That is not what the verse is talking about at all. The verse is talking about how Hakadosh Boruch Hu created a human being, a soul in a body. The plain meaning of the verse: “And He breathed into his nostrils

18:03 Speaker 1 “The breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The verse is telling us what happens down here, how the soul came down here. And here we learn something new: when the soul came down here, even though its descent into a body required “making”—“And G-d said, ‘Let us make man’”—and speech, so that it could be clothed in a body, Tanya nevertheless calls it “He breathed.” That emphasizes that even when the soul is clothed in a body, it remains connected through that “breathing.” The soul’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is a connection like a breath. And what does that mean? If there is a barrier, something in the way, the breath does not get through. If there are transgressions, if a person has sins, that creates an interruption between the soul and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So this is the foundation of chapter 5; this is what the Alter Rebbe adds in chapter 5 to chapter 4. Again, in chapter 4 the Alter Rebbe comes to explain the soul’s greatness at its source. That is the whole point of chapter 4. So chapter 4 does not bring the plain meaning of the verse. It brings the Zohar’s interpretation of the verse: the Zohar says that “He breathed” means “one who blows, blows from within himself.” That is the soul’s greatness. Here we see that it is connected with the innermost dimension of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But when we move to chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe wants to explain the plain meaning of the verse—what effect this has down here: even in the soul’s descent below, its connection is one of “He breathed.” So he brings the entire verse and adds those words. That is regarding this verse. The same applies to the second verse. What does the second verse say? “For His people are Hashem’s portion; Yaakov is the cord of His inheritance.” What does “Yaakov is the cord of His inheritance” add to “His people are Hashem’s portion”? The same thing. “His people are Hashem’s portion” speaks of how the soul is connected with Hashem’s Name.

19:59 Speaker 1 It speaks about the soul at its source, as a portion of Hashem. “Yaakov is the cord of His inheritance” speaks about the soul’s descent into the body. There you have the idea of a cord and all the qualities of a cord. The soul descends below and becomes clothed—so that is how the discussion continues here. What does the Alter Rebbe say? Yes, the reason is that they are against His will. A transgression is against His will. What else? What is the explanation here? Well, because of that—so what? Why does that mean separation? According to the discussion we are learning here, the separation is very simple. All created beings come from the external dimension, from speech. All created beings originate in the external dimension; they come from speech. Speech is not blocked by a barrier. Hakadosh Boruch Hu spoke and brings the world into being. Whatever the state of a created thing, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. “There is nothing besides Him”; “There is no place devoid of Him”; “I fill the heavens and the earth”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. What is the actual state of creation? Is a created being nullified or not? That is not relevant. Because this is the truth: everything is nullified. Granted, the created being feels itself; it cries out, “I!” It feels its own existence and says, “I am something.” That makes no difference. Why? Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere; everything is nullified. That is the truth. But a Jew is connected with the innermost dimension of the Essence. Even when a Jew is down here—“And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—even as a created being who has descended here below, a Jew’s very being is connected with the portion of Hashem, with the innermost dimension of His will. Torah and mitzvos belong to that innermost dimension of His will. The innermost dimension of the supernal will is that a Jew should do what Hashem wants. And if you do not do what Hashem wants, you oppose the innermost dimension of His will. There, separation is possible. That is why the rest of the world is not separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu: the world is connected only with the external dimension of His will.

24:56 Speaker 1 And in the external dimension of His will there is no separation. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is certainly everywhere, and in the external dimension of His will everything is nullified—that is it. But in the innermost dimension of His will, Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose that His will be revealed through Torah and mitzvos: 248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions. The moment a Jew commits a transgression, it is against the supernal will. That is, it is against the innermost dimension of His will. And you are a Jew; you are connected with that innermost dimension. So when you commit a transgression, you disconnect yourself; you become separated. That is why only for a Jew is there such a thing as transgressions, such a thing as separation, Heaven forbid, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is the root of what it means for a Jew to be separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu through a transgression. And this brings us to the analogy of the cord. The cord is the Jew’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But the moment a Jew sins, he damages the cord. He damages the supernal will and, consequently, the cord of connection; this causes damage to the cord as a whole. And there are differences between a transgression punishable by kareis, grave transgressions, and the various other kinds of transgressions. There are different degrees of separation and disconnection, Heaven forbid, between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This gives rise to the whole matter of the Shechinah’s exile: through a transgression, a person separates himself from the supernal will. In doing so, he takes the hei of Hashem’s Name, which gives him life, and brings it down into the kelipos. The Shechinah then goes into exile, Heaven forbid, among the kelipos. So afterward there must be a “return of the hei”: when he does teshuvah again, he draws out the flow of life that fell into the kelipos and restores it to its place. That is the meaning of “return of the hei”—the lower hei. Do you understand the meaning a little better? Ah, I hope so... There are the Rebbe’s explanations

27:05 Speaker 1 here on Igeres Hateshuvah. We study only some of those explanations. There is part 39 here, several volumes. Just the Rebbe’s brilliance. How does the Rebbe explain Tanya? How does the Rebbe learn the plain meaning? Every word is precise. I simply do not know how people understood Igeres Hateshuvah before the Rebbe. No, I cannot understand it. They simply did not understand it. They thought they did. The Rebbe took every word, every detail, everything, and made it all shine in the most wonderful way. Every point of precision is there. Just understanding the flow of the discussion—what is going on here? What did the Rebbe say? All these verses, all these things. Everything, everything, everything is precise. Every detail simply comes alive. There is an extended discussion here, an explanation here—there is a lot. We have discussed only one point of it. There are all sorts of questions. Why, for instance, does he bring four verses? What is the significance of those four verses? Why does he need exactly four verses? [unclear], 13 [unclear], and so on. Why exactly four verses? Why so many proofs altogether? Where is this going? We already spoke about that earlier. Everything else speaks about the honor of Hashem. What are these proofs and verses doing here? Bring one verse. Why do we need two analogies—the analogy of breathing and the analogy of a cord? Why is one analogy not enough? What does each add to the other? Seemingly, the two analogies contradict each other. Think about it: the analogies are not alike at all. The analogy of “He breathed” says there must be a continuous connection with the breath, and the moment something gets in the way, it is as though there is no continuation at all. As we said, the moment you put up a barrier, it does not work at all. The analogy of a cord is not like that. The analogy of a cord

29:06 Speaker 1 is that there is a cord, it is tied, and you cut it. That is an entirely different analogy. Why are there two analogies? I am saying all this just to make you want to look into it. Go find the answer. The Rebbe explains everything in Ha’aros VeTikkunim. But here, the central point of chapters 5 and 6 is to explain that the soul’s connection with the innermost dimension of G-dliness exists down here as well. Therefore, when there is a sin or transgression, that connection too is harmed. Then teshuvah is needed to restore the Shechinah to its place. That is the same principle.