Tanya Chapter 1 - Part 11

00:02 Speaker 1 We’re talking here about the bad middos. In the previous class, we spoke about laziness and sadness, which come from the element of earth. I didn’t remember what the— I said there were two explanations. We asked why laziness and sadness are connected to earth. I said there were two explanations, but in the end we explained only one. The explanation we gave in the previous class was that earth has a heaviness to it; it pulls downward. Laziness and sadness have that same tendency toward heaviness, the opposite of being energetic, doing things, and taking action. The second explanation for why laziness and sadness are associated with earth is that earth is where things grow. It is the source from which everything grows. As it says, “Everything comes from the earth.” Just as in holiness everything comes from the earth: there is an aspect of earth in holiness, which is bittul. And there is earth of kelipah, which is the source of all kinds of evil. That is the idea of sadness. Sadness, and the laziness that comes from it, are the foundation from which all the problems in serving Hashem grow. When a person reaches a state of despair and sadness, all the other problems come from there. As the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, chapter 26, a person may feel sad even over a sin he committed. In other words, it is sadness and regret over matters of holiness. Yet the Alter Rebbe says there in Tanya that this is a ploy of the yetzer hara, intended to make him fall into desires afterward. The yetzer hara takes a person and fills him with sadness; through that sadness, through becoming dejected and giving up on himself, he can then fall into all the bad middos and desires. We see plainly that sadness leads to all kinds of evil, and that is another reason it is connected to earth. Just as earth causes all kinds of things to grow,

02:21 Speaker 1 so too, sadness is what all the problems and bad things of kelipah that follow grow from. In the language used to describe this negative state, it is called an “askupah nidreses,” a threshold that gets stepped on. This is discussed at length in Derech Chaim. There is such a thing as an askupah nidreses. An askupah is the threshold at a doorway, the place your foot steps on as you enter. [unclear] I don’t know how to say it. Huh?

02:59 Speaker 2 A step.

03:01 Speaker 1 So there is the threshold. What do you call it? There is the askupah nidreses that everyone steps on. Similarly, sadness is like that in the yetzer hara: it is called an askupah nidreses. In short, a person feels like a floor rag, like he is nothing, and so all the kelipos step on him. When a person becomes sad, he feels that he is nothing, that he is a zero: “I’m nothing; I’m no use for anything.” And then, because he feels he is no use for anything, all the kelipos, all the kelipos of evil, come and step on him. They use him and do whatever they want with him. That is where all the troubles we see in serving Hashem come from, G-d forbid. So that is another reason laziness and sadness are connected to the element of earth. In any case, the Alter Rebbe says that all of this comes from it. It all stems from this animal soul. Now the Alter Rebbe continues to a third point. We have already discussed two things that come from the animal soul, from kelipah. First, a person gets his vitality from it. The fact that he is alive and feels himself to exist, to be an entity—that is kelipah, and it is the root of all these matters. Second, we discussed the bad middos that come from it. From the sense of “I,” from the sense of self, arise all the bad middos he has just discussed. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to the third point and says: “And even the good middos that are in the nature of every Jew from birth”—yes, even the good middos a Jew has by nature—“such as compassion and acts of kindness, come from it.” The good middos a Jew has by nature also come from the animal soul. That is a very big chiddush, right? Even if a person has good middos,

05:05 Speaker 1 those good middos do not necessarily come from the G-dly soul. Good middos can also come from the animal soul. Chassidim used to tell a story that a person can live—the Rebbe once said this in a sicha as well. Yes, he once said it in a sicha—that a person can live seventy years and never serve Hashem. A Jew who observes Torah and mitzvos and does everything according to his understanding can live seventy years and never serve Hashem. But wait, he does kind deeds, gives to others, and helps everyone! That can come from the nature of his animal soul. Yes. In other words, it does not necessarily mean that it comes from holiness. It can also come from kelipah. The Alter Rebbe says here: “And even the good middos that are in the nature of every Jew from birth”—the middos a Jew has naturally—“such as compassion and acts of kindness.” The Gemara says that this people has three distinguishing traits. Jews have three traits: they are compassionate, they perform acts of kindness, and they are modest. So even the middos a Jew has by nature, the Alter Rebbe says, “come from it.” They too stem from the animal soul. Why? “For in the Jewish people, this soul of kelipah comes from kelipas nogah.” In a Jew, this kelipah is kelipas nogah, which also contains good. We say that the animal soul comes from kelipah—but which kelipah? Not the wholly impure kelipos, but kelipas nogah, which also contains good. Kelipas nogah has good mixed into it, and it derives from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Kelipas nogah is connected to the Tree of Knowledge. Before the Tree of Knowledge, evil and good were separate. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, and He also created evil. “He forms

07:00 Speaker 1 and creates evil.” Right? In davening we say “creates everything,” but the verse says, “He forms light and creates evil.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu created evil from the outset, but when He created it, He created it separately. He created light and holiness on one side, and evil on the other; He created them apart. Then Adam Harishon came and, through the sin, brought about a mixture. He mixed good and evil, and ever since the Tree of Knowledge there has been no good without evil and no evil without good. There is no such thing in the world as good and evil existing separately. Good and evil are always mixed together. That is what nogah is: a mixture of good and evil. And a Jew’s animal soul comes from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So it is not only evil; it also has good in it, and therefore the animal soul can have a good middah too. The general—the general explanation of this: what is the overall explanation here? We are saying that a good middah can also come from the animal soul. A good middah that is part of a Jew’s nature comes from the animal soul. This is connected to something explained in Chassidus. It is one of the fundamental ideas in Chassidus: a Jew may do good things, but if he does them because that is his nature, he is not serving Hashem. A person can do good things, but it is just his nature; he is not serving Hashem. In Chassidus, two things are explained in this connection. First, regarding Avraham Avinu, it says that at the Akeidah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to him, “Now I know that you fear G-d.” Chassidus asks: What does “Now I know” mean? Only now, at the Akeidah, when Avraham was 137 years old, did Hashem discover that he feared Heaven? What about everything Avraham Avinu had done until then, all the mitzvos?

08:56 Speaker 1 Natural traits. So Chassidus explains that Avraham Avinu had the trait of love by nature. That means everything he had done until then might have come from his nature, from his natural love. Avraham had that nature, so perhaps until then he had done it without doing it for Hashem. But when the Akeidah came, Hakadosh Boruch Hu told Avraham to do something contrary to his nature. A person who is naturally kind cannot bear to see blood. He cannot act with severity. Here Hakadosh Boruch Hu came to Avraham and told him to slaughter his son—an act of severity, the opposite of kindness. And Avraham went to do it with joy. Then it was revealed: “Now I know that you fear G-d.” In other words, it became clear that Avraham did what he did for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The proof was that with the same joy with which he had done everything that came from love, he also did the opposite—an act of severity. Chassidus explains a second story along the same lines. The Gemara tells a very interesting story, a very strange story that is difficult to understand on the straightforward level. It tells of Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma and Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, two Tannaim. Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was one of the Ten Martyrs who were killed by the authorities, as we read on Yom Kippur. Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was imprisoned and being taken to be executed. So he called Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma and asked him, “What of my share in the World to Come?” Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma

10:40 Speaker 1 meets Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon. Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon had been imprisoned because he taught Torah publicly. He had the mesirus nefesh to teach Torah publicly, and they imprisoned him and were going to kill him. So he asks Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma, “What of my share in the World to Come? Will I have a share in the World to Come?” Here is a person showing mesirus nefesh for Torah law, to spread Torah and mitzvos, and he is unsure whether he will have a share in the World to Come. So Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon—Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma—asks him, “Tell me, did you ever do any particular mitzvah in your life? Did any particular deed come your way? Was there ever a mitzvah that you did?” Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon tells him, “Yes, there is one mitzvah I did. Once, some of my own money got mixed up with money set aside for tzedakah, and I took it all and gave it to tzedakah because I didn’t know which money was mine.” What happened? He gave it all to tzedakah. So Rabbi Yosi told him, “If so, you have a share in the World to Come.” That is what the Gemara tells us, and on the straightforward level it is hard to understand. What is going on here? Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, with all his greatness, is now showing mesirus nefesh, yet he has doubts. Chassidus explains that he was the opposite of Avraham Avinu, but the point is the same: by nature, he was inclined toward severity. Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon was naturally inclined toward severity, so acts of mesirus nefesh were not so difficult for him, given his nature. He did not mind that they were going to kill him. So that was no proof that he loved Hashem. But when he gave away the tzedakah money together with his own money—a person whose nature inclines toward severity,

12:21 Speaker 1 who is naturally more restrictive, is particular about his money and so on—he could have found an excuse. Instead, he went and gave it all away. That was contrary to his nature, an act of kindness. This revealed that he loved Hashem, that he did these things not for himself but for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In other words, sometimes one act can reveal whether a person loves Hashem or loves himself. Of course, there we are talking about very high levels; this is only an example to help us understand the idea a little. Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking about a lower level, the plain meaning of the animal soul. If a person is naturally charitable, that does not necessarily have to do with his G-dly soul. His charitable acts may come from the nature of his animal soul. His animal soul comes from kelipah, and kelipah contains not only bad things but good things too. So he naturally likes doing good things. He likes helping people; he feels drawn to do good. He has compassion for people; he is also compassionate by nature. A Jew is compassionate by nature, so he has compassion for another person. Now all the commentators ask here, in Tanya: Why does the Alter Rebbe mention only that Jews are compassionate and charitable, and not the trait of being bashful? It is a well-known question. Why did the Alter Rebbe not mention bashfulness? After all, the Gemara says there are three traits in a Jew’s nature. Many ask: If the Alter Rebbe wanted to mention only some of them, he could have mentioned just one. Why mention two? If he wanted to list them all, he should have listed all three. What is the basis for this choice? This is the Alter Rebbe’s choice, not the Gemara’s. Why did the Alter Rebbe take precisely two and leave out the third?

13:52 Speaker 3 Is it a good trait?

13:55 Speaker 1 Of course it is a good trait. What is the question? Bashfulness is a very good trait. It is the opposite of brazenness, which is a bad trait. The opposite of brazenness is bashfulness. It is a little hard to define bashfulness. It does not simply mean someone who is embarrassed to speak in public or is embarrassed to... Bashfulness means a Jew’s natural reluctance to commit a sin, or to act insolently toward someone greater than himself. It is the opposite of insolence and brazenness. That is what bashfulness means here. A Jew has bashfulness by nature. It is a kind of natural self-effacement and gentleness, a gentle nature that cannot brazenly confront someone. It is like the saying, “A person would not brazenly lie to his creditor’s face.” When a Jew tells a lie, he turns red. He cannot... It is hard for him to lie so brazenly. That is the idea. That is what bashfulness means, and it is a very good trait. Nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe does not mention it. There is a wonderful explanation from the Rebbe, which the Rebbe writes in several places. The Rebbe explains that there seems to be a contradiction in the Gemara. It says that a Jew is bashful by nature. On the other hand, the Gemara says, “The Jewish people are the boldest among the nations.” The Gemara lists three that are bold: the Jewish people are the boldest among the nations—boldness is part of their nature. A Jew, by nature, is actually bold. “The Jewish people are the boldest among the nations, the dog is the boldest among the wild animals, and the rooster is the boldest among birds.” And there is another opinion that the goat is the boldest among domesticated animals. The Gemara lists several things that are bold. When it comes to the nations, the Jewish people are the boldest. So the Maharsha asks: Isn’t that a contradiction? Here you say the Jewish people are the boldest among the nations, and there you say they are bashful. The explanation is that they acquired the trait of bashfulness

16:06 Speaker 1 at Matan Torah. In other words, Jews are not bashful by nature. On the contrary, a Jew is naturally bold. But at Matan Torah, the sounds and lightning, the thunder and Hashem’s voice, broke something within the Jews; they broke their brazenness. The purpose of the sounds and lightning at Matan Torah was to break the brazenness that Jews had by nature, and that gave them a nature of bashfulness and gentleness. As the verse says, “So that His fear will be upon your faces, so that you will not sin.” That is the trait of bashfulness. In other words, bashfulness is not originally natural to a Jew. Where did that trait come from? They acquired it at Matan Torah. Here, though, the Alter Rebbe is discussing the nature of the animal soul. Bashfulness is not part of the animal soul’s nature. Compassion and charitable giving are. Bashfulness, by contrast, is not part of the animal soul’s nature; it is something they acquired at Matan Torah. That is how the Rebbe explains it in several letters. So the Alter Rebbe’s wording is precise. In Tanya every word is precise. Why did the Alter Rebbe not mention bashfulness? Because it is not relevant here to the animal soul. There is another difficulty. Yes? There is another very strong question raised here, one that most of the commentators leave unresolved. They ask a very strong question about Tanya. Here the Alter Rebbe says that the natural trait of all Jews, their compassion and charitable giving, comes from the animal soul. Certainly, that is where it comes from. But look at Igeres Hakodesh, chapter 12. There the Alter Rebbe says explicitly: “It is well known that Jews are compassionate and charitable by nature, because their souls are drawn from His attributes, in which kindness prevails over severity.” He is talking about the G-dly soul—that a Jew is compassionate and charitable by nature,

18:10 Speaker 1 That is because the Jewish soul is drawn from His attributes, blessed be He. This refers to the G-dly soul, which comes from the attributes of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and the whole matter. If you look inside the Tanya there, you see that the Alter Rebbe says the source of the qualities of being compassionate and doing acts of kindness—the Jewish nature—is the G-dly soul. It seems to be a direct contradiction between what the Tanya says there and what it says here. In several places, this remains a question requiring further study. The Rebbe resolves it in a number of ways. At least one of the Rebbe’s explanations is that there is no contradiction: there, the Alter Rebbe is speaking about something else. In fact, the qualities that make a Jew compassionate and kind are present in both souls, the G-dly soul and the animal soul. What the Alter Rebbe emphasizes there is a different point. What the Alter Rebbe emphasizes in Igeres Hakodesh is that, for a Jew, because the G-dly soul comes from the attribute of kindness, kindness is stronger than severity. That is what the Alter Rebbe is discussing there: a Jew has a nature in which kindness is more dominant. Why? Because the G-dly soul is more closely associated with the attribute of kindness than with severity. He explains the matter there. So it is not a contradiction. There is the G-dly soul and the animal soul. The G-dly soul has the attribute of kindness. And the animal soul also has the attribute of kindness. On what basis? The G-dly soul has it because it is drawn from His attributes, blessed be He, because it is drawn from G-dliness. The animal soul also has the attribute of kindness because the animal soul comes from kelipas nogah. Both have this quality by nature, but the difference is that in the animal soul it is “by the nature of their birth”; that is its nature. That is the precise wording. Here the Alter Rebbe says “by the nature of their birth”—he was born that way. In other words, the compassion and kindness within him are not on account of G-dliness, but on account of how he was born. “That’s how I was born.” By contrast, in the G-dly soul, the attribute of kindness comes from His attributes, blessed be He, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So a person senses that when he comes

20:00 Speaker 1 to kindness, it is because he comes from G-dliness. On the contrary, that is the whole difference between the natural qualities of holiness and the natural qualities of kelipah. In kelipah, the qualities are simply natural. By contrast, in holiness, they come from His attributes—from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Just very briefly, on this matter of “there is no good without evil, and no evil without good”: we have seen that there is evil, an evil nature and a yetzer hara, and that in all matters there can be an element of evil. There is a powerful teaching from the Frierdiker Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe once said it in a sicha to children. It is a very powerful teaching, and [unclear] in the sicha. Since there is evil and an evil nature, “there is no good without evil, and no evil without good.” So even the very best things have an aspect of evil in them. The Frierdiker Rebbe says: Chassidus is something good. Chassidus is certainly a good thing. But since everything has a little evil in it, there is a certain element of evil even here. What is the evil in it? This is very striking. The Frierdiker Rebbe says: What is the evil here? We see among boys and children who grow up in a Chassidic home and a Chabad cheder, in an environment of Chassidus, that they are sometimes a little lacking in derech eretz toward their parents, their teachers, their rabbis and people who, according to halachah, are deserving of respect. They certainly ought to show that respect. Nevertheless, we see a weakness in this area. The reason, he says, is that Chassidus demands bittul. All of Chassidus, the entire foundation of Chassidus, is bittul: “There is nothing besides Him.” Chassidus teaches that everything is G-dliness and G-dliness is everything. So there is nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And as a result, because of that bittul, people feel that everyone is equal, and this

22:28 Speaker 1 leads, through a chain of consequences, to a situation where a student who grows up in a home where they speak about bittul all the time thinks: If everyone is nullified, then Dad and the teacher and the rabbi are all nullified too. Everything is nullified. That can lead to chutzpah and a lack of derech eretz, a failure to show them respect. So the Frierdiker Rebbe says that one must understand what “there is nothing besides Him” and “everything is nullified” mean. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us the Shulchan Aruch, and the Shulchan Aruch sets out the halachos. There He commanded, “Honor your father and your mother,” and “Each person shall revere his mother and his father.” This is why honoring parents is one of the Ten Commandments: the very same Hakadosh Boruch Hu, besides Whom there is nothing, asks us to honor our parents. Likewise, there is an obligation to honor teachers and elders, and to show respect to all sorts of people who must be respected. [unclear] He demands of those children that they be careful: even though they learn Chassidus, which teaches that everything is nullified, they must still know that there are rabbis, there are halachos, and they must conduct themselves according to Torah law. Now, the Rebbe asked that we study the laws of the Beis Hamikdash. So we are studying a lesson in the Rambam’s Hilchos Beis Habechirah; it has begun. I don’t know exactly—there was a lesson today—and perhaps over these weeks we will take a minute to discuss a teaching from Chassidus connected to the laws of the Beis Hamikdash. So just one teaching: Why are they called Hilchos Beis Habechirah, the Laws of the Chosen House? The Rebbe asks: Why did the Rambam call it Beis Habechirah? Why not Beis Hamikdash? It is the Beis Hamikdash, yet the Rambam specifically called it Beis Habechirah. The Rebbe explains the difference: Mikdash means holiness, that the thing itself is holy. Bechirah means that the thing is not holy in itself; it was chosen. Choice means

24:25 Speaker 1 that it has no special quality of its own. Its entire distinction is that it was chosen. It does not have holiness in its own right; its holiness comes from being chosen. Choice means that the thing has no inherent distinction—its distinction is only that He chose it. Now, as is well known in Chassidus—and anyone who has studied this has learned it—there is a dispute. There is a dispute among the Amoraim over whether the Beis Hamikdash is a holy place in its own right, possessing holiness of its own, or whether the site of the Beis Hamikdash has no holiness of its own, and its holiness comes only as a result of the holiness reaching the Jewish people who came to that place. There is a dispute between the Rambam and the Ramban over whether the holiness of the Beis Hamikdash came through enclothement—the holiness of the Shechinah was enclothed in the site of the Beis Hamikdash—or whether it came by way of passage: the holiness passed through the site, but the physical site of the Beis Hamikdash could not itself become a place for G-dliness. This is the dispute between the Rambam and the Ramban. The Rambam holds that a physical place cannot contain holiness, G-dliness or the Shechinah, because it is physical. Physicality and the Shechinah do not go together. Rather, the Shechinah passed to the Jewish people through that place. The Ramban disagrees, and this is also the view according to Chassidus: the holiness of the Beis Hamikdash came through enclothement; the Shechinah was enclothed in the site of the Beis Hamikdash. So the Rebbe says that the Rambam’s choice of words is precise and consistent with his position. Since the Rambam holds that the Beis Hamikdash served only as a passage, he called the work Hilchos Beis Habechirah—Beis Habechirah—to emphasize that the entire distinction of the site of the Beis Hamikdash comes from Hashem’s choosing it, not from the site itself being inherently holy as a Mikdash. It has no inherent distinction, only the distinction of having been chosen by Hashem from Above. There are ideas to discuss here; that was just one brief point.