Igeres Hateshuvah Chapter 5 Part 3

00:00 So we’ll continue here in chapter 5 of Igeres Hateshuvah, at the top of page 95b. We’re in the middle of the Alter Rebbe’s explanation of what sin and transgression bring about. Until now, the Alter Rebbe has explained what the soul is and the extraordinary stature of a Jewish soul. The soul’s source is the name Havayah: inwardness, “For Hashem’s portion is His people,” and “He blew.” The soul comes from the inwardness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Alter Rebbe explained the four letters within the soul, the four letters of the name Havayah, which are present in every single soul. Then, in chapter 5, the Alter Rebbe began to explain the soul’s descent. He explains that even though the soul descended below and became clothed in a body, the “He blew” remains in full force. On the contrary, the Torah wants to teach us that the soul below, as it exists within the body, is connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu through “He blew”—an inward union. This is also the continuation of the verse: it then says that the cord creates the connection and bond between the soul above and the soul below, which is clothed in the body. The soul’s source is the four letters of the name Havayah. The Alter Rebbe goes on to say that there is also a lesson here for us. Describing the soul with the words “He blew” teaches us something very, very important. What does it teach us? Not only the soul’s greatness and its source in His inwardness, but that for a Jew to live, there must be a direct connection, with no interruption and nothing separating them. We see this physically: if something stands in the way, blowing cannot work. You cannot blow into something if there is a barrier. So for the soul to continue to be present in the body, there must not be

02:32 a barrier. The moment there is a barrier between G-dliness and a person’s body, the breath of the blowing does not reach it. In the previous class, we learned precisely how the Alter Rebbe explains that it reaches it, through ratzo and shov, and so on. Now let’s continue inside, with the words of the Tanya. Here the Alter Rebbe will explain what happens through sin and transgression: they create the barrier. We said that if something separates and interrupts, then Hakadosh Boruch Hu—G-dliness—cannot reach there. The Alter Rebbe says: Nothing, neither physical nor spiritual, can form a barrier before Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What is a barrier? You can speak of a barrier when you are dealing with something limited. I am standing here; I am a limited human being. I blow air from my mouth and want it to reach over there. If there is a wall in between, it will not reach, because the air cannot get through when something is in the way. When does this apply? When we are talking about a physical person, who is limited and affected by a physical object. The blowing, the air, is physical. So when there is a partition, the air does not reach. But when we are talking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu, how could any of this apply? Nothing, spiritual or physical, separates or interrupts before Him, may He be blessed. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. So no barrier can apply: “The whole earth is filled with His glory,” and “There is no place devoid of Him”; “In the heavens above and on the earth below, there is nothing else.” There is no place where Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not present, above or below. And “He fills all worlds,” and so on. Hakadosh Boruch Hu fills all the worlds. So how can we say that the verse, “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life,” wants to teach us that there must be no barrier, because if there is

04:57 a barrier, the soul will not reach below? How could that be? There is no barrier before Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Alter Rebbe answers with the verse in Yeshayahu: “Rather, your transgressions have separated between you and your G-d.” There is one thing that creates a barrier. What creates a barrier? Sins. “Your transgressions have separated between you and your G-d.” When there are transgressions, when there is sin, the sin creates a partition and prevents G-dliness from reaching the soul within the body. “Separated between you and your G-d”—that is what creates the partition. But why do sins create a partition? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. You just cited several verses, all saying that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere and that nothing physical or spiritual can conceal Him. Why do sins conceal Him? Let’s continue. If things can conceal Him, perhaps physical and spiritual things can conceal Him too. And if nothing can conceal Him, why can sins do so? What power do sins have to prevent Hakadosh Boruch Hu from being revealed? The Alter Rebbe answers: “The reason is that they are contrary to the supernal will, blessed be He, which gives life to everything.” A sin is contrary to the supernal will. The supernal will is the source of life for all the worlds. The moment you commit a sin, you go against that will, so it is not drawn down there, and His will is not present there. When His will is not present, He is not revealed there. As it says, “Whatever Hashem desired, He made, in the heavens and on the earth.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed everywhere in the world because He wants to be. “Whatever Hashem desired, He made”—He wants it. When a Jew commits a sin, he does something contrary to that will. He conceals that will. Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not want it. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not want to be there, He is not there. In other words, this is

07:04 not like the physical world. In the physical world, something forms a barrier because a person is limited. There are limitations. A person is limited, and the partition is limited too, so it stops the air. In other words, this is unavoidable. The limitation, the barrier, is unavoidable; it does not depend on what I want. I cannot decide, “I want to blow air through here,” and have it pass through a partition. I cannot do anything about it. I have no control over it, because that is the nature of things. That is how reality works. Above, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere, but He is present where He wants to be; where He does not want to be, He is not present. So the moment there is a sin, His will is concealed. His will is concealed, so He is not present there. That is why sins cause concealment. As explained above, it is the source of the flow from Havayah and is found in the tip of the yud. You see, this connects to what we discussed in chapter 4. In chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe said there are four letters in the name Havayah, but there is also the tip of the yud. What did the Alter Rebbe explain in chapter 4? What is the tip of the yud? It is the will, the desire, the focal point of all four letters. So too here: the entire extension of Hakadosh Boruch Hu into the world begins with His will. It is the focal point of every flow of influence. So if you do something contrary to His will, He is not present there, because He does not want to be there. That is simply the plain meaning of the Tanya. Now let’s talk a little about avodah. The first question that comes up when we read these words is: Why does the Alter Rebbe bring so many verses here? Why does he need so many verses? He brings

08:59 four verses in all: “I fill the heavens and the earth,” and “The whole earth is filled with His glory.” “There is no place devoid of Him” and “In the heavens above and on the earth below, there is nothing else”—those are also one point, not two. “He fills all worlds.” He brings four statements here. Why do I say four? If you look, it actually seems as though there are five. But this is not my point; it is Reb Levik’s point. The Rebbe’s father says there are four verses here, because Reb Levik maintains that the words “There is no place devoid of Him” and “In the heavens above and on the earth below, there is nothing else” are all one quotation from the Zohar. Ordinarily, we would say that “There is no place devoid of Him” is from the Zohar, while “In the heavens above and on the earth below” is a verse. But Reb Levik says no: it is all one continuous passage, the wording of the Zohar. So there are four verses here. Why does the Alter Rebbe need to bring four verses? Beyond that, the main question is that we are already in Igeres Hateshuvah. We have already studied Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah—twelve chapters in which the Alter Rebbe explained the oneness of Hashem. There he brought verses, passages from the Zohar, explanations and elaborations on “There is nothing else besides Him,” the oneness of Hashem, the higher unity and the lower unity. Suddenly the Alter Rebbe comes here and presents something new: Did you know that nothing physical can stand as a barrier before Hakadosh Boruch Hu? What is he teaching us? It is obvious. Of course—we have already studied twelve chapters about it. In Likkutei Amarim, too, there were several chapters on the oneness of Hashem: chapters 21, 33, and 48. There, too, the Alter Rebbe spoke at length about everything being utterly nullified before Him, and about His encompassing all worlds. There is

11:01 It means just what it says, except that He is present below just as He is above. [unclear] and explained all these matters at length. Then we come to Igeres Hateshuvah, and suddenly the Alter Rebbe takes up the subject again. He needs to say it all over, as though he is about to introduce a new idea. And he brings several verses as well. That raises questions. So the Rebbe explains this based on a teaching of his father, Reb Levik. In his notes on the Tanya, Reb Levik asks: Why does the Alter Rebbe bring four verses? He says that the four verses correspond to the four letters of Hashem’s name. Since the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 4 that the soul has four levels—chochmah, binah, the middos, and malchus—corresponding to the four letters of Hashem’s name, he brings four verses. Reb Levik explains how each verse corresponds to one letter. The first, “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” corresponds to chochmah. That is why heaven and earth are mentioned together: from the perspective of chochmah, everything is utterly nullified; “there is nothing besides Him.” Heaven and earth are equal in this respect. “The whole earth is full of His glory” corresponds to binah. In binah, the emphasis is specifically on the earth, because binah is already a lower level, related to those who receive. That is why only the earth is specified there; heaven is no longer mentioned. “There is no place devoid of Him,” and “In the heavens above and on the earth below, there is nothing else”—which emphasize the heavens above and the earth below—relate to the middos in Hashem’s name. And the fourth verse, “He fills all worlds,” corresponds to malchus, the final hei of Hashem’s name.

12:54 Four verses, four letters—fine, it’s a beautiful teaching, but it still does not answer the question we asked. Why do we need to say all this? We already know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. Why does it matter that a verse must be brought for each letter? It’s a beautiful correspondence: four verses, four letters. But why is it needed? The Rebbe gives a remarkable explanation in a sicha in volume 39. In brief, the Rebbe’s point is that here we are speaking about the soul of a Jew. In Likkutei Amarim and Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, the Alter Rebbe spoke about all created beings and explained the unity of Hashem as it relates to the entire world. Here we are speaking about the unity of Hashem as it relates to a Jew, to the soul of a Jew. That is a different kind of unity. What is the difference between Hakadosh Boruch Hu as He is revealed in the world and Hakadosh Boruch Hu as He is revealed in the soul? The distinction is very simple: the world is not holy; the world is a created being, an entity. But it is nullified. Why is it nullified? Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere, because the word of Hashem brings it into being at every moment. All the explanations in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah teach us that, in truth, the created being has no independent existence: it is only the power of the One who creates it. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is present in every detail. But all this is from the perspective of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, who is everywhere, and therefore everything is nullified to Him. With a Jew, we say something entirely different. A Jew’s oneness with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is also from the Jew’s side, not only because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere. It is not only a matter of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s infinity—that He is infinite and without limit, and before Him all...

14:58 “There is nothing besides Him,” and consequently everything is nullified to Him. That applies to the entire world. With a Jew, we say something different. We say that a Jew’s being—his intellect, his emotions, his thought, speech, and action, all the powers of his soul—are themselves G-dliness. A Jew, by his very nature, is connected with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Every part of him is one with G-dliness. A Jew’s chochmah is the chochmah of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew’s binah is the binah of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew down here, a soul in a body, uses his intellect to understand G-dliness. That itself is the yud of Hashem’s name; that itself is the hei of Hashem’s name. This is the Alter Rebbe’s new teaching in Igeres Hateshuvah, chapter 5: this is the rope, the bond through which the soul below, in a body and clothed in the body’s limitations, is united with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Now, this is something distinctive, and I might have thought that things could conceal or obscure such a bond. When you say that nothing conceals because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere—that is from His perspective. Fine: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite and without limit, present everywhere, and nothing obstructs Him. For that, we do not need verses, evidence, or proofs. But when we speak about the soul, where G-dliness is present inwardly and must become united with the person as he is down here, I could wonder: How can the soul’s being clothed in the body, the process of descent from level to level, the sense of self, the body, the person’s very being, his physical brain, physical heart, and physical limbs, not create concealment? How can they not get in the way? They are a barrier. That is why the Alter Rebbe brings particular verses—four verses addressing each aspect—to emphasize that even from the perspective of what makes a Jew unique,

17:04 even from the perspective of his own being, nothing conceals, he is united with G-dliness, and nothing stands between them. What is the explanation? Why does nothing stand between them? If G-dliness is clothed within him, why doesn’t the body conceal it? The Rebbe says the explanation comes from the laws of a barrier to immersion in a mikveh. We are talking about something that intervenes, so let’s see how that works in the laws of mikveh. There are two types of barriers in the laws of mikveh. The first is when a person enters a mikveh but does not immerse his entire body. Suppose the mikveh was very hot, very cold, or very dirty—or for whatever reason, he rushed in and jumped back out without immersing completely. If even one hair remained outside the water, the immersion was invalid. That is one kind of barrier: his entire body was not under the water. There is another kind in the laws of mikveh: a person’s entire body was under the water, not a single hair remained outside, but there was dirt under his fingernails. Or he had written out his lesson, and a little blue ink from his pen remained on his finger. That is a barrier. What is the law in that case? There is a distinction: it depends on whether the person minds it or does not mind it. There are various laws—for example, regarding a Torah scholar’s garment, or someone who works as a builder, or someone whose work involves getting dirty. Whether something constitutes a barrier depends on what the person minds. The Rebbe says these two laws correspond to the two matters we have just discussed. If we are speaking from the perspective of

19:00 Hakadosh Boruch Hu being everywhere, so that nothing stands in the way, that applies to the entire world. It is like the first law of immersion: when the entire body is under the water, there is no barrier of that kind. Similarly, since Hakadosh Boruch Hu is present everywhere in the world, nothing stands in the way; everything is nullified to Him. But with a Jew, we want to say not only that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is everywhere, but that even from the perspective of the Jew’s own being and limitations, he is not separate. How can he not be separate? If G-dliness must be clothed within his particular form and being, surely his being conceals G-dliness. Here we need to understand that if a person does not mind something, it does not constitute a barrier. This also explains the relationship between the soul and Hakadosh Boruch Hu: because He does not mind it, it does not stand in the way. In other words, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the concealment presented by the body and its limbs is of no consequence, and therefore nothing stands in the way. That is the law concerning a barrier. But if a person does mind something, it does constitute a barrier. This is what the Alter Rebbe explains here: nothing physical or spiritual stands in the way, because it is of no consequence to Him. A transgression, however, does matter to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A transgression goes against His will; therefore it conceals, creates a barrier, and there He is not revealed. This also explains the difference between a non-Jew doing something wrong and a Jew doing something wrong. Precisely with a Jew, because this oneness exists from below, from the perspective of his own being, sin and transgression...

20:51 It causes concealment. Because a Jew is rooted in the innermost level of Hashem’s will—that is his source—when he commits a sin, it prevents Hashem’s will from being revealed. A non-Jew’s entire form, his entire existence, comes only from the external level of speech. Since it is external, even if he does not behave properly, Hashem’s presence is still there and is not concealed. That is why sin matters so deeply for a Jew and causes such harm. This is what is meant by the verse, “Your sins separate between you and your G-d.” All of this explains the gravity of sin. On the other hand, the Rebbe also says—not the Alter Rebbe here, but it is written in Chassidus—that the teachers of Chassidus explain that “Your sins separate between you and your G-d” is only from the person’s side. “Between you and your G-d”: it is the person who creates that separation. But from Hashem’s side, even when a Jew sins, Hashem’s bond with him always remains. As it says in Tanya, chapter 24, even at the time of the sin, his soul “remained faithful to Him, blessed be He.” There is never a true separation between a Jew and Hashem. That is why, even after a Jew sins, he can do teshuvah, and through teshuvah Hashem forgives him, pardons him, and erases it all. And this is the good news that the Alter Rebbe will explain to us in the coming chapters: how, through the power of teshuvah, a person can set everything right.