Chapter 1 - Fifth Lesson

00:01 All right, today we’re starting in the middle of chapter 1, at the two dots. This is where the discussion the Alter Rebbe sets out to explain actually begins. Until now, it has mainly been questions and back-and-forth discussion. The Alter Rebbe has been showing that the beinoni is something distinct: the differences in serving Hashem are not just about what a person actually does. If we look only at actions, there is no difference between a beinoni and a tzaddik, whether a tzaddik who has some evil or a tzaddik who is wholly good. The beinoni, too, commits no transgressions. So what is the difference? We understand, then, that we need to go deeper to understand the essential nature of a beinoni. All of that was an introduction, a back-and-forth discussion that the Alter Rebbe used to reach this point. Now the Alter Rebbe begins his explanation. This is where we start the subject he will explain in the coming chapters. He will explain the whole matter: what a Jew is, what we are made up of, how a person functions, and how a person’s inner reality is structured. On that basis, we will later be able to understand the difference between the tzaddik, the beinoni, and the rasha, with all the details. So we now begin with this passage on page 5b, at the two dots. The Alter Rebbe says: “For behold, according to what Rabbi Chaim Vital z”l wrote in Shaar Hakedushah and in Eitz Chaim, Gate 50, chapter 2.” The Alter Rebbe is saying that, as an introduction to understanding the matter, we will look at what Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote. He was one of the well-known students of the Arizal, and he recorded the Arizal’s teachings. He wrote what the Alter Rebbe is about to say, and the Alter Rebbe will now develop and explain it. What does he say? “Every Jew, whether righteous or wicked, has two souls.” Every single Jew,

02:09 whether righteous or wicked, has two souls. That is what the Arizal taught, as Rabbi Chaim Vital quotes in his name: every Jew, righteous or wicked, has two souls. As it is written, “And souls I have made.” There is a verse that says, “And souls I have made.” It says “souls” in the plural, and that verse is not speaking about the Jewish people as a whole. It is speaking about each individual Jew, as is clear from the continuation of the verse. It says, “For the spirit from before Me will be enwrapped, and souls I have made.” It speaks about each individual Jew, yet uses the plural. From there we learn that every Jew has two souls, which are two nefashos. So he says that these two souls are, in fact, two nefashos. What does that mean? Broadly speaking, we know that there are several names for levels of the soul. In general, there are five: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. The difference between the level of nefesh and the level of neshamah is that nefesh is vitality. The word nefesh, as its name suggests—the verse says, “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living nefesh.” A living nefesh: the main idea of nefesh is vitality, vitality in practice. It relates to physical life in the literal sense—a person is alive—and to things expressed in actual practice. Then there is ruach, which relates to the emotions of the heart. Neshamah is the level of intellect. Chayah is the level of will, and yechidah is the level of delight, as the whole subject of the five names is explained in Chassidus. So the Alter Rebbe says that although the verse says, “And souls I have made,” using the word neshamos, not every Jew has the level of neshamah. Neshamah is a particular level; not everyone reaches it.

04:20 Not everyone is at the level of neshamah, either in the G-dly soul or in the animal soul. In the G-dly soul, it involves engagement in Torah with concentration. That is the level of neshamah, the intellectual faculty; and there is also such a level in the animal soul. The level of neshamah in the animal soul is the animal soul’s intellect. But that is not what we are discussing here. We are speaking about every Jewish soul, whether righteous or wicked. Therefore, the Alter Rebbe explains that they are two nefashos: the level of nefesh, the basic, simple level that finds expression in actual practice. Every single Jew has that. In other words, everyone has at least the level of nefesh in the G-dly soul, and everyone also has the level of nefesh in the animal soul. Now, why does the verse say neshamos? If so, we might ask, why does the verse say, “And souls I have made”? One explanation the Rebbe gives is that the verse is speaking of them Above. “And souls I have made”—the verse speaks of the soul at its source, as it exists Above, where it is called a neshamah, because Above it is at the level of neshamah. Here, however, we are speaking of it as it descends below, as it exists in the human body. Therefore, the Alter Rebbe makes clear that he means the level of nefesh, which is what becomes clothed in the body. The Alter Rebbe says that both a tzaddik and a rasha have two nefashos. What does that mean? How, seemingly, can we say that a tzaddik has two nefashos? Earlier, the Alter Rebbe said that a tzaddik is judged only by the good inclination. And what does it say there? He killed it through fasting. He has no evil inclination at all. So what does it mean that he has two nefashos? The same question can be asked in reverse. What does it mean that a rasha has two nefashos? After all, it is also said of a rasha that the evil inclination judges him. That implies

06:23 that he has only one soul. So, at first glance, we could say that the Tanya is referring to the beginning of life. When a tzaddik or a rasha is born, every Jew is initially born with two nefashos, both the tzaddik and the rasha. That is to say, even Jews who, as the Alter Rebbe said earlier about the verse in Iyov, “You created righteous people; You created wicked people,” have souls whose role in the world is to be tzaddikim, and souls whose role in the world is to be resha’im, because they need to be beinonim—even so, each one has two nefashos at birth, both a G-dly soul and an animal soul. Later in life, the tzaddik completely nullifies his animal soul, while the rasha may, Heaven forbid, become so wicked that he has no share in the G-d of Israel and is left only with the animal soul. But the Rebbe does not accept that explanation here. The Rebbe says that the meaning is that everyone always has two nefashos. Even after a tzaddik reaches the highest levels, he still has two nefashos. He has an animal soul as well. And conversely, a rasha always has two nefashos. Even the greatest rasha has two nefashos. Regarding the rasha, this can be understood from the Rambam. In that well-known ruling, the Rambam says that even a wicked person who says he does not want to observe the Torah’s instructions nevertheless, as a Jew, truly wants to fulfill the Creator’s will. That is why he may be compelled until he says, “I want to.” This is the famous Rambam in the laws of divorce: every Jew, even a complete rasha, truly wants to fulfill the Creator’s will. From this we understand that even a person who is a rasha with some good in him, whatever his level, always has his G-dly soul, his spark,

08:18 and can therefore do teshuvah at any time, at any moment. That is regarding the rasha. Conversely, even a person who is a complete tzaddik always has an animal soul too. What happens is that his animal soul becomes refined and purified, or he transforms it into good, and so on. “With all your heart”—with both your inclinations. The animal soul is transformed into good, and then, so to speak, it becomes part of his love of Hashem. Or he has killed it. The Rebbe makes a novel point: even when he has killed it, that does not mean the evil inclination is not there at all. It is there in a slain state. In other words, I don’t know exactly what that means, but even a tzaddik who has killed his evil inclination still has that soul. His animal soul is present, but in a slain state. I don’t know what that means, but in any case, what does it mean overall? The meaning here in Tanya is that everyone really has both nefashos. It does not mean that at a certain point you are left with only one soul. Everyone has two nefashos, because the two nefashos are their life. A person has to work with both. What, then, is the work? To transform the animal soul, to nullify it, to transform it. But we will always have the animal soul. The question is in what state: subdued, until it is transformed into good, and so on. And this is not to say that it is like what is explained in the maamar about “Draw me after You; let us run”: that the ultimate aim is not to nullify the animal soul but, on the contrary, to make use of the animal soul’s enthusiasm—so that we have the “let us run”—and serve Hashem with that too. In any case, we see from this that we need to look closely at the words of Tanya and be precise, because every word in Tanya contains tremendous depth, layer upon layer.

10:17 Bottom line, what has the Alter Rebbe told us so far? The Alter Rebbe says that every Jew, whether a tzaddik or a wicked person, has two souls, two nefashos. Now the Alter Rebbe is going to begin explaining this, but before he does, I want to pause on two points. The first is: Why does he need to cite Rabbi Chaim Vital? Didn’t we know this before Rabbi Chaim Vital? Why go all the way to Rabbi Chaim Vital? These things are written in the Gemara and the Midrash. They’re even written in Tanach, in Koheles. Koheles speaks of “an old and foolish king” and “a poor, wise child.” It’s talking about a person: the old and foolish king is the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, and the poor, wise child is the yetzer tov, the good inclination. And the Gemara in Berachos discusses the verse, “And Hashem G-d formed man.” The Hebrew word for “formed” is written with two yuds. So the Gemara says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created a person with two inclinations, the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara. So there are really two questions here. First, why does the Alter Rebbe need to cite the Arizal instead of the Gemara, the Midrash, or the verses? Second, when he does cite a verse, he cites one from Iyov: “And souls have I made.” Why doesn’t he cite the verse from Bereishis that the Gemara cites, “And Hashem G-d formed man”? The word “formed” is written with two yuds, and from that we learn that everyone has a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara. This question was asked by the Tzemach Tzedek. Now, the explanation of each point goes to the heart of understanding the entire Tanya and the whole character of the Alter Rebbe’s Tanya and Chassidus—what the Alter Rebbe wants to introduce and explain to us in Tanya: that these are two

12:23 completely different things. There is the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara—that is one matter. And there is the G-dly soul and the animal soul—that is another matter, and that is what the Arizal revealed. The Arizal revealed that every Jew has not only a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara, but also a G-dly soul and an animal soul. That is the revelation of the Arizal, and it is specifically learned from the verse in Iyov. The verse in Bereishis isn’t talking about souls. It speaks of inclinations: “formed” is written with two yuds, from which we learn that there are two inclinations, a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara. But here we aren’t talking about a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara. Here we’re talking about a soul. That is an entirely different category. What, broadly speaking, is the difference? When you say “inclination,” you’re already talking about something specific, a particular force—something that comes to interfere with you, someone who comes to persuade you. An inclination is a power of persuasion. There’s a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara. There’s a power in the soul that draws us and tries to persuade us toward good, and there’s a power that wants to persuade us toward evil. As the Frierdiker Rebbe says in one of the maamarim, the word yetzer is also related to the word for forming an image. It paints pictures for you. The animal soul—the yetzer hara—paints pictures. What does the yetzer do? How do we, G-d forbid, fall into undesirable things? It paints evil for you as something wonderful. It gives it flair, as they say; it gives it color. The yetzer hara has a talent for coloring and depicting desires. It makes them seem so appealing, so, so enjoyable and so good. That’s how it tries to persuade us and draw us toward evil. And the same is true on the other side: the yetzer tov paints a picture. It tries to show us, explain to us, persuade us, how beautiful a life of Torah and mitzvos, a life lived as a Jew, can be, and

14:40 that is how it draws us. So these are already very specific matters connected with persuasion—with how to bring a person to do good or to do evil. This is familiar; it’s what’s written in Koheles. It’s what King Shlomo said about a poor, wise child and an old, foolish king. That is the battle, the struggle between the inclinations. The Arizal revealed that there is a soul. A soul is something entirely different. A soul isn’t just a matter of particular details; a soul is life. As we said, a soul means what you live for. A soul is your essence. Nefesh can also be understood in the sense of desire. In other words, where are you? It’s not just what I do, but where I live, where my life is. This is life. And this is the new insight the Arizal reveals to us: that a Jew has two kinds of life. He has two souls. A soul is a whole life. It isn’t merely a matter of an inclination. An inclination can be something external. In other words, without Chassidus, without Tanya, without the Arizal, how had we always understood it? How do Jews who haven’t had the privilege of the revelation of Chassidus understand it? A person has one soul. What does it mean to have two souls? There’s one soul. Just as a table has the soul of a table—the soul of an inanimate object—and there’s the soul of a plant, the soul of an animal, and the soul of a human being. A soul means being alive. You have one life. Either you’re alive or you’re dead. I’m a living person. And what does “living” mean? Life includes everything that makes up life: I’m alive. A person has pleasure and desire, intellect and emotions, thought, speech, and action. He’s alive. Then there’s the question of what I use that life for. That’s what an ordinary person who hasn’t studied Chassidus thinks: I’m

16:51 alive. Life means that I breathe; life means that I feel. Life means that I want things. I have desires. None of that is inherently good or bad; it’s pareve. I’m alive. That’s it. Then there’s the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara, which, as we said, are a kind of force—what they call an impulso in Spanish. Every language has a word for it. Yes, a sort of push, something that persuades you toward evil or toward good. Then the Arizal comes and says: No. We have two souls, two kinds of life. The life of kedushah and the life of kelipah are two completely different kinds of life, entirely unrelated to each other. And that is what we need to understand. That is what the Alter Rebbe is now going to explain: what the animal soul is and what the G-dly soul is. They are different lives. It’s a different understanding, a different way of looking at things, a different essence. What is life? Life in the animal soul is one kind of essence. Life in the G-dly soul is another. And that is what the Alter Rebbe is coming to explain to us as we go through the next chapters. So the Alter Rebbe begins by saying the following. At least let’s make a start. We’ll see now that the order is that the Alter Rebbe first explains the animal soul. Then, in chapter 2, he’ll explain the G-dly soul. And in discussing the animal soul itself, the Alter Rebbe speaks about three matters. It’s divided into three parts. First, he explains what the animal soul is in general. What does “soul” mean? What is the animal soul, broadly speaking? That’s the first point. Then he’ll speak about the evil of the animal soul—bad character traits. And afterward he’ll speak about the good of the animal soul, which is also a wonderful new insight connected with what we’ve just said. Once we understand that the animal soul

19:00 isn’t only evil—that the animal soul is a soul, it’s life—we can understand that it can also have good; it isn’t necessarily evil. Nevertheless, that good is connected with the life of the animal soul. It’s a way of life; it’s another meaning of life. And if you understand what kind of life the animal soul wants to live, you can see how there can be good there too. So, more specifically, we’ll see three matters here: first, what the animal soul is in general; second, the evil of the animal soul; and third, the good of the animal soul. Let’s at least read the opening lines. The Alter Rebbe says: “And it is clothed…” Sorry. “One soul derives from kelipah and the sitra achra.” The first soul is the soul that comes from kelipah and the sitra achra, “and it is clothed in the blood of a person to give life to the body.” There is a soul that comes from the realm of kelipah. In later chapters, the Alter Rebbe will explain at greater length what kelipah is. Broadly speaking, a kelipah is something that conceals. Just as a peel physically hides the fruit, so too, the sitra achra conceals the truth. It’s something that hides things, that doesn’t let us see the inner dimension, the G-dliness in everything. And it is also called sitra achra. Achra means, as the Alter Rebbe will explain later, “the other side”—not the side of kedushah. It lacks bittul to G-dliness, and that is why it is called sitra achra. “And it is clothed in the blood of a person to give life to the body, as it is written, ‘For the soul of the flesh is in the blood.’” So the first thing the Alter Rebbe explains is the definition of the animal soul. The animal soul is the soul clothed in a person’s blood to give life to the body. In simple words: me. The fact that a person feels, “I’m alive, I exist, I’m a being.” That is what “in the blood of a person to give life to the body” means. The natural feeling we have that “I’m alive, I exist,”

21:06 This “I” is neither bad nor good. It’s a feeling. But this “I” is the starting point. It’s the essence of life for the animal soul. It’s the essence of life for the animal soul. What’s the problem with that? What does it mean? How do we explain it? So, with Hashem’s help, we’ll discuss this in the next class and go deeper into the subject: what “life” really means, how the G-dly soul defines life, and how the animal soul defines life. And this is what the Alter Rebbe says here: “It is clothed in a person’s blood to give life to the body.”