Chapter 4 - First Lesson

00:00 Speaker 1 Today we’re starting chapter 4. After explaining the soul’s faculties, the Alter Rebbe now begins to discuss the soul’s garments. That’s the progression in Tanya: in chapter 2, the Alter Rebbe spoke about the essence of the soul. What is the essence of the G-dly soul? In chapter 3, he spoke about the G-dly soul’s faculties, intellect and emotions. What is their role? And in chapter 4, the Alter Rebbe begins to discuss the garments of the G-dly soul. The subject of the garments is central to Tanya in particular, because it is a book for beinonim. The whole point of the book, as the Alter Rebbe comes to explain, is that the main avodah is specifically with the garments. That is what the entire purpose of making a dwelling place in the lower realms is about; it is the purpose of creation. So a beinoni is someone whose main avodah is with the garments. Understanding exactly what the garments do begins here in chapter 4. So the Alter Rebbe begins. Let’s first read the text. The Alter Rebbe says: “Furthermore, every G-dly soul has three garments, which are thought, speech, and action in the 613 mitzvos.” The Alter Rebbe is saying that in addition to what we said earlier—that there are ten faculties of the soul, which derive from the Ten Supernal Sefiros, and which, broadly speaking, are intellect and emotions—there is something else. There is more. We’re asking: What does the G-dly soul have? What are the things the G-dly soul has with which we serve Hashem? So in addition to the soul’s ten faculties, it also has three garments. This, too, parallels what is Above. Although the Alter Rebbe doesn’t emphasize it here, other maamarim explain that just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu has the Ten Sefiros of Atzilus, there are also the three worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and those three worlds

02:12 Speaker 1 of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are called garments. The world of thought, the world of speech, and the world of action correspond to Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. So the soul, too, has ten faculties and three garments. Now, why are the garments called garments? The Alter Rebbe doesn’t explain it, but it’s self-evident: the word “garments,” as distinct from faculties, means much the same as it does physically. Think about a person’s clothing. A garment is not the person himself, but the person is clothed in it. On the one hand, a garment is something separate; it isn’t the person himself. On the other hand, a person is clothed in a garment to such an extent that through the garment you can get hold of the person—not only physically, but, more importantly, in a spiritual sense too. Sometimes you look at a person’s clothes and get to know the person. Usually, we can tell something about who a person is from their clothes. An orderly person, for example—you see that he’s neatly dressed. A disorganized person—how do you say it, a messy person? You see it in the way he dresses. There’s the way a young man dresses. There are all sorts of things you can see in someone’s clothing that tell you something about the person wearing it. But the main point in the Alter Rebbe’s use of the word “garments,” as explained in Likkutei Torah as well, in the maamar beginning “Shishim Heimah Melachos,” and in several other places, is that a garment is a means of revealing oneself to something outside oneself. That is the main difference between faculties and garments. Faculties belong to the person himself. They are the soul, the person himself: his intellect and emotions. They express who the person is. A person has intellect and emotions. He is a good person, a wise person. When you call someone wise, you’re talking about the person himself. But when you speak about garments, you’re talking about the person as he extends beyond himself. It’s

04:15 Speaker 1 no longer the person himself; he is now relating in some way to something outside himself. What is this “outside”? It can even be the person himself. The garment of thought is a revelation, an expression directed toward himself. In other words, he wants to know and understand, and he has letters of thought. The letters of thought are the garment in which the intellect is clothed. The intellect is revealed in thought, and through thought a person knows what he understands, and similarly what he feels, and so on. So the garment of thought is a kind of revelation, an expression to oneself. Speech is an expression directed toward another person. When someone speaks, though, he speaks to someone on his level. Action is an expression directed toward something incomparably different. It is a garment that engages with inanimate things, with something wholly other, something incomparable to oneself. So what, essentially, do we mean by garments? We mean an expression, a revelation to something outside oneself. The same applies to the G-dly soul. When we speak about the G-dly soul, its intellect and emotions are the G-dly soul in itself. What does the G-dly soul understand? What does it feel? The G-dly soul is G-dliness. It is literally a part of G-d Above. So it has an understanding of G-dliness and a feeling for G-dliness. The G-dly soul lives in G-dliness; that life is expressed in intellect and emotions. Thought, speech, and action are the G-dly soul’s activities. What does it do with them? That’s where the three garments come in. How does the G-dly soul express its intellect and emotions? It can express them in the letters of thought, to itself. It can express them in the letters of speech, to another person. And it can express them through action, in practical mitzvos. That’s what garments are. There is another point about garments, another very, very important detail.

06:14 Speaker 1 It isn’t explained here at the beginning, but it becomes clear later in the chapter. I’m mentioning it now to give the complete picture. There is something very special about garments: sometimes a garment elevates the soul. Sometimes a garment has the power to lift a person, to raise him to a higher place. In simple terms, say an ordinary person puts on very fine clothes, and people begin to honor him. Yes, that’s quite something—just because of what he is wearing. As the Gemara says, “My clothes are my honor.” That’s what they called their clothes: “my honor.” Rabbi Yochanan, too, called his clothes “my honor.” Clothes bring honor to a person. When someone dresses in respectable clothes, people honor him more, because clothing has an effect on the person. So much so that, when someone wants to work on his inner self, we sometimes say that his outward appearance can help him do that work. “His inside should be like his outside.” There’s an interesting story in the Gemara—everyone knows it. The Gemara in Berachos says that certain students were kept out of the yeshivah because their inside was not like their outside. If we translate the phrase “their inside should be like their outside,” it means that their inner selves should match their outward appearance. So there is an outward appearance, and the inner self may not match it. In other words, the external garment has tremendous power. A person’s outward appearance affects him, and the same applies to the soul’s garments. Although the garments seem merely external—they are garments, something separate—nevertheless, a garment has the power to affect the soul. This is true of thought, speech, and action, as we will indeed see later in the chapter. Later on, when the Alter Rebbe discusses

08:26 Speaker 1 the 613 mitzvos, we’ll see that the garments are actually higher than the soul itself. The soul’s garments belong to the G-dly soul. Where do all the 613 mitzvos come in? The 613 mitzvos are the secrets of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and all of that is found specifically in the soul’s garments. So that is another aspect of the greatness of garments. At any rate, the Alter Rebbe says that every Jew has three garments: thought, speech, and action in the 613 mitzvos.

12:15 Speaker 2 of the meaning of the 613 mitzvos in thought, speech, and action. So the entire person—who is “the person”? Here it means all the powers of the soul, but he calls them the 613 limbs of the soul. Why? Because he is talking about the 613 mitzvos, so he divides the soul into 613 limbs. We know that, in general, there are ten powers of the soul. Just as the body is divided into 613 parts, 248 limbs and 365 sinews, so too the soul has, in a spiritual sense, 248 limbs and 365 sinews. Chassidus gives a calculation; the maamarim explain how to arrive at the number 613 for the soul as well. There are 613 powers of the soul corresponding to the 613 mitzvos and the 613 limbs. So that is what the Alter Rebbe is saying: the person is clothed in them. Chassidim would explain that here the Alter Rebbe specifically wants to speak in general terms, of all 613 together. He does not mean to divide them into separate parts. The Alter Rebbe wants to say that there is a dimension in which, when a person fulfills mitzvos, learns Torah, speaks words of Torah—when a Jew observes Torah and mitzvos—the whole person is there, der gantzer mentsh. That is the first point. One’s entire being, the whole person, the whole soul, becomes a soul of Torah and mitzvos. Through the garments, the soul is held there; the whole person is there. Now the Alter Rebbe says: “And in particular, the Chabad faculties of his soul are clothed in his comprehension of the Torah, which he comprehends on the levels of PaRDeS according to his capacity for comprehension and the root of his soul above.” Now, more specifically: we said in the previous chapter that the powers of the soul are divided into two general groups. There are the intellectual faculties and the emotional faculties, and these too are clothed in different garments. The intellectual faculties are clothed primarily in the garment of thought, while the emotional faculties are clothed primarily in speech and action. This is

14:25 Speaker 2 what the Alter Rebbe is saying: “The Chabad faculties of his soul are clothed in his comprehension of the Torah, which he comprehends on the levels of PaRDeS according to his capacity for comprehension and the root of his soul above.” Speaking more specifically, the intellect of the soul is clothed primarily in thought as it relates to understanding Torah. That is where the garment of thought comes in: you need it in order to understand and comprehend. And about this the Alter Rebbe says that he comprehends PaRDeS “according to his capacity for comprehension and the root of his soul above.” What does “his capacity for comprehension and the root of his soul above” mean? This is a very interesting point. They are two things. One is his capacity for comprehension, and the other is the root of his soul above. His capacity for comprehension means his talents, quite simply. Each person has his own abilities: what he can grasp and how much he can understand. One person studies more in depth, another covers more material. One learns better through concrete examples, another through abstraction; one is stronger in quantity, another in quality. There are different kinds of characteristics of the soul, and each person needs to study in a way suited to him. That is his capacity for comprehension. The root of his soul above is something else: something connected to the soul’s root. It is like what the Alter Rebbe said in the introduction to Tanya. The Alter Rebbe says there that Hillel had a soul rooted in kindness, and therefore he always tended toward kindness. Shammai had a soul rooted in severity and tended toward severity. That has to do with the root of the soul. In other words, the rulings of Torah, too, are connected to the soul’s root. The same applies to PaRDeS. Some souls are more connected to the revealed dimension of Torah. Others are more connected to the inner dimension of Torah. Everyone needs to study the entire Torah. There is a letter from the Rebbe: someone asked the Rebbe about this passage in Tanya, “How can I know what I should study?” So the Rebbe said, “His capacity for comprehension

16:35 Speaker 2 and the root of his soul above”—but I don’t know the root of my soul above. That was the question someone once asked the Rebbe. I don’t know the root of my soul above; I need the Rebbe to tell me. How else can I know what to study—whether to study more of the revealed Torah, more Chassidus, more Kabbalah, more derush? Should I study pshat, remez, derush, or sod? What world do I come from? There are the well-known stories chassidim always tell, right? Rabbi Yosef or the Alshich—there are different versions of who went to whom. He went to the Arizal and fell asleep during the discourse, and it pained him that he had fallen asleep. They tell it about the Alshich or about Rabbi Yosef. They lived at the same time. He would come to the Arizal and could not listen—he would fall asleep. It pained him greatly. How could he fall asleep? So afterward he asked the Arizal why this was happening to him. The Arizal told him, “Your soul belongs to the realm of derush.” That makes sense if it was the Alshich; the Alshich was full of derush. The Arizal’s teachings belong to the realm of sod. So you do not belong to the realm of sod, and that is why you fall asleep. It does not mean you are lesser; it is simply not your world. Well, those were great tzaddikim. They knew what world they came from. For ordinary people—not everyone who falls asleep during a class should take it as a sign that he does not belong to that world, right? There are probably other possible reasons. But how can a person really know? Someone did ask the Rebbe this. And the Rebbe told him: Look, the Alter Rebbe did not mean that you should go investigating the root of your soul. What he means is that a Jew needs to study the entire Torah. A Jew needs to study pshat, remez, derush, and sod, the revealed Torah and Chassidus, Kabbalah. You need to study the entire Torah. But in practice, you will see

18:20 Speaker 2 over the course of your life that there are subjects that resonate with you more, and you will have more success with them. Other subjects will be harder for you. So over time you will discover this; you do not need to go searching and asking. Study—a Jew needs to study. But in practice, it means that there really are many levels and many degrees. Some people get further in one area, others in another, because each person has his own abilities and talents, and there are also matters connected to the root of his soul above. Because of the root of his soul, he belongs more to one area than to another. There is a story about the Rogatchover. His yahrzeit was a few days ago. The story goes that the Rogatchover was with the Rebbe Rashab, and the Rebbe Rashab delivered a maamar. The Rogatchover felt terrible. It hit him like a spiritual bomb, because he did not understand the maamar. Of course, he understood it better than we would, but by the Rogatchover’s standards, he could not grasp it. So he was a little down, brokenhearted. The Rebbe Rashab told him that he did not need to be upset. He said, “You received a blessing from my grandfather, the Tzemach Tzedek, that you would become a master of the revealed Torah. He did not give you a blessing that you would become a master of Chassidus.” He told him that when he was a child, his father had brought him to the Tzemach Tzedek. The Rogatchover had been to the Tzemach Tzedek. The Rogatchover was born in 5618; the Tzemach Tzedek passed away in 5626. So he was six, eight—eight years old. In any case, his father was a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek, and he brought him to the Tzemach Tzedek, who blessed him that er zol zayn a baal nigleh—that he should be a master of the revealed Torah. Right? So, well, it was through that blessing that you became such a master. So

20:29 Speaker 2 they say he told him that he would become a master of the revealed Torah and that he should study Nazir, tractate Nazir. That is why the Rogatchover had long hair. Because the Tzemach Tzedek had told him “tractate Nazir,” he understood that he had to observe something connected with it. That is how the story is told. That is Rabbi Shemaya[?]. But in any case, that is how it worked out in practice. It is an example. Even a person on a very high level, like the Rogatchover, had a soul that belonged more to that world. In any case, this is what the Alter Rebbe is explaining to us here about the garments of the soul. The garments of the soul are thought, speech, and action as they relate to the Torah’s 613 mitzvos. And within that, as we said, the garment of action is connected primarily with practical mitzvos. The garment of speech is connected with studying the meaning of the Torah’s 613 mitzvos, and the garment of thought is connected with the Torah’s PaRDeS, with understanding and comprehension.