Chapter 4 - Fifth Lesson

00:00 Yes, so we’ll continue with the Tanya on page 8b, at the first line at the top. The Alter Rebbe explained here that when it comes to the garments of the soul, although they are called only “garments,” their greatness nevertheless surpasses that of the divine soul itself beyond measure. The Alter Rebbe explains why: because the garments are connected with Torah and mitzvos, and Torah and mitzvos are one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “The Torah and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are entirely one.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Torah are truly one. Now the Alter Rebbe continues with a question—a very fundamental, broad question about Torah and mitzvos as a whole. And it seems that here the Alter Rebbe is teaching us a great principle for understanding more deeply what is so special about Torah and mitzvos: what is so extraordinary about the unity a Jew attains with Hakadosh Boruch Hu through them. So we said that Torah and mitzvos are one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. His wisdom and will, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, are entirely one. Now the Alter Rebbe asks: But Hakadosh Boruch Hu is called Ein Sof, and “His greatness is beyond searching,” and “no thought can grasp Him at all.” The Alter Rebbe is asking what seems to be a simple question. You’re saying that when a Jew studies Torah and fulfills mitzvos, which are the wisdom and will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a unity is formed and he becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—entirely one. But how is that possible? How can there be any unity with Hakadosh Boruch Hu? On the face of it, Torah and mitzvos are limited things: limited wisdom, limited mitzvos, matters that exist within measure and limitation. They are things of this world, with all the limitations of this world. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite. How can Torah and mitzvos be one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu when Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite? And Torah

02:20 and mitzvos have an end, because they are subject to limitation. The Alter Rebbe spells out the question in detail: “But Hakadosh Boruch Hu is called Ein Sof, and ‘His greatness is beyond searching,’ and ‘no thought can grasp Him at all.’” So he brings various teachings of our Sages and verses that show us how wondrous Hakadosh Boruch Hu is—utterly beyond comparison to anything measured or limited. “And so, too, His will and wisdom.” We said that the Torah is the will and wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We’re speaking about His will and wisdom, and here too we find various expressions in verses showing that even in His will and wisdom He is infinite: as it is written, “There is no searching His understanding”; and it is written, “Can you fathom G-d?”; and it is written, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts.” The three verses the Alter Rebbe brings here speak about wisdom and will. That is, the first verses or expressions he brings speak, as it were, about Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite. His greatness is infinite, beyond searching. “No thought can grasp Him”—Him, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. What he brings now, though, are verses about wisdom and will. “There is no searching His understanding” speaks about understanding. The understanding, the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, cannot be comprehended. Similarly, “Can you fathom G-d?” speaks, as it were, about the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And likewise, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts”—our thoughts... It speaks about His thoughts. So we are already speaking not about Him Himself, not about Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, but about His wisdom, His will, the sefiros. And even concerning these, we say that no human being has any grasp or comprehension of them. So the question naturally arises: How

04:37 can you say that when a Jew studies Torah and fulfills mitzvos, he becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite and cannot be grasped at all, while Torah and mitzvos are physical, finite things, matters of measure and limitation? The Alter Rebbe explains: Regarding this, they said, “Where you find the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there you find His humility.” So the Alter Rebbe answers this based on a teaching of our Sages. Our Sages say: “Where you find the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there you find His humility.” Right? Where does this teaching of our Sages appear? What is this teaching? The Gemara says that in the verses, we find that the very same verses that speak of the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu also speak of His humility. For example, there are various verses in Tanach that speak of His greatness. There are the verses in Parshas Eikev, for instance: “Hashem your G-d is the G-d of gods and the Master of masters,” right? I don’t remember all the wording. “The great, mighty and awesome G-d, Who shows no favor and takes no bribe, Who executes justice for the orphan and the widow.” I’m not quoting the verse correctly, but more or less, you see that in the very same passage that speaks of His greatness and describes Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the most wondrous terms—“the G-d of gods, the Master of masters,” and so on—it also says that He loves the poor and the needy, the orphan and the widow. So here we see that where you find His greatness, in the very place that speaks of His greatness, it also speaks of His humility. With Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the two go together. That is the straightforward meaning of the teaching of our Sages. But the Alter Rebbe brings this teaching here with a profound and wonderful precision that gets to the question we

06:38 are asking here. The Alter Rebbe explains it differently. The Alter Rebbe’s interpretation is: “Where”—yes?—“you find His greatness, there you find His humility.” In other words, the very same place where you find His greatness is where you find His humility. That means the greatest greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is found in the very place of His greatest humility. As it were, what does that mean? At a deeper level, what does “Where you find His greatness, there you find His humility” mean? It means that His greatness, His infinity—all the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—is present within the tzimtzum. There is His greatness and there is His humility. His greatness is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, infinity, His greatness. His humility is the tzimtzum: Hakadosh Boruch Hu contracted Himself, an act of humility. Right? So concerning this, they say, “Where you find His greatness, there you find His humility.” It means that the same infinity found in His greatness is found in His humility. The same great Eibershter found in the realm of greatness is also found in the realm of tzimtzum. Now, if we apply this to our subject here, to the Torah: What was the Alter Rebbe’s question, and what is his answer? The Alter Rebbe asked: Seemingly, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite and unlimited, while Torah and mitzvos are limited. How can there be unity here? They are two different things. What is the answer now? The answer is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not “unlimited.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not “unlimited.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is Ein Sof. Ein Sof is not the same as “unlimited.” Unlimited is the opposite of limited; if He is unlimited, then He is not limited. Ein Sof is not the opposite of limited. Ein Sof means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite and has no defining bounds, no fixed form, no

08:47 A description. And because He is infinite, He can, while remaining infinite, also be within limits. It does not mean that when there is a tzimtzum, He has to move away, become disconnected, or leave His infinity behind. He can be there with all His infinity within the tzimtzum, within the limits. So limits are not a departure from Him; they are a continuation of Him. They are Him Himself. Just as He, being infinite, is present in the unlimited, so too He is infinite within limits, within the tzimtzum. And this brings us to Torah and mitzvos. When we say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu, being infinite—with all the things we have said about Him here, that He is infinite and His greatness is beyond searching—contracted Himself and placed Himself within the measurements and limits of Torah and mitzvos, what do you see when you look at Torah and mitzvos? From the outside, you see measurements and limits. But in truth, what is within those measurements and limits? All of the infinite is there. It is He Himself. All of the infinite is within the measurements and limits. This is the point of the subject we are discussing: in that very place, in that very thing, the infinite is within the tzimtzum. And how does this work in general? Just to understand it a little better and not confuse it with other things: there is tzimtzum. Chassidus explains that there is a tzimtzum spoken of in relation to the world, and a tzimtzum spoken of in relation to Torah. These are two different kinds of tzimtzum. Sometimes Chassidus speaks about the tzimtzum involved in creating this world. Hakadosh Boruch Hu was infinite and beyond all existence. To make a world, Hakadosh Boruch Hu made a tzimtzum. There, the meaning of the word tzimtzum is withdrawal, removal, concealment. It is as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not here—not literally, chas veshalom. But the nature of the tzimtzum in relation to this world is generally that Hakadosh

10:50 Boruch Hu concealed His boundlessness to make room for the worlds. So there, tzimtzum means concealment, withdrawal. It is as though Hakadosh Boruch Hu conceals Himself, contracts Himself, so that there can be an empty space, a place here, room for the worlds. That is in relation to this world. In relation to Torah, we mean something different. Regarding Torah, there is the well-known teaching of our Sages: “He contracted His Shechinah between the two poles of the Ark.” The Ark held the Torah, the Tablets. So what does it mean that He contracted His Shechinah between the two poles of the Ark? It does not mean there that Hakadosh Boruch Hu concealed Himself. Chas veshalom—just the opposite. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is there, between the poles of the Ark. There, “contracted” means that, so to speak, He put Himself in; He placed His entire Self, His Shechinah, there. Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed all His infinity, as He is, within the limits of the poles of the Ark. On the one hand, the Ark’s dimensions are measured in cubits; it occupies a limited space. But what is within that limited space? What does it contain? What lies there? The infinite lies there—Hakadosh Boruch Hu as He is infinite. That is precisely the idea that “where you find His greatness, there you find His humility.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not confined to being unlimited. He can be present in His full force within measurements and limits, within a limited reality. In fact, this point appears explicitly in Rashi’s commentary on the Chumash. Rashi says that Moshe Rabbeinu would hear the voice of Hakadosh Boruch Hu when he entered the Mishkan. It says in Rashi that the Shechinah descended into the Holy of Holies and spoke there. Moshe stood at the entrance to the Tent and heard the voice of the Shechinah, but at the entrance the voice stopped. Rashi says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu spoke from the Holy Ark, and the voice extended as far as the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Moshe Rabbeinu stood there and heard

12:52 everything that Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to him and wanted him to tell the Jewish people. Outside the Mishkan, no one heard anything. Only within the thirty cubits occupied by the Mishkan could the voice of Hakadosh Boruch Hu be heard. So Rashi says, in Parshas Naso, if I’m not mistaken—or perhaps also in Vayikra—“One might think it was because the voice was low.” You might think it was simply a quiet voice, and that is why it could not be heard outside, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu spoke softly. Rashi says: No. It was the same voice heard at Matan Torah, which traveled from one end of the world to the other. At Matan Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu spoke and the Jewish people heard Him. The whole world heard it. It was “a great voice that did not cease.” That same voice heard at Matan Torah was heard in the Mishkan. Ah, but here it was heard only within thirty cubits! That is the whole point here. [unclear] In practice, it was in a limited place. The area was thirty cubits, but what was within those thirty cubits? The same infinity, the same boundlessness, the same voice of Hakadosh Boruch Hu that was heard at Matan Torah was present there. In its quality, it was the same; it was simply in a smaller place. What was present there? The voice of the Infinite, just as it was at Matan Torah, with its full reach. So this is an example to help us understand what we are discussing. And that is what the Alter Rebbe says here: Look, “Hakadosh Boruch Hu contracted...” As we said, tzimtzum here means that He placed Himself within it. He contracted—He put in His entire Self—His will and His wisdom. As we said, that is His infinity, but He contracted it, placed it within the 613 mitzvos of the Torah and their laws. In practice, these are limited things: there are precisely 613, no more and no less.

14:44 And within that, too, there are limits—their laws are defined. How each mitzvah is performed, every detail of the laws, how tefillin and tzitzis must be made—every detail. “And in the combinations of the letters of Tanach and their interpretations”—likewise with the Written Torah. We know that the Written Torah has another limitation: the letters. In the Oral Torah, the limitation is the laws; each law defines what is required. If the tefillin are not exactly the required number of fingerbreadths by fingerbreadths, they are invalid, and so on—all the details. And when we come to the Written Torah, there is the limitation of the letters. If one letter is missing or is not written properly, the Torah scroll is invalid. All these things are measurements and limits. “And their interpretations”—that refers to the teachings of our Sages, of blessed memory. Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu place all this within the measurements and limits of the letters and the laws? “So that every neshamah, ruach, and nefesh in the human body can grasp them with its understanding.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted union to be possible. As we said, He wanted a Jew to be able to unite with Him through his garments—his thought, speech, and action. That is why Hakadosh Boruch Hu made this entire tzimtzum. But again, this tzimtzum does not mean that He is absent. On the contrary, He is present with His entire essence, with all His infinity, within that limit, within that law and within those letters. All of the infinite is there. “So that every neshamah, ruach, and nefesh in the human body can grasp them with its understanding and fulfill whatever can be fulfilled of them in action, speech, and thought.” As we said in the first part of the chapter, the garments are garments of the soul. The soul—or, neshamah is more connected with Torah, ruach is more connected with love and awe, and nefesh is more connected with action. That is what we said earlier. The garments clothe the soul. To fulfill a mitzvah, you also need

16:53 Nefesh, ruach, and neshamah too—the intellect and emotions, everything. But what is the goal? The goal is for it to enter the garments of thought, speech, and action, and through them, for it to be clothed in all ten of its faculties in these three garments. Torah and mitzvos become clothed in all ten faculties of the soul. Through what? Through the garments. So it follows that what is present here is the entire Infinite. And that answers the question the Alter Rebbe asked. So, once again, we had a question and an answer here. First, the Alter Rebbe laid down a principle: There is something extraordinary about a Jew’s thought, speech, and action that is not found anywhere else, not even in nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. In thought, speech, and action, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself is present. The Master of the Universe, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, in His very own glory, is present within Torah and mitzvos. In other words, when a simple Jew thinks the letters of Torah, speaks words of Torah, or performs any mitzvah, at that moment there is actual unity with the Infinite Light. That was the principle. The Alter Rebbe then asked: But how can that be? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is infinite. Not only is He infinite; His will is infinite, and His wisdom is infinite too. So how can my thought, speech, and action unite with the Infinite? I am finite and limited. In response, the Alter Rebbe explained the principle that Hakadosh Boruch Hu contracted and placed all of His infinity within this limitation. And that is the very greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Where you find His greatness, there you find His humility.” His true greatness is that He places all of His infinity within the contraction. As we said earlier, there are two, two

18:56 kinds of contraction: the contraction involved in the creation of the worlds and the contraction within Torah. Accordingly, there are also two ways to explain the teaching of our Sages, “Where you find His greatness, there you find His humility.” Sometimes it is explained as “despite”: Although Hakadosh Boruch Hu is great, He nevertheless has humility. In other words, there is an element of “nevertheless.” He has greatness, and nevertheless He also has contraction. That is one way it is sometimes explained, and we see it in relation to the worlds. Although Hakadosh Boruch Hu is great, infinite, and without limit, He nevertheless puts Himself aside. He concealed, contracted—as though He concealed His boundlessness out of humility, so that a world could exist. There, the point is that although He is great, He nevertheless contracted. But with Torah and mitzvos, as we explained earlier, it is “where”—in that very place, in that very matter. His infinity is expressed within “I am Hashem your G-d.” The entire Infinite is present within the contraction. That is the special wonder of Torah. There is a vort chassidim say about this. I don’t remember; I’m not sure. They say it in the name of chassidim, or earlier authorities—I don’t know who. They would say it in Yiddish. The word “contraction” can be translated in two ways in Yiddish: ayngekvetsh and arayngekvetsh. In Hebrew that is, um, how do you say it? Um, I’ve forgotten the words. To shrink and to compress. How do you say it in other languages? Everyone can think about that. In other words, ayngekvetsh, to shrink, is, well, a contraction. Right? Arayn—meaning to put yourself aside to make room for something else. And

21:39 arayngekvetsh, to compress, means to fit a great deal into one place. So that is the difference between the two translations of “contraction”: With regard to the world, it is ayngekvetsh—as though He puts Himself aside, you see, to make room for the world. But in Torah it is arayngekvetsh: He places His entire self inside the letters, inside the measurements and limits. That is what they say regarding Torah and mitzvos. This also has practical relevance, of course, when we speak about our approach. Chassidim always spoke about the same thing regarding the Rebbe, hiskashrus, the relationship between Rebbe and chossid—the whole subject. When we speak about learning, why is learning the Rebbe’s Torah so important? And likewise, following his instructions? When a person follows an instruction of the Rebbe or learns from a sicha, the same point applies. On the one hand, every sicha and every maamar has a defined scope and limits. The Rebbe is certainly incomparably greater than what he writes in a maamar or sicha. The Rebbe’s wisdom, his knowledge, his greatness—they are endless. We have no grasp of them. You learn a sicha with all your excitement, but still, a sicha is a particular revelation, something limited that we can understand. You learn a sicha, you learn a maamar, and it is wonderful. But ultimately, you know that it is incomparable to his true wisdom. So here they say the same vort about contraction. On the one hand, it has a defined scope and limits, but within that sicha, within that maamar, “I have written and given My very self.” The Rebbe places his whole being, his very essence, all of himself, into every maamar, every sicha, every subject. Likewise, when we speak about Tanya—the Alter Rebbe wrote Tanya, and it is known that in Tanya, the letters themselves matter.

23:36 Chassidim were extremely careful to study Tanya and pay close attention to its letters, because they knew that the Alter Rebbe himself wrote Tanya. He spent a great deal of time carefully choosing every word and every letter and invested himself in its letters. That is why Tanya is regarded like the Written Torah. Chassidim were very particular, when studying Tanya, to learn its exact letters, memorize it, and pay attention to the words and all of that, because in Tanya every single letter is precise to the utmost degree. So here too we say the same thing the Alter Rebbe says here: Within a particular combination of letters, every detail is very, very precise. Look, just as we say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed all of His infinity within the letters—which is why the letters of the Torah matter so much—the same applies to the letters of Tanya. That is why we must be very precise about the letters and the words, and know that every detail in Tanya is precise to the utmost degree. As is known, there is a story that the Alter Rebbe would sometimes spend whole weeks on a single letter, deciding whether to write it this way or that way, because every letter in Tanya is deliberate, with depth upon depth. Right.