Chapter 6 - Part Five

00:01 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe spoke here in chapter 6 and explained the difference between holiness and kelipah. He drew a very sharp distinction: they are opposites. In other words, there are only two categories, two groups: either bittul, self-nullification, or a sense of independent existence. If something is nullified to Hashem, it is holy; if it is not, it is kelipah. That is the basic principle. Anything nullified to Hakadosh Boruch Hu receives its divine life-force inwardly, and consequently its bittul is openly apparent. [unclear] That is holiness. Something that lacks this bittul receives its life-force from the “back,” and so on; that is kelipah, the sitra achra. This raises a question: If so, why does the Torah, in halachah, have things that are permitted and things that are forbidden? Seemingly, there should only be a mitzvah or a prohibition. That’s it—nothing more. If it is holy, it is a mitzvah. If it is not holy, it is kelipah, and kelipah should be forbidden. Everything that is not holy should therefore be entirely forbidden. So the Alter Rebbe now comes to explain that within kelipah itself there are two kinds. That is where the discussion continues from here. At the end of chapter 6, the Alter Rebbe will explain the subject of the three impure kelipos. In chapter 7, he will explain kelipas nogah. So the Alter Rebbe begins here, at the top of page 11, where we are up to: “The kelipos are divided into two levels, one lower than the other.” The Alter Rebbe says that kelipah has two levels, one lower than the other. One kelipah is worse, lower than the other. “The lower level”—the Alter Rebbe starts with the negative side, meaning the very lowest level, the side of what is forbidden. After that, in the next chapter, he will speak

02:11 Speaker 1 about kelipas nogah. “The lower level is the three completely impure and evil kelipos.” What is the lower kelipah? It is what is called the three completely impure and evil kelipos. We already learned in chapter 1 that there are three impure kelipos, and here the Alter Rebbe gives some explanation of them. What are the three impure kelipos? “The three completely impure and evil kelipos”—meaning that they contain no good at all. Based on what we explained here, that means the divine life-force has been so constricted through the many tzimtzumim we discussed that it has entered a state of exile. Through all those contractions, through the long chain of descent, a state has come about in which they contain no good at all. Of course, this needs further explanation. The Alter Rebbe does not explain it at length here, but it is explained in maamarim, particularly those of the Rebbe Rashab, in Hemshech 5672 and elsewhere. The point is not, chas v’shalom, that they have no spark. Even the three impure kelipos must have a spark; without one, they could not exist at all. So they too contain a spark of holiness, through which they exist. Rather, when the Alter Rebbe says here that they are “completely evil” and “contain no good at all,” he means that the spark has descended so far, through the exile, the descent, and all the tzimtzumim we mentioned earlier, that it is in a state of total exile. Consequently, the light of the spark does not shine at all. In the language of Chassidus, drawing on a halachic concept, “the entire piece becomes forbidden.” In the laws of what is forbidden and permitted—when studying Yoreh De’ah for semichah, the laws of meat and milk, salting, and mixtures—we learn about different kinds of mixtures. Sometimes something forbidden falls into something permitted, or vice versa, and the permitted part remains permitted while the forbidden part remains forbidden. It is just that sometimes the forbidden part is nullified by a majority or by a ratio of sixty to one. That depends on the quantities, but the permitted part remains permitted in itself, and the forbidden part remains forbidden. Sometimes, though, a mixture of forbidden and permitted falls under the principle that “the entire piece becomes forbidden.” That means even the permitted part has become entirely forbidden. For example, if a piece of meat has milk or blood in it, that piece becomes forbidden. To make it permissible now, you need sixty times the volume of the whole piece, not just sixty times the forbidden portion that was in it. You need sixty times the whole piece, because the entire piece becomes forbidden: even the part that had been permitted has become forbidden. It depends on the particular case whether this principle applies. Those are the laws of what is forbidden and permitted that one studies. Chassidus says—the Rebbe Rashab applies this idea here as well:

04:25 Speaker 1 When it says that the three impure kelipos contain no good at all, it means that the spark has descended so far through many tzimtzumim that it is in a state of exile. It is as though the spark has been extinguished, completely extinguished: no light from it can be seen anymore. Consequently, “the entire piece becomes forbidden”; so to speak, the spark has become part of the darkness, part of the evil. Nevertheless, of course, the spark is still there. That is why, as the Alter Rebbe will say in chapter 7, through teshuvah motivated by great love, the sparks in the three impure kelipos can also be elevated. That requires a special effort, but it is not that there is no spark there at all. It is important to understand these concepts. Here in Tanya, though, the Alter Rebbe says that the three impure kelipos are a state of complete evil, with no good in them at all. “In Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine chariot, they are called ‘a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire.’” What is the Alter Rebbe saying? There is Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine chariot.

06:29 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe wants to explain this, at least briefly. For some reason, Chassidus does not discuss it at length. There is a letter from the Rebbe here in which the Rebbe goes into more detail, drawing on various teachings of the Ramak according to Kabbalah—[unclear]. Chassidus does not discuss the details so much. Why? I don’t know, but that is how it is. What exactly are the three impure kelipos? What does that mean? Why are there three? There is only one kelipas nogah, but there are three impure kelipos. What is the significance of three? What is the difference between them? There is not much explanation written about this. So you see, Tanya alludes to it briefly here by citing the verses. According to Kabbalah, the source for the three impure kelipos is in Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine chariot. We know that Yechezkel saw a chariot. What does that mean—what did he see? He saw the sources of all created beings. Yechezkel’s vision of the chariot showed him our entire world, but as it exists in its source. The world is made up of the inanimate, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, and everything else in the world. And, as the saying goes, the higher world corresponds to the lower world. Yechezkel saw things as they exist in their source, and that is essentially the chariot: everything found down here as it exists above, in the higher worlds. Of course, in the higher worlds everything is holy. The chariot is holy, and even the “stormy wind” and “great cloud” that the Alter Rebbe cites here are holy above. Chas v’shalom, they themselves are not the three impure kelipos. They are holy; they are the source from which the three impure kelipos develop down here. Yechezkel’s vision of the chariot depicts the worlds as they exist in their divine source. It is like when we speak of “the face of a lion” and “the face of an ox.” Of course, the lion above in the chariot is a living being, an angel. It is not an impure animal, chas v’shalom. It is a holy angel that sings praise. The angel Michael, whoever that is

08:22 Speaker 1 The angel called the lion. The lion down here is a non-kosher animal. In other words, Yechezkel saw the root of the matter. So what does it say about the Merkavah? In the account of the Merkavah, there is the Merkavah itself, and within it are all the living beings he saw: the face of a man, the face of an ox, the face of an eagle, and so on. Then it says that around the Merkavah, on the outside, there was “a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire.” In other words, something surrounded the Merkavah from the outside. Now, those are three things. Here in Tanya there are only two, but the verse lists three: a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire. The Alter Rebbe says that these are the three unclean kelipos. The Rebbe explains that, in the plain meaning, these three things are the three unclean kelipos. What does that mean? The Rebbe gives us a little sense of it, a little explanation. There are three elements: fire, wind, and water. The stormy wind is the element of wind. The great cloud is the element of water—a cloud is water, clouds are water—and the flashing fire is the element of fire. So those are three elements, corresponding to the three unclean kelipos. Earth is not an element in its own right. As is well known in Chassidus, citing the Ramak, the element of earth is not an element in its own right; it only receives. It has no distinct quality of its own. There are really three elements, and that is why there are three mother letters: alef, mem, shin, and so on. Earth is the sense of independent existence. There is nothing there besides that sense of existence, no content of its own. Fire, wind, and water correspond to the three lines: water is the right line, chesed; fire is the left line, gevurah; and wind is the middle line, tiferes. Earth is malchus,

10:43 Speaker 1 which receives. But the three lines, the three emotional attributes, are fire, wind, and water—chesed, gevurah, and tiferes—and these are the three aspects of kelipah. In other words, when we speak of the three unclean kelipos, evil and impurity comprise three aspects. There are aspects of chesed, aspects of gevurah, and aspects of tiferes. In serving Hashem, for example, there are negative character traits associated with the line of chesed, such as cravings for pleasure and so on. Everything associated with the right line includes negative traits connected with chesed—misdirected loves. There are unclean kelipos associated with the line of gevurah, such as anger, murder, and so on: negative traits connected with gevurah. And there are negative traits associated with the line of tiferes: showing off, a desire for fine clothing, and that sort of impulse. These are things connected with tiferes, with self-display, which corresponds to the element of wind. That is what is meant by the three unclean kelipos. At their root, in the Merkavah, they are of course holy: a holy stormy wind, a holy great cloud, a holy flashing fire. From there they descend and develop into the chesed, gevurah, and tiferes of the three unclean kelipos. It is like what Chassidus says about serving Hashem: sometimes a person feels a surge of love during prayer—a holy feeling. During prayer, love for Hashem awakens in him, a holy love. But after prayer, when he finishes and goes to eat his meal, that love enters the food. The same love, the same surge he felt during prayer—if he does not guard himself properly, he can carry on with that same vitality, that same geshmak, that same feeling he had during prayer for G-dliness. Then it turns into love and desire, full of vitality, for the kugel, the cholent, the food, the meal. That is called holy love, in the course of

12:52 Speaker 1 its descent and development, becoming a misdirected love, a love of kelipah. The same applies to gevurah. A person arouses fear of Hashem, gevurah, during prayer. He is stirred with fiery fervor—the fire of gevurah, love like flames of fire, or fear. But afterward, after prayer, he becomes angry with people who do not behave properly. He shouts at them, he explodes, and that becomes the gevurah of kelipah. Similarly, in the Merkavah it is holy; it is fire on the side of holiness. But as it descends, through the shattering of the vessels, it becomes the three unclean kelipos. It comes from those three aspects as they exist in the Merkavah, particularly since they are outside the Merkavah. In other words, they are already the source from which the three unclean kelipos descend down here. “And from them,” says the Alter Rebbe, “flow and derive the souls of all the nations of the world and the continued existence of their bodies.” Now the Alter Rebbe tells us what receives from them. These three unclean kelipos exert an influence down below. What do they supply? Here the Alter Rebbe lists everything that comes from the three unclean kelipos. He will discuss all the levels—the animal, plant, and human realms—and explain each detail. The Alter Rebbe says: “And from them flow and derive the souls of all the nations of the world and the continued existence of their bodies.” He begins with human beings: the nations of the world. We said in chapter 1 that the nations of the world come from the three unclean kelipos; the soul of a non-Jew comes from them. “And the souls of all unclean animals forbidden to be eaten, and the continued existence of their bodies.” The same applies to animals: the souls and bodies of unclean animals forbidden to be eaten. That is, the animals the Torah says are unclean and forbidden to eat—unclean wild animals, unclean domesticated animals, and unclean birds. All those things forbidden to be eaten: both their bodies and their souls come from the three unclean

14:59 Speaker 1 kelipos. “And the continued existence and vitality of all forbidden foods from the plant kingdom, such as orlah and kilayim of the vineyard, and so on.” The same applies when we come to plants. There are also forbidden foods from the plant kingdom. The Alter Rebbe gives examples: orlah and kilayim of the vineyard, forbidden plant products that derive from the three unclean kelipos, as stated in Eitz Chaim, Gate 49, chapter 6. Now the Alter Rebbe adds a fourth thing, concerning a Jew. Until now he has been discussing created beings: the nations of the world, forbidden animals, and forbidden plant products. Now the Alter Rebbe adds that the three unclean kelipos can affect Jews too—and that, of course, is what concerns us most. “And likewise, the continued existence and vitality of every act, word, and thought associated with all 365 prohibitions and their offshoots, as stated there at the end of chapter 5.” When it comes to a Jew, any thought, word, or deed involving something forbidden—a transgression of the 365 prohibitions or their offshoots—receives its vitality from the three unclean kelipos. So up to this point the Alter Rebbe has explained what the three unclean kelipos are and the influence they have in the world: four things that receive their vitality from them. Now let’s look at some interesting points. This is all straightforward in Tanya, as they say. But there are several very interesting nuances here. I want to pause over a few of them, as time allows. When you pay close attention to the wording in Tanya, you find remarkable depths in these details. First of all, I don’t know if you noticed as you listened, but we have not spoken about the inanimate realm. The Alter Rebbe spoke about the Jewish people, about human beings, animals, and plants. He does not mention the inanimate realm. That is surprising. Why is that? I’ll give each question and its answer right away. There is

17:12 Speaker 1 There are questions here about every detail, but I’ll give one question and answer. When we get to inanimate things, the answer is that there are no three unclean kelipos in the inanimate. There is no such thing as the three unclean kelipos in something inanimate. And that fits with what we said earlier: there are three unclean kelipos, not four. There is no fourth element, because something inanimate, like earth, does not belong to the three unclean kelipos. There is nothing wholly evil among inanimate things. All the prohibitions in the Torah involve either plants, animals, or human beings. When it comes to the inanimate, there is no such thing. There can be, but that is something imposed on it: if you take a stone and bow down to it, then of course it becomes part of the three unclean kelipos. But that is not because of the stone itself. It is because a person made it into an idol. There is no inanimate thing that is forbidden by its very nature, as it was created. Hakadosh Boruch Hu did not create a forbidden inanimate thing. Hakadosh Boruch Hu did not create a forbidden inanimate thing. There is a reason for this according to Kabbalah as well. It says that the shattering of the vessels did not occur in Malchus, in the inanimate. It occurred in the realms of animals and plants, the other kinds of created beings. The inanimate belongs to Malchus. There was no shattering in Malchus. It occurred only in Tohu. In short, that is a Kabbalistic matter that we cannot go into here. In any case, that is one point. That is why the Alter Rebbe does not mention the inanimate. Then we come to plants, animals, and human beings. But there is also a very interesting point of precision in what the Alter Rebbe says. Let’s start with plants; I’ll work my way up. We spoke about the inanimate, so let’s talk about plants. When he gets to plants, the Alter Rebbe mentions orlah and kilay hakerem. Why does the Alter Rebbe mention specifically orlah and kilay hakerem? He wants to mention plants that belong to the three unclean kelipos from the outset,

19:22 Speaker 1 actually. As we said, when it comes to the inanimate, the Alter Rebbe does not want to discuss something that becomes forbidden later, but something forbidden from the outset. So when he comes to plants, too, he wants to give examples of things forbidden from the outset. That is why he gives orlah and kilay hakerem. You see, a plant can become forbidden later through a mixture or for some other reason, but here he wants to discuss a plant that is forbidden from the time it comes into being. That is orlah: the fruit is forbidden during the tree’s first three years. That is the principle of orlah. The same applies to kilay hakerem, a prohibited mixture in the way the plants grow. It grows as a prohibited mixture, so its growth is forbidden. On the other hand, there is something interesting: when the Alter Rebbe speaks about plants, he does not say “their souls and the sustenance of their bodies.” When he spoke about human beings and animals, the Alter Rebbe said “their souls and the sustenance of their bodies.” So he mentions the word “soul.” But when he comes to plants, he does not mention the word “soul.” He speaks only of the sustenance and life of what is forbidden. Why? For human beings and animals, the Alter Rebbe mentioned both soul and body. For plants, he does not say soul and body. He does not mention a soul at all. With human beings and animals, that makes sense: they have both a soul and a body. Every person is made up of a soul and a body. A non-Jew has a soul and a body. An animal, too, has a soul and a body. Does a plant have only a body and no soul? What does that mean? There is an explanation from the Rebbe Rashab, and there is an explanation from the Rebbe. The Rebbe Rashab says that “soul” here means will. As is known, one meaning of the word nefesh is will: “my nefesh,” “your nefesh.” “My nefesh” means

21:42 Speaker 1 “my will.” So what does the Rebbe Rashab say? A person has a will. An animal also has a will, but a plant has no will. Since it has no will, it is not appropriate to use the word “soul.” That is what the Rebbe Rashab writes. The Rebbe writes that a soul is not only will. Citing the Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim, he explains that a soul is connected with all the senses. A soul means the vital activities that enable it to do more than merely have a will: to feel, to move, to go from place to place, all sorts of things. Not just will—all its vital activities. It eats and drinks and feels. All of that exists only in inanimate things and—sorry, in animals and human beings. That is what is called a soul. A plant has only the body of a plant. There is no aspect of soul there. The bochurim here studied volume 6 of Likkutei Sichos this week. There was a class here on [unclear], the first class on [unclear]; they studied volume 6. So they know that sicha. There the Rebbe discusses what a soul is. What does this mean? Why? Animals and human beings form one category, while inanimate things and plants form another. Animals and human beings have a soul; inanimate things and plants are bodily. This is precise in the Tanya: when he comes to animals— inanimate things, animals, and human beings, he mentions the matter of a soul. He also adds the body, because in addition to the soul, the body of a non-Jew or a non-kosher animal also belongs to the three unclean kelipos. In other words, the body, too, actually receives its life from the three unclean kelipos. When he comes to plants, he mentions only their sustenance and life, without saying “soul,” because they do not have one in the sense we explained.

23:36 Speaker 2 Shaar Hayichud calls it the daas of the inanimate.

23:43 Speaker 1 Not only in Shaar Hayichud. In Likkutei Amarim, chapter 51, too, the Alter Rebbe says “the soul of the inanimate.” Because they do have a soul. It is not that they have no soul. What does it mean that they have a soul? Their soul serves only to enable growth—the vegetative soul. But since a plant’s defining feature is not an activity of the soul; it is simply that its body grows, this is not really considered a soul. What else do we have here? There are many precise points. “Unclean animals that are forbidden to eat.” What is the significance of “unclean animals that are forbidden to eat”? Why does the Alter Rebbe use the longer phrase “unclean and forbidden to eat”? Following what we said earlier, the Rebbe explains that the Alter Rebbe wants to speak of things that are forbidden to eat from the outset, not things that became forbidden later. In other words, the Alter Rebbe wants to exclude cases of an animal that died without shechitah or a treifah. Those are not inherently unclean animals; they are kosher species. But because the animal became a neveilah or a treifah, it became forbidden to eat. So you cannot say that it inherently belongs to the three unclean kelipos. Inherently, it belongs to kelipas nogah, because it is a kosher animal. It is only because it was not slaughtered properly that it became a neveilah. So that is not an example of what we are discussing here. Here we want to speak of things whose entire existence, as we said, belongs to the three unclean kelipos. That is why he says “unclean and forbidden to eat”: they are forbidden to eat from the outset, and then both the soul and the body inherently belong to the three unclean kelipos. The Rebbe gives another explanation for “unclean and forbidden to eat”: so that we do not mistakenly think he means tumah and taharah as they relate to a mikveh. That is a different kind of tumah, tumah that results from touching something and the like. So the Alter Rebbe specifies that this tumah relates to eating: “unclean and forbidden to eat.” It is interesting how

26:01 Speaker 1 every word in Tanya is precise. The Alter Rebbe does not write words for no reason; every word in Tanya is precise. Beyond that, there is a whole major discussion here—a well-known sicha of the Rebbe, part of which was edited and published in Likkutei Sichos. It is the whole question of a prohibition on the person as opposed to a prohibition inherent in the object. The Rebbe apparently wants to derive from the end of chapter 6 of Tanya that all rabbinic prohibitions, and similarly prohibitions that apply only at certain times, are seemingly prohibitions on the person, not prohibitions inherent in the object. Because these things are forbidden only at a particular time. So they are not like the forbidden things we spoke about, which belong to the three unclean kelipos in their very soul. If the prohibition depends on the time, that implies it is not in the thing’s soul; it applies only for a certain time. Chametz on Pesach—can you say that the prohibition is inherent in the chametz? After all, on Erev Pesach it was permissible. After Pesach it becomes permissible again. It is forbidden only on Pesach. So its status—the object itself is not inherently forbidden. It does not belong to the three unclean kelipos. This leads into a whole in-depth discussion in the revealed dimension of Torah: is a time-dependent prohibition inherent in the object? It has halachic implications. If someone ate less than the minimum measure, whether that is forbidden or permitted by Torah law depends on whether the prohibition applies to the person or is inherent in the object. The Rebbe has sichos on this subject. He discussed it at length on 15 Menachem Av, on 8 Nissan, on Acharon Shel Pesach, and on Parshas Kedoshim. There was an extended discussion on 9 Menachem Av. Parts of it appeared in several places in Likkutei Sichos, one of them in Likkutei Sichos, volume 17, Parshas Kedoshim, on orlah. Because the Rebbe notes a precise point here about orlah: the Alter Rebbe says that orlah belongs to the three unclean kelipos, yet seemingly orlah is a time-dependent prohibition, lasting only three years. After

27:52 Speaker 1 that it becomes permissible. So why does it belong to the three unclean kelipos? And so on. There is much more to say about this. Anyone who wants to can look at the sicha in volume 17, Parshas Kedoshim, with [unclear].