Chapter 7 - Part Three

00:00 Speaker 1 We’re in the middle of chapter 7, on page 11b, in the lesson beginning “from kelipas nogah,” after the period. The Alter Rebbe is explaining that kelipas nogah is an intermediate category. Because it is intermediate, it depends on the person: one can elevate it to holiness, or bring it down to the source of the impure kelipos. He is explaining how it can be elevated, and gives the example of eating fatty meat and aged wine. Now the Alter Rebbe continues with another example of something that can be elevated: “And likewise, one who says something humorous to clear his mind and gladden his heart for Hashem, His Torah, and His service.” When a person says something humorous—a joke that brings joy and a smile—what is his purpose? To clear his mind and gladden his heart for Hashem, His Torah, and His service, all of which should be approached with joy. The Alter Rebbe mentions three things here: Hashem, His Torah, and His service. These are three things about which we’re told to be joyful. There is a teaching of our Sages that a person needs to be joyful. Regarding prayer, it says, “One should stand to pray only in a state of joy.” Torah study, too, should be approached with joy. And serving Hashem throughout the day should be done joyfully: “Serve Hashem with joy.” So you see all three here: “for Hashem” refers to prayer; “His Torah” to Torah study; and “His service” to all of our service of Hashem, which must be in the spirit of “Serve Hashem with joy.” That is why the Rebbe writes in many letters that serving Hashem with joy must extend through all twenty-four hours of the day, since it says, “Serve Hashem with joy.” And as the Rambam writes, serving Hashem takes place all day long. Even when a person eats or sleeps, there is a way to serve Hashem in everything: “Know Him in all your ways.” So it follows that, really,

02:30 Speaker 1 joy should be present at all times. And since we need to be joyful, there is a place for something humorous. Sometimes a person says something humorous, and it gives him a smile, clears his mind, and gladdens his heart. “To clear his mind” relates to learning: sometimes a person wants to open his mind for study, and when he is happy, his mind works better. We can see for ourselves that when a person is in a good mood, he understands things better. That is “to clear his mind.” Then there is “to gladden his heart”: joy also opens the heart, enabling a person to awaken his heart in prayer and in everything else. So the Alter Rebbe continues: “As Rabbah would do for his students: he would first say something humorous to them, and the rabbis would be amused.” We see this with Rabbah. The Gemara, in a well-known passage in Shabbos, says that before Rabbah began teaching his students, he would say something humorous to them. The rabbis would be amused, and then he would sit in a state of reverence. In other words, as preparation for Torah study, he wanted to open his students’ hearts and minds so they would absorb the lesson better. He would begin the lesson with something humorous. So here we see something that belongs to nogah: humor in itself belongs to nogah. It is not something holy. Not only is it not holy; on its own, humor can even be a form of casting off the yoke. It is like the previous example we discussed: not just meat, but fatty meat; fragrant wine. We’re not talking about eating bread and drinking water, as we discussed in the previous lesson. We’re talking about something that is not refined in itself. It is something coarse,

04:35 Speaker 1 fatty meat and aged wine. Nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe teaches something new here: if you use the fatty meat and aged wine with the intention of opening your mind and heart, they, too, are transformed into holiness. The same applies here. The Alter Rebbe brings the example of humor, which in itself is not something a person needs; it takes time away from Torah study. Besides, humor can sometimes lead to casting off the yoke when one indulges too much in mockery, at the urging of the yetzer hara. Nevertheless, here humor is transformed into holiness when a person uses it, as it says, to stir himself to serve Hashem with joy, to clear his mind, and so on. Now, the example the Alter Rebbe gives here is very interesting. He says that Rava would do this for his students: he would say something humorous to them, and the rabbis would be amused. In the text of the Gemara we have, it says Rabbah. The maamarim also use the name Rabbah. Incidentally, there is the maamar of Chassidus, “Lecha Dodi,” that the Rebbe said at the Rebbe’s wedding. In that maamar, too, the Rebbe quotes the Gemara with the name Rabbah. That is the usual version in our Gemara. But the Alter Rebbe chose the version Rava here, as the Rebbe once discussed at length at a farbrengen. It’s a fascinating explanation. There are two versions, and the Alter Rebbe specifically chose the less common one, Rava. What is the point of that? The Rebbe explained that there is something particularly interesting here: on the one hand, there is a reason to say Rava, and on the other, there is a reason to say Rabbah. Each version has its own rationale. In other words, there is something distinctive about saying that Rabbah made a practice of beginning with humor, and something distinctive about saying that Rava did.

06:33 Speaker 1 And in this passage of Tanya, it is specifically Rava who matters. That is why the Alter Rebbe says Rava. Why? The Rebbe explained as follows. There is something distinctive about Rabbah and something distinctive about Rava. Let’s start with Rabbah. At the beginning of Tanya, when discussing the beinoni, the Alter Rebbe said of Rabbah that “his mouth never ceased from study.” Rabbah was someone who studied day and night; his mouth never ceased from study. So we might think that for a person like that, humor would have no place. Who needs humor? Someone who isn’t so eager to learn and needs a joke to get into the mood, wake himself up, and develop an interest. But why would a person who studies Torah all day anyway need humor? Nevertheless, even Rabbah, whose practice was that “his mouth never ceased from study,” would say something humorous. What is distinctive about Rava? The Rebbe explained: the Gemara tells us something about Rava, and we’ll come to that. There is a difference between Abaye and Rava. Abaye’s way of learning was described in the Gemara as “bones”—something drier, more focused on grasping the intellectual substance. The order of this is explained in the maamarim. The Rebbe discusses it in the well-known maamar “Maglei Pumei DeRava” in Sefer Hamaamarim Melukat, where he explains the difference between Abaye and Rava. With Abaye, Torah study was a matter of “bones,” in the Gemara’s expression—gnawing on a bone. It was learning focused more on grasping the intellectual substance, a kind of learning marked by greater bittul. With Rava, it was the opposite: “fatty meat.” In other words, Rava studied in the manner of “fatty meat.” He studied expansive halachos with enjoyment, developing lines of reasoning. It was a form of learning more centered on the reasoning of

08:38 Speaker 1 Rava’s approach involved more reasoning, more geshmak and more arguments—sweeter, more intellectual arguments. So I might have thought: Fine, Abaye’s Torah study, which involved more effort to grasp the ideas, needed a lighthearted remark to awaken an interest in learning. But with Rava, the learning itself was geshmak; the very act of learning was pleasurable. Why would he need a lighthearted remark? The learning already had its own richness. Yet he needed one too. That is the novelty: even Rava had a practice of beginning with a lighthearted remark. So the Rebbe said: It turns out that with both Rabbah and Rava, it is a novelty that each had this practice. And that brings us to our subject in the Tanya, the book of beinonim. Rabbah’s level is not the level of a beinoni. “His mouth never ceased from study”—that is a higher level. Rava’s approach, by contrast, is more relevant to ordinary people. So the point here is that the Alter Rebbe chose Rava’s example in Tanya because it is more relevant: even someone who can find pleasure and joy in the learning itself can, by making a lighthearted remark, help himself feel joyful and open his mind and heart to Torah study and the service of Hashem. For him too, then, the lighthearted remark becomes part of the service of Hashem, and he elevates it to holiness. The Rebbe discussed this in a hadran. Just to complete the point, the Rebbe also discussed the custom of singing before a maamar. That sicha was very interesting; the Rebbe spoke about niggunim. In general, the practice of the Rebbeim was to sing niggunim before

10:39 Speaker 1 a maamar. The Rebbe explained that, seemingly, music too belongs to kelipas nogah. Like anything else, you can use music for holiness, for the Beis Hamikdash, and so on. But there is also music that belongs to kelipah. Music itself is a kind of kelipas nogah, and it depends on the intention behind it: whether you sing to awaken yourself to the service of Hashem or just for its own sake. I mean, music can also lead to casting off the yoke. So the custom of our Rebbeim to sing a niggun before a maamar was also a kind of lighthearted remark. That was the explanation: We did not see the Rebbeim following a practice of making a lighthearted remark, so the Rebbe asked why we had not seen our Rebbeim do so. And the Rebbe said: It was the niggun. The niggun serves the same purpose. A lighthearted remark takes something from kelipah and elevates it, preparing a person to enter into... The niggun does the same thing. You take something that is essentially nogah, and by singing it before a maamar, before a great Torah teaching, it becomes holy. It is an interesting explanation. The Rebbe discussed it on the tenth... in the month of Av, perhaps something like that. I do not remember exactly. In any case, up to this point we have been speaking about the power a Jew has to take things from the world and make them holy—the power to take kelipas nogah and turn it into the service of Hashem. The Alter Rebbe continues: “But one who is among those who gorge themselves on meat and guzzle wine to satisfy the desires of his body and animal soul—which is the element of water among its four evil elements, from which the trait of desire comes...” What happens if a person eats meat and drinks wine like someone who gorges and guzzles? He eats meat and drinks wine with desire, with an appetite,

12:45 Speaker 1 as we discussed in chapter 1. “Through this, the vitality of the meat and wine within him descends and is included, for the time being, in the utter evil of the three impure kelipos.” This causes a descent. Everything the person ate—the vitality of the meat and wine within him—descends for the time being into the utter evil of the three impure kelipos. You see, there is a descent here. This is what we said: When a person eats not for the sake of Heaven, he causes the food to descend. He takes the vitality of the meat and wine, which could have been elevated to holiness had he intended to eat for the sake of Heaven, and by eating it to satisfy his desire, he brings it down into the three impure kelipos. Notice the Alter Rebbe’s precise wording: “the vitality of the meat and wine within him.” The Alter Rebbe does not simply say “the vitality of the meat and wine.” He specifies, “the vitality of the meat and wine within him.” This relates to the whole discussion. We spoke in one of the earlier classes—and we will come back to it—about a prohibition on the person and a prohibition on the object. We discussed what the Alter Rebbe says here. The Rebbe once spoke about this at a farbrengen in 5736, at length: Does the well-known distinction apply to prohibitions? Is it considered a prohibition on the person or on the object? This whole question, with prohibitions from the Torah and prohibitions of the Sages: When is it called a prohibition on the person, and when a prohibition on the object? The Alter Rebbe seems to imply, broadly speaking, that even with a prohibition of the Sages, there is a prohibition on the object. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear; there is room for discussion. At the farbrengen, arguments were given on both sides, based on the precise wording here. On the one hand, he says, “the vitality of the meat and wine descends.” That is, when a person eats food to satisfy his desire, the descent is not only in the person. The food descends too. The food becomes part of the three impure kelipos—meaning, the object itself. On the other hand, he says, “within him.” The Alter Rebbe’s wording is “the vitality of the meat and wine within him.” So the Alter Rebbe does relate it to the person. It is not entirely in the object itself. It is the meat and wine—but which meat and wine? Those within the person. In the end, then, it is connected to the person, as the Alter Rebbe will soon say, because afterward it can also be elevated. In any case, what does he say? “The vitality of the meat and wine within him descends and is included, for the time being, in the utter evil of the three impure kelipos, and his body becomes a garment and a vehicle for them for the time being.” So what happens? The vitality falls into the three impure kelipos. That is one thing. Besides that, the Alter Rebbe says, the person’s body—as we said, there is an aspect involving the object and an aspect involving the person—also changes. The vitality of the meat and wine now descends from nogah into the three impure kelipos. In other words, the moment a person eats to satisfy his desire, he takes things that belong to nogah and turns them into part of the three impure kelipos. That is one descent. The Alter Rebbe says something else as well: The person himself, the person’s body, becomes a garment and a vehicle for them for the time being—while it is happening. When a person eats to satisfy his desire, not only does the food descend to the realm of kelipah; the person does too, because his body has now served as an instrument. His body has become a garment. In other words, he used his—he ate to satisfy his desire, so his body became a garment for the food, which is in the three impure kelipos because of his intention. So the person’s body too becomes a garment and a vehicle for it; it is subjugated. He has now given himself over to the body’s desire, so the body becomes a garment, the instrument, right? The body acts as the means by which the person can indulge that desire. So the body is like

15:00 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe says, “the vitality of the meat and wine within him.” In other words, the Alter Rebbe does attribute this to the person, to the gavra. It is not entirely in the cheftza, the thing itself. It is the meat and wine—but which meat and wine? The meat and wine within the person. So ultimately it is connected with the person, as the Alter Rebbe will say shortly, because it can also be elevated afterward. In any case, what does he say? “The vitality of the meat and wine within him descends and is temporarily included in the absolute evil of the three impure kelipos, and his body temporarily becomes a garment and a vehicle for them.” So what do we see? The vitality falls into the three impure kelipos. That is one thing. Besides that, the Alter Rebbe says that the person’s body—as we said, there is an aspect here concerning the thing itself and an aspect concerning the person—the vitality of the meat and wine now descends from kelipas nogah into the three impure kelipos. In other words, the moment a person eats for the sake of desire, he takes things that belong to kelipas nogah and turns them over to the three impure kelipos. That is one descent. The Alter Rebbe says something else as well: the person himself, the gavra, the person’s body, temporarily becomes a garment and a vehicle for them, at the time of the act. When a person eats for the sake of desire, it is not only the food that descends into the realm of kelipah. The person does too, because his body has now served as an instrument. His body has now served as a garment. In other words, he used his—he ate for the sake of desire, so his body now became a garment for the food, which is in the three impure kelipos because of what he intended to do. So the person’s body, too, becomes a garment and a vehicle for this. It has become subservient. Now it has become subservient to the body’s desire, so the body becomes a garment, the instrument, right? And the body serves as the means by which a person can eat for the sake of desire. So the body is like

16:59 Speaker 1 a means. A vehicle is more than a garment; it is as though the body has been completely subjugated. The body now becomes, so to speak, a vehicle, given over to the person’s desire. So it turns out that not only does the food descend into the three impure kelipos; the person’s body does too. Of course, we are speaking about a Jewish body. A Jewish body, in essence, belongs to nogah. But through what? Through which act? When a person eats food—

17:25 Speaker 2 permitted food.

17:27 Speaker 1 But he eats it for the sake of his appetite. So the body, too, while he is eating, becomes a garment and a vehicle for the three unclean kelipos, until the person repents and returns to serving Hashem and studying His Torah. How long does that last? This descent—an immense descent, in which a person becomes a vehicle for the three unclean kelipos, may Hashem protect us—lasts until the person repents and returns to serving Hashem and studying His Torah. Notice the wording, “repents and returns.” It implies that the Alter Rebbe means teshuvah. “Repents and returns.” In other words, it isn’t enough just to return to serving Hashem; he also has to do teshuvah. That is what the wording here implies. He has to do teshuvah for having eaten to satisfy his appetite, and then return to serving Hashem. Those are two things: to repent for eating to satisfy his appetite, meaning to regret it, and, beyond that, to return to serving Hashem and studying His Torah. He takes himself and the energy he got from the food, and uses it to serve Hashem and study His Torah. Then it returns and enters holiness. Here the Alter Rebbe explains how this is possible. With the three unclean kelipos, it isn’t possible. If someone eats forbidden food, studying Torah won’t help. Even doing teshuvah won’t help—ordinary teshuvah, at least—because forbidden food is forbidden. You cannot elevate something forbidden. But here you can. Even though he ate to satisfy his appetite and thereby brought it down into the three unclean kelipos, he can still rectify it. The Alter Rebbe explains why: “Because it was permitted meat and kosher wine, they can return and rise with him when he returns to serving Hashem.” Since the thing itself is kosher and permitted, as soon as he

19:35 Speaker 1 repents and returns to serving Hashem, he can elevate it again. That is the meaning of heter, “permitted,” and mutar, “unbound”: “For it was not bound and held captive by the external forces so that it could not return and rise to Hashem.” That is what the word heter means. It also has the sense of releasing those who are bound. In other words, it isn’t locked up or tied down. It remains open, so there is a way to elevate it back into holiness. “Only a trace of it remains in the body, and therefore the body requires chibut hakever, as explained below.” The Alter Rebbe adds that a trace remains because there was a time when he ate to satisfy his appetite and enjoyed that pleasure—eating not for the sake of Heaven—and it gave him vitality. For a time, then, the body drew sustenance of a physical sort, connected to kelipah, to the three unclean kelipos. That needs rectification, and the rectification is chibut hakever. Chibut hakever is a kind of punishment a person undergoes to remove from him the pleasures and things he enjoyed in this world. So even though he returned to serving Hashem, he will still require chibut hakever. Now, as is known, Hayom Yom says there are ways to make amends so that one will not need chibut hakever, through various practices explained there, [unclear], and so on. There are various ways to help a person avoid chibut hakever. But the Alter Rebbe will discuss this at length in chapter 8, so, with Hashem’s help, we’ll speak about it in more detail there. There is another addition here from the list of corrections, concerning what is written below. The Tanya has a list of corrections, and some editions have already incorporated this passage into the text. It says: “And likewise the vitality of a drop of semen that issues from him in vain, that issues from him because he did not sanctify himself during marital relations.” He is speaking about matters connected with intimacy and married life. It is the same principle, meaning that these, too, are permitted things.

21:40 Speaker 1 A person who is married according to the Torah and halachah must, here too, act for the sake of Heaven. As the Alter Rebbe said in chapter 2, he must sanctify himself during marital relations. If he acts without holiness, without the right intention, then the same thing happens here: it descends into kelipah, and special effort is needed to elevate it again. In any case, up to this point the Alter Rebbe has taught us about the two sides of kelipas nogah: nogah contains both good and evil. You can elevate it when you use it for holiness, for the sake of Heaven. Conversely, you can also bring it down when you use it not for the sake of Heaven but to satisfy your appetite. Now, today is 11 Menachem Av, the yahrzeit of Reb Hillel of Paritch. Some time ago—at least one more thing. The Rebbe brings up Reb Hillel, and there are also sichos in which the Rebbe spoke about him. It is well known that Reb Hillel was so highly regarded among chassidim that his Chassidus was studied in Chabad as well, and extraordinary things were said about him. So I’ll come to the point that relates to what we’re discussing here, in light of this chapter of Tanya. It is generally known that Reb Hillel was meticulous to the utmost in every matter. That is one of the things we know about him: he served Hashem with an extraordinary degree of care, even inwardly. They tell a story about one occasion—it is recounted in Likkutei Dibburim. The chassidim tell of a Lag BaOmer when they were going to hold a farbrengen. But that Lag BaOmer also fell on a Behab fast day. So the chassidim, together with

23:44 Speaker 1 the rabbis, ruled that they could begin the farbrengen without completing the fast. It was one of the fasts observed after Pesach, on Monday, Thursday, and Monday. Lag BaOmer fell that way that year. In any case, the rabbis, including Reb Isaac of Homil, ruled that it was permitted. In short, the chassidim began the farbrengen before sunset, and Reb Hillel did not eat. Everyone else ate; he did not. So Reb Isaac of Homil called out to him, “What is this stringency? Everyone has decided that it’s permitted to eat!” Then he joked with him, saying something like, “Is your body like the donkey of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair?” There is, after all, that saying about Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair’s donkey, which was so holy that it would not eat certain things. That was the sort of remark he made. Reb Hillel cried. The Frierdiker Rebbe recounts that Reb Hillel said he truly had not intended to eat, but it just would not go down. The food would not go down. He wanted to eat, but... He said that he had worked on his body to the point that anything inappropriate had become contrary to its nature. Something he should not do, his body simply could not do. Something like that. This was the level Reb Hillel had attained through his own efforts. Many stories of this kind are told about him: his body had become a vehicle for the Shulchan Aruch, even for the most meticulous observance. They tell that once he was traveling in a carriage across a bridge while he was asleep. Suddenly, as they reached the bridge, he jumped up and woke. What happened? Rabbi Yehudah HaChassid’s testament says not to ride in a wagon across a bridge.

25:44 Speaker 1 So he was asleep, but he sensed that the wagon was approaching a bridge. He jumped up and got off. It shows just how refined his body had become—a vessel for the Shulchan Aruch.