0705 - Pshat in Tanya Perek 1 - R' Shmuel Levitin - Rashbatz

00:01 One of the things that used to go on in seven seventy in the Chofs was that Shmuel Witten used to give a shir and Tanya once a week for a half hour. Thursday night from nine to nine thirty, he'd give a shir and Tanya. And many of the times he would repeat things that he heard from the Rashbatz, who was a Mashpia in Lubavitch, and he used to give also a shir and Tanya in Lubavitch, I also think once a week. And he used to go to his shir Tanya, and he would repeat certain things that he heard from the Rashbatz. So I just want to repeat one of the things I remember he touched. The Rashbatz, when he was learning the first perek of Tanya, where the Alter Rebbe brings that every Yid, ech ha tzadik ve'echad roshé hashtei neshamas, has tun neshamas. And then the Alter Rebbe says, sheheyn shetei nefoshos, which are two nefoshos. And nefesh achas, one is from Klipa of Sitra Achra, which is a nefesh habamis, and then the second one is a nefesh elokis. And he asked the question, what does the Alter Rebbe mean by saying there are tun neshamas, sheheyn shetei nefoshos? What does that mean? The tun neshamas, which are tun nefoshos. And he touched like this. When you say tun neshamas, they seem like a neshamah is something more removed from the person. It's a neshamah in the person. They say tun neshamas, so you say there are two things that are there that

01:16 are connected to the person, but they're removed. So the Alter Rebbe says it's not like that. These tun neshamas, sheheyn shetei nefoshos, nefesh is life. These are two basically lifestyles a person could have. It's not just two things which are put into the person. These are two ways a person could live. You could have the life of the nefesh habamis, and you could have the life of the nefesh elokis. And this is one of the words that when he said it, I heard it from a few times. So that stuck in my mind that this is an interesting way to touch that the Alter Rebbe is in the beginning of the first perek of Tanya is already telling you that these two are two ways of life a Yid could live, the life of a nefesh elokis or the life of the nefesh habamis.