In the Alter Rebbe's words: "להחיותה מבחינת ראשה עד בחינת רגלה" - "to give it life from the aspect of its head to the aspect of its foot." The chochmah of the soul is able to animate a person from his head down to his foot, from the loftiest level in the soul down to its very lowest level. In other words, it can encompass all the faculties of the soul and influence them all the way down.
And how do we know that the chochmah of the soul really does extend its influence all the way down? From the words of Shlomo HaMelech, the same Shlomo HaMelech we quoted earlier from Mishlei, "ה' בחכמה יסד ארץ" ("G-d founded the earth with chochmah"), who writes in Koheles, as the Alter Rebbe quotes: "כדכתיב החכמה תחיה בעליה" - "as it is written, chochmah gives life to those who possess it." The sefirah of chochmah gives life to its "possessor," meaning the entire body and the entire soul. The "possessor" contains within himself, as it were, the sefirah of chochmah, and it enlivens and influences the whole of the soul.
Having spoken about a couple who are "the lowest of the low" and transgressors of Israel, whose child receives the lowest and most inferior level of the soul, the Alter Rebbe adds a parenthetical remark, to complete the picture, that this is not an absolute rule. Sometimes it is precisely to lowly and coarse parents that a child is born whose divine soul is exceedingly high and exalted. In his words: "ולפעמים ממשיכים פושעי ישראל נשמות גבוהות מאד שהיו בעמקי הקליפות כמו שכתוב בספר גלגולים" - "and sometimes transgressors of Israel draw down very lofty souls that were in the depths of the kelipos, as is written in Sefer Gilgulim."
Here is a brief explanation of this (brief, just as the Alter Rebbe himself placed it in parentheses): there are souls that have fallen into the depths of the kelipos, whether because of this or that deed or because of external circumstances, and have fallen into the hands of the forces of impurity. The Holy One, blessed be He, who is the Master of everything, could extract them from there without the slightest difficulty. But there is a rule that He Himself established and revealed to us: "The Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with unreasonable demands upon His creatures." He does not impose on His creatures tasks beyond their capacity, and He does not force them to do things against their will. Only in rare cases does this change; as a rule everything runs according to the rules He set down. And since He decreed that the forces of impurity should have certain powers, a soul that has fallen into their hands does not leave them except with their consent, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not take it from them by force.
When, then, will the forces of impurity agree to release such a lofty soul? If a soul like that were to descend and be born to righteous parents, it would turn the world over: it would spread Torah and mitzvos in abundance and bring many Jews close, and the forces of impurity would lose their 'livelihood' and be diminished. So they are in no hurry to release it. Where do they agree? When there is a couple who are "the lowest of the low" and transgressors of Israel. There they say: no problem. Chances are this child will not be sent to cheder and will not be taught Torah, after all this is the home of transgressors of Israel, so nothing will come of it anyway.
And nevertheless, in many cases the great leaders of Israel, who know how to identify these lofty souls, when they come down and where they come down, send people to extract those children born into such homes, in order to draw out the benefit that lies in them.
There are many examples of this, and the Midrash lists a number of them:
Avraham Avinu was born to Terach.
Chizkiyahu HaMelech was born from Achaz.
Yoshiyahu was born from Amon.
Mordechai, from Shim'i.
Even Melech HaMashiach, whose soul is surely the loftiest of all souls, the one that must transform the entire world and bring it to its ultimate purpose: it is explained that before its descent into the world this soul passed through 'defective' channels. On one side, from Yehudah and Tamar his daughter-in-law, from whom Peretz was born; and on the other side, from Rus the Moabite, and Moav came from the daughters of Lot. It is precisely through such channels that so lofty a soul made its way, because the forces of impurity assume that nothing special will come out of there, and it is precisely from there that the most special thing emerges.
In any case, all of this is said in parentheses, to tell us that this is not an absolute rule. But even when it is indeed as it usually is, that the soul born to "the lowest of the low" and transgressors of Israel is a very low soul, it loses nothing of the true power that exists within it, of the chochmah of the soul in which the Ohr Ein Sof shines.
In the second half of the chapter the Alter Rebbe comes to explain the concept we have spoken of, that this very love exists in every single Jew, and where it exists. He asked four questions, the first of them being: what is the root of this love and where is it found? The third question, how it is an inheritance, he has already answered: the Avos were a "chariot," and therefore they merited and succeeded in transmitting it to all. But where in the soul is this love located?
We have already encountered the word "chochmah" a number of times here, the chochmah of the soul, the sefirah of chochmah, and we see that the faculty of chochmah is the faculty that contains the Infinite. What, then, is the chochmah of the soul, this thing that every Jew possesses? It is not a substance; it is a faculty within the soul, a soul-power that serves as a vessel to receive that Infinity. This is what we will learn in the lines that follow.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "הנה החכמה היא מקור השכל וההבנה" - "chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding." The meaning of the word "chochmah" is the source of a person's understanding. "והיא למעלה מהבינה שהוא הבנת השכל והשגתו" - "and it is higher than binah, which is the understanding and grasp of the intellect." Binah is when a person understands the matter, grasps it, takes hold of it and internalizes it, "והחכמה היא למעלה מההבנה והיא מקור להן" - "and chochmah is above understanding and is the source of it."
We spoke at length about the difference between chochmah and binah when we studied chapter 3, and we will review the points that clarify matters here. When a person understands something and internalizes it in an orderly, clear way, his understanding is limited: each person according to his talents, according to his capacity for depth, and according to his grasp. Even the wisest person has a limit to his understanding, and he cannot grasp things that lie beyond it. It is known that within the intellect there is chochmah and there is binah, and these are not synonyms for the same thing but two distinct faculties: binah is the power of understanding, that a person understands something, absorbs it and internalizes it; chochmah is the source of intellect and understanding, the grasp of something that is above the soul's capacity for orderly, internalized absorption.
A person sits and studies a particular subject. Usually what happens is this: first he does not understand what is going on and he falls into confusion. Everything looks incomprehensible to him, the contradictions loom large against one another and nothing makes sense. He sits with himself and wonders how to get out of this, and then suddenly the Holy One, blessed be He, in His abundant mercy, throws him a flash of insight, an idea. (The same holds for a problem in business, a problem in learning, and in any field.) In that instant when the flash arrives, and it is no more than a split second, the person feels a light, and everything is utterly clear to him and he has no questions.
But this clarity lasts only a split second, and in the next step one of two things happens:
Either the flash of insight disappears as quickly as it came. Within a second it is gone, and all that remains with him is the feeling that a moment ago everything was so clear.
Or, if nothing distracts him, and he manages to stay focused and get hold of the thing, he will take a word or two from that flash, begin to draw them out and think them through, and little by little internalize and absorb.
That is how it works, and everyone feels this at one level or another on many occasions in life. And why does that point only flash, instead of descending immediately into understanding? Is it because the person is superficial, and so it escapes him? No. He may be a very deep and intellectual person, and still this is how it works, because the Holy One, blessed be He, implanted such a faculty in the soul.
This faculty is like a camera: it photographs things that are above a person's capacity to absorb. And once it has photographed them, that thing, which in its essence is above the capacity to absorb, shines upon the person at that moment, and while it shines on him everything looks wonderful and clear to him. But it is not a given that he will also succeed in bringing the matter down into the framework of understanding, for what the soul photographed is something above absorption, above comprehension and above understanding, something abstract. If he does manage to bring it down, he will be able little by little to take small pieces, crumbs and points, and bring them down. But the stage at which the soul, as it were, photographed the matter, that stage is what is called the chochmah of the soul.
An analogy: a person sees with his eyes a hundred-story building. He saw it in a single second; he opened his eyes and closed them. In that one second in which he opened his eyes and saw the hundred-story building, he saw all hundred stories, and now, if he has the gift of speech and the talent for it, he can describe in marvelous detail, for an hour or two or more, what he saw in a single second.
Not long ago there was a report about a man born with many limitations in terms of how he functions in his environment, what is called a 'special child,' and he is not Jewish, who is enormously gifted, and whose visual 'photographic' ability is astounding. They brought him to Jerusalem and he flew over the city in a quick circuit lasting a few minutes. Afterward he came down, sat himself down, and drew a precise drawing of all the streets, buildings and details he had passed over, with every detail and every detail of a detail right to the end, and the images are remarkable. How long did the 'photographing' take him? A second, and in that second he photographed everything. This is in fact a capacity that exists in every person in one form or another: he sees a wealth of details all at once, and afterward he can close his eyes, and it takes him time to spell out and break down what he saw.
To summarize: in this section we learned that "chochmah gives life to its possessor" - the chochmah of the soul enlivens and influences the entire soul, from the aspect of its head to the aspect of its foot. We examined the Alter Rebbe's parenthetical remark, that sometimes transgressors of Israel draw down very lofty souls that were in the depths of the kelipos, and we explained why it is specifically there that the forces of impurity agree to release them. We then began to explain the nature of the chochmah of the soul: the source of intellect and understanding, which is above binah, a faculty that grasps and, as it were, 'photographs' something beyond the capacity to absorb, as in the analogy of the flash of insight and the analogy of one who sees a hundred-story building in a single second.
In the next section we will continue explaining the chochmah of the soul, and how it is within this faculty that the hidden love in the heart of every Jew resides.