Avraham Avinu was the first: "אחד היה אברהם" ("Avraham was one"), "אברהם העברי" ("Avraham the Ivri"). He was the first in whom it was revealed, in an essential way, that he belonged to the "one side" (ever echad) while the whole world stood on the other.
Where does the Written Torah first tell us about Avraham Avinu as a personality, not merely as somebody with brothers and parents, but as a distinct figure on whom the spotlight is turned? In the third parshah: "And G-d said to Avram, go forth from your land." And how old was he then? As the verse says, "And Avram was seventy five years old." Seventy five years went by and the Written Torah says nothing about him. The Midrashim, of course, are full of wondrous stories from those years, but in the Written Torah he simply does not appear. And then, from the age of seventy five, we suddenly have before us a new and singular personality, one that an entire sefer revolves around.
What happened at seventy five? Until then Avraham was a man who, by his own powers, studied, understood, grasped and loved. In that there is no essential novelty. At seventy five, "And G-d said to Avram": the Creator of the world revealed Himself to him and raised him to a new essence.
This also explains why Yitzchak was not born earlier. Had Avraham had a son before that, it would not have been Yitzchak, it would have been some "other" son. Yitzchak had to be born after the age of seventy five, after Avraham had undergone the bris milah, because only then can the chain of generations begin. For here something essentially different starts, not a man like any other man. And although certainly even before that the Holy One gave him a pure neshamah, it is not on the same level at all. Avraham the man is not on the level of Avraham Avinu.
And since this new essence was given to Avraham as a gift from Above, it follows that everyone who descends from him receives it from him. In the words of the Alter Rebbe: "ועל כן זכו להמשיך נפש רוח ונשמה לבניהם אחריהם עד עולם", "and therefore they merited to draw down nefesh, ruach and neshamah to their children after them forever." Everyone who comes from them, forever and without limit, receives nefesh, ruach and neshamah from Avraham Avinu. Inside every Jew there is, as it were, a "miniature Avraham Avinu": in one it is more hidden and in another more revealed, but the same principle and the same original seed is found in all of them, and it is impossible for there to be a descendant of Avraham who does not have it.
From where is that neshamah drawn in its source? "מעשר ספירות דקדושה", "from the ten sefiros of holiness." As is known, the neshamah descends through a seder hishtalshelus, a chain of progressive descent, as we say every morning: "My G-d, the soul You placed within me is pure; You created it, You formed it." The hishtalshelus runs through the four worlds, Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and in each and every world there are ten sefiros: chochmah, binah, daas, chesed, gevurah, tiferes, netzach, hod, yesod and malchus. Within each sefirah there are levels of nefesh, ruach and neshamah, and within each of those there is a further division: in nefesh there is nefesh of nefesh, ruach of nefesh and neshamah of nefesh; in ruach there is nefesh of ruach, ruach of ruach and neshamah of ruach. We are dealing here with countless gradations.
The highest level: the neshamah of Avraham Avinu came from the very peak of peaks, from the highest world, the highest sefirah and the highest level within it: neshamah of neshamah of chochmah of Atzilus.
The lowest level: the lowest world is the world of Asiyah; its lowest sefirah is malchus; the lowest level within it is nefesh; and within nefesh itself, nefesh of nefesh. So the bottom extreme is: nefesh of nefesh of malchus of Asiyah.
The distance between these two extremes is without limit. Nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe establishes that every single person, no matter from which rung his soul comes and what kind of nefesh he received, even if he received the very lowest level, has within that lowest of the low also the very highest. Certainly it is present in him in an extremely contracted and condensed form, but it is that very same point, which passes from the loftiest heights all the way down to the lowest depths.
And what determines which soul each person receives? In the words of the Tanya, "לכל אחד ואחד כפי מדרגתו וכפי מעשיו", "to each and every one according to his level and according to his deeds":
"According to his level": the rung assigned to him by a Divine decision, in accordance with his mission in the world. This one's mission requires a neshamah of Atzilus, and that one's mission requires a nefesh of Asiyah.
"According to his deeds": through his deeds a person can bring about a change. There are those who received a nefesh of a very low level, and through an abundance of good deeds merited an "upgrade" in the middle of their lives, a revelation of a higher level.
And this holds true even at the very bottom extreme: "ועל כל פנים אפילו לקל שבקלים ופושעי ישראל", "and in any event, even to the lightest of the light and to the wanton sinners of Israel." A "kal shebekalim" is a frivolous person, someone to whom nothing matters, whom no mitzvah warms or speaks to ("kal daas," light headed, is a negative expression). "Posh'ei Yisrael" means a wicked person. And if the two are combined in one man, then both his level in deeds and his level in soul are the very lowest.
"נמשך בזיווגם נפש דנפש דמלכות דעשייה", "there is drawn down through their union a nefesh of nefesh of malchus of Asiyah." Imagine that the parents, father and mother, are both frivolous and wanton sinners, behaving in a downright animalistic manner, and now a new soul must descend into the world through them. Which soul can come down into such a home? Seemingly the lowest level there is: nefesh of nefesh of malchus of Asiyah. Nefesh is the lowest of the three; nefesh of nefesh is the lowest of the low within the sefirah of malchus, which is the lowest sefirah of the world of Asiyah, which is the lowest of the worlds. "שהיא המדרגה התחתונה שבקדושת העשיה", "which is the lowest level in the holiness of Asiyah," the lowest that can possibly be. But this is not a non Jew. He is a Jew, and we are still speaking about kedushah, holiness.
And here the Alter Rebbe continues: "ואף על פי כן, מאחר שהיא מעשר ספירות דקדושה, היא כלולה מכולן", "and nevertheless, since it is from the ten sefiros of holiness, it includes them all." At the end of the day, nefesh of nefesh of malchus of Asiyah is one of the ten holy sefiros.
In Kabbalah and in Chassidus every sefirah is called a "partzuf," a countenance. Why? Because when you look at a person's face, the face contains a whole world; everything is there in it. So too every single sefirah is a complete partzuf. The sefirah of malchus is not malchus alone: in broad strokes it is malchus, but it contains within itself chochmah, binah, daas, chesed, gevurah and everything else. And this is one of the differences between kedushah and kelipah: in kelipah there is fragmentation, while in kedushah there is blending and unity. Therefore even the lowest sefirah, malchus, is bound up with the sefirah of chesed and with the sefirah of chochmah, and consequently bound up with the higher world as well. True, the connection runs through many stages before you locate it, but it is there.
And this is the order the Alter Rebbe describes: "היא כלולה מכולן, גם מחכמה דעשיה, שבתוכה מלובשת חכמה דמלכות דאצילות, שבתוכה חכמה דאצילות, שבה מאיר אור אין סוף ברוך הוא ממש", "it includes them all, including chochmah of Asiyah, within which is clothed chochmah of malchus of Atzilus, within which is chochmah of Atzilus, in which there shines the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, literally." Since malchus is composed of all the sefiros, it is bound up also with the chochmah of its own world, chochmah of Asiyah, and that is linked in a chain all the way up to chochmah of Atzilus, so that in the final analysis the Or Ein Sof is contained within it. There is more to be expanded upon in this matter, and we will stop here for now.
In summary: Avraham Avinu was the first to become a new essence, and not by his own powers but through a Divine revelation that lifted him up, and from the age of seventy five and onward the chain of generations begins. Because of this, the Avos merited to draw down nefesh, ruach and neshamah to their children after them forever, from the ten sefiros of holiness, to each and every one according to his level and according to his deeds. And even at the very lowest level, the nefesh of nefesh of malchus of Asiyah drawn down even to the lightest of the light and to the wanton sinners of Israel, since it comes from the ten sefiros of holiness it includes them all, and within it, in its innermost core, shines the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, literally. Into every Jew, on whatever level he stands, that same potential of Avraham Avinu was placed, and deep within him Avraham Avinu lies hidden.
A question came up here: after all, Avraham Avinu himself was the son of Terach, and a "ben hanidah." The precise answer is as we said, that one must not look at the Avraham who existed before the age of seventy five. True, he had virtues, he had a history and he had a family, but from seventy five onward this is a different Avraham Avinu, a new essence, and the Written Torah treats him as though it had not known him beforehand. An excellent illustration of this is the change of Avraham's name, and G-d willing we will return to that and focus on it.
In the next section we will take up the two lines in parentheses at the top of the following page, where the Alter Rebbe's answer to this question appears.