At the opening of chapter 18 the Alter Rebbe established that the verse “ki karov eilecha hadavar me'od” (“for the matter is very close to you”) is addressed even to a person whose mind and understanding fall short in the knowledge of G-d, who has no heart with which to comprehend the greatness of the Ein Sof. Even of such a person it is said “the matter is very close to you,” because buried in the heart of every single Jew there is a hidden love for G-d, and by its power anyone at all can arrive at love and fear while fulfilling Torah and mitzvos.
In opening the subject, the Alter Rebbe raised four questions:
What is the root of this love in the soul?
What is this love about - what does it ask for, what does it reach toward, and how far does it reach?
How can love be inherited from the Avos? Love, after all, does not seem to be the kind of thing that passes down as an inheritance.
How does fear come to be included in this love, when it is called specifically a “hidden love”?
Two of these four questions were answered in chapter 18:
The root of the love lies in the faculty of chochmah in the soul. As we explained at length in the previous lesson, chochmah is a unique faculty, one that is able to contain what stands above intellect and comprehension, and therefore the revelation of the Ein Sof finds expression specifically in the chochmah of the soul.
The love is inherited from the Avos because the Avos were a merkavah, a “chariot”: their bittul to G-dliness was so total that it became their very essence, and anything that is “essence” passes down as an inheritance to the end of all generations.
In chapter 19 the Alter Rebbe comes to explain a further question: what is this love about? That is, what does the love demand of the one who loves - what does he seek as a result of it, and what level does it reach? For there is a love whose strength makes a person willing to do a certain thing for his beloved, and the stronger the love, the more he is willing to do; everything according to the measure of the love. So the question here is: this love with which a Jew loves the Holy One, blessed be He, how far does it go, and what point is a person capable of reaching through it?
The Alter Rebbe opens: “ולתוספת ביאור” - “by way of further explanation.” Not all the questions have yet been answered, and more explanation is needed in order to address those we have not yet touched. For that purpose “צריך לבאר היטב”, “one must explain well,” what King Shlomo said in Mishlei: “מש״כ נר ה' נשמת אדם”, “the candle of G-d is the soul of man” (and the verse continues: “searching out all the innermost chambers”).
The plain meaning of the verse, as the commentaries explain it: just as a person looking for something in the dark uses a candle to search it out, so does the Holy One, blessed be He, examine everything that goes on inside a person and in his thoughts - “searching out all the innermost chambers.” And who testifies as to what happened in his inner world? The soul, which accompanied him through all one hundred and twenty years of his life, in which all his thoughts were absorbed and in which they remain, and which testifies about him on the day of judgment. It emerges that everything done in the dark is brought to light by means of the soul, and that is the meaning of “the candle of G-d is the soul of man.”
The Alter Rebbe adds a further meaning to the verse: the soul does not become a candle only after one hundred and twenty years, when the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were uses it as a lamp to inspect what was done in the dark. Rather, during a person's life in this world as well, his soul is like a candle.
In his words: “פירוש שישראל הקרוים אדם”, “meaning that Israel, who are called ‘adam.'” The name “adam” is a title unique to the Jewish people, as it says in Yechezkel: “And you, My flock, the flock of My pasture, you are adam.” From here the Gemara in Yevamos derives why the graves of gentiles do not convey tumah in a tent while the graves of Jews do: in all the laws of tumah the Torah says “adam ki yamus be'ohel,” “a man who dies in a tent,” and “adam” is said of Israel alone - “you are adam.”
The Alter Rebbe continues: “נשמתם”, the soul of Israel, “היא למשל כאור הנר”, “is, by way of analogy, like the light of a candle.” The verse, then, comes to compare the soul to the light of a flame.
[This analogy appears elsewhere in Tanya as well. In chapter 35 it is brought in a different context, based on the well known passage of the Zohar known as the Yenuka: just as a candle has several components - the wick, the fire, and the oil which serves as fuel and continually binds the fire to the wick - so is a person's body the wick, the Shechinah that rests upon his head the fire, and Torah and mitzvos the fuel. Here the Alter Rebbe is using a different aspect of that same analogy.]
The Alter Rebbe looks closely at a physical candle and at what happens to it as it burns, and from there draws the comparison to the soul. The light of the candle “שמתנענע תמיד למעלה בטבעו”, “which by its nature constantly flickers upward.” It is the nature of a burning flame to flicker upward. Whichever way you tilt the candle, the flame never stands still; it is as though it is trying to tear itself free of the wick and rise upward, even though it cannot actually break away.
And what is the reason for this? “מפני שאור האש חפץ בטבע ליפרד מהפתילה ולידבק בשרשו למעלה”, “because the light of the fire by nature desires to separate from the wick and to cleave to its root above.” Everything strives to return to its root; that is how the Holy One, blessed be He, imprinted the creation. In the same vein is the well known expression: “zerok chutra la'avira, a'ikarei ka'i” - throw a stick in the air and it will always land on the side of its root.
There are four elements in the world: fire, air, water and earth. The Rambam writes in Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah that there are four distinct bodies, each one surrounding the one beneath it on all sides like a sphere: the first body, adjacent to the sphere of the moon, is the body of fire; beneath it the body of air; beneath that the body of water; and beneath that the body of earth. [Even though science today offers other explanations, what interests us is the truth of the matter as the Torah states it.]
According to this order, the water ought to have been above the earth, and there would have been no place for creatures to move about on the face of the ground. This is what we praise the Holy One, blessed be He, for every morning in Birchos HaShachar: “l'roka ha'aretz al hamayim,” “who spreads out the earth upon the waters” - that He reversed the natural order and spread the earth over the water, so that we could exist and move about in the world.
This is also what lies behind the concept we are familiar with as “gravity”: a stone always falls downward, because it is returning to its root, the earth, from which everything comes and to which everything returns. Fire, by contrast, has its source above, and therefore it strives upward: “ולידבק בשרשו למעלה ביסוד האש הכללי שתחת גלגל הירח, כמו שכתוב בעץ חיים”, “and to cleave to its root above, in the universal element of fire beneath the sphere of the moon, as is written in Etz Chaim.” There is where the universal element of fire is found, the potential of all fire, and therefore even a small match that is struck immediately senses that it has been cut off from its root and tries to return to it.
This yearning is natural, not logical. For if we could hold a conversation with the flame and ask it why it wants to rise upward, it would have no rational reason to give: by every rule of logic it ought to want to stay down here. In the Alter Rebbe's words: “ואף שעל ידי זה יכבה ולא יאיר כלום למטה”, “even though thereby it would be extinguished and would give no light at all below.” As long as it is attached to the wick it has an existence; everyone feels it, benefits from it, and accords it respect and appreciation. But the moment the fuel runs out and it succeeds in breaking free, it will go out, and there will be no more light here below in this world.
And should one imagine that at least upon reaching its source its existence will be preserved there, he continues: “וגם למעלה בשרשו יתבטל אורו במציאות בשרשו”, “and even above, in its root, its light would be nullified out of existence within its root.” When the fire arrives at its source it will not remain a flame at all, for there is nothing there but the source and potential of fire, and it becomes utterly nothing.
As we have already discussed in one of the lessons, in the language of the Gemara: “shraga b'tihara” - a candle burning at midday has no significance whatsoever. It is so completely nullified that one cannot even tell whether it is lit, since the light of the sun overwhelms it. So too the fire upon reaching its original source: it is entirely batel, as if it does not exist.
To summarize: in this section we reviewed the four questions raised at the opening of the subject, and the two answers explained in chapter 18 - that the root of the love is in the chochmah of the soul, and that it is inherited from the Avos, who were a merkavah. Chapter 19 comes to explain what this love is about: how far it reaches. To that end the Alter Rebbe opened with the verse “the candle of G-d is the soul of man,” and we learned that the soul of a Jew is compared to the light of a candle, whose nature is to flicker upward and to yearn to separate from the wick and cleave to its root in the universal element of fire - even though in doing so it will be extinguished and give no light below, and even though its light will be nullified out of existence within its root above.
In the next section we will see how, from this very nature of the candle's light, we learn what the hidden love within the soul of a Jew is all about.