In the previous part we stopped at the beginning of chapter 20, on page 26a (page 51), right in the middle of the subject. This is not a simple or easy matter, and it takes some depth of thought to grasp it properly. So let us first review, in outline, the points we have already learned, so that the continuation will make sense.
In chapter 20 the Alter Rebbe begins to explain how close the thing really is for every Jew: not to fall into any sin, and to fulfill every mitzvah. At first glance this seems puzzling. Every person knows how many tests stand before him, and how many of them he does not usually withstand. How, then, is such a thing possible? These words come as a continuation of what was said in chapter 18, "כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאד" ("for the thing is very close to you"), with the emphasis on the word "מאד" ("very"). Chapter 20 is only the opening of the subject, and it will take several chapters to draw out its full meaning and absorb it, but the direction of the discussion is as follows.
In chapter 19 we learned that when a Jew stands before a test of faith or, God forbid, denial of faith, he does not weigh for even a moment the option of abandoning his belief in the Creator of the world. Immediately the yechida of his soul, the innermost Jewish point, is aroused, and he says to himself: maybe I don't keep Shabbos, maybe I don't eat kosher, maybe I don't pray as I should, but to cut myself off from the Holy One, blessed be He, that I do not want. For that, every Jew is ready even to give up his life. When? When it is clear to him that the question facing him is a question of faith or denial.
So the Alter Rebbe comes in chapter 20 and says: now I am going to explain to you that every single matter in the Torah, every mitzvah, and on the other side every transgression, is itself a question of faith or denial.
He opens the chapter by showing that the first two of the Ten Commandments, which speak directly about faith and, of course, about the rejection of idolatry, actually contain the entire Torah:
"אנכי ה' אלקיך" ("I am the Lord your God") - all the positive mitzvos are included in it.
"לא יהיה לך" ("You shall have no other gods") - all the prohibitive mitzvos are included in it.
And when it becomes clear to a Jew, not only as an intellectual understanding but as something he actually feels, that every single detail is really a question of "אנכי" and "לא יהיה לך" - that this is not merely a question of kosher or not kosher, and not merely a question of keeping Shabbos or desecrating it - then immediately his soul is aroused, and he is not willing to transgress in anything at all. The only question is how one arrives at this recognition, that all the details and all the matters are bound up with "אנכי" or with "לא יהיה לך". To bring us to that understanding, the Alter Rebbe opens with a broad explanation.
He begins with a foundational concept that every person must internalize, one of the principles of faith: the Creator is one. "One" here does not mean merely numerically one, that there is one and not two, but yachid umeyuchad, utterly singular, that there is no reality besides Him, that there is nothing but Him alone. And at first glance, what does it mean that there is no other reality? After all, there is a whole world here, created in the six days of Creation, upper worlds and lower worlds. That is why a whole process of explanation is needed here.
In the previous part we examined the difference between a person who throws a stone and a silversmith who fashions a goblet. The purpose of the analogy is to bring us to the recognition that the existence of the world is not to be credited to the world itself, but solely to the divine power that brings it into being; one must not see the reality visible to the eye as something separate from the divine power producing it.
To sharpen the point: a person who sees a stone flying through the air - even a child understands that no stone became airborne by its own nature, and that all stones have remained exactly as nature made them. So if a stone is nevertheless seen in the air, what is the observer actually seeing? Not a flying stone, but the force of the thrower propelling it. With his eyes he sees a stone, but he knows how to separate the two, and he does not attribute the flight to the stone but to the thrower, because it is obvious to him that there is a force here causing the stone to fly.
And the nimshal: the entire world is an enormous chiddush, something utterly new, for the Holy One, blessed be He, invested divine energy into it and brought it into being. Just as the stone's flight is a new state that the stone does not have by its own nature, and when a person threw it upward he created in it a new state, so must one contemplate the world as a whole: before it was created it had no potential for existence whatsoever, and its entire reality and existence come only from the divine power that is producing it. Therefore one must not credit the existence to the creation itself, but rather see in the world the divine energy that is producing it. A person who merits to see the world this way - this is something wondrous, and this is what we say: "המחדש בטובו בכל יום תמיד מעשה בראשית" ("Who in His goodness renews each day, continually, the work of Creation").
The whole problem is that we get confused: we see a world and we fail to notice that it is nothing but the result of divine energy producing it at this very moment - like a small child who sees a stone in the air and is sure that there are stones that hover in the air. But after contemplating the analogy, thinking it through and letting it sink in, the necessary conclusion is that when we see the reality of a world, we have to connect to the understanding that there is divine energy here bringing it into being.
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That is as far as we came in the previous part, and it serves as the introduction to what we are learning now. So what is the step forward? What is missing in the earlier explanation, and why does another explanation have to be added to it?
Let us look first at the analogy. True, someone who sees a flying stone does not attribute the flight to the stone but to the force of the thrower. But in the end, in the thrower's own world this state of a flying stone has value, content, meaning and a reason, and even a purpose. The fact is that this is what he did: he invested time, thought and energy, he aimed and he produced a result. So it turns out that although there is no self-flying stone here, only a force propelling it, nevertheless there is a situation here that carries importance, from the very fact that the thrower occupied himself with it and invested himself in it. Consequently one cannot say that for the thrower the state before the stone was thrown is identical to the state afterward: before, he was not occupied with such a state at all, whereas now he is focused on the stone and engaged with it. There is no sameness between before and after; a change has taken place, something new has come about.
And so too in the nimshal: true, the existence of the world is not to be credited to the world itself but to the Holy One, blessed be He. But once the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world in the six days and He is engaged with the creation, then the creation does have importance, for the fact is that He occupies Himself with it, and something has changed. Even though the credit is given not to the creation but to the Creator, it would seem that something has been added here; and if something has been added, where is the oneness of God? Before the creation this thing did not exist, and after the creation came into being, it apparently does exist.
Whereas the conclusion we are meant to arrive at is what we say in the prayers: "אתה הוא עד שלא נברא העולם, אתה הוא משנברא העולם" ("You are the same before the world was created, You are the same since the world was created") - there is no change whatsoever. That is to say, nothing has come into being here: there is no independent reality here, nothing has any significance, and in absolute terms the thing does not exist at all.
And if so, if nothing has any significance and it does not exist at all, what is the meaning of saying "You are the same before the world was created, You are the same since the world was created"? That is the question, and the answer to it comes in chapter 20.
In summary: in this part we reviewed the foundations of chapter 20: every mitzvah and every transgression is a question of faith or denial, since "אנכי" contains all the positive mitzvos and "לא יהיה לך" all the prohibitive ones; we examined the oneness of the Creator, yachid umeyuchad, with no reality besides Him; and we reviewed the analogy of the thrown stone, from which we learned that the existence of the world is not to be credited to the world itself but to the divine power that brings it into being. From there we moved forward to the further question: with the thrower himself, after all, a new and significant state has come about, and seemingly the same is true with regard to the creation. If so, how can we say "You are the same before the world was created, You are the same since the world was created," with no change at all?
In the next part we will take up the Alter Rebbe's answer to this question, and continue to go deeper into the explanation of the subject.