In the previous part we looked closely at the expressions "behibar'am" ("when they were created") and "achar hibar'am" ("after they were created"), and we mentioned the explanation given in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah. Now we continue in chapter 20, from the first line of page 26a.
"וכן כל העולמות העליונים אינם פועלים שום שינוי באחדותו יתברך בהבראם מאין ליש" - "and likewise all the upper worlds effect no change whatsoever in His blessed Oneness by their being created from nothing into something." No world, upper or lower, produced any change in the Creator. The very fact that they came into being, brought forth from nothing into something, did not introduce the slightest change in Him.
"שכמו שהיה הוא לבדו הוא יחיד ומיוחד קודם הבראם, כן הוא לבדו הוא יחיד ומיוחד אחר שבראם" - "for just as He was alone, one and unique, before they were created, so is He alone, one and unique, after He created them." The identical oneness, the identical uniqueness that existed before creation, remains exactly so afterward. And the Alter Rebbe deliberately says "all the upper worlds," to teach us that from the very highest extreme down to the very lowest extreme, where the Creator is, as it were, actually involved, no change whatsoever came about.
And why is no change produced?
Here the answer begins: "משום דכולא קמיה כלא חשיב וכאין ואפס ממש" - "because before Him everything is reckoned as nothing, as literally naught and nothingness." All the worlds, upper and lower, are in relation to Him considered as nothing. Nothing has come into being here to which any importance can be attributed. And we need to understand how this can be, since after all He is, so to speak, occupied with them.
Two levels in the explanation:
Chapters 20 and 21 present two explanations, and in order to grasp the difference between them let us divide the matter into two levels (in slightly coarse language, so as to sharpen the point in our minds):
As the matter stands from the side of the Creator Himself: the divine power as it is entirely above any involvement with created beings. In the words of one of the maamarim: "creating worlds is not the essence of G-dliness" - the Creator's whole concern is not the making of worlds. The creation of worlds is an immense tzimtzum, a contraction; it is the constricted dimension in which He contracted Himself in order to create a world, while He Himself is above this entire involvement. This is the level chapter 20 deals with: how the whole of creation is naught and nothingness relative to Him as He is above involvement with creation.
As the matter stands from the side of the involvement with creation: what takes place at that stage where He is involved with the creation. That level is what we will deal with in chapter 21.
So let us climb slowly, from below upward, and read the Alter Rebbe's words:
"כי התהוות כל העולמות עליונים ותחתונים מאין ליש, וחיותם וקיומם המקיימם שלא יחזרו להיות אין ואפס כשהיה" - "for the coming into being of all the worlds, upper and lower, from nothing into something, and their life and their existence which sustains them so that they should not revert to being naught and nothingness as before." Not only the initial coming into being from nothing into something, but the ongoing life force and existence as well. The Holy One does not create a world and then leave it to run by itself; the creative power continues to hold the creation in being at every single moment, so that it should not revert to being naught and nothingness as it was before.
And what is this power that creates and sustains? "אינו אלא דבר ה' ורוח פיו יתברך המלובש בהם" - "it is nothing other than the word of G-d and the breath of His blessed mouth which is clothed within them." The Torah calls this divine energy by the name "speech": "And G-d said, let there be light," "And G-d said, let there be a firmament," and likewise we learned in Pirkei Avos, "With ten utterances the world was created." A matter of saying, of speech.
It is precisely this term "speech" that will make clear to us why the entire world is naught and nothingness. The Holy One presents the matter in language we can grasp, so that it can enter our comprehension; were it to remain entirely abstract we would have no handle on it at all. Once the matter is called "speech," we can contemplate what happens in the world of human speech - what importance, what value a word has relative to the power that speaks it - and from there rise to understand the nimshal, the subject of the analogy.
[And it is always worth recalling: this is not a lesson in history, nor is it about somebody else. It is being said about each and every one of us.
And as is known from the lengthy explanation in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah: the letters in which the divine energy clothes itself in order to form a thing are the very letters that give it life, and they are also the letters by which that thing is called in lashon hakodesh. A table is called "shulchan" because these are the letters in which the divine power clothes itself to create the table, and so it is with every single thing.]
The analogy of the power of speech in the soul: a person's soul operates in an extraordinarily complex way, and we have no sense at all of the immense processes the soul goes through in every single action it performs. The Rebbe once gave an analogy in a yechidus: if a person were to contemplate how many faculties, senses and processes are required for his hand to move from the right side to the left, he would find it hard to move his hand at all. How much more so with an act of the soul: a single word that leaves the mouth passes through many stages before it is articulated.
And to make the matter easy, let us begin specifically from below. The strings of a musical instrument produce sounds, but the physical organs of speech - the throat, the tongue, the teeth and the lips - do not produce the letters. The letters come from a faculty of the soul called the "power of speech," and it clothes itself in the sounds that issue from the five places of articulation in the mouth.
An infant: a newborn infant has all his vocal cords intact and lacks nothing, and nevertheless he cannot speak.
A mute: at the other extreme, one who cannot bring speech out into actuality is not lacking anything in the power of speech of his soul. The simple proof: he is capable of raising children who speak fluently and well. The limitation is in the vessels alone.
It emerges that the power of speech in the soul is not limited at all, and the number of words it is able to bring forth is without limit. The limitation exists only in the vessels: the body may weaken and deteriorate, but the soul-power itself has no limit.
Now a person utters a single word. It may well be a great word, full of meaning and content, and with all due respect to it, it is one word. And from here on we must always set that word against the soul-power that is able to bring forth words without limit: what value does one word have against a power that has no limit? What is the worth of the limited against the unlimited? It has no value at all. A single word is as naught and nothingness relative to the power of speech.
In summary: in this part we learned that all the worlds, upper and lower, effect no change whatsoever in His Oneness, since "before Him everything is reckoned as nothing" and all is "literally as naught and nothingness." We identified the two levels of the explanation: chapter 20 deals with creation in relation to Him as He is above involvement with creation, while chapter 21 will deal with the stage at which He is involved with it. We saw that the coming into being of the worlds, and their continued existence at every moment, is nothing other than "the word of G-d and the breath of His blessed mouth which is clothed within them," and from this came the analogy of the power of speech in the human soul: a single word that has left the mouth counts for nothing against the soul-power capable of bringing forth words without limit.
In the next part we will continue with the explanation of the analogy and its application to the nimshal.