Before we move on to chapter 21, let us review the foundation we learned in chapter 20. The power of speech is the potential latent in the soul, the capacity to produce words. The question, then, is this: what is the worth of a single word that has actually come out, relative to the faculties above it?
Measuring a word against the levels above it:
Against the power of speech itself: the power of speech can produce words without limit, whereas what has actually emerged - a single letter, a syllable, a word, even a whole sentence - is a finite quantity. The relation between one and the infinite is no relation at all, and the word takes up no space whatsoever. This does not mean the word has no value in its own right: speech has content and meaning, and the power of speech itself also produces letters and words. The deficiency lies only in this, that it is one against the limitless.
Against the power of thought: here there are two deficiencies. First, a single word against the capacity to think endless words. Second, the letters of thought are abstract, refined and elevated, while the spoken word is coarse. Its nothingness is thus doubled: one against infinity, and coarse against abstract.
Against the world of emotion and awareness: here the nothingness is total. Not only because it is one against the limitless, but because in the world of emotion and awareness letters have no function at all; there they carry no meaning whatsoever.
To put it differently: the word's nothingness relative to the power of speech lies in what it lacks, namely a multiplicity of words; but what it does contain, letters, is something meaningful, and of the very same species as its source. Relative to the world of awareness and emotion, however, even what it does contain is nothing at all, since there letters have no place whatsoever.
[It is worth stressing: we are not discussing here the content carried by words and its power to affect a listener. Speech certainly has tremendous power - it moves emotions and even thoughts, and in the later maamarim of the Rebbe Rashab the greatness of speech and the reason for its great power are explained at length. But our concern here is the worth of the word itself, the value of the sound and the letters that have been produced.]
Who is "speech" in the analogue? The world, creation itself. The "power of speech" and the "power of thought" are the Divine power that contracts itself in order to create. The "world of awareness," of emotion and intellect, is the Creator Himself (and although this too is a level, for our purposes here we will set it opposite the Creator Himself).
Now let us measure: the world before us as against the Creator - does it have any worth? After all, we do not say of a man that his soul is no longer whole because he spoke five thousand words, or that his friend who has not yet spoken is more complete than he. Nothing is added to a person if he speaks less, and nothing is missing from him if he speaks more. The soul is so abstracted from the world of speech that speech neither adds to it nor detracts from it. Exactly so is the entire world relative to the Essence of the Creator: nothing has changed, nothing was added and nothing was lost - "You are the same before the world was created, You are the same since the world was created."
That concludes our summary of chapter 20. Chapter 21 comes to add to all of this a point that is both powerful and fascinating, and it opens with a question that a clever objector might raise.
Where exactly does the word have no worth? Only relative to the levels above it - relative to the power of speech, the power of thought, and the soul. But within the world of speech itself the word certainly has worth. And in the analogue: granted that relative to the Essence of the Creator, as He is above the tzimtzumim (the contractions), nothing has changed and nothing has been added. But relative to the power that descended and contracted itself and brought the world into being - the Creator who constricts Himself, who supervises every last detail and involves Himself with every last detail - there, seemingly, the "speech" does have worth, since within the world of speech, speech has worth.
But it is not so, for in the Creator one cannot divide between a higher level and a lower level: "in the heavens above and on the earth below there is nothing else." Still, since we are carrying the analogy of speech along, we must carry it to its conclusion - and that is the subject of chapter 21.
Two questions that were asked before we entered the chapter:
Does the speech sustain the world, or does the world sustain the speech? It is the Divine speech that sustains the world, and not only at the moment of creation: the ten utterances spoken during the six days of creation continue to be spoken at every single moment. As the Alter Rebbe puts it in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, chapter one, that those very words and letters which formed the heavens "stand firmly forever within the firmament of the heavens" - they continue to act at every moment, as though the six days of creation were taking place right now, and every single detail of creation were being brought into being at this very instant.
If the world is nothing - is there then no world at all, and what of "the work of My hands in which I take pride"? There is the well known saying of the Rebbe Maharash: what is the proof that there is a world? Not from the fact that a person touches and sees it, but from the verse "In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth" - if the Torah says there is a world, then there is a world. And that is precisely the question: how do we resolve the conflict between the nothingness of the world and its being created and renewed at every moment? In chapter 21 we will find the answer.
An important introduction for understanding the chapter:
The entire world is limited, and all the faculties of a created being are limited. There is no perfection in creation: every faculty that has an advantage has, at one and the same time, a deficiency as well, and in order to reveal the advantage one must pass through the deficiency - the one depends on the other. The root of the deficiency is that the created being was created limited, and limitation itself is a deficiency: it reaches this far and can go no further. The Creator is the perfection of everything, and therefore in each of His faculties there is only the advantage, without the deficiency that accompanies that faculty.
Take the power of speech as an example. The ability to speak is a tremendous advantage - a person can reveal to another what is inside him, his thoughts and his feelings. G-d forbid, a person who cannot express himself suffers a tremendous lack, and the ability to express oneself at the right time and in the right way is an enormous advantage. But this advantage comes bound up with a deficiency: in order to speak, a person must go out of himself and sever the thing from himself.
Shimon wants to know what is going on inside Reuven. As long as it remains within Reuven's own world, Shimon will have no idea what is being spoken of; and thoughts cannot be read, because they have stayed inside the person. The ability to bring out what is in Reuven's world and convey it to Shimon is an advantage - something emerges that otherwise would never have come out; but alongside it is a tremendous deficiency: one cannot both bring it out and have it remain within. The whole essence of the power of speech is going outward, and it cannot simultaneously be inside. (Like a person who is warm and comfortable at home: if he wants to go out and bring home bread, he has to give up the warmth inside. One cannot both go out and stay in.)
And this is how the entire world is built: every faculty has an advantage and alongside it a deficiency. Intellect has a tremendous advantage, but one of its deficiencies is that it does not go outward - intellect is not emotion. Every advantage in creation must have, at the same time, a deficiency as well, for there is no perfection in creation.
But by the Creator, who created the world and all these advantages, every advantage found in creation certainly exists in Him as well - "He who forms the eye, shall He not see? He who fashions the ear, shall He not hear?" The difference is that by Him the advantage exists without the deficiency. We have no capacity to grasp this, for it is said, "My thoughts are not your thoughts," and certainly our speech is not His speech: He speaks with the advantage of speech - the going outward - and at the very same time remains inside.
And what do we gain from this idea? Something tremendous. If the Creator's speech truly went outward, and a world were formed that had left Him, then the world would indeed have worth, importance and significance, since within the world of speech, speech has worth; it is only inside the soul that it has no worth, but once it has gone out it does have worth. The point, however, is that by the Creator of the world nothing went out at all. To us, created beings, it appears as though the world is outside, but in truth everything has remained inside.
Of Rabbi Meir it is said that he was among the greatest of the parable-makers among the Tannaim, as the Gemara puts it: "When Rabbi Meir died, the makers of parables ceased." What is the achievement of a teacher who gives a parable? He takes an idea too deep to be grasped and brings it down into a story, an illustration, a matter, and says it over to the student who is listening.
What is happening here? The student who hears the parable does not see all the depth contained in the analogue. To his eyes it is a nice story, and he does not always fathom his teacher's intent, nor does he always grasp the depth; at times it seems to him a mere story, and that is the end of it. In his own world it appears that the idea has left the teacher's world and has clothed itself in a pleasant story, and that there is no connection between the story and the teacher's wisdom.
But by the teacher, in the very second that he says the parable and invests in it the details of the analogue, in every single word of the parable the connection to the analogue is present in his mind. For him the parable never detached itself from the analogue for a moment: every detail of the parable and every detail of the analogue are one and the same, with no difference between them. And this illustrates the difference, as it were, between us and the Creator - to us it appears that the world went out and became separate, while by Him nothing went out and nothing became separate at all.
In summary: in this section we reviewed chapter 20. We examined the worth of a single word relative to the power of speech (one against the limitless), relative to the power of thought (one against infinity, and coarse against abstract) and relative to the world of emotion and awareness (where letters have no place at all) - and we saw that the nothingness relative to the lower levels lies in what the word lacks, whereas relative to awareness even what it does contain is nothing. In the analogue: the world is the "speech," and the Creator does not change through creating it - "You are the same before the world was created." We then took up the clever objection - that relative to the contracted power that brings the world into being, speech would seem to have worth; we saw that the Divine speech enlivens the world at every moment; and we cited the saying of the Rebbe Maharash that the proof of the world's existence is from the verse "In the beginning G-d created." And we prefaced the foundation that there is no perfection in creation - every advantage is bound up with a deficiency, whereas by the Creator the advantage exists without the deficiency: His speech goes outward and remains inside, like the teacher for whom the parable and the analogue are one.
In the next section we will read chapter 21 from within, and see how the Alter Rebbe resolves the conflict between the nothingness of the world and its actual creation and existence.