In the previous section we learned that the source of the neshamah is in the very inwardness of the Creator, and that every soul is literally a chelek Eloka mima'al mamash, an actual part of G-d above. In this section we will dwell on the gloss (hagahah) written by the Alter Rebbe, which resolves a fundamental difficulty with the Rambam's formulation, and then we will open a new question: how can there be different levels among souls when they all come from one single source?
The Maharal's difficulty with the Rambam's formulation:
Let us begin with an interesting point: there is one who disagrees with the Rambam's formulation that we read, that the Creator is the knowledge, He is the Knower and He is the Known. The Maharal of Prague, in the introduction to his work Gevuros Hashem, challenges the Rambam very forcefully and does not accept this definition. The Creator is so exalted, so infinite and so abstract, that even the word "Knower" cannot attach to Him, for knowledge is an intellectual category, one of the things the Creator brought into being.
The Maharal's proof: we do not say "the Wise One, blessed be He," but rather "the Holy One, blessed be He" (Hakadosh Baruch Hu). And it is striking that the Rambam himself opened the halachah with the words "the Holy One, blessed be He." What does the word "kadosh" mean? Separate, abstract, removed. The word "kadosh" expresses that we have no definition of Him at all: whatever you say about Him, that is not Him. Therefore, to say of Him "He is the Knower, He is the knowledge, He is the Knowing" is neither fitting nor correct. He cannot be captured in any definition; He can only be called "the Holy One."
Yet the Alter Rebbe specifically quotes the Rambam. And one should know that the Maharal of Prague was the great-grandfather of the Alter Rebbe. The question immediately arises: how can one simply move on without addressing the Maharal's outcry that this does not work? To this the Alter Rebbe writes a gloss in the margin, and resolves it.
The Alter Rebbe explains a simple idea: the Rambam is right and the Maharal is right, both of them are right. The Creator in His essence is certainly the Holy One, blessed be He, and He cannot be captured by any description, for He is infinite and utterly abstract. But together with this, the mekubalim revealed to us that the Creator constricted His divine light (tzimtzum) into a seder hishtalshelus, an ordered chain of worlds that has order, limitation and description. He limited Himself: not that He became limited, for He remains abstract, but that His powers entered into limitation. He lowered Himself and revealed His capacities in a limited form as well, for our sake, though He certainly remains infinite and unbounded.
According to this, both sides are right. The Maharal is right that as He is in His abstract essence, He can be called nothing but "the Holy One, blessed be He." And the Rambam is right that as the Creator has lowered and constricted Himself within the seder hishtalshelus, within a world of concepts, one can indeed say of Him "the Knower" and "the knowledge." There is no contradiction between them.
Let us read the gloss inside:
The gloss is attached to the words "וכמו שכתב הרמב"ם", "and as the Rambam wrote," and on this he says "והודו לו חכמי הקבלה", "and the sages of Kabbalah agreed with him": the mekubalim concede to the Rambam that despite the Maharal's outcry, the Rambam is correct, "כמו שכתוב בפרדס מהרמ"ק", "as is written in the Pardes of the Ramak," Rabbi Moshe Cordovero in Sefer HaPardes. "וגם לפי קבלת האר"י ז"ל יציבא מילתא", "and also according to the Kabbalah of the Arizal the matter stands firm." And how? "בסוד התלבשות אור אין סוף ברוך הוא על ידי צמצומים", "in the secret of the enclothement of the Or Ein Sof, blessed be He, by means of tzimtzumim." When the infinite divine light contracts and descends into the seder hishtalshelus, then the Rambam is correct.
And which tzimtzumim? Many constrictions, "בכלים דחכמה בינה דעת דאצילות", "into the vessels of Chochmah, Binah and Da'as of Atzilus." When the divine light descends into the chain of Atzilus, which contains ten sefiros, Chochmah, Binah, Da'as, the light is constricted within Chochmah, and then it is possible to call Him Knower and Known. But not above Atzilus, and there the Maharal is right. The Maharal is speaking of Him as He is above enclothement in the worlds; the Rambam is speaking of Him as He is within the enclothement of the worlds.
And as is written elsewhere, that the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is exalted and uplifted with an infinite loftiness, high above the very essence and category of Chochmah, Binah and Da'as. The Creator in His essence is above every definition, and so exalted is He that the essence and category of Chochmah, Binah and Da'as, which for us are the highest level of intellect, are considered relative to Him like physical action, like something literally corporeal. As it is written, "כולם בחכמה עשית", "You have made them all with wisdom." Why does it not say "You have grown wise with wisdom" or "You have comprehended with wisdom"? With a human being we say that with his intellect he thinks, comprehends and understands, and with his hands he does; but of the Creator we say that with Chochmah He does, because Chochmah on the level of Elokus is like action.
To say of the Creator "You are wise" is in fact a lowering, and He can be called wise only when He lowers Himself to the level of the seder hishtalshelus. But as He is above this lowering, He is certainly called holy and separate.
After all this length, the principle can be summed up in one line: the soul of every Jew, each and every one without distinction, has one source. And what do we call that source? "חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש", "literally a part of G-d above": His innerness, His inwardness, His thought and His wisdom. All these expressions are one idea, and it is true of every Jew without distinction.
Myriads of distinctions of level among souls:
Immediately a question arises: if so, all souls should be on the same level, since they all come from the same point. To this the Alter Rebbe says, "ואף שיש רבבות מיני חלוקי מדרגות בנשמות", "and although there are myriads of different distinctions of level among souls," rung above rung without end. How can it be that all souls, in their myriad varieties, are one and the same essence drawn from His very innerness and inwardness, and nevertheless there are myriads of distinctions of level among them?
The Alter Rebbe brings three examples of types of souls, from one extreme to the other:
A broad view: from the very beginning of the Jewish people until our own generations.
There is no need to go from one extreme to the other, for in every single generation and at every stage one sees distinctions of level.
Even within a low level itself there are distinctions of level.
The first example: the souls of the Avos compared with the souls of our generations:
In the first stage the Alter Rebbe opens with "כמו גודל מעלת נשמות האבות ומשה רבנו עליהם השלום", "such as the great superiority of the souls of the Patriarchs and Moshe Rabbeinu, peace be upon them." Avraham Avinu, the first Jew, from whom the Jewish people began; and seven generations later, Moshe Rabbeinu. These are the seven shepherds familiar to us from the seven Ushpizin, from the Avos to Moshe Rabbeinu, and they are certainly the loftiest souls.
On the other side, "נשמות דורותינו אלה", "the souls of these generations of ours," souls that are several thousand years removed from Avraham Avinu. And how does he describe them? "דעקבי משיחא", "of the heels of Mashiach," souls of the heel. It is known that all souls were contained in Adam HaRishon: just as a human body has a head, hands and legs down to the heel, so did the soul of Adam HaRishon include the souls of all. There are souls that came, as it were, from the head, and there are those from the hands, from the heart, and down to the heels. We are already from the heels, before the coming of Mashiach, and we hear the footsteps of Mashiach: the lowest souls, coming from the heels of the general soul level since Adam HaRishon, "בחינת עקביים ממש לגבי המוח והראש", "literally the category of heels relative to the brain and the head."
And there is an interesting nuance here. The third of the Avos is called Yisrael and is called Yaakov, and the name Yaakov is explained as "yud akev," the yud shines in the heel: although the heel is a low level, the yud illuminates it. But here the expression is "ikvei," in reverse order: not that the yud shines in the heel, but heel itself, in which one does not even see the yud. These are the lowest levels, the heel of Adam HaRishon as it were, by way of analogy. That is the first example.
In summary: in this section we learned the gloss in which the Alter Rebbe resolves the Maharal's difficulty with the Rambam. In His essence the Creator is exalted above every definition and is called the Holy One, blessed be He; but as He has constricted Himself within the seder hishtalshelus and within the vessels of Chochmah, Binah and Da'as of Atzilus, one can indeed say of Him "the Knower and the knowledge." Both sides are right. From there we moved to the question of how, if all souls come from one source, there can be myriads of distinctions of level among them, and we began with the first example: the distance between the souls of the Avos and Moshe Rabbeinu and the souls of our own generations, the generations of ikvesa d'Meshicha.
In the next section we will continue with the subject: how these distinctions of level appear not only between the beginning of the Jewish people and our own day, but even within every single generation.