In the previous section we studied the different levels in the drawing down of the neshamah, and how the souls of Israel are drawn from their supernal source in a whole range of levels. In this section we go deeper and see how this principle of "from one extreme to the other" holds true in every single generation, and how to resolve the question: if the source of every soul is literally one and the same point, why do we see such enormous differences between them?
"From one extreme to the other" in every generation:
There is no need to compare only the far extremes, from Avraham Avinu down to us. In every generation: in the generation of Adam HaRishon, in the generation of Avraham Avinu, in the generation of Moshe Rabbeinu, and in our own generations too, there are the heads of the thousands of Israel, souls bound up with the "head" among souls, souls that are on the level of head and brain; and on the other side there are the souls of the simple folk and the unlearned. These are drawn from the level of the brain, and those from the level of the heel.
From here the Alter Rebbe moves to a third example: "וכן נפשות לגבי נפשות" ("and likewise souls in relation to souls"). Even within the simple folk themselves, and not in relation to the heads of the thousands of Israel, there are differences. Nefesh is the lowest of the five levels: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah. And even within this lowest level there are "souls in relation to souls," for every nefesh contains all the levels within it: the neshamah-of-nefesh, the ruach-of-nefesh, and the nefesh-of-nefesh. So there are souls drawn from the neshamah-of-nefesh, souls in which the ruach-of-nefesh shines, and souls of the nefesh-of-nefesh.
And within each one of these there are further levels, endlessly and without limit. In practice no two people are alike: each one has a neshamah of a different level, with a different mission and a different task. If two were identical, one of them would be superfluous. Every person's soul was sent into the world to rectify and accomplish what has been placed upon it, and there is nobody in the world who could fill his role in his place.
As for the number of Jewish souls: the six hundred thousand souls that stood at Mattan Torah are general souls, which include the entire Jewish people down to this day, and all of them are included in this same principle. This is explained in Tanya in the chapters that follow. We will get to it.
And from here the simple question arises: how can it be that all of them come from literally the same point, all of them a "chelek Eloka mimaal mamash," a literal part of G-d above, and yet as they descend below such vast differences appear between them?
Before answering, the Alter Rebbe lays down the principle. He is the one who opened with the question, "ואף שיש רבבות" ("and although there are myriads"), so he must also complete the answer. First he establishes: even though such great differences are apparent, there is no retreat from the principle stated earlier, and it does not change.
Therefore, despite the differences we see, the root of every nefesh, ruach and neshamah, the root of all the levels of every kind, "מראש כל המדרגות עד סוף כל דרגין" ("from the head of all levels to the end of all levels"), from the very highest level (the Avos, Moshe Rabbeinu, and the heads of the thousands of Israel in each generation) down to "sof kol dargin," the very lowest level, clothed in a body of earth, even the lowliest of the lowly, the most distant and fallen person there could be, the heel of the heel, all of them are drawn from the supernal brain, which is chochmah ila'ah, as it were. There is no change in the principle that every single Jew, no matter who he is or what he is or where his soul is placed, on the low level, the middle or the high, has his source in literally that same point.
A precision in the wording "ad sof kol dargin":
When the Alter Rebbe wants to rank the extremes among souls, from the very highest to the very lowest, his wording is "מראש כל המדרגות עד סוף כל דרגין". He opens in lashon hakodesh and switches into the language of Targum: not "ad sof kol hamadreigos" but "ad sof kol dargin," in Aramaic. The Rebbe dwells on this precision: why the switch to the word "dargin"?
The explanation is based on the Alter Rebbe's teaching in Torah Or, built on the statement of Sefer Yetzirah that the letters are like stones. Just as one builds a house out of stones, so out of letters are formed words and sentences. And if letters are like stones, then there are different kinds of stones: there are stones formed by Heaven, the rocks and stones created during the six days of Creation and existing ever since; and there are stones formed by human hands, namely bricks, as the generation of the Dispersion said, "הבה נלבנה לבנים" ("come, let us make bricks"), taking material and fashioning bricks out of it. True, bricks too are made of the material of Creation, since everything comes from Bereishis, but their form is given them by human beings, whereas the form of a stone comes about with no human involvement.
And just as there are two kinds of stones, so there are two kinds of letters: letters formed by Heaven, and letters formed by man. This is the difference between lashon hakodesh and the language of Targum, and every foreign language. In lashon hakodesh every word has meaning, content and truth all the way through; a word in a foreign language, by contrast, came into being because a number of people got together and decided to produce words by which what they were talking about would be understood. This is also the difference between lashon hakodesh and today's modern Hebrew, a language that is constantly being renewed, with an academy laboring to invent its words: again, words made by human beings. Lashon hakodesh, the language of the Torah, has words whose origin is from Heaven and which possess holiness, and all other languages are on a lower level.
This distinction is connected to the difference between the Creator's revelation to Avraham Avinu before the bris milah and after it. And the difference is fascinating: the revelation that preceded the bris milah is described by the Torah in the language of Targum, "במחזה" ("in a vision"), while the revelation afterward is called "וירא" ("and He appeared"), an expression of seeing. Seeing and vision mean the same thing, as in "chazon Yeshayahu," which is also a form of seeing, except that "re'iyah" is lashon hakodesh and "machazeh" is the language of Targum.
Before the bris milah, Avraham Avinu did not merit a divine revelation on as high a level as he did afterward. And in the Torah's way, where the metaphor it chooses is precise so that the lesson will be understood, the revelation before the bris is called "machazeh," a vision, and the revelation after the bris is called "vayeira," seeing, an entirely different level. Something on a high level is expressed in lashon hakodesh, and something on a low level is expressed in the language of Targum.
Therefore, when the Alter Rebbe wants to set out the two extremes, from the highest of them to the lowest, he writes "מראש כל המדרגות עד סוף כל דרגין". "Sof kol dargin" is the lowest level, and in order to stress that he means the very lowest of levels he wrote it in the language of Targum. From here we learn how precise every word and every expression in Tanya is, and this is how the Rebbe explains, in his note in Likkutei Sichos, why the matter is written here with the wording "kol dargin."
The analogy of the son drawn from the father's brain:
It emerges that all souls, from the very highest level to the very lowest, are drawn from that same source. On this the Alter Rebbe brings an analogy, and with it we begin: "נשמות ישראל עלו במחשבה" ("the souls of Israel arose in the [divine] thought"), and it is written "בני בכורי ישראל" ("Israel is My son, My firstborn"), and by way of analogy, "כמשל הבן הנמשך ממוח האב" ("like the analogy of the son who is drawn from the father's brain").
Let us consider a physical son, drawn in a physiological way from his father's brain. The son who is born and comes out into the world is a healthy, whole child, with two hundred and forty eight limbs and three hundred and sixty five sinews, and within his body there are different degrees of importance:
Organs of the highest degree of importance: the brain, the heart, the liver, the kidneys and the like.
Limbs of a lesser degree of importance.
Parts that get separated from him: nails and hair. Although they too have their importance, from time to time we cut them off and part with them.
In other words, within one and the same body there is a part of exceptional importance, and alongside it a part whose degree of importance is such that one can even dispense with it.
And where did all these extremes come from? The son was formed from a single point, from one drop, and in the drop itself no differences whatsoever were visible; it is one single point. And nevertheless, once it went through its process and the son was born, the extremes are visible in him: from the head of all levels to the end of all levels, from the highest parts down to the lowest.
To summarize: in this section we learned that the principle of "from one extreme to the other" holds in every generation: there are the heads of the thousands of Israel who come from the level of head and brain, and there are the souls of the simple folk who come from the level of the heel, and even within nefesh-souls themselves there are endless gradations of neshamah, ruach and nefesh within the nefesh, until no two people are alike. We saw that the principle that all of them are drawn from one source, from the supernal brain which is chochmah ila'ah, does not change despite the differences we see. We examined the precise wording "mei'rosh kol hamadreigos ad sof kol dargin," and the difference between lashon hakodesh and the language of Targum as an expression of higher and lower levels. And we began the analogy of the son drawn from the father's brain, in which we will see how from one drop all levels of limbs are formed.
In the next section we will take up the analogy of the son drawn from the father's brain in its details, and see how it explains the question of how such widely differing levels of souls can be drawn from a single point.