In the previous section we studied the faith in G-d's oneness, and the two gains hidden in this awareness: the private joy of a person who succeeds in bringing the King into his own consciousness, and the making of a dirah betachtonim, a dwelling place for Him below. On the basis of these two, the Alter Rebbe writes that the joy of a Jew is "שמחה כפולה ומכופלת", a joy doubled and redoubled, a joy twice over.
The two joys:
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "מלבד שמחת נפשו המשכלת בקרבת ה' ודירתו אתו" ("apart from the joy of his intelligent soul in G-d's nearness and His dwelling with him"). This is the first joy: the intelligent soul uses its intellect as it should, contemplates the depth of the Creator's greatness and brings the King into its own dwelling, and in that itself there is joy. To this he adds: "עוד זאת ישמח בכפליים בשמחת ה' וגודל נחת רוח לפניו יתברך באמונה זו" ("he should rejoice doubly in the joy of G-d and in the great pleasure that this faith gives Him"). This is the second joy, the greater one: the joy over the nachas ruach, the delight, that a person has given the Creator Himself.
A parable: a person does something that brings himself benefit and enjoyment, and, on the other hand, he does something that gives great joy and pleasure to the father he loves. Which will make him happier, his own personal enjoyment, or the fact that he gave his father pleasure? Obviously he rejoices more in having given his father joy, and all the more so in having given the King joy. So too here: it is a great joy that a person manages to bring the King into his awareness, and above that is the joy of having given the Holy One Blessed be He pleasure. For the whole purpose of the world's creation was that we should reveal Him out of the concealments, and this person merited to reveal Him. That is a divine delight.
"דאתכפיא סטרא אחרא ואתהפך חשוכא לנהורא":
This faith brings it about that "אתכפיא סטרא אחרא ממש", the sitra achra (literally "the other side," the negative side) is actually subdued. Every single time a person brings this awareness into his mind, the sitra achra is subdued and flees. And one should not imagine that bringing it in once is enough and it stays there permanently; it has to be brought in again and again and yet again. The sitra achra is constantly planting the opposite awareness in a person: forget it, you are here, enjoy every moment. Holiness says: the Holy One Blessed be He is here, forget your pleasures and start thinking about the Creator's pleasure. Every time a person brings this faith into his awareness he subdues the sitra achra, "ואתהפך חשוכא לנהורא", and the darkness is transformed into light.
And what darkness is this? "שהוא חושך הקליפות שבעולם הזה הגשמי המחשיכים ומכסים על אורו יתברך" ("the darkness of the kelipos of this physical world, which darken and conceal His light"). This world is full of kelipos, coverings and disturbances: wherever a person turns he sees nothing but self-existence, ego and "I," and he has to shatter all of it and say to himself first of all: ein od milvado, there is nothing besides Him.
There is a story about one of the Alter Rebbe's great chassidim, Reb Binyamin Kletzker. (In those days there were no family names yet, and he was called by his trade: "klotz" in Yiddish is a log of wood, and he was a major timber merchant.) His talent was remarkable: one look at a forest was enough for him to assess precisely what it was worth, how much could be produced from it and what it was worth paying for it, and the local landowners hired him as an appraiser. In time he said to himself: why should I work for them? So he became a timber merchant himself, and grew wonderfully wealthy.
Once, at the end of the year, they brought him the full balance sheet: how much came in and how much went out, how many shipments by sea and how many by land. He sat and added up column after column, and when he reached the bottom line he stopped and reflected: what is all this timber, and what is the whole world? Out of an inner awakening he wrote at the foot of the page, not as a joke but in absolute truth: "ein od milvado", there is nothing besides Him. That is the bottom line of all the millions: everything is G-dliness. He had reached enormous wealth, and even so he laughed at the entire world and saw it as nothing at all. Such a way of looking at the world, and the recognition that everything is G-dliness, is itself the taking of the world's darkness and turning it into light.
"עד קץ הימין" ("until the End of Days"). Until the time the Holy One Blessed be He has set, until the coming of Mashiach, the kelipos have the capacity and the permission to conceal and to disturb. The Holy One Blessed be He gives them this power because He wants there to be a struggle. As the verse says, "קץ שם לחושך", "He set an end to darkness," that a day will come when the Holy One Blessed be He puts an end to this darkness, "דהיינו קץ הימין שיעביר רוח הטומאה מן הארץ ונגלה כבוד ה' וראו כל בשר יחדיו" ("that is, the End of Days, when He will remove the spirit of impurity from the earth, and the glory of G-d will be revealed and all flesh together shall see"), as will be explained further on.
This is worth pausing on. Of the days of Mashiach it is said, "days in which there is no desire," days that we will not take pleasure in, because then there will no longer be any struggle; everything will be simple and G-dliness will be openly revealed. And then, specifically, we will long for the days of exile, where the delight lies precisely in struggling and succeeding.
"ובפרט בארצות הטמאות" ("and especially in the impure lands"). Particularly a Jew who is outside the Land of Israel, where according to halachah the very air is impure, "ומלא קליפות וסטרא אחרא" ("and full of kelipos and sitra achra"), and even there he arrives at this awareness of G-d's oneness: his achievement is greater than it would be in the Land of Israel. For the dwelling is made in the lowest realms, and the lower, darker and more degraded the place, the more powerful the dwelling made there. "ואין שמחה לפניו יתברך כאורה ושמחה ביתרון האור הבא מן החושך דווקא" ("there is no joy before Him like the light and joy of the superiority of light that comes specifically out of darkness"). When darkness is turned into light, that light has an entirely different flavor than light that was not preceded by a state of darkness.
"ישמח ישראל בעושיו":
"וזהו שכתוב ישמח ישראל בעושיו" ("this is the meaning of the verse, 'Let Israel rejoice in his Makers'"). Here one must be precise: why is the Holy One Blessed be He called here "his Makers," rather than "let Israel rejoice in his Creator" or "in his Former"? As is known, there are four worlds, Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and the world of Asiyah, of "making," is the lowest of them. "In his Makers": the Jew rejoices in the fact that he reveals the Holy One Blessed be He as the Master of the house specifically in the world of Asiyah, in this world. And the lower the world in which the revelation takes place, the greater the joy.
"פירוש, שכל מי שהוא מזרע ישראל יש לו לשמוח בשמחת ה'" ("meaning, that everyone of the seed of Israel should rejoice in the joy of G-d"). Whoever is a Jew, and it makes no difference what his level of intellect, understanding or ability is, has reason to rejoice in the Creator's joy. And what is that joy? "אשר שש ושמח בדירתו בתחתונים, שהיא בחינת עשייה גשמיות ממש" ("that He rejoices and is glad in His dwelling below, which is the dimension of Asiyah, actual physicality"). The Holy One Blessed be He rejoices and is glad that this physical world becomes a dwelling for Him. And who makes Him the dwelling in the lowest realms? Israel. As it were, the Holy One Blessed be He says to him: I am giving you a share in My joy; come and rejoice together with Me.
Why does the verse say "his Makers" in the plural?
It would seem that it should have said "his Maker," and the plural might sound, G-d forbid, as though there were two who made. But the Alter Rebbe explains: "בעושיו לשון רבים, שהוא העולם הזה הגשמי המלא קליפות וסטרא אחרא שנקרא רשות הרבים" ("'in his Makers,' in the plural, for this refers to this physical world, full of kelipos and sitra achra, which is called a public domain, reshus harabim"). It is known that there is a reshus hayachid, a private domain, and a reshus harabim, a public domain. The Yachid, the Singular One, is the Holy One Blessed be He, the One and Only, and any place where G-dliness is revealed is a reshus hayachid. This physical world, on the other hand, is called reshus harabim, the domain of the many, because no revelation of G-dliness is seen in it and it appears as though there are many. And who created this state of "many"? The Creator Himself, who as it were contracted Himself and brought Himself down into the state of "his Makers," in the plural.
This world is also called "טורי דפרודא", which in Aramaic means "mountains of separation." A person's avodah is to take precisely this place, which looks like many and like something separate, and to reveal that in truth all is one and there is nothing, G-d forbid, separate from the Creator: "ואתהפכן לנהורא ונעשים רשות היחיד לייחודו יתברך" ("and they are transformed into light and become a reshus hayachid for His oneness"). Through what? "באמונה זו", "through this faith." When a person has faith in G-d's oneness, he makes the Creator the Master of the house in his own life and turns the world into a reshus hayachid.
Now, a person might look out at the great world, full of kelipos, sitra achra and darkness, and say: who could possibly fix all of this? And out of that thought give up before he has begun. To this Pirkei Avos says: "It is not upon you to complete the work, nor are you free to desist from it." You do not have to finish everything, but whatever is within your ability to do, you are obligated to do.
A parable: there was a drunkard who used to drink himself senseless, and in his drunkenness he was not responsible for his actions and would smash and destroy whatever came to hand. But the next morning, once he sobered up, he would look at what he had done, take out cash and immediately pay for all the damage: "What can I do, I had no control over myself, so I am paying." One night he got thoroughly drunk, wandered around and smashed a few shop windows, and that very same night a major earthquake struck the area: houses collapsed and streets were wrecked. He got up in the morning, saw the destruction and said: am I supposed to pay for all of this? Did I do all of this? They told him: you did not do all of it, but what you did do, you must pay for.
So too with a person who looks at the world, sees the ruin in it and wonders: am I supposed to pay for all of it and repair all of it? We tell him: you do not have to complete all of it, but "nor are you free to desist from it."
In summary: in this section we learned that a Jew's joy in the faith in G-d's oneness is a "joy doubled and redoubled": the joy of his intelligent soul in G-d's nearness and in His dwelling with him, and above that, the joy in G-d's own joy and in the great nachas ruach he gives the Creator. This faith subdues the sitra achra and transforms the darkness of the kelipos into light, like Reb Binyamin Kletzker who summed up all his accounts with "ein od milvado"; and its achievement is especially great in the impure lands, because of the superiority of light that comes specifically out of darkness. We also looked closely at "Let Israel rejoice in his Makers," the revelation specifically in the lowest world of Asiyah, and at the plural "his Makers," the transformation of the "reshus harabim" and the "mountains of separation" into a reshus hayachid for His oneness, and all of this through this faith.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 33.