In the previous section we looked at the share that the nefesh hachiyunis, the vital soul, has in the performance of a mitzvah. Certainly the desire to do a mitzvah comes from the nefesh ha'elokis, the G-dly soul, which wants what the Creator wants; but without the vital soul and the body, the G-dly soul cannot accomplish a thing. It turns out that the animal soul, the vital soul, is a partner in the mitzvah, and not a junior partner either: a full partner, for without it nothing moves at all.
The reason is this: the G-dly soul is spiritual while the body is physical and material, and the spiritual does not act upon the material except through an intermediary that connects the two. That intermediary is the vital soul, the very vitality and energy pulsing in the body and giving it life. Without it the G-dly soul could not act within the body at all. In the Alter Rebbe's words: «והממוצע ביניהם היא נפש החיונית הבהמית המלובשת בדם האדם שבלבו ובכל הגוף» - «and the intermediary between them is the animal vital soul, which is clothed in a person's blood, in his heart and throughout his body.» So all of them together are partners in doing the mitzvah.
Why the soul of the beinoni descends to be clothed in the animal soul:
Here already lies the answer to the question we raised: why did the Holy One, blessed be He, bring down the souls of beinonim to be clothed inside the animal soul? We already said in the previous section that one cannot answer that the purpose is simply the struggle and the battle, and that there is a G-dly delight in the victory. For if that alone were the purpose, there would have been no need for them to be clothed one inside the other; it would have been enough for each to stand in its own corner and not be affected by the other one interfering with it.
Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the Shechinah to rest specifically upon the body, and to rest in this world. If there were a clean division, the G-dly side in one wing and the body and the animal vitality in a separate wing, the Shechinah would never rest upon the body, since the mitzvos would be fulfilled by the spiritual G-dly part alone and the body would have no part in it. That is why the soul must be clothed inside the animal soul: every time a Jew does a mitzvah, the animal cannot slip away and say «I am not involved.» At the moment of the mitzvah they are all partners together, and once the animal is a full partner, the Shechinah rests upon it. That is the goal.
This is also Moshe Rabbeinu's answer to the angels: the Torah does not belong to them, for being purely spiritual they cannot fulfill mitzvos. The whole purpose is specifically in a body.
But a question still remains:
We explained that at the moment of the mitzvah the entire body is the one carrying it out. But the animal soul is not merely a technical participant: it is full of bad middos, bad inclinations and negative traits, which cannot become holy. The proof: the moment a person stops working at it, the moment he dozes off and is no longer on guard, animalistic thoughts and all the old problems immediately float back up to the surface, as if he had never done a thing. Even if he spent a thousand hours doing mitzvos, one second of letting go and the animal floats right back up to the top of the water. That is a sign that even while he was doing the mitzvah it never changed and remained exactly as it was, simply waiting for the moment it could break out. If so, we have here a sack full of filth: how can the Shechinah, which is a revelation of G-dliness, rest upon it?
On this the Alter Rebbe concludes the chapter: «ואף שמהותה ועצמותה של נפש הבהמית שבלבו» - «and even though the essence and substance of the animal soul in his heart» has not budged and has not changed; that is, its bad middos remain, and they have still not been absorbed into holiness.
This is the difference between the tzaddik and the beinoni. The tzaddik's avodah works on his inner world as well, and once he has mastered his inner world he no longer has bad middos at all, so his animal too is absorbed into holiness. The beinoni, by contrast, does not succeed in affecting his inner world; he only affects his thought, speech and action. And this is not a matter of his choosing: the Holy One, blessed be He, created tzaddikim as tzaddikim and created beinonim as beinonim, and the beinoni cannot transform his middos. And if his middos have not been absorbed into holiness, how does the Shechinah rest upon him?
To this the Alter Rebbe answers: «מכל מקום מאחר דאתכפיין לקדושה ובעל כרחן עונים אמן ומסכימין ומתרצין לעשיית המצוה על ידי התגברות נפשו האלקית שבמוח ששליט על הלב» - «nevertheless, since they are subdued before holiness and against their will answer amen and agree and consent to the performance of the mitzvah, through the prevailing of his G-dly soul in the brain, which rules over the heart.» At the time of the mitzvah the bad middos do not break out; they bend, and against their will they answer amen, agreeing and consenting to the mitzvah being done, by force of the G-dly soul in the brain prevailing over them, for the brain rules the heart and silences it: right now the mitzvah has to be done.
And here is the proof: if they were not answering amen against their will, the animal would have prevailed and the mitzvah would not have been done. After all, there was a battle here, to put on tefillin or not, to give tzedakah or not, to keep Shabbos or not; and once the person overcame and did it, that is a sign that those very feelings and inclinations which a moment earlier told him «don't» have submitted to holiness.
And what became of those middos at that moment? «והם בשעה זו מבחינת גלות ושינה» - «and at that time they are in a state of exile and sleep.» The middos are asleep. True, it is possible that the moment the person stops working on them they will break out, but as long as they have quieted down against their will they pose no interference, «ולכך אין זו מניעה מהשראת השכינה על גוף האדם בשעה זו» - «and therefore this is no obstacle to the resting of the Shechinah upon a person's body at that time.» At the very least, during the time he is doing the mitzvah there is no obstacle, since all the bad middos are in a state of iskafya, with their heads bowed.
«דהיינו שכח נפש החיונית המלובש בעשיית המצוה הוא נכלל ממש באור ה' ומיוחד בו ביחוד גמור» - «that is, the power of the vital soul which is invested in the performance of the mitzvah is literally absorbed in the light of Hashem and united with it in complete union.» There is a genuine oneness here between a person's own vital energy and the mitzvah. And even though inside, the animal is trying to run wild, at this moment its head is bowed and it has been silenced.
A precise reading of the four expressions:
There is a beautiful precision here in the Alter Rebbe's golden language. Although at first glance it reads like repetition, in describing the state of the bad middos during the performance of a mitzvah the Alter Rebbe uses four distinct expressions:
«דאתכפיא לקדושה» - «they are subdued before holiness»
«ובעל כרחם עונים אמן» - «and against their will answer amen»
«ומסכימים» - «and agree»
«ומתרצים» - «and consent»
It is worth noticing that the four expressions fall into two groups. The first two are about coercion: the middos do not want this and do not agree to it, they have simply been forced into it. They are subdued, and against their will they answer amen. The last two are loftier: «agree» and «consent», as though they have already been broken and have come around to agreement and willingness. What is behind the difference?
An explanation is found in the writings of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, the Rebbe's father, who explains the Tanya by way of Kabbalah. It is written in Kabbalah that the word מצוה is an expression of the name Havayah. How so? The word מצוה has four letters: מ, צ, ו, ה. The last two, ו and ה, are literally the last two letters of the name Havayah. And the first two letters: through the atbash exchange, tav is exchanged with alef, shin with beis, reish with gimmel, kuf with daled, and tzadi with hei; and continuing in that same order, mem is exchanged with yud. So the mem is a yud and the tzadi is a hei, and before us stands the complete name Havayah.
And why is the yud-hei not openly visible in the word מצוה, so that one has to dig for it in the exchange of letters, while the vav-hei is written out plainly? This too is deliberate. The name Havayah divides into two groups: yud-hei is the aspect of «the hidden things belong to Hashem our G-d,» and vav-hei is the aspect of «and the revealed things.» Yud-hei alludes to the higher part of the name Havayah, and to the lofty, deep and hidden part of the soul, which is why it is a name in its own right, one of the names of the Holy One, blessed be He, as it says, «for a hand is upon the throne of Kah.» Vav-hei, by contrast, is not a name in its own right and alludes to a lower level, and therefore it appears openly in the word מצוה.
Based on this: when a Jew performs a mitzvah out of a revelation of the inner dimensions of his soul, from the aspect of the yud-hei within it, which is a lofty and powerful G-dly light, that force works on the animal within him until it «agrees and consents», as if melted by the intensity of the light. But when a person does not manage to arouse the yud-hei dimension of his soul, and fulfills the mitzvah from the aspect of vav-hei alone, that too is a force, and the proof is that it accomplishes iskafya of the sitra achara and that «against their will they answer amen»; it simply does not have the power to bring about agreement and consent. That is precisely why the Alter Rebbe uses four expressions, hinting at the four states within the name Havayah.
In summary: in this section we learned that the vital soul is the intermediary connecting the G-dly soul to the body, and is a full partner in the performance of a mitzvah. From here comes the answer to the question of why the soul is clothed inside the animal soul: so that the Shechinah should rest specifically upon the body, in this world. We also learned that although the bad middos of the beinoni's animal soul have not been absorbed into holiness, this is no obstacle to the resting of the Shechinah at the time of the mitzvah, since they are in a state of iskafya and in a state of exile and sleep, and the power of the vital soul invested in the mitzvah is literally absorbed in the light of Hashem and united with it in complete union. Finally we examined the four expressions the Alter Rebbe uses, and Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's explanation of the allusion to the name Havayah in the word מצוה.