In the previous part we took up the question of whether a person's bond with the tzaddik is an inner bond or an external one. We saw that even someone who fights against the tzaddik still receives from him, but only on the level of "achorayim," the "back." In this part we will look more closely at what that level of achorayim actually means, and from there we will move to the close of the chapter: the sharpening of the point that every Jew is literally a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash, a part of G-d above, and what role parents play in all of this.
What is the level of achorayim?
The familiar illustration: a person has to give something to someone he does not like, and having no choice, he tosses it to him over his shoulder, behind his back. He does give it, but he gives it by way of his back. So too with someone who receives from the tzaddik while still fighting him: he does receive, but on the level of achorayim.
There are several ways to understand this:
The pipes get blocked: Such a Jew will come to daven and will want to be genuinely moved, to feel something real, for instance "ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך" ("and you shall love Hashem your G-d"). For the one who is bound to the talmid chochom in a pnimiyus, inner way, the flow is open and the arousal comes easily. For the one who is not bound that way, there are blockages at every turn, and every movement of feeling in avodas Hashem is hard for him, because his pipes are stopped up and the flow reached him only through the achorayim.
The tzaddik's own pnimiyus and chitzoniyus: In the tzaddik's own life there are inner things and outer things. His pnimiyus, his inner life, is his Torah and his tefillah, as the Tanya itself says later in Iggeres HaKodesh, siman 7, that the life of the tzaddik is emunah, yirah and ahavah. But he also has physical things: a home, a car, furniture, since after all he lives in this world. Those things, though, occupy in him only a place of chitzoniyus, externality. They are the tzaddik's achorayim.
Which raises the question: what kind of life does a person want for himself? Will the tzaddik's inner things be what matters to him, so that his own life becomes an inner life bound up with the Creator, with Torah, tefillah and ruchniyus as the main thing and the vanities of the world secondary? Or will the vanities of the world take center stage? It depends entirely on the kind of bond he has. One who is bound to the tzaddik in his pnimiyus receives from the tzaddik's pnimiyus, and that becomes his life. One who is connected by way of the achorayim, his life will be the tzaddik's achorayim.
In other words, the physical, external matters, which for the tzaddik are only achorayim, will be this person's very life. They will preoccupy him and take the central place in him. He may well be a G-d fearing Jew who learns and davens, and still the question stands: what is important to him, what occupies his mind? Is it the external, physical side of things?
Here a precision is needed. All of this is said from the person's side. From the tzaddik's side, in his great compassion he arouses even the Jew who is far away, thinks about him, pulls him out of the depths of the kelipos and brings him back. That is exactly why he was given the role of being the head and the brain, to hold the whole system together and to know which strings to pull. But from the person's side, by his own choice he decides what will be important in his life: the pnimiyus or the chitzoniyus. That is what exists in practice.
"Chelek Eloka mimaal mamash": the title of the chapter
If we wanted to sum up all of chapter 2 in a single title, it would be: chelek Eloka mimaal mamash, literally a part of G-d above. Every Jew is a part of G-d above, literally, and within that come all the details: how, despite this, there are still differences in level, and how one nevertheless connects back to the source.
At the close of the chapter the Alter Rebbe wants to sharpen the point even further: all of Klal Yisroel are literally a part of G-d above, and no one can interfere with that, change it or lower it. Every one of them is a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash without any change whatsoever.
To sharpen this, the Alter Rebbe brings the words of the Zohar which touch on the fact that parents do have a say, a choice, and that it lies in their hands to affect which neshamah will come down to their child. Based on that one might have thought that it is not truly a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash, that someone does have a hand in it. So he clarifies what the Zohar means: the bottom line stays exactly as we said, the chelek Eloka mimaal mamash is not diminished. Certainly the parents have a part, and their part is enormously important, but it does not touch the chelek Eloka mimaal mamash. Their part is in providing a very important external assisting force, not in the essence.
The words of the Tanya at the end of the chapter: "ומה שכתוב בזוהר, ובזוהר חדש, שהעיקר תלוי שיקדש עצמו בשעת תשמיש דווקא, מה שאין כן בני עמי הארץ" ("and as for what is written in the Zohar and in Zohar Chadash, that the main thing depends specifically on a person sanctifying himself at the time of marital union, which is not the case with the children of the unlearned"). The Zohar establishes that the parents' conduct has an effect: parents who are G-d fearing, refined and holy have more refined children, while the children of the unlearned, who are coarse in spirit, are themselves coarse. From this it would seem that the parents determine which neshamah comes down; but the Zohar itself explains that it is not referring to the neshamah at all, but to something else.
The nefesh hasichlis
Until now we have spoken of the two neshamos, the two souls that every Jew has, as we learned in chapter 1. But in fuller detail every person has three souls; it is just that the third one is not called a "nefesh" in every source, and it goes by several different names. Where it is called a nefesh, its name is the nefesh hasichlis, the intellectual soul.
What is the nefesh hasichlis, and what is its job?
The nefesh haElokis is above, the nefesh habahamis is below, and between them a go-between is needed. The nefesh haElokis understands no language other than kedushah, Elokus and ruchniyus; speak to it in the language of gashmiyus and it has no idea what you are talking about. The nefesh habahamis understands only a coarse, animal language; speak to it about ruchniyus and it has no idea what you are talking about. The Holy One, blessed be He, took these two souls and placed them together inside one person, and since one of them represents G-dliness and the other represents an animal, and there is no match between them, He put a matchmaker into the person as well. That matchmaker is called the nefesh hasichlis.
Why is it called the intellectual soul? Because it is the nature of the intellect to lay claim to objectivity. A person who thinks or feels one way, if you explain the matter to him logically and his mind grasps it, will move over to that side; explain the opposite to him and he will move to the opposite. The nefesh hasichlis says: let us take things objectively and cleanly, just as they are. Maybe the Elokis is right, maybe the bahamis is. And once it has been convinced that a certain thing is true, it finds the words to translate the G-dly matters into a language in which even the animal will understand that they are worthwhile and good.
This nefesh hasichlis can also be called a "levush," a garment. What is a garment for? There is a house, which is inside, and there is the street, which is outside, and the two are opposite extremes. How does a person leave the inside and walk around outside? He puts on a garment, and by means of it he can go out. Without a garment there is no way to bridge inside and outside. The levush is the intermediary between the higher and the lower.
In our own language you could call this a person's character: what kind of character does he have, and what is he drawn to? An elevated, refined, pure character will make it easier for him to translate what the nefesh haElokis is saying, to cleave to it, and to explain to his nefesh habahamis just how worthwhile these things are. A coarse, low character means the person will be pulled toward the animal side and will not want to hear what the nefesh haElokis has to say at all.
The role of parents
So who determines which intermediary a person gets? That is determined by the parents. The nefesh haElokis, which is literally a part of G-d above, is placed there by the Holy One, blessed be He, and no one interferes with that. The nefesh habahamis is an animal, and there too no one interferes. But the intermediary between them, that is set by the parents, and from here all kinds of situations can arise:
A lofty, holy neshamah whose parents were coarse in spirit and gave it a coarse intermediary: the extremes in its struggle will be far harder, and either the person will fall, or the neshamah will prevail.
A lower neshamah whose parents were G-d fearing and pure and gave it a pure intermediary: it will always cleave to higher and holier things and stay far from the animal side.
This is what the Zohar is speaking about when it describes what parents give their child.
Let us read the words in the text: "היינו משום שאין לך נפש, רוח או נשמה שאין לה לבוש" ("this is because there is no nefesh, ruach or neshamah that does not have a garment"). This is the levush we have been calling the nefesh hasichlis. And where is it received from? "מנפש דעצמות אביו ואמו" ("from the nefesh of the very essence of his father and mother"), from the essential being of the father and mother, who give it to their child. "וכל המצוות שעושה" ("and all the mitzvos that he does"), all of them come about through that garment. Why is a person drawn to do a mitzvah? Because his intermediary explained to him that it is worth doing. A coarse intermediary, and the mitzvah does not stir him; a refined one, and he runs to it. Even the flow that is given from Above passes through this garment, and even ruach hakodesh at its highest level descends to a person by means of it.
And if he sanctifies himself, that is, if the parents are holy, he draws down a holy garment for his child's neshamah. The neshamah itself is holy without any input from the parents, but they assist it and give it a better supporting force. Even a great neshamah needs its father's sanctification, because it needs an intermediary, it needs a levush. The parents' role here is decisive. But the neshamah itself, and here he comes back to the point, is literally a part of G-d above, and in that no one can interfere.
This is why sometimes "נשמת אדם גבוה לאין קץ, באה להיות בנו של אדם נבזה ושפל" ("the neshamah of an infinitely lofty person comes to be the child of a despicable and lowly person"). The Holy One, blessed be He, can place a great neshamah precisely with the lowest and most degraded parents. Why? Because it is written in Kabbalah that there are lofty neshamos that the kelipos and the forces of evil will not allow to come down into the world at all, and so the Creator makes a kind of compromise with the forces of tumah: the neshamah will descend to a place where the chances of it being lost are high. And together with this, "lo yidach mimenu nidach," no one is ultimately cast away, and so the Holy One, blessed be He, sends it down anyway. There are many fascinating stories about this, for example in the stories of the Baal Shem Tov, who would send a student to a certain place where such a Jew was to be found; with his shining eyes he knew how to identify the lofty neshamah and draw it to its proper place, even though it had come down to a low place.
So it emerges that parents do not interfere on the level of the neshamah, as the Arizal wrote, and all of this is brought in Likutei Torah in parshas Vayera and in Taamei Mitzvos on parshas Bereishis. The conclusion is that the chelek Eloka mimaal mamash is in our own hands, and all we have to do is know how to guard it. And together with that, we have received here a lesson in just how decisive and critical our role as parents is in helping the next generation to be a pure and holy generation.
In summary: in this part we learned that the level of achorayim means receiving from the tzaddik in an external, blocked way, both in the sense that a person's spiritual pipes become stopped up, and in the sense that he attaches himself to the tzaddik's external, physical matters rather than to his pnimiyus. We also saw that the sum of chapter 2 is that every Jew is literally a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash, in which no one can interfere. We were introduced to the third soul, the nefesh hasichlis, which mediates between the nefesh haElokis and the nefesh habahamis as a garment drawn from one's parents. And finally it became clear that parents do not determine the essence of the neshamah, but their role is decisive in giving the next generation its garment and its character.
In the next part we will turn to chapter 3, where we will learn about the ten sefiros and the seven "days of building": how the nefesh haElokis is built out of intellectual and emotional faculties, and how this structure relates to the order of hishtalshelus.