Introduction: Where Are the Worlds?
When we speak about «worlds,» the imagination immediately places them somewhere up above, as though with a fast enough spaceship, or with some sophisticated instrument yet to be invented, we could travel to the world of Yetzirah, the world of Beriah, the world of Atzilus. Obviously we dare not take this physically: the worlds are not «there,» they are here. There is a parallel in our own physical world. A logical insight is something spiritual, and where is it located? Right here. It is simply that you cannot grasp it between your fingers; you grasp it in a more abstract way. It has no physical place and no physical location, because its location is in more spiritual dimensions, and that does not mean it is a few floors higher up or lower down. So too with the worlds. They are not to be pictured as being so many meters or kilometers higher. They are G-dly concepts, spiritual, real and eternal, and they are everywhere. Even when we speak about neshamos and about angels, we do not mean a physical address, we mean a spiritual level.
On this basis we say that the abode of the souls of the tzaddikim is the world of Beriah, while the abode of the angels is a lower world, the world of Yetzirah. To understand this, we need an introduction about the ten sefiros that exist in every single world.
The Ten Sefiros and the Four Partzufim:
In each of the four worlds there is what is called a complete partzuf of ten sefiros: Chochmah, Binah, Daas, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malchus. This is just as in the soul of a human being there are ten faculties, as we learned in chapter 3 at the beginning of Tanya, that the faculties of the soul descend through hishtalshelus from the ten supernal sefiros. Nevertheless, in each of the four worlds it is mainly one group of sefiros that shines, and that group is the theme of that world.
In maamarim of chassidus the ten sefiros are divided into four general groups, called the four partzufim:
Chochmah.
Binah.
The six middos, called Zeir Anpin, which are the middos as a whole: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach, Hod and Yesod.
The sefirah of Malchus, which stands on its own.
Corresponding to these are the four worlds, in each of which one of the four groups is the main illumination, dominant and ruling there:
The world of Atzilus - Chochmah.
The world of Beriah - Binah.
The world of Yetzirah - the six middos.
The world of Asiyah - the sefirah of Malchus.
And as we said, every world contains all ten sefiros; we are speaking only about what shines in it predominantly.
The Difference Between Angels and Souls:
Angels serve Hashem according to the middos that are natural to them, whereas souls serve Hashem as a result of hisbonenus, contemplation: not merely according to their nature, but according to what ought to be. Therefore, of the four worlds, the world of souls is Beriah, the world of Binah and contemplation; while the angels, whose avodah is essentially in the middos, belong to the world of middos, the world of Yetzirah. That is precisely the meaning of the line we read: the abode of the souls of tzaddikim is in the world of Beriah and the abode of the angels is in the world of Yetzirah, and the abode of the tzaddikim is loftier than the abode of the angels.
The Gloss: Higher Angels in the World of Beriah:
The Alter Rebbe notes in a gloss on the side: «והיינו בסתם מלאכים» (this refers to ordinary angels). When we speak of angels in general, we mean «ordinary angels,» the body of angels that belong to Yetzirah; but there are loftier angels in the world of Beriah. We are familiar with this in a general way from the berachos of Krias Shema that we say every morning: «the Ofanim and the Chayos HaKodesh,» and above them the Serafim. The Ofanim and Chayos HaKodesh are a lower level, and the Serafim are higher than they, and those loftier angels exist in the world of Beriah, while most angels belong to Yetzirah. The avodah of those higher angels is loftier, and therefore it is bound up with Binah and with contemplation, which is why the Alter Rebbe says that their service is «בדחילו ורחימו שכליים» (with awe and love that are intellectual), a love and fear that come from contemplation of the mind, as is written in Raaya Mehemna that there are two kinds of Chayos HaKodesh: natural ones and intellectual ones (and both are called, in general, Chayos HaKodesh).
Back to the Body of the Tanya:
«וההבדל שביניהם הוא» (and the difference between them is), that is, between Yetzirah and Beriah, between the angels and the souls: «כי בעולם היצירה מאירות שם מידותיו של אין סוף ברוך הוא לבדן» (for in the world of Yetzirah there shine only the middos of the Ein Sof, blessed be He). Yetzirah is a world in which the G-dly middos are the primary illumination, and therefore whoever belongs to the level of Yetzirah serves Hashem chiefly with the middos, the realm of Zeir Anpin. «שהן אהבתו ופחדו ויראתו וכו'» (which are His love and His dread and His awe, etc.): love is an aspect of Chesed, dread and awe are aspects of Gevurah, and so on. «כדאיתא בתיקונים» (as it is stated in the Tikkunim, that is, Tikkunei Zohar) «דשית ספירין מקננין ביצירה» (that six sefiros nest in Yetzirah): the six sefiros called Zeir Anpin shine in the world of Yetzirah and belong to it.
And since Yetzirah is the abode of the angels, and it is the middos that shine there, it follows that «ולכן זאת היא עבודת המלאכים תמיד יומם ולילה לא ישקוטו לעמוד ביראה ופחד וכו'» (and therefore this is the service of the angels constantly, day and night they do not rest, standing in awe and dread, etc.). They have no stopping and no interruption at all. An angel is a creation whose entire being is the service of Hashem, along the particular line it was created for: an angel belonging to Chesed serves with love, an angel belonging to Gevurah serves with awe. In the Alter Rebbe's words: «והיינו כל מחנה גבריאל שמהשמאל» (and this is the entire camp of Gavriel, which is from the left), which belongs to awe, «ועבודת מחנה מיכאל היא האהבה כו'» (and the service of the camp of Michoel is love, etc.). This is what Yechezkel the prophet saw in the supernal Merkavah: the face of a lion on the right, the avodah of the camp of Michoel, and the face of an ox on the left, the avodah of the camp of Gavriel.
Yechezkel the prophet saw, in the vision of prophecy, those loftier and more spiritual beings; that is, he saw the state and the level itself. There is a parallel in our physical world. Take a person born blind whose other senses all function perfectly. You can explain to him volume, weight and dimensions, and he will feel them and understand. But color he will never be able to grasp. However much you explain to him what white is, he will ask you from within his own frame of reference: is white wide or narrow, heavy or light, round or square? He simply has no capacity to understand what color is, because the faculty to grasp it is missing. So it is with us in our coarse world: we cannot grasp those concepts, just as one cannot explain an intellectual idea to someone who has no vessels to understand it, who does not even know what is being spoken about.
The World of Beriah:
«אבל בעולם הבריאה מאירות שם חכמתו ובינתו ודעתו של אין סוף ברוך הוא, שהן מקור המידות ואם ושורש להן» (but in the world of Beriah there shine the Chochmah, Binah and Daas of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, which are the source of the middos and their mother and root). The source and root of the middos is Binah. «וכדאיתא בתיקונים דאימא עילאה מקננא בתלת ספירן בכורסיא» (and as it is stated in the Tikkunim, that Ima Ila'ah nests in three sefiros in the Throne). «Ima Ila'ah,» the supernal mother, is the Zohar's term for Binah, as we already learned in the earlier parts of Tanya that father and mother are a metaphor for Chochmah and Binah: Chochmah is called father and Binah is called mother. And «kursaya» in our language is a throne, for in Kabbalah the world of Beriah is called «the world of the Throne.»
One could ask: we said that Beriah is the world of Binah, so why does the Alter Rebbe mention «His Chochmah, His Binah and His Daas»? The answer is as we prefaced: every world contains all ten sefiros, and the illumination here is in the Chochmah, Binah and Daas of Beriah. But the essential theme of Beriah is Binah, that is, hisbonenus.
«ולכן הוא מדור נשמות הצדיקים עובדי ה' בדחילו ורחימו הנמשכות מן הבינה ודעת דגדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא» (and therefore it is the abode of the souls of the tzaddikim who serve Hashem with awe and love drawn from understanding and knowledge of the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He). Beriah belongs chiefly to the souls of the tzaddikim, whose avodah is indeed with feeling, but a feeling that comes as a result of contemplation, as we discussed in the previous chapter regarding the «soul of the speaking being.» «שאהבה זו נקראת רעותא דליבא כנ"ל» (for this love is called re'usa deliba, the desire of the heart, as mentioned above): in chapter 17 we learned that an emotion drawn from contemplation is called «re'usa deliba,» «ומרעותא דליבא נעשה לבוש לנשמה בעולם הבריאה שהוא גן עדן העליון כדלקמן» (and from re'usa deliba a garment is made for the soul in the world of Beriah, which is the upper Gan Eden, as will be explained later).
True, there are terms and concepts here that we are not accustomed to in Tanya, and especially for someone who lacks the background in this style and vocabulary, the material is very abstract and it is hard to keep track of all the names and levels. But first of all, it is Torah and one must learn it; second, with enough learning we will, with Hashem's help, grow accustomed to it; and third, further on we return to more familiar terms. In any case, even as this chapter deals with lofty levels of worlds and abstract names, we will try to translate it and bring it down into the language of avodas Hashem: the world of Beriah means serving Hashem as a result of contemplation; the world of Yetzirah means serving Hashem out of the natural love that is already there.
For the goal of this study is not to acquire a theory about higher worlds. We are not learning sefarim of Kabbalah here in order to draw diagrams of what goes on in the upper worlds, but in order to translate it all into the avodah of a person, into daily avodas Hashem: to know the great advantage we have as human beings endowed with intellect, and that the Holy One gave us that intellect so that we should use it, contemplate the greatness of Hashem, and serve Him as far as possible according to what ought to be, and not only according to what a person happens to feel like doing. And when a person does his avodah according to what ought to be, he is touching the concept called the world of Beriah: the matter of understanding, which is the superiority of man over animal, that his service flows from comprehension and intellect. That is the point the Alter Rebbe wants to awaken in this chapter.
Michoel and Gavriel: In Yetzirah or in Beriah?
A question was asked: do Michoel and Gavriel belong to the world of Yetzirah or to the world of Beriah? There is an interesting treatment of this in the Rebbe's notes on Tanya. The Rebbe points out that the Zohar states explicitly that Michoel and Gavriel are angels whose service is intellectual, whereas here in Tanya it says their service is natural. The Rebbe resolves this with a precise distinction between «the camp of Michoel» and «the camp of Gavriel» on the one hand, and Michoel and Gavriel themselves on the other: the camps of Michoel and Gavriel belong to the world of Yetzirah, while Michoel and Gavriel themselves belong to the world of Beriah.
Is There Hiskalelus Among the Angels?
A further question: does an angel remain purely within its own nature, or is there hiskalelus, an intermingling, so that an angel whose nature is Chesed also receives something of the aspect of Gevurah? Here too there is an interesting precision in the Tanya, in the fourth line at the beginning of the chapter, where it says of the angels: «לפי שאינם בעלי בחירה, ויראתם ואהבתם היא טבעית להם» (because they do not possess free choice, and their awe and their love is natural to them). On the face of it, why the singular «is,» when «their awe and their love» is plural and it should have said «are»?
The explanation is that something is hinted at here. In the prayer «Uva LeTziyon Go'el,» which we say every day, we quote the verse from Yeshayahu, «And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy,» and immediately afterward the Targum: «umekablin dein min dein,» and they receive one from the other. In other words, «one called to another» means that each receives from his fellow. It emerges that if one angel has one nature and his fellow another, he possesses his own original nature and also what he receives from the other. This also explains why he says «Holy» three times. Saying «Holy» means that the angel declares that its whole nature is limited, and that there is something higher than it that is holy and set apart, which it cannot reach; so one declaration should have sufficed. But in general terms there are three lines: Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, right, left and center. Each angel has its own natural line, and since it also receives from the other two lines, it declares what is in them as well, saying «Holy» with respect to its own original level and also with respect to what it has received.
This is why the Alter Rebbe is precise in writing «ויראתם ואהבתם היא טבעית להם» (and their awe and their love is natural to them) in the singular: each individual angel has what is natural to it, its own nature. But hiskalelus certainly exists, as in «and one called to another,» «and they receive one from the other,» for each receives and is influenced by his fellow; it is only that what is natural to it in its original nature is different from what it receives from another.
And as for the standing of the angels relative to human beings, as we said at the start of the chapter: a Jew, even on a low level, serves at least with the intensity of an angel, and when he is on a higher level, he is loftier than an angel.
In summary: in this portion we learned that the worlds are not to be pictured as located in some higher physical place, but as spiritual levels and rungs. We prefaced that every world contains a complete partzuf of ten sefiros, but in each world one of the four groups is the main illumination: Chochmah in Atzilus, Binah in Beriah, the six middos in Yetzirah, and Malchus in Asiyah. From here comes the difference between the abode of the angels and the abode of the souls of the tzaddikim: in Yetzirah the middos alone shine, and therefore the service of the angels is constant, with natural love and awe, the camp of Michoel from the right and the camp of Gavriel from the left, as in Yechezkel's vision of the Merkavah; while in Beriah there shine His Chochmah, Binah and Daas, which are the source and root of the middos, and therefore it is the abode of the souls of the tzaddikim who serve with awe and love drawn from contemplation, which is «re'usa deliba» and becomes a garment for the soul in the upper Gan Eden. We also looked at the gloss about the loftier angels in Beriah whose service is with intellectual awe and love, at the Rebbe's precise distinction between Michoel and Gavriel and their camps, and at the hiskalelus found among the angels.
In the next portion we will continue the explanation of the chapter, and will try to go on translating the levels of the worlds into the language of daily avodas Hashem.