In the previous section we learned that a person's neshamah rises, from time to time, higher than the angel. In this section we will look at the root of that distinction: the avodah of waging war with the evil. The Holy One placed the neshamah of every Jew inside a body in which outright evil is mixed in, and therefore every single thing he does involves a battle. It is precisely out of this fighting that he merits to rise, from time to time, even higher than the angel.
As we already learned in chapter 4 of Tanya, love and fear are the pnimiyus, the inner dimension, of all the mitzvos. And just as the mitzvos divide into two groups, mitzvos asei (the positive commands) and mitzvos lo saaseh (the prohibitions), so too:
Ahavah (love) is the root of the positive commands.
Yirah (fear) is the root of the prohibitions.
And since every Jew possesses a natural, built-in love and fear, he is given the power to stand up to the struggle and bring about iskafya sitra achara, the subduing of the «other side»: both in «turning away from evil», which comes out of the natural inner yirah that is in him, and in «doing good», which comes out of the natural ahavah that is in him. In the Alter Rebbe's words: «בין בבחינת סור מרע» (both in the aspect of «turn away from evil») and «בין בבחינת ועשה טוב» (and in the aspect of «do good»).
«בין בבחינת סור מרע» - «both in the aspect of turning away from evil»:
What is a Jew's «turning away from evil»? «לכבוש התאוות ולשברן», to conquer the desires and break them. He conquers his cravings. Every craving, every urge to see, to gaze, to hear, to speak or to think about things that are the opposite of G-d's will, he fights with himself and stands up to it. This avodah of iskafya is a great distinction that has no place at all by an angel.
«ובין בבחינת ועשה טוב» - «and in the aspect of doing good»:
In «doing good» as well there is a struggle. By nature a person wants to do only up to a certain limit, the limit that is comfortable for him, and the avodah is to do the good deed a little beyond that, like what we learned in Tanya in chapters 15 and 16 regarding the number of times a person reviews his learning. In the time of the Gemara the norm was to review everything a hundred times, so one who reviewed a hundred and one times was considered to have broken his nature and acted beyond his habit (and in our day even a single review, or two, is considered hard). And so it is in every matter: to do a mitzvah more beautifully, to make the effort and buy nicer tefillin, nicer tzitzis, a nicer mezuzah. The work of doing the thing with hiddur is itself a measure of iskafya.
This iskafya exists only in a neshamah that is inside a body, and it is what makes a person loftier than the angel. That is why he is able to be lifted up into the world of Beriah at least once a week (on Shabbos) or once a month (on Rosh Chodesh). Of course, if on Shabbos he chooses to conduct himself in the opposite way, he will remain below; but the ability to be lifted up has been placed in his hands.
Here the Alter Rebbe adds a sentence that looks like a closing summary, but in fact it contains a further point: «והם היו בעלי בחירה לבחור ברע ח״ו ובחרו בטוב», they possessed free choice, they could have chosen evil, G-d forbid, and they chose good.
That simple Jew has no love of G-d and fear of G-d that came out of hisbonenus, contemplation; all he has is the natural love and fear. But he had iskafya, and he fought. At the very moment he stood in that struggle, the ability to choose evil was in his hands, and he chose good. And where does the ability to choose come from? From the intellect, as we learned in chapter 38 regarding the neshamah of the «speaker», which comes with intellect and with choice. It emerges that although his avodah is on the level of natural service, the very capacity of choice, through which he chose good, has its source in the intellect, and therefore he deserves to rise to the world of Beriah, the world of intellect. Even though he does not serve G-d on such a level, he has a connection to it, because he belongs to the world of choice.
Why does the Alter Rebbe add this sentence? Because without it there would be room to argue: granted, he deserves to be loftier than the angel, but the world of Yetzirah is a vast world in its own right. The angel stands in the world of Yetzirah at a low rung, so let the person rise within Yetzirah itself to a rung higher than the angel and remain in that same world. Why lift him on Shabbos all the way to the world of Beriah? To this the added sentence answers: he deserves not only to rise above the angel, but also to rise to the world of Beriah, the world of intellect, since even while he serves G-d according to his nature he is making use of free choice, which belongs to the world of intellect.
And since this is so, he had the choice to choose evil and he chose good, he subdued the sitra achara both in «turning away from evil» and in «doing good», by this he brought about «iskafya sitra achara istalek yekara dekudsha brich hu», when the other side is subdued the glory of the Holy One is elevated, a wondrous divine revelation of «יתרון האור מן החושך», the superiority of light that comes out of darkness.
«יתרון האור מן החושך»:
As we have mentioned in earlier chapters, the intent is not merely that light has an advantage over darkness, that a lit room is preferable to a dark one. That simple truth every person understands, even a small child, and it is not what King Solomon meant. His intent is the difference between a room that was always lit, and a room that was dark and then turned into light: that is light of an entirely different kind. Turning the darkness into light is something special and precious. It emerges that a person who finds himself in a world mixed of good and evil, and subdues the evil within him and chooses the good, this is a wondrous distinction.
There is a maamar of the Previous Rebbe that adds to this chapter. In Tanya it says that the ordinary souls, who serve G-d through iskafya, are loftier than the angels; and the Previous Rebbe says in one of his maamarim that they are loftier even than the tzaddikim, not only than the angels. With regard to the angels the matter is clear, since they have no choice at all; but even by tzaddikim, whose avodah is constantly in light, this iskafya is not present. In contrast, the simple person who finds himself inside the evil and inside the darkness has a daily struggle at every step and turn, a great war, and therefore the result by him is far more precious. Their avodah, then, is above the angels and even above the tzaddikim, and from this it is understood on its own that it is fitting to lift them up to a lofty world: they deserve it.
And if so, the question turns around: why only on Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh? They ought to be lifted up all the time. In any event, on Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh they are lifted up, as is hinted in the words of the prophet regarding the woman who ran to the man of G-d: «לא חודש ולא שבת», it is neither Rosh Chodesh nor Shabbos. On Shabbos and Rosh Chodesh it is understood that a simple person is lifted up, but on an ordinary day that is not so.
In the time to come this will be constant: that is the «day that is entirely Shabbos», and this is why we say «מזמור שיר ליום השבת», a psalm, a song for the day of Shabbos, for the day that is entirely Shabbos, after the coming of Moshiach. The difference between this time and that one is that then the divine revelation will be constant, and there will be no iskafya and no struggle. That is something that will indeed be missing, and we will long for the days of exile; and therefore King Solomon says in Koheles that there will come «ימים אשר אין לך בהם חפץ», days in which you have no desire. We will long for these days and say: what a shame that we did not use every single moment of the time of exile, in which the distinction of iskafya exists, a very great distinction that lifts a person all the way to the level called here in Tanya the world of Beriah, the world of Binah, the upper Gan Eden, neshamah.
It is worth making sure that all the synonyms we have met here should not remain, in our eyes, words that make our knees knock without our knowing what is being spoken about. This language, even if it is somewhat lofty, should be accessible to us, so that we know clearly what the subject is.
In summary: in this section we learned that the neshamah of a Jew was placed in a body in which outright evil is mixed in, and therefore his entire avodah is a war, and through the power of iskafya he rises higher than the angel. The natural love and fear in the heart of every Jew are the root of «doing good» and «turning away from evil», and with their strength he conquers his cravings and adds in the hiddur of mitzvos beyond what is comfortable for him. We looked at the added phrase «והם היו בעלי בחירה», they possessed free choice, that the capacity of choice has its source in the intellect, and therefore he deserves to rise specifically to the world of Beriah, the world of intellect; at «יתרון האור מן החושך» as the distinction of darkness that was turned into light; at the words of the Previous Rebbe that this avodah is loftier even than the avodah of the tzaddikim; and at the fact that in the time to come, on the «day that is entirely Shabbos», the revelation will be constant, and then we will long for the distinction of iskafya of the days of exile.
In the next section the Alter Rebbe will enter into an even finer point: in every world there is the world itself, and there are the ten sefiros within it, in the language familiar to us, the neshamah and the G-dliness that shines within it. When we say that a Jew rises to the world of Yetzirah or to the world of Beriah, the intent is that he rises to the world itself; but to the G-dliness that shines within that world, even the neshamah does not rise there. Rather, the Torah he learns and the mitzvos he fulfills are what are elevated to the G-dliness within the world, which is immeasurably loftier. We will deal with this delicate point at length.