With good fortune we now open chapter 3 of the Tanya. In chapter 2 we did not go into the details and the levels within the neshamah; we stayed with its essence, that there is a soul whose source is on high, a chelek Eloka mimaal, a literal part of G-d above, together with all the expansion, the questions and the explanations that came in its wake.
In the previous section we studied at length the second soul of a Jew and the essence of the neshamah, that it is a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash which descended all the way into a physical body; we also studied the influence of the tzaddik and the role of the parents in drawing the soul down. Now, at the opening of chapter 3, we move from the essence of the neshamah to its ordered form of expression. Although the soul is spiritual, abstract and unlimited, it also has a defined expression, arranged in specific faculties and characteristics, as we will learn in this chapter.
When we spoke of "a part of G-d above" we added one more word: "chelek Eloka mimaal mamash", a part of G-d above, literally. One of the explanations we learned is that the emphasis in the word mamash comes to tell us that this part of G-d does not remain "above"; it comes down to something tangible, into an actual physical body, all the way down below.
The Alter Rebbe continues along the same line in chapter 3. The neshamah, spiritual and lofty as it is, and as hard as it seems to define it, nevertheless has an expression in an orderly arrangement that can be defined. This does not mean that we have limited the soul, for it remains abstract; it means that it has a certain form of expression, one that has a definition, a description and details.
Let us turn to the words of the chapter:
"והנה כל בחינה ומדרגה משלוש אלו" - "Now, each of these three levels and grades," meaning each of the three levels mentioned in chapter 2: nefesh, ruach and neshamah. There are two more, chayah and yechidah, but the main ones are these three.
In very general terms:
Nefesh - includes the faculties of action.
Ruach - includes the emotional faculties.
Neshamah - includes the intellectual faculty.
From this it follows that there are people whose very makeup, conduct and daily life show that they are people of action; everything they encounter, they measure by how it translates into deed. There are people who are emotional, and there are people who are intellectual. This comes from the fact that in one person the level of neshamah shines more, in another the level of ruach, and in a third the level of nefesh, even though every person possesses all three.
But it makes no difference which level we are speaking of; each of the three is itself composed of ten faculties. What is the source of this, and what is the reason for it? The Alter Rebbe says that it corresponds to the ten supernal sefiros, for in G-dliness there are ten sefiros.
What are the ten sefiros?
The Creator of the world, His very Essence, is infinite, unlimited, and cannot be defined by any description. As we know from the principles of faith, He has no body and no bodily form can be ascribed to Him, He has no description, and so on. And yet the Creator emanated and contracted from Himself ten sefiros. He determined that there be ten, not nine and not eleven, and in every single world there are ten sefiros, ten different expressions of the Divine revelation.
Since in the upper worlds there are ten sefiros, therefore in every nefesh, ruach or neshamah there are likewise ten faculties. And what is the connection between them? Is it only so that there be no jealousy in the work of creation, ten there and ten here?
To this the Alter Rebbe adds a word: "שנשתלשלו מהם", "which have devolved from them." The soul that is here below in a person's body comes, after all, from above, and in order to descend and be revealed it passes through the seder hishtalshelus, the chainlike descent of the worlds, as we learned in chapter 2. And since it comes from those very worlds in which there are ten sefiros, and was revealed by means of them, it therefore absorbed into its own essence what exists in those worlds.
Of course, in those worlds the ten sefiros exist in an abstract, spiritual sense, whereas as they exist in a person's soul they are defined faculties that can be actualized, as we will soon see. This is what it means that the "part of G-d above" descended to become mamash: it can be actualized, grasped, described and felt.
"הנחלקות לשתים" - "which are divided into two":
The ten faculties divide into two groups: a group of three and a group of seven. This division is not only in the soul of man but also above, in G-dliness and in the upper worlds. That is why the Alter Rebbe first quotes the name of this division as it is above, and only afterward describes the name it carries below.
As the division exists above in the upper worlds, it is described in Sefer Yetzirah, which we have already mentioned several times, in these words: "שהן שלוש אמות ושבע כפולות", "three 'mothers' and seven 'doubles.'" In these few words the ten sefiros are named in their two groups.
What exactly is meant by "three mothers," what is meant by "seven doubles," and what is the difference between them, is easier to explain as they exist below in the soul of man than as they exist in the supernal sefiros.
"פירוש" - "that is to say" - since we are not speaking now of the ten sefiros as they are above, but of the ten faculties as they are in the soul of man:
The three "mothers" - chochmah, binah and daas. These three levels belong to the world of intellect, and we will study them at length, please G-d, later in chapter 3. Their names are the same both in the sefiros and in the soul of man: chochmah, binah, daas.
The seven "doubles" - "ושבעת ימי הבנין", "the seven days of building," which are the seven middos, the emotional attributes.
Why are the first three called "mothers"? Because all the emotions and all the middos are in truth the offspring of these "mothers," chochmah, binah and daas, like a mother who gives birth to children. In general one says "three mothers," but when we go into greater detail we call chochmah the "father" and binah the "mother."
"And the seven days of building":
"Building" refers to the world; the world is built by the middos, as the verse says, "עולם חסד יבנה", "the world is built through kindness." The world is built in a cycle of seven days: "For six days G-d made... and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed." This cycle corresponds precisely to the seven "doubles," the seven middos: Sunday is chesed, Monday is gevurah, Tuesday is tiferes, and so on, and Shabbos is malchus.
Therefore, when one contemplates each of the days of creation and sees what was created on it, it matches precisely the character of the seven middos. On the first day, which corresponds to chesed, whose theme is light and giving, it says "ויאמר אלהים יהי אור", "And G-d said: Let there be light." On the second day, which corresponds to gevurah, whose theme is contraction and withholding, the firmament was created, whose whole function is contraction, to separate between the upper waters and the lower waters; and that is why the expression "and it was good" does not appear on that day, for in gevurah the good is not openly visible. And so each and every day has its own particular theme.
The Ramban, in the second chapter of the Torah, adds, after the Torah finishes describing the seven days, that on a broader scale all the years of the world's existence, which run in a cycle of seven thousand years, likewise correspond to the seven middos, each millennium corresponding to one of the days of creation. He describes this at length and in a most fascinating way, the difference between the days and what was created on each one, and it is worth looking at his words inside.
We are at the end of the sixth millennium, and the seventh is malchus, the kingship of the Creator in its complete form. Already now we begin to taste of it, like Friday afternoon when one already tastes of the Shabbos food. In any case, the seven days of building are the seven middos, and they are called "days of building" because creation was built through them. These are the supernal sefiros: chesed, gevurah, tiferes and so on.
Why was the world built specifically through the seven middos and not through all ten sefiros? If there are ten sefiros, why did the Creator not make a cycle of ten, beginning with chochmah, binah and daas and continuing on? What is this "deprivation," if one may put it that way, that the first three have no connection to creation and only the seven do? This too we will understand from the soul of man.
What is the difference between intellect and emotion? Intellect in its essence is a matter of a person with himself, whereas a middah, an emotion, is in its essence a matter of a person in relation to another. This is also reflected in the very nature of intellect: when a person wants to contemplate, to study and to think deeply, the surroundings often disturb him; he wants to be focused, to be alone with himself. The more he sits with himself and concentrates, the easier it is for him, and the more noise there is around him, the less he is able to concentrate. The middos, by contrast, are entirely about influencing another: to whom will one show chesed, to whom gevurah, to whom tiferes. All the middos are directed toward another.
From here comes the answer: it is impossible that a reality of a separate, alien world, "olam" from the word helem and hester, concealment and hiddenness of G-dliness, should emerge from the theme of the first three. Chochmah, binah and daas are entirely about G-dliness, as a thing unto itself, with no relation to anything else.
The whole theme of the middos, however, is to make possible a reality of "another" in relation to the Creator. Now, there is really no concept of "another" relative to Him, for He is everything and everything is He; rather, the concept of "another" relative to Him means a reality that feels itself as though it were separate and detached. That is the world, and it can come only from the middos, not from intellect. This explains why the world was built only through the seven days of building, and why chochmah, binah and daas have no part in the "building."
In summary: in this section we learned that each of the three levels, nefesh, ruach and neshamah, is composed of ten faculties, corresponding to the ten supernal sefiros from which they have devolved. These ten divide into two groups: three "mothers" (chochmah, binah, daas), called "mothers" because they give birth to the middos; and seven "doubles," the seven middos called "the seven days of building," since creation was built through them, in precise correspondence to the days of creation and to the character of each middah. We also learned why the world was built specifically from the middos and not from the intellect: intellect is a matter of "unto itself," G-dliness as it is, while the middos make possible the reality of a separate "other," which is the world.
In the next section we will turn to the faculty of chochmah as the source of intellect: we will delve into the essence of the sefirah of chochmah, as the first flash of intellectual revelation and the source of the entire process of understanding within the soul.