In the previous section we looked at the words of Shlomo HaMelech, «מה יתרון לאדם בכל עמלו שיעמול תחת השמש», «What profit has a man in all his toil that he toils under the sun», and we learned that the toil which is not «under the sun» is the toil of Torah. Now we will see that the Zohar reads far more than this into the verse.
The depth of the Zohar's words is that there are two kinds of toil within the toil of Torah itself. The Zohar explains that Shlomo HaMelech is not speaking only of two kinds of toil, the toil of Torah as opposed to toil in other things, but that within Torah itself there are two kinds: there is a man who labors and exerts himself in the study of Torah, and nevertheless the Torah he learns is «under the sun» and has no profit in it; and there is toil in Torah that is above the sun.
In the language of the Zohar: "דאפילו עמלא דאורייתא, אי עביד בגין יקריה כו'", «even the toil of Torah, if he does it for his own honor», that is, for his own standing and personal gain, then it too is «under the sun». This is what Shlomo HaMelech means by «What profit has a man in all his toil»: when his toil in Torah is done «for his own honor», it is not toil for the sake of Heaven but for the sake of himself, and that is not how it should be. But when he learns Torah lishmah, for its own sake, his learning rises upward.
A further source: the Gemara relates that a bas kol, a heavenly voice, went out from the upper worlds and declared, "וזהו שכתוב אשרי מי שבא לכאן ותלמודו בידו", «Fortunate is one who arrives here with his learning in his hand». The wording «with his learning in his hand» demands precision. If a man learned Torah his whole life, and his soul ascends on high when his years are complete, how could he possibly arrive without his learning? And regarding one who never learned at all, there is no room to speak of «his learning», since he has no learning to speak of. It must be, then, that the subject is a man who did learn, and even so there is one who arrives with his learning in his hand, and alongside him one who arrives and his learning is not in his hand.
As the Alter Rebbe explains, "פירוש שלא נשאר למטה בעולם הזה", «meaning that it did not remain below in this world». If he learned Torah not lishmah, «for his own honor», it is entirely possible that he invested his whole life in the study of Torah, and after a hundred and twenty he is asked: why did you come without your Torah? And where is it? It stayed below. And when he asks to do teshuvah, he will be told: that was something you had to do down there.
From here we see the enormous importance of paying attention that one's learning be for the sake of Heaven and in holiness. And as we learned, there are several levels in this:
Outright not lishmah: the situation is severe, and the learning remains below in the world of the kelipos.
Neither lishmah nor outright not lishmah: the learning rises to the external dimension of the worlds. Here too a correction is needed, but at least it rises to the external dimension of the worlds.
Lishmah: the learning rises to actual Elokus, and this depends on the level, whether it was accompanied by intellectual love and fear or by natural love and fear, and this was the entire length of chapter 39.
[It is worth clarifying that none of this has anything to do with the physical circumstances of the one learning. A man riding a bus who learns holy subjects while sitting in his seat: what difference does it make whether he is sitting or standing on his feet, and even if he learns lying down? «ובשכבך ובקומך», «when you lie down and when you rise», in every place and in every situation a man should be learning Torah. Not only is there no problem with this, this is precisely how it should be, and so the Gemara brings according to one opinion in explaining «when you lie down and when you rise», in the manner that a person walks or lies down and the like. The entire weight of the matter rests on lishmah and not lishmah.]
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At this point the Alter Rebbe turns to a question that may well have been troubling the student since the middle of chapter 39, and even earlier, since the middle of chapter 38, from the moment he wrote that a tefillah or a mitzvah without kavanah is «like a body without a soul». That is where this whole subject opened: what is that soul, and which soul is present here, domem, tzomeiach, chai or medaber, inanimate, vegetative, animal or speaking, in all the length that we have studied.
And seemingly one should ask: Master of the Universe, what difference does it make in what manner he did it? The main thing is that he learns Torah and keeps mitzvos. What Torah is he learning? Gemara, Chumash, Divine wisdom, the wisdom of the Holy One blessed be He. What do I care what he thought and what he did not think? He said verses of Torah, he said words of Gemara, this is Elokus, this is holiness, and he performed mitzvos. Can a man really ruin the mitzvah with his thoughts?
All the more so, since "ואף דאורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד", «the Torah and the Holy One blessed be He are entirely one». Nobody has the power to sever the Torah from the Holy One blessed be He; so it was, so it will be, and so it is always. And likewise His will and He are one: if the Holy One blessed be He wants Torah to be learned, that will is the Holy One blessed be He Himself, and the same with the mitzvos He wants us to fulfill. If so, how can the matter possibly depend on a person's feeling, his thought and his imaginings? And what room is there for all these divisions, that this remains in the kelipos, this rises to the external dimension of the worlds and this to the inner dimension of the worlds?
Put differently: why is kavanah needed at all, and why should it have the power to spoil anything? Why does the deed require that «soul», and why does the person have to get involved in the whole matter, when what is happening here is the performance or the study of Divine wisdom? Why should the Divine wisdom not simply remain clean and authentic, with the person not altering it at all?
The foundation of the answer: concealment and tzimtzum
The answer rests on an idea that we already studied at length in the previous chapters, and we will review it briefly, since the explanation is built upon it, an explanation that is simple and very easy to grasp.
We spoke about the Divine vitality with which the Holy One blessed be He enlivens all the worlds, and about the two differences between the upper worlds and this lowest world:
Tzimtzum, contraction: in this world the vitality is contracted, whereas in the upper worlds it is not contracted. And within this world itself there are gradations: in the domem, the inanimate, the tzimtzum is greatest; in the tzomeiach, the vegetative, it is less; in the chai, the animal, less still; and in the medaber, the speaking creature, less again. And so too in higher worlds there is still less tzimtzum.
Concealment: whether the Divine vitality is revealed or hidden. In this world, and this is what all the levels share, from the highest of them to the lowest, everything is hidden. A person looks at the inanimate, the vegetative, the animal and the speaking creature, and he sees that it is alive and active, but Elokus he does not see. In the upper worlds, by contrast, the vitality is revealed and there is no concealment there.
It emerges that in the upper worlds there are two advantages: the vitality is expansive and not contracted, and it is revealed and not hidden. In this world both deficiencies are present together, both concealment and tzimtzum.
This world in its entirety is absolute hiddenness and concealment. There is no single thing in the world that a person can point to and say, «Here, right here I see Elokus». It makes no difference whether he is looking at an ant, a cup, a stone or a human being. With physical eyes he sees things operating with various degrees of tzimtzum and revelation, but he places them all in the same display window and says: in none of them do I see Elokus. And why? Because «אכן אתה אל מסתתר», «indeed You are a God who hides Himself». The Holy One blessed be He concealed Himself, and this entire world is concealment and tzimtzum.
And when we say that everything existing in this world is in a state of concealment, we mean everything: every creature, every action, every thought, every word and every deed. Everything that takes place in this world lies under a thick curtain of hiddenness and concealment. A person produces a sound from his mouth, and no one hears Elokus in his speech.
But when a Jew says words of Torah, «שמע ישראל ה' אלוקינו ה' אחד», «Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One», this is Elokus, and in that speech there is no concealment. And the same when a Jew puts on tefillin: one sees in actual fact the fulfillment of G-d's will and a person's connection to the Holy One blessed be He. Where is the concealment? In Torah and mitzvos there is no concealment.
The tzimtzum, however, remains exactly where it was. What is that sound? A physical sound of a created being. And just as we said that even the animal and the speaking creature are in a state of tzimtzum (the medaber is greater than the chai, and nevertheless it too is in tzimtzum), so too the voice of a created being is a contracted thing, a tzimtzum of a Divine force.
It turns out that the moment we spoke words of Torah we removed only one of the two problems: there is no concealment here but revelation. But the second problem, the tzimtzum, we have not removed. The thing is contracted, and if it were not contracted, could we hear it with physical ears? Could we fulfill the mitzvah with a physical hand? It is proven, then, that the thing is contracted.
In summary: in this section we learned from the words of the Zohar that even within the toil of Torah itself there are two kinds: one who learns «for his own honor», whose toil is «under the sun», and one who learns lishmah, whose learning rises upward. We examined the statement of the Gemara, «Fortunate is one who arrives here with his learning in his hand», which teaches that Torah learned not lishmah remains below in this world, and we reviewed the levels in this: outright not lishmah, which remains in the world of the kelipos; that which is not outright not lishmah, which rises to the external dimension of the worlds; and Torah lishmah, which rises to actual Elokus according to its level. We then presented the fundamental question: if «the Torah and the Holy One blessed be He are entirely one», why should the matter depend on a person's kavanah, his feeling and his thought? And we began with the foundation of the answer, the distinction between concealment and tzimtzum: in Torah and mitzvos there is no concealment, but the tzimtzum remains in place.
In the next section we will continue with the explanation: how Torah and mitzvos rise above the tzimtzum, and why a person's kavanah is required for this.