In the previous chapters we learned various ways to awaken the love of G-d in a person's heart. In chapter 45, a relatively short chapter, the Alter Rebbe teaches yet another path, meant for someone who has not managed to arrive at love through those other ways, and who nevertheless wants to engage in Torah and mitzvos with vitality and with an awareness of their importance, and not in a dry manner.
In his words: «עוד יש דרך ישר לפני איש לעסוק בתורה ומצות לשמן», «There is yet another straight path before a man, to engage in Torah and mitzvos for their own sake.» The goal is to arrive at an involvement in Torah and mitzvos «lishman», for the sake of Heaven and with inner vitality. And what is this path? «על ידי מדתו של יעקב אבינו עליו השלום שהיא מדת הרחמים», «by means of the attribute of Yaakov Avinu, peace be upon him, which is the attribute of mercy.»
In the order of the sefiros, tiferes comes after chesed and gevurah. With this the Alter Rebbe teaches that one can reach the emotion of love through tiferes as well: whoever did not begin with the path of chesed, or tried and did not succeed in it, can reach that feeling by way of the attribute of tiferes. And as is well known, the three Avos correspond to these three middos, and all of this is grounded in verses in the Torah:
Avraham: corresponding to the attribute of chesed, love.
Yitzchak: corresponding to the attribute of gevurah, fear.
Yaakov: corresponding to the attribute of tiferes, mercy.
What is the connection between tiferes and mercy?
Tiferes is the blending of chesed and gevurah as one. The word «tiferes» means something splendid, something beautiful. Chesed is like the color white, and gevurah is like the color black. Of white alone one does not say that it is splendid, and the same is true of black alone. But a picture that holds a beautiful combination and a perfect harmony of white and black together, arranged with precision, that is what we call splendid. Tiferes therefore contains within itself both the white and the black, both chesed and gevurah.
Put differently, this blending is precisely what mercy is:
The attribute of chesed: its conclusion is always, give. Give without limit and without pause, for there is nothing that should hold you back. Chesed is one long green light.
The attribute of gevurah: its conclusion is, do not give. And if you do give, it must be measured, by a reckoning, according to what he actually deserves, and never giving without an accounting. The moment some deficiency is found, you stop immediately.
The attribute of tiferes: it takes both of them into account. It says to chesed: you are right, one must give. And it says to gevurah: you are right, there is a deficiency in him. And still one must give, because one has mercy on him.
Mercy does not ignore the shortcomings. Chesed ignores them and says to give without any reckoning, and gevurah cries out that he is not worthy and has no claim. Tiferes reckons with both of them at once: even though the law is on gevurah's side, in the end we have mercy on him and give to him. That is why the attribute of tiferes is called the attribute of mercy.
The Alter Rebbe says that a person should make use of this attribute of mercy, and through its power he will be able to fulfill Torah and mitzvos. How? «לעורר במחשבתו תחלה», «to first arouse in his thought.» Even before he approaches Torah and mitzvos, when all sorts of hindrances and obstacles and temptations stand before him, he should first arouse in his thought «רחמים רבים לפני ה'», «abundant mercy before G-d.» And mercy upon whom? «על ניצוץ אלקות המחיה נפשו», «upon the spark of G-dliness that gives life to his soul.» Mercy on his neshamah, not on his body and not on his desires.
At first glance, what room is there for mercy on the neshamah? Every day we say, «the soul You have given me is pure.» On this the Alter Rebbe goes on at length for a number of lines, explaining that the mercy it calls for is enormous: «אשר ירד ממקורו חיי החיים אין סוף ב"ה», «which has descended from its source, the Life of life, the blessed Infinite One.» The neshamah has come down from its lofty source.
Think of a prince raised in his father's palace, who received every good thing in the world, and one day he is told that he must leave against his will, and he is cast into some primitive place with no water, no electricity, nothing at all, and he has to manage the way people managed two thousand years ago. His frustration would be beyond description. But the distance in that analogy is a distance from one physical place to another physical place, whereas the distance between the neshamah as it is in its source and the place it has arrived at is a distance from a lofty spiritual state to a low and primitive physical one, a distance incomparably greater.
Another analogy: an intellectual person, who grasps only matters of intellect, placed into a group of foolish, illogical people. His difficulty and frustration are greater than those of someone thrown into a physically primitive place, because the frustration of being among people who have no understanding whatsoever of what is being discussed is a frustration of the soul. It is in such an intensely painful situation that the neshamah finds itself.
And from where did it descend? «ממקורו חיי החיים, אין סוף ברוך הוא, הממלא כל עלמין וסובב כל עלמין וכולא קמיה כלא חשיב», «from its source, the Life of life, the blessed Infinite One, who fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and before whom everything is as nothing.» These three expressions recur many times in the Tanya, and in the coming chapters, with G-d's help, we will dwell at length on «memalei kol almin» (filling all worlds) and «sovev kol almin» (encompassing all worlds).
It is worth stressing that we are not speaking of a physical distance. «Physical» can only be said of something material, and precisely when the distance is not physical it is far greater. How far is foolishness from intellect? That is not a measurement of space at all, but a spiritual distance that is not measured in terms of place. So too with the descent of the neshamah. It is not a material distance, for even after the soul leaves the body it is not located somewhere up above, but in that very same place. It is simply that then it is without the limitations of the body, without the materiality, the coarseness and the lowliness in which it was held captive on account of the body. This is an entirely abstract matter, and therefore hard to absorb in physical terms, but one must contemplate it.
The Alter Rebbe continues: «ונתלבש במשכא דחויא הרחוק מאור פני המלך בתכלית ההרחק», «and became clothed in the skin of the serpent, which is utterly removed from the light of the King's countenance.» The soul became clothed in a place that is the absolute furthest from the King. And what is «mashka dechivya»? Literally: «mashka» means skin, «chivya» means serpent.
There are places in the sefarim of Kabbalah that explain this expression differently. As we already learned in chapters 6, 7 and 8, there are things in the world that are absolute evil, the three completely impure kelipos, and there are things that are not absolute evil, kelipas nogah, which contains a bit of light as well. According to those sources, the three impure kelipos, which are absolute evil, are called «the serpent»: the serpent itself, the primordial serpent, whose entire purpose was to inject filth into the world and to cause Chavah and Adam to sin against the will of the Creator. Kelipas nogah, on the other hand, which is not absolute evil and contains a measure of good, is called «mashka dechivya»: not the serpent itself, but only its skin, its outer layer.
But that is not the Alter Rebbe's intent here. That explanation comes to indicate the relative superiority of kelipas nogah over the things lower than it, whereas here the Alter Rebbe is not coming to grant any sort of distinction to physicality. On the contrary, he is coming to emphasize just how low and degraded the place is to which the neshamah has descended.
Rather, his intent here is this: «and became clothed», the neshamah entered into a garment, namely the body, which wraps around it the way skin wraps around a person. And in what kind of garment? «Dechivya», a garment belonging to the serpent, a low garment. The neshamah has therefore become clothed in a place that is utterly removed from «the light of the King's countenance», because this lowly world is the furthest extreme of the coarse kelipos, the very end point of all coarseness and lowliness that exists.
In summary: in chapter 45 the Alter Rebbe teaches an additional path to engaging in Torah and mitzvos lishman, by way of the attribute of Yaakov Avinu, the attribute of tiferes, which is the attribute of mercy. Tiferes blends chesed and gevurah, and gives even to one who has a deficiency, out of mercy for him. A person should first arouse in his thought abundant mercy before G-d upon the spark of G-dliness that gives life to his soul, which descended from its source, the Life of life, and became clothed in «mashka dechivya», in the garment of the body in this world, utterly removed from the light of the King's countenance.
In the next installment we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words, explaining the depth of the mercy one feels for the neshamah, and how the attribute of mercy continues to serve in the service of G-d.