We continue with chapter 45. Already in chapter 36, and in a number of other places in Tanya, we have met expression after expression describing just how low this world is, and it is into this world that the neshamah, the soul of every single Jew, came down. In this chapter the Alter Rebbe teaches how a person arouses rachamim rabbim, great mercy, upon his own soul, and how that arousal becomes the strength he needs for avodas Hashem.
There are two stages in arousing this mercy:
The very descent of the soul into a body: even if this Jew has never sinned in his life, even if we imagine him a tzaddik from birth who always does the Creator's will, whose thoughts hold no foolishness, whose speech holds no foolishness, whose whole life is clean, the mere fact that his soul is placed inside a physical body is already an enormous descent for it. The soul stood in so lofty a place, and now it must busy itself in a place so low.
“ובפרט כשיזכור על כל מעשיו ודיבוריו ומחשבותיו מיום היותו שלא טובים המה”, “and especially when he recalls all his deeds and words and thoughts from the day he came into being, that they were not good”. Notice how gently the Alter Rebbe phrases it. When a person takes an accounting of everything he has done, said and thought from the day he was born, he must remember that his soul was there with him through all of it, a partner, as it were. If the soul finds itself in a body that sins, a body with thoughts that are not good, with words and deeds that are not good, then its descent is lower still: from the heights where it once stood, it now sits in a place that transgresses the will of the Creator. And how much pity there is for a soul tangled up in a place where the body drags it to violate the Creator's will at every turn.
[Learning Torah and keeping mitzvos is in itself no descent at all; it is a tremendous ascent. What is being described here is the contemplation of a person who is not yet keeping Torah and mitzvos and is looking for something to awaken him to keep them. To him we say: begin by contemplating the sheer pity of a soul placed inside a body.]
«ומלך אסור ברהטים», “and a king is bound in the rahatim”. The word rahatim can be read in several ways:
Rahatim from the word for ropes. The “king” here is the Holy One Himself, as it were, for the soul is “a literal part of G-d above” and He is bound up with it; thus He is, so to speak, tied and bound in ropes. Wherever the Jew takes his soul, there it goes, dragged along against its will. And when a person does deeds and says words that are not good, the “king” is left bound in those very ropes that the person tied around Him.
Rahatim from the rushing of water, as in the verse in Bereishis, «ברהטים בשקתות המים», the water channels where the water runs. On this reading the Zohar explains «ברהיטי מוחא», the rush of thoughts in the brain, running without pause like water streaming through the troughs. The “king”, the spark of the soul within a person, is bound up in those thoughts: when thoughts of foolishness and thoughts that run against the Creator's will go racing through his mind, the soul has no choice and is dragged along after them, like a man tied to a galloping horse who is pulled wherever the animal takes him. And how much pity there is for it.
«כי יעקב חבל נחלתו», “for Yaakov is the rope of His inheritance”. The Jewish people are called “Yaakov”, and they are the Holy One's own portion, except that the bond between them is described as a rope: a rope whose one end is tied above to the roof and whose other end hangs below, and even in a two hundred story building it is one single rope. Every movement made at the lower end registers above; pull down here, and you are pulling the whole thing. So too in the nimshal: a Jew is like that rope, and when he commits sins here below he drags his soul, and the root of his soul, along with him into places that are not good. And the same works in reverse: when they arouse him from above, when a bas kol goes out and proclaims, he feels the tremor and the shake down here. That is «וכמשל המושך בחבל וכו'», “like the analogy of one who pulls on a rope”. (This will be explained at length later, in Iggeres HaTeshuvah.)
«והוא סוד גלות השכינה», “and this is the secret of the exile of the Shechinah”. The Holy One is, as it were, in exile, affected by what we do. And why did He arrange that He be affected by our deeds? That is the “secret”; this is how He decided. And since this is how He set it up, that the soul is affected by the deeds of the body, there is tremendous pity on the soul for being dragged down.
«וע"ז נאמר וישוב אל ה' וירחמהו», “and of this it is said: let him return to Hashem and He will have mercy on him”. On the face of it the verse means that the Holy One will have mercy on the Jew, but here it is read differently: «וישוב אל ה'», let him return in teshuvah to the Holy One, «וירחמהו», let him have mercy on the “Name of Hashem” within him, on his nefesh ha'elokis, his divine soul, which is a spark of Him. Why leave it sunk in the mud? Let him return, so that it will no longer be sunk there. And though it is certainly true that the Holy One has mercy on the Jew, the avodah here is «לעורר רחמים רבים», “to arouse great mercy” on the divine soul within him, «על שם ה' השוכן אתנו», “on the Name of Hashem that dwells with us”. For even one who sins and finds himself in the lowest pit, the Holy One is there with him, and everywhere, «כדכתיב: השוכן אתם בתוך טומאתם», “as it is written: who dwells with them in the midst of their impurity”. A person who makes himself impure drags the Holy One, as it were, along with him into that place, and there is no greater pity than that.
This is the contemplation that comes before learning Torah and keeping mitzvos, and we will immediately see that the Torah itself is the solution and the reconnection. Even if a person has not managed to awaken love of Hashem or fear of Hashem in his heart, let him take the middle line, the path of mercy, which is the middah of tiferes, and arouse mercy on his own soul, and this will give him strength.
«וזהו שאמר הכתוב וישק יעקב לרחל וישא את קולו ויבך», “and this is the meaning of the verse: and Yaakov kissed Rachel, and he raised his voice and wept”. None of the stories the Torah tells about the holy Avos are merely stories. Anyone who surveys them all will see that out of their entire lifetimes only the barest sliver is recorded: Yaakov was with Lavan for twenty years, and of all those years we have nothing but a general summary, not a day by day account. So if the Torah chose to dwell on certain episodes, to expand and give detail, it is because they touch us and are relevant to us even today, an eternal matter. The Torah is not a history book; it is a book that comes to teach us and to give us direction.
And something more: we must not look at the Avos through the spectacles of ordinary human beings like ourselves. “The Avos are themselves the chariot”, as Tanya brings several times; they were holy ones of the most exalted kind. True, they had physical bodies, they walked about in this very world, and we know precisely where they went, but they were extraordinary people, and even this common ground is not really so common.
Even someone who learns Chumash with Rashi, on the level of peshat, without Kabbalah and without Chassidus, already finds here a hint of something far deeper. Rashi does not comment on «וישק», the kiss, but on the weeping: because Yaakov came empty handed, and beyond that, because he foresaw that she would not be buried with him (Rachel was buried at Kever Rachel and not in Me'aras HaMachpelah). From this it is clear that we are not dealing with a simple scene, but with words that have depth behind them.
Here is another example. When Eliezer came on Avraham's mission to bring Rivkah for Yitzchak, he placed on her hands “two bracelets... ten gold shekels their weight”, and Rashi there comments: “two bracelets”, a hint to the two Luchos that were “joined” together; “ten gold shekels their weight”, a hint to the Ten Commandments. Rashi, in the plain sense of the verse, is teaching us that these are not mere gifts but hints to things yet to come. How much more so with the act of Yaakov Avinu.
After all, the act itself is puzzling: at first sight he gives her a kiss. Where is the modesty, where is the conduct one would expect? [There is a quip that Yaakov Avinu foresaw that Jews several generations later would read this story and understand it improperly, in a human and even coarse way, and that is what he wept about.] So what is the inner meaning of these words?
«כי רחל היא כנסת ישראל, מקור כל הנשמות», “for Rachel is Knesses Yisrael, the source of all souls”. [And as is well known, Rachel and Leah represent levels within the Jewish people, which is the basis of Tikkun Rachel and Tikkun Leah in Tikkun Chatzos.]
«ויעקב - במדתו העליונה שהיא מידת הרחמים שבאצילות», “and Yaakov, in his supernal attribute, which is the attribute of mercy in Atzilus”. Just as Avraham is chesed and Yitzchak is gevurah, Yaakov is the middle line, the middah of tiferes and rachamim, «הוא המעורר רחמים רבים עליה», “he is the one who arouses great mercy upon her”. Yaakov looks at the Jewish people and arouses mercy on the Jew who finds himself in such a physical world. And this is not a story from thousands of years ago; it is current right now: at every moment the middah of Yaakov is arousing great mercy on Rachel.
«וישא את קולו», “and he raised his voice” upward, «למעלה למקור הרחמים העליונים הנקרא אב הרחמים ומקורם», “above, to the source of the supernal mercies, which is called the Father of mercies and their source”.
«ויבך - לעורר ולהמשיך משם רחמים רבים על כל הנשמות ועל מקור כנסת ישראל, לעלותן מגלותן ולייחדן ביחוד העליון, אור אין סוף ברוך הוא», “and he wept, to arouse and draw down from there great mercy upon all the souls and upon the source of Knesses Yisrael, to raise them out of their exile and to unite them in the supernal union, the Or Ein Sof, blessed be He”.
It is worth drawing a distinction here. In the order of the ten sefiros, the attribute of mercy is tiferes (chesed, gevurah, tiferes), and then there is mercy as it exists in its supernal source, which is above the ten sefiros altogether. This is familiar from davening: at a time of special favor we say «אב הרחמים», and at ordinary times «אב הרחמן». During the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah we say each day «מי כמוך אב הרחמן», while at Minchah of Shabbos we say «מי כמוך אב הרחמים». «אב הרחמים» is the source of mercy, far loftier, whereas «אב הרחמן» describes a lower level. And Yaakov Avinu, who is the attribute of mercy below, lifts up his voice to arouse and draw down from the supernal mercies themselves.
Once a person has aroused mercy on his soul, is it then lost? No. «וישק», the kiss, teaches how Rachel is reconnected to her supernal source, namely «בבחינת נשיקין, שהיא אתדבקות רוחא ברוחא», “in the manner of kisses, which is the cleaving of spirit to spirit”, the cleaving of a person's spirit to the spirit of G-dliness. Consider a kiss in the literal, physical sense: the mouth of the one kissing reaches the innermost part of the mouth of the one kissed. And with a Jew and the Holy One: a person joins his own innermost self to the innermost divine self. When a Jew learns Torah, his mouth pronounces the words of Torah and he joins them to himself, and he is, as it were, kissing the Holy One.
And from where do we know that this may be called a kiss? From an explicit verse in Shir HaShirim: «כמו שכתוב ישקני מנשיקות פיהו», “as it is written: let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”. And Rashi there explains that it means He should reveal to us the secrets of the Torah and its reasons. That is the kiss: the revelation of the inner dimension through the speaking of Torah.
«דהיינו התקשרות דבור האדם בדבר ה' זו הלכה», “that is, the binding of a person's speech to the word of Hashem, which is halachah”. One who learns halachos is learning the divine will, and immediately he cleaves to the Creator with the cleaving of a kiss.
«וכן מחשבה במחשבה», “and likewise thought with thought”: he joins his own thought to the thought of holiness, Torah and mitzvos.
«ומעשה במעשה», “and deed with deed”: he joins his own action to the action the Holy One desires, «שהוא מעשה המצות, ובפרט מעשה הצדקה וחסד», “which is the performance of the mitzvos, and in particular the act of tzedakah and kindness”.
And why specifically tzedakah and chesed? «דחסד דרועא ימינא», in the words of Pasach Eliyahu, chesed is the divine right arm, as it were, and a person who invests his money in tzedakah connects himself to that “right arm”, and the right affects the entire body. «והוא בחינת חיבוק ממש, כמו שכתוב: וימינו תחבקני», “and this is literally an embrace, as it is written: and His right hand embraces me”. Whereas «ועסק התורה בדבור ומחשבת העיון הן בחינת נשיקין ממש», “the involvement in Torah through speech and through the thought of deep study are literally in the category of kisses”.
So it emerges that in this one verse Yaakov Avinu is giving every Jew, right up to today, a piece of guidance: before you begin to learn Torah, contemplate what is happening here. Yaakov, who is the attribute of mercy, is seeking to lift the Jew up. Arouse mercy on your own soul, and from there give Torah a “kiss”, and this uplift will reconnect you to the root of the whole matter.
And the conclusion of the chapter: «והנה על ידי זה יכול לבוא לבחינת אהבה רבה בהתגלות לבו, כדכתיב: ליעקב אשר פדה את אברהם, כמו שכתוב במקום אחר», “and through this he can come to the level of great love revealed in his heart, as it is written: to Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham, as is explained elsewhere”. A person begins with mercy, and in the end love of Hashem is awakened in him as well.
The verse «כה אמר ה'... ליעקב אשר פדה את אברהם» is puzzling: where do we find that Yaakov redeemed Avraham Avinu? On the plain level one has to rearrange the words, as if it read: “Thus says Hashem, who redeemed Avraham, to Yaakov”, meaning that the very G-d who is speaking to Yaakov is the One who redeemed Avraham.
But the Midrash offers a fascinating reason for this wording: Avraham Avinu's being redeemed from Ur Kasdim and saved from the fiery furnace came about in the merit of Yaakov. It is like a king who wanted to throw a man into a furnace. People came and argued all sorts of reasons why he should be spared, and the king said: none of these reasons convinces me. Until the defender came and said: I see with foresight that this man will one day marry, and his daughter will marry the king's son. Said the king: if so, shall we burn this man and prevent all that? Take him out. So too Avraham was redeemed in the merit of Yaakov, for from him Yaakov and all of the Jewish people were destined to come. That is why it says “to Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham”: Yaakov is the cause and the source of the redemption.
And in the inner dimension of Torah it is explained this way. Avraham is chesed, and the middah of chesed is love. A person whose love is stuck, who cannot manage to arouse love of Hashem in his heart, his love is like someone trapped inside a fiery furnace, locked behind bolt and bar. How does he redeem the “Avraham” within him? “To Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham”: let him take up Yaakov's attribute, the middah of rachamim, let him arouse mercy on his own soul, and he will see that this mercy redeems his love.
To summarize: in this section we learned how a person arouses great mercy on his soul, both from the very fact of its descent into a body, and especially from recalling all his deeds, words and thoughts «שלא טובים המה», that they were not good. We explained «ומלך אסור ברהטים» in two ways: ropes, and the rushing of thoughts, «רהיטי מוחא». We explained «יעקב חבל נחלתו» and «סוד גלות השכינה», and «וישוב אל ה' וירחמהו», that he should have mercy on the “Name of Hashem” that “dwells with them in the midst of their impurity”. We then looked at the verse «וישק יעקב לרחל וישא את קולו ויבך»: Yaakov is the attribute of mercy that arouses mercy upon Rachel, Knesses Yisrael, the source of all souls; «וישא את קולו» is his raising his voice to the “Father of mercies and their source”; and «וישק» is the level of kisses, the joining of a person's inner self to the inner divine self in speech, in thought and in deed, and especially in tzedakah and chesed, which are the level of an embrace. And finally, «ליעקב אשר פדה את אברהם», that the attribute of mercy is what redeems love.
Chapter 45 stands on its own. Its whole subject is to take the attribute of mercy and through it to arrive at love of Hashem, and it does not continue into the chapter that follows. In the next installment we will turn, G-d willing, to the next chapter in Likkutei Amarim.