In the previous section we painted a picture of the greatness of the King: how exalted and lofty He is, and how the unlimited angels in the unlimited worlds are literally as nothing before Him. Now we will see what the King did with all this greatness of His.
The Alter Rebbe continues from the angels: “וכולם שואלים”, “and they all ask”. There is no number to the angels. If we could hear the tremendous commotion going on in all the worlds, we would hear every one of them crying out and asking a single question: “איה מקום כבודו”, where is the place of His glory? Where is the Holy One, blessed be He, to be found, where is He revealed? The angels do not see Him; they only understand that everything they grasp and feel is no more than margins and small footnotes. And so they ask: where is the place of His glory?
And the answer comes: “ועונים מלא כל הארץ כבודו”, “and they answer: the whole earth is filled with His glory”. In the earth, down here, in the physical world. And why would He seek precisely down below? “הם ישראל עמו”, “they are Israel, His people”, because here is where His people are, and the Holy One, blessed be He, loves His people and wants to be with them. Therefore He gave Himself over to them and took them out of the garbage heap. The King Himself said: it is specifically the one lying in the refuse that I take, and it is with him that I want to be. And all the great angels stand astonished: He left them all for the sake of the simple Jew down below.
In the words of the Alter Rebbe: «כי הניח הקב"ה את העליונים ואת התחתונים ולא בחר בכולם כי אם בישראל עמו, והוציאם ממצרים ערות הארץ - מקום הזוהמא והטומאה - לא על ידי מלאך ולא על ידי כו', אלא הקב"ה בכבודו ובעצמו ירד לשם, כמו שכתוב 'וארד להצילו וגו''», “For the Holy One, blessed be He, set aside the upper worlds and the lower worlds and chose none of them, only Israel His people, and He took them out of Egypt, the nakedness of the land, the place of filth and impurity, not by an angel and not by etc., but the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory descended there, as it is written, «And I came down to deliver him».”
[Something similar is told in the Gemara about Moshe Rabbeinu, who ascended to receive the Torah on behalf of the Jewish people. Immediately the angels protested: “What is one born of a woman doing among us?” What is he doing here, and how can he come to receive Torah? They could not fathom how the very essence of everything, the “hidden treasure”, is given by the Holy One, blessed be He, specifically to Jews down below. And yet that is exactly what He did: He set aside the upper worlds and the lower worlds, choosing no angel and no world, only Israel His people.]
Let us pause here. In another month we will be sitting at the seder and reciting this very passage from the Haggadah: “not by an angel and not by a seraph”. But the author of the Haggadah brings a different verse as proof: “«And I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night», I and not an angel, I and not a seraph”. Why, then, did the Alter Rebbe depart from the wording of the Haggadah? He uses the same idea and the same familiar phrasing, “the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory”, yet he brings a different verse, “And I came down to deliver him”. In what way is this verse stronger and more fitting for our subject?
In the Igros Kodesh there is a letter in which the Rebbe was asked exactly this question, and his answer is as follows. The author of the Haggadah comes to explain the reason that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not send an angel: because Egypt is an impure and degraded place, and an angel could not have survived there. The Alter Rebbe, however, is not trying to explain here that no angel was sent because an angel was incapable. He wants to highlight the affection of the Holy One, blessed be He, for the Jewish people: why did He descend Himself? Because He loves His people and wants to come down to them. That is why he did not bring the verse cited by the author of the Haggadah, but a different one.
The verse “And I came down to deliver him” was said at the burning bush, when the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks with Moshe Rabbeinu: “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their pains. And I came down to deliver him from the hand of Egypt and to bring him up from that land to a good and spacious land.” These verses fit our subject in the Tanya precisely: they describe a person lying in his lowliness, in the garbage, and the descent of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory, to rescue him and raise him up out of affection. The verse “And I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night”, by contrast, can be understood differently: not out of affection for Israel, but because an angel cannot withstand the degradation of such a place. That is why the Alter Rebbe departed from the wording of the Haggadah and chose specifically the verse that expresses His affection for His people.
The Alter Rebbe continues: «כדי לקרבם אליו בקירוב ויחוד אמיתי, בהתקשרות הנפש ממש, בבחינת נשיקין פה לפה לדבר דבר ה' זו הלכה», “in order to draw them close to Him with a true closeness and union, with an actual bonding of the soul, in the manner of kisses, mouth to mouth, to speak the word of G-d, which is halacha”. The Holy One, blessed be He, seeks to bring the Jewish people close to Him and unite them with Him in an actual bonding of the soul, in a true connection of the order of neshikin, kisses, mouth to mouth. And where does He give us, as it were, the ability to kiss Him? In speaking the word of G-d. He placed Himself into the Torah and says to a person: with your own mouth, say the word of G-d. And when a person says the word of G-d, and the word of G-d is the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, he is literally joined to Him.
«ואתדבקות רוחא ברוחא היא השגת התורה וידיעת רצונו וחכמתו, דכולא חד ממש», “and the cleaving of spirit to spirit is the comprehension of Torah and the knowledge of His will and His wisdom, which are literally all one”. Not only speech with the mouth, but a connection of one's inner self: when a person brings the Torah into his intellect and knows Torah, his very inwardness becomes joined. And since the Holy One, blessed be He, and His wisdom are one, and He and His will are one, the moment a person connects to His will, he has kissed the King.
And where does the King embrace us? «וגם בבחינת חיבוק, הוא קיום המצות מעשיות ברמ"ח אברין, דרמ"ח פיקודין הן רמ"ח אברין דמלכא כנז"ל», “and also in the manner of an embrace, which is the fulfillment of the practical mitzvos with the 248 limbs, for the 248 commandments are the 248 limbs of the King, as mentioned above”. Every mitzvah a Jew performs is an embrace from the King: one wraps himself in a tallis or puts on tefillin, and the King embraces all of him. When a person embraces his friend he takes hold of his entire being, and so too the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, takes hold of all of us: the 248 mitzvos He gave us are His 248 limbs, so to speak, and with them He embraces us.
«ודרך כלל נחלקים לשלש בחינות», “and in general they are divided into three categories”. The 248 mitzvos are broadly divided into three groups, and through them the embrace is expressed in its entirety:
Right: mitzvos that are of the quality of chesed, kindness, like the right arm, as it were.
Left: mitzvos that are of the quality of din, judgment, like the left arm.
Middle: mitzvos that are of the quality of rachamim, mercy, corresponding to the body.
In the words of the chapter: “ימין ושמאל ואמצע שהם חסד דין רחמים, תרין דרועין וגופא וכו'”, “right and left and middle, which are chesed, din and rachamim, the two arms and the body, etc.”, as in Pasach Eliyahu: the two arms and the body. This is the embrace of the King, who takes hold of the Jewish people and lifts them up.
And contemplating this is not only about what happened three thousand years ago. Every single day a person must feel as if he himself left Egypt today: in every single moment in which he is able to rise up out of the garbage heap and occupy himself with Torah, the King is embracing him.
And if a Jew contemplates this and takes it to heart, what feeling should he return to the King? The King left everything behind and said that He wants specifically this small Jew down below, to give him His very self entirely. How will such a person feel toward the King? As we said earlier: with an actual kelos hanefesh, a literal expiring of the soul out of longing. This is the love a Jew must arouse in his heart, returning love for love, in the manner of “as water reflects a face back to a face, so one person's heart to another”.
In the previous chapters the student was required to understand concepts and to be capable of deep contemplation, and so that contemplation belonged to a person on a high level, or at the very least to someone who possesses the power of hisbonenus; the lower a person was, the harder it was for him to contemplate the matters explained there. In this chapter it is the reverse: the lower a person is, the better a vessel he is to arrive at love of G-d. For the lower he is, the more he feels the distance, and if the King took even him and gave him the ability to be embraced by Him, how much must he love Him! That is why precisely here, “the matter is very, very close to you”.
And how does this fit with the Tanya being a “sefer shel beinonim”, a book for the intermediate ones? There are many levels within the beinoni, and this sefer teaches how to become a beinoni: it takes the simplest Jew, the lowest of the low, and says to him, come and be a beinoni, leave the nonsense behind and connect to the King. You have an opportunity, and the King wants specifically you. And the one who feels his own lowliness is the first vessel for this. That is the point of this chapter.
In the previous lesson we spoke about having compassion on the soul, and about how wherever a person goes he drags the King along with him: what pity for the soul that finds itself so far down, with a person pulling it along into everything he does. We also brought what the Rebbe wrote to a certain Jew, that when he goes to a place that is unfitting he is dragging the Rebbe along with him too. By divine providence I came across a beautiful explanation of the Chasam Sofer this week which completes this idea, this time from the positive side.
The Gemara relates about Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai before his passing (the end of that passage is quoted in the Tanya in chapter 41) that he said to his students: “I do not know by which path they are leading me.” According to the simple reading, two paths lie before him, Gan Eden and Gehinnom, and he does not know where he is being led. His students asked of him, “Our master, bless us,” and he said to them: “May it be His will that the fear of Heaven be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood.”
The Chasam Sofer explains: Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had no doubt about where he was being led. He knew himself, and he knew that his place was in Gan Eden. But he said these words to his students, and if he was taking stock of his own soul, what did his students have to do with it? Rather, this is what he was telling them: as long as I was with you and had my influence on you, and you saw me in front of your eyes, I made sure you would conduct yourselves properly, and I knew I would always be in a good place, since you too would be in a good place. But now, when I am going to another world and you are left on your own, and I am bound to you always, if you do foolish things I will find myself there as well, for I am drawn along after you. This is “I do not know by which path they are leading me”: I do not know by which path you will lead me, to Gan Eden or somewhere else.
To this the students asked, “Our master, bless us,” and he answered: “May it be His will that the fear of Heaven be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood.” When I was flesh and blood my awe was upon you, since you saw me with your own eyes; now, when I will be in Heaven, a disconnect could set in. May it be His will that you feel that I am with you then too, and that you watch over me and do not drag me into places I have no wish to reach. This beautiful explanation fits exactly the point we discussed in the previous lesson.
In summary: in this section we learned that all the angels ask “where is the place of His glory”, and the answer is “the whole earth is filled with His glory”, down below, with the Jewish people; that the Holy One, blessed be He, set aside the upper and lower worlds and chose Israel His people, and descended in His own glory to rescue them from the nakedness of the land. We noted the precision of the Alter Rebbe in choosing specifically the verse “And I came down to deliver him” rather than the verse brought by the author of the Haggadah, in order to stress His affection for Israel rather than the angel's inability. We learned about the neshikin, speaking the word of G-d and comprehending Torah and knowing His will and His wisdom, and about the embrace, the fulfillment of the practical mitzvos, the 248 commandments corresponding to the 248 limbs of the King, divided into right, left and middle. And we saw the novelty of this chapter: it is specifically the lowly one who is the better vessel for love of G-d, and therefore “the matter is very, very close to you”, and this is a “sefer shel beinonim” that invites the simplest Jew to connect to the King. Finally we brought the explanation of the Chasam Sofer on the words of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, which completes the idea we studied in the previous lesson.
In the next section we will continue and expand on this idea.