We have reached chapter 48 of Tanya. We already learned the first part of it and stopped on page 67b (page 134), on the fifth line from the top, where a new passage begins: «והנה פרטיות הצמצומים» (And now, the particulars of the tzimtzumim).
This chapter asks for concentration and real thought if one wants to grasp what is being discussed, and it is one of the most fundamental chapters, not only within the sequence of chapters we are learning now, but for understanding a basic concept in chassidus altogether: the concept of «memalei kol almin» and «sovev kol almin», which sets out the various levels of divine light that illuminate everywhere in creation. This concept recurs many times in Tanya itself, as well as in maamarim of chassidus, in Torah Ohr and in Likkutei Torah, and it is precisely here, in this chapter, that we find its clarification and its proper definition.
Before we enter into the subject itself, let us review the flow of the chapters:
In the previous chapters we learned that a Jew must arouse love for the Almighty in his heart. This has been the running theme for several chapters already: how a person arouses love for the Almighty.
Chapter 46: The Alter Rebbe offers a path that is straight and very close at hand, where contemplating it brings a person easily to love of the Creator. He builds it on the verse «כמים הפנים לפנים כן לב האדם לאדם» (As water reflects a face back to a face, so one man's heart reflects another's). When a person sees that someone else is doing for him, helping him, drawing him close, a feeling immediately stirs in him to repay him in kind and to love him. That is simply human nature. And how much more so when the one doing the favor is a great king and the recipient is small and lowly, and the king has done something for him of incomparable greatness: a parable of a great king who comes down to lift up a man lying in the garbage heaps, draws him close, brings him into his palace and embraces him. Surely that simple man will be aroused with tremendous love for the king.
The nimshal: The Almighty is the king, and the whole Jewish people are that simple man lying in the refuse. When did this happen? At the exodus from Egypt. Israel were sunk in all the filth of Egypt, and the Almighty Himself, in His own glory, «not by an angel and not by a seraph», came down to save them. There is no closeness greater than this, and this ought to arouse in us a tremendous love.
Chapter 47: The exodus from Egypt happened more than three thousand years ago, whereas the intent is that a Jew should arouse love for the Creator at every single moment, and should understand that at every moment the Almighty comes down to take him out of the state he is in and to raise him up to Himself completely. The Alter Rebbe therefore explains there that this takes place in every generation and every single day: every moment that a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, he has the opportunity to connect with the King, and the very granting of that opportunity by the Creator is the greatest gift of all, in response to which a person returns a great love.
Chapter 48: Here the Alter Rebbe adds that even when love of the Creator demands that a person sacrifice and lose something, a little time, a little money, a little sleep, a little pleasure, for the sake of the Creator's will, he must stand up to it. Here a person's battle with himself is far harder: is he prepared to constrict himself, his desires, and everything he imagines for himself, for the sake of the Creator's desires?
This point too is understood from the parable. One who sees another person giving up everything he has and constricting all that is his for his sake responds in the same measure and even beyond it: he too is ready to give up and to constrict himself for the other's sake.
From here on the Alter Rebbe comes to explain at length: every single moment that a person exists, and every single second that the world exists, exists only because the Almighty, as it were, constricts His divine light, so that the created being should exist within its own measures and limits and not be nullified into nothingness. This understanding is meant to generate a response on our side, «as water reflects a face back to a face»: that we too should constrict all our own concerns for the sake of the Creator. And that is where the subject concludes in chapter 49, that a person must move everything aside for the sake of the Creator.
Why do we say «as it were»? Because there is a principle that «the tzimtzum is not to be taken literally», since in truth the Almighty is present everywhere. (One should not get ahead of what comes later; if we have time, we will explain this further on.)
The subject of the chapter, then, is to understand the concept: what does it mean that the Almighty, as it were, constricted His divine light so that this world should exist. In the beginning of the chapter, up to the point we have reached, it was explained at length that the world is limited, and not only the physical world in front of us, but also the upper worlds, Gan Eden and the delight of the souls. From the very top down to the very bottom, everything is limited. There are different levels in the quality of that limitation, but everything is limited, and this entire limitation stems from the fact that the Creator constricted His light.
So what is this tzimtzum? «והנה פרטיות הצמצומים איך ומה אין כאן מקום דיבורם» (Now, the particulars of the tzimtzumim, how and what, this is not the place to discuss them). To explain in detail how the tzimtzumim took place and what they are involves a great many particulars, and this is not the place to spell out all the kinds of tzimtzum, their details and their modes. The Alter Rebbe wishes to explain them only in a general way, and even that requires some understanding of these matters.
«אך דרך כלל הן הם בחינת הסתר והעלם המשכת האור והחיות» (But in general terms, they are a concealing and hiding of the drawing down of the light and the life force). The Almighty hid and concealed the chayus, the divine energy. And why are hiding and concealing needed? Because the life force that shines and spreads forth is unlimited, and had there been no concealment and hiding, no reality of limitation would ever have come into being.
«שלא יאיר ויומשך לתחתונים בבחינת גילוי להתלבש ולהשפיע בהן ולהחיותם להיות יש מאין» (so that it should not shine and be drawn down to the lower beings in a manner of revelation, to clothe itself in them, to flow into them and to give them life so that they be something from nothing). The divine light should not shine and be drawn down to the lower created beings in a revealed manner. And when we say «lower beings», the intent runs from the highest down to the lowest, from Gan Eden all the way down to the physical world in which we find ourselves: not one of the creations is able to receive an unlimited light that would shine upon it in revelation, clothe itself in it and flow into it to give it life as a «yesh», a something. For if that unlimited light were shining, the reality of a «yesh» would not exist at all.
We can illustrate this from things we meet every day. True, we have no grasp of an unlimited power, yet even with limited forces it is clear that there is something whose limit is vast and a vessel whose limit is far smaller, and there has to be a match between them. Someone who wants to fill a little cup with water does not take a full barrel and turn it over into it. Even though the barrel too is limited and the cup is limited, the barrel's limit is a hundred times, two hundred times, even a thousand times greater than the cup's. And if he pours the whole barrel into the little cup, not only will the cup not be filled, it will itself be nullified and nothing of it will remain.
In summary: In this section we reviewed the flow of the chapters: the path of arousing love of the Creator through «as water reflects a face back to a face», the parable of the king who lifts a man from the garbage heaps and its nimshal in the exodus from Egypt (chapter 46), and how this takes place in every generation and in every mitzvah (chapter 47). We then noted the new point of chapter 48: that the existence of the world and of a person at every single moment stems from the fact that the Almighty, as it were, constricts His light, and from this comes the demand that a person too constrict himself for the sake of the Creator's will. We learned that the tzimtzumim are «a concealing and hiding of the drawing down of the light and the life force», so that it should not shine to the lower beings in a revealed manner, since an unlimited light would leave no reality of a «yesh» at all, as in the parable of the barrel poured into the little cup.
In the next section we will go deeper into the concept of tzimtzum, and from there into the definition of «memalei kol almin» and «sovev kol almin».