We have arrived at chapter 50 of the Tanya. Before we study the chapter itself, let us begin with a brief review of what came before, and then identify the new point that this chapter introduces.
In the preceding chapters we learned at great length about various levels of ahavas Hashem, love of G-d: this level and that level, all the way up to the level of «nafshi ivisicha» (my soul desires You). All of these levels share one thing in common, while chapter 50 will introduce something entirely different.
The Alter Rebbe established a basic principle regarding love and fear of G-d: important and good as they are, they are called «wings» (gadfin), and with that their place is defined. On the one hand we see how important they are; on the other hand, we must know exactly what their place is.
It is like a bird: the essential part of the bird is its head and body, while the wings are not its essence. A bird without wings cannot fly, true, but it is still a bird, and a kosher bird at that. The function of the wings is to lift the bird upward, but they are not its purpose or its essence. A bird without wings is still a bird; wings without a bird are nothing at all.
And the nimshal, the lesson: love of G-d and fear of G-d are extremely important. They arouse a person, they drive him, they lift him up. But what is the goal they are meant to lead to? Actual avodas Hashem, the practical keeping of Torah and mitzvos. A person who settles for love and fear without Torah and mitzvos is like someone who settles for wings without a bird. He therefore has to know that the whole purpose of the love and the fear is to see how this emotion carries him to the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos in the simple, literal sense. If what he seeks is to cleave to the Creator, let him understand that such dveikus comes through keeping Torah and mitzvos. If what he seeks is that G-dliness should shine within his soul, let him understand that it is through keeping Torah and mitzvos that G-dliness will shine in his soul. And so with every type of love and fear: the bottom line is one and the same, the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos.
Here the Alter Rebbe begins to speak about a different kind of love of G-d: a love whose content, whose yearning, and whose arousal of the soul cause a person specifically to want to flee from the body, from the world and from reality, and to go out of himself entirely.
The love discussed in all the previous chapters ultimately brings a person to Torah and mitzvos, and therefore it brings him into reality: to learn Torah one has to be settled and present within reality, and to perform mitzvos one needs physical objects through which they are performed. This love brings a person into the world, in order to join the world with the Holy One, blessed be He. Chapter 50, by contrast, deals with precisely the opposite love: an emotion that is entirely about leaving reality, leaving the body, leaving the world, a desire to reach klos hanefesh, the expiring of the soul, and to step completely outside the ordinary dimensions. On the face of it, such a love does not lead a person to keep Torah and mitzvos at all, since keeping Torah and mitzvos requires precisely reality, a body, and a world.
It emerges, then, that the chapter divides into two parts:
The first half: an explanation of how exalted this love is, how much its whole character is one of leaving and rising upward, klos hanefesh and mesirus nefesh.
The second half: an explanation of how, despite all this loftiness, even such a love gets turned around and connected to the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos.
Introduction: two ways of arranging the sefiros
Before we study the chapter itself, let us offer an introduction that will help us better understand the topics it discusses. Although these ideas are familiar, and some have been explained before, here they will be presented in a more focused way. In the order of the ten sefiros there are two general ways of ranking them and picturing how they unfold one from another (hishtalshelus) and influence one another:
One long list (the better known arrangement): Chochmah, Binah, Daas, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malchus.
A division into three lines: the right line, the left line, and the middle line. (Not all ten sefiros fit into this arrangement, and this is not the place to elaborate.)
According to the second approach, the sefiros divide into three groups, and within each group there is a right, a left and a middle:
ChaBaD: Chochmah is the right line; Binah is the left line; Daas is the middle line.
ChaGaS: Chesed is the right line; Gevurah is the left line; Tiferes is the middle line.
NeHI: Netzach, Hod and Yesod, in the same pattern.
For our purposes only the first two groups are relevant. Once the sefiros are divided into three lines, all the sefiros of the right line are bound up with one another, unfolding one from the other and influencing one another; and so too the sefiros of the left line, and so too those of the middle line.
The right line and the left line
Let us look more closely at the right line and the left line, because on them depends our understanding of what the levels of love of G-d explained until now actually are, and what the level is that chapter 50 deals with. Everything discussed until now belongs to the right line, while the present chapter deals with the left line, and as we shall see, the left line is higher than the right. The difference between them: the right line runs from above downward, and the left line from below upward. Let us illustrate this with an example that is immediately understandable, Chesed and Gevurah:
Chesed, the right line: giving. A man of chesed is one who is prepared to come down from the high level on which he stands and descend to the lower one, to the poor man who has nothing, and to give to him. The wealthy giver is above and the poor recipient is below, so this is a line of «from above downward.»
Gevurah, the left line: Gevurah has a number of meanings, and for our purposes its character is self-containment, holding oneself in: not to spread outward and give, but on the contrary, to contract (tzimtzum), to remain with what one has and not let it out. This remaining within oneself is a line of «from below upward.»
Let us return to where we began. The previous chapters spoke about a love of G-d whose content is: since I love the Holy One, blessed be He, so much and want to be connected to Him, I understand that my path must be to settle myself into the world and to settle myself into understanding, to go and learn Torah, to keep mitzvos, to enter into an order and a routine, because this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants of me. This is not a line of fleeing, of disorder, of wanting only klos hanefesh; it is an orderly order, a settling in, and the precise fulfillment of every last detail.
An example of this is Aharon the Kohen. Aharon burned with an enormous enthusiasm of love of G-d, and nevertheless, when he came to kindle the Menorah, Rashi says: «This tells the praise of Aharon, that he did not deviate» - every single detail exactly as it should be, in perfect order, without changing a thing. This is a line of descent from above downward, a descent into frameworks: the right line, the line of Chesed.
In summary: in this section we have offered two introductions to chapter 50. First, the principle that love and fear are called «wings»: they are of great importance, but their purpose is to carry a person to the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos, and this is the common denominator of all the levels of love explained until now. Second, we identified the new point of chapter 50, a love whose entire yearning is to leave the body, the world and reality, and we outlined the structure of the chapter: first an explanation of how exalted it is, and finally an explanation of how even this love becomes connected to the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos. We also learned the division of the sefiros into three lines, the difference between Chesed (the right line, from above downward) and Gevurah (the left line, from below upward), and we saw that the love discussed until now is in the category of the right line.
In the next section we will take up the left line, the love whose character is an ascent from below upward, and we will begin studying the chapter itself.