In the previous chapters we dealt with the levels of love that belong to the right line. In chapter 50 we take up a completely different kind of love: a love whose conclusion is the desire to get out of oneself, out of one's own existence and out of the world altogether, to flee from everything. This love belongs to the left line, the line of gevurah.
The two loves also have different sources. The love of the right line comes from the level that precedes it, from the level of chochmah, while the love of the left line comes from the level of binah. And within binah itself there is chesed of binah and gevurah of binah, and we will go into that in detail later. First let us set out the general picture.
These are the foundations the Alter Rebbe brings in the chapter in order to explain the levels of right and left:
Yearning, silver and gold: in the language of the Torah love is called «ve'ahavta», and it has another expression as well, kisufin, yearning, as in the verse «nichsof nichsafta», from the same root as the word kesef, silver. Silver belongs to the right line, gold to the left line.
«And gold comes from the north»: from this verse it emerges where gold originally comes from, from the north. And as is known, north is left and south is right, and therefore the Torah associates gold with the left and silver with the right.
Kohen and Levi: the kohen is called a man of chesed, «to bless His people Israel with love», while the Levi is the level of gevurah. So the right line, the line of silver, from above downward, the line of chesed, is connected to the kohen; and the left line, which runs from below upward, the line of gevurah and of gold, is connected to the Levi.
All these examples are brought in the chapter to explain and clarify the matter, and from them we will understand how a person arrives at such a love in the first place: what gives birth to love and what arouses the emotion. According to the order of creation by which the Holy One created the soul of man, the thing that affects the middos and arouses them is the intellect, through hisbonenus, contemplation. There is a type of contemplation that leads to a conclusion of chesed, from above downward, and there is another type of contemplation that leads to a conclusion of gevurah, from below upward. In chapter 50 we will see which contemplation leads to the conclusion of gevurah: the level of the Levi'im, of gold, of fleeing and rising upward.
Let us turn to the words of the chapter (page 70, p. 139): «והנה כל בחינות ומדרגות האהבה הנזכרים לעיל», «Now, all the levels and degrees of love mentioned above», meaning all the levels explained in the previous chapters, «הן מסטרא דימינא ובחינת כהן», «are from the side of the right and the level of the kohen», who is «איש חסד», «a man of chesed», «ונקרא כסף הקדשים», «and it is called the silver of the holy things».
Why does he not simply say «silver», but rather «the silver of the holy things»? The expression appears in a verse in Kings chapter 12, where it is said explicitly with regard to the kohanim: «And Yehoash said to the kohanim, all the silver of the holy things that is brought into the House of Hashem», an instruction to the kohanim about what to do with the half shekel monies that people would bring to the Mikdash. So the expression «silver of the holy things» is directed specifically at the kohanim, and that is why the Alter Rebbe is precise to use exactly this phrase: a kohen is a man of chesed, the side of the right, the level of silver.
And the word kesef, silver, is an expression of love and yearning, «מלשון נכסוף נכספת לבית אביך», «from the expression, you surely yearned for your father's house», the same root and the same meaning.
When the Alter Rebbe brings a verse to prove his point, it would seem to be enough for him to quote only the words that bear on the matter at hand. What is he trying to prove from this verse? That love is called yearning, that kesef is a term of love belonging to the side of the right. For that purpose he could have quoted only the words «nichsof nichsafta», and whoever wants to look into it can open Bereishis chapter 31, find the verse, and see the continuation and the context. What, then, is the relevance here of quoting also the words «for your father's house»?
The answer is that with these words the Alter Rebbe is hinting at something that is relevant to us. The verse was said by Lavan to Yaakov, and as we learned in chapter 3, chochmah and binah are called in another language father and mother: chochmah is called abba, father, and binah is called imma, mother. And if we rise one level above chesed and gevurah, the right line belongs to chochmah, to the father. Therefore the Alter Rebbe brings also the continuation of the verse, «for your father's house», since the word «father» hints at chochmah, the right line with which we are dealing. In this way the root of the matter is hinted at: how does a person arrive at a love of chesed? Because its beginning and its source are in the level of chochmah.
Up to here the Alter Rebbe has summed up in three lines all the levels of love explained until now, and now he opens a new kind of love, one that does not at all resemble the kinds explained so far: «אך יש עוד בחינת אהבה העולה על כולנה», «But there is yet another level of love which surpasses them all». This is not merely one more kind, which could be placed in the same row alongside the previous ones, but a far higher level, «which surpasses them all», for the left line is loftier than the right line, «כמעלת הזהב על הכסף», «like the superiority of gold over silver». If the right line is the level of silver («nichsof nichsafta»), then the left line is the level of gold, and the difference between gold and silver is beyond comparison: an entirely different order.
And what is that love, and why is it called specifically gold? «והיא אהבה כרשפי אש», «and it is a love like fiery coals».
Here is the difference between water and fire. Water belongs to the right line, for its way is to flow and descend from above downward. That is its nature, and that is chesed. Water always goes together with chesed, and about Avraham Avinu, the man of chesed, we say in the prayer for water: «Remember the father who was drawn after You like water». Fire is precisely the opposite: it rises upward, consumes whatever exists and flees upward. This is the kind of love that belongs to the left line, a love whose conclusion is flight from existence and an ascent from below upward.
And where does this love come from? Not from the side of chesed, but «מבחינת גבורות עליונות דבינה עילאה», «from the level of the supernal gevuros of the higher binah», from the side of gevurah, from the side of the left, and not like the other loves explained above which belong to the side of chesed. And just as silver, when viewed from a higher story of the right line, comes from the level of chochmah, so too the source of fire and gevurah is in a higher level: in the supernal gevuros of the higher binah.
Let us add a word. The intention is not, as one might have thought, that a love of chesed comes from chochmah and a love of gevurah comes from binah. After all, every love must come by way of contemplation, and without contemplation no emotion is born at all, and contemplation is the level of binah. It follows that every kind of love must come from binah, from contemplation. If so, what does this division mean, that binah belongs to one kind and chochmah to the other?
It can be understood by way of a parable. Chochmah and binah are called father and mother, and every child that is born must come from both of them, from the father and from the mother. There is no kind of birth that comes from the father alone or from the mother alone. So too every contemplation must come from chochmah and binah together. But what is the difference? We see in reality that there are children who resemble the father more and children who resemble the mother more: though all of them come from both, some are more connected to and resemble the mother, and some resemble the father more. So it is in our subject: there is a love that resembles the father more, the level of chochmah, and there is a love that resembles the mother more, the level of binah, and the love of our chapter comes from the gevuros of the higher binah.
In summary: in this section we learned that all the levels of love explained until now are from the side of the right, the level of the kohen and the man of chesed, and are called «the silver of the holy things», from the expression of yearning, «you surely yearned for your father's house», and in these words is hinted its source in the level of chochmah, which is called father. Over against it there is a level of love «which surpasses them all», like the superiority of gold over silver: a love «like fiery coals» belonging to the left line, to gevurah, to the Levi, to the gold that comes from the north, and its conclusion is flight from existence and an ascent from below upward. Its source is in the supernal gevuros of the higher binah, and not that the one love comes from chochmah alone and the other from binah alone, but as in the parable of the child who resembles the father more or the mother more.
In the next section we will examine the essence of this love and the name «gold» that is given to it, and we will bring a passage from the Gemara in tractate Bava Metzia, where we will be able to see how the words of the Gemara are beautifully explained on the basis of these lines in Tanya.