We have reached the middle of chapter 50, on page 70b (page 140). Last time we stopped at the line beginning with the words «kaltah nafshi» (my soul yearns), and we pick up here with the words «ve'hinei mikan yatza shoresh haleviim lematah». Let us begin with a short review of what the chapter has said so far.
All the varieties of ahavas Hashem that the Alter Rebbe elaborated on in the earlier chapters are a love defined as «from above to below»: a Jew is aroused with a great love for the Almighty, and what that love wants is to become bound up with Him within the framework of the world and of nature, within the ordered system that the Almighty established for him. He knows and understands that it is specifically through keeping Torah and mitzvos that the true and proper connection is formed, and that is the path he serves on, and that is what he seeks. This is the common denominator of every kind of love we have studied until now.
The point is captured in the analogy we learned: love and fear are like wings, «gadfin», which have no purpose in themselves; their entire function is to lift the bird and carry it aloft. In avodas Hashem: their purpose is that the keeping of Torah and mitzvos should be alive, with a soul in it. So the love of Hashem discussed until now comes to strengthen and enliven the performance of Torah and mitzvos.
In chapter 50 the Alter Rebbe takes up an entirely different kind of love, one that bears no resemblance at all to anything learned until now. What this love wants is to get out, to escape, the way a flame always seeks to tear itself away from the wick that holds it. This is the matter of ratzo: a person wants out of the limitations he is in, to the point of kelos hanefesh, the soul literally expiring, and with that we closed the previous section.
Three analogies for the difference between the two kinds of love:
Water and fire: the love spoken of until now is a «love like water», whose nature is to flow downward, from above to below; while the love here is a «love like fire», whose nature is the opposite, to flee from below upward.
Silver and gold: kesef (silver) is from the word kissufin, yearning, and it alludes to a love that runs from above to below. Gold, by contrast, «does not pass current with the merchant», and in the language of the Gemara it is not «charif latzeis», not quick to go out. People do not use it for everyday purchases; it is kept locked away, because it is so rare and so precious. So too the love described here: it has no place in the world, it is as though it is leaving the world, from below upward. And its superiority over the kinds of love that preceded it is like the superiority of gold over silver.
Kohen and Levi: the love spoken of until now is in the category of kohen, for the kohen is a man of chesed, and the nature of chesed is to give downward, like a wealthy man giving to a poor man. But the love here, breaking out of the framework in ratzo and rising upward, is in the category of Levi. As explained in Kabbalah, the root of the kohen's soul is in chesed, and the root of the Levi's soul is in gevurah.
And just as the world cannot absorb gold into everyday use because it is simply too precious, so too the stature of the Leviim is very great but hidden, and a person cannot see it openly. Openly it is precisely the kohanim who stand above the Leviim, as it says in this week's parshah, parshas Korach, to Aharon regarding the Leviim: «veyilavu alecha vesharsucha», they shall be joined to you and serve you. The Leviim are attached to the kohanim and minister to them. And nevertheless, the root of their soul, which is gevurah, is higher than the root of the kohen's soul, which is chesed; it is only that, like gold next to silver, it has no place in daily use.
From here the Alter Rebbe continues: «ve'hinei mikan yatza shoresh haleviim lematah», and from here comes the root of the Leviim below. That is, from this level of love like fire, gevurah, going out, kelos hanefesh, derives the root of the Leviim here below.
And the Alter Rebbe adds in parentheses: «ule'asid shehaolam yisaleh yihyu hem hakohanim», in the future, when the world will be elevated, they will be the kohanim. In the time to come, after Moshiach comes and builds the third Beis Hamikdash speedily in our days, the world will be elevated and will stand on a higher level, and then the Leviim will be the kohanim. «Ukemo shekasav ha'Arizal al pasuk», as the Arizal wrote on the verse in Yechezkel, «vehakohanim haleviim bnei Tzadok». What does «vehakohanim haleviim» mean, kohanim or Leviim? The holy Arizal explains that the verse is speaking of the future, when the Leviim will be the kohanim, «shehaleviim shel achshav yihyu kohanim le'asid», that the Leviim of now will be kohanim in the time to come.
A word of background is in order. The kohanim were drawn from the tribe of Levi to begin with, from Aharon the Kohen, and the kehunah belongs only to his sons. So within the tribe of Levi itself there are the kohanim, who are higher, and there are the Leviim, in effect the very same family, except that in our time the Leviim stand on a lower level than the kohen.
Does this mean that in the time to come the Leviim will be the ones serving in the Beis Hamikdash, that a Levi will kindle the menorah and a Levi will offer the korbanos?
Certainly not. And the reason is: «zos haTorah lo tehei muchlefes», this Torah will not be exchanged. If the Torah says that the kohanim perform the service and not the Leviim, then the kohanim perform the service and not the Leviim. There is no change in the Torah even in the time to come; after Moshiach comes there will not be a different Torah, but this very same Torah.
Rather, the difference between a kohen and a Levi is essentially in the soul: one who is born of the descendants of Aharon the Kohen has the root of his soul in chesed, and one born into a family of Leviim has a soul bound up with gevurah. In the time to come, the souls that are from gevurah, the souls of today's Leviim, will be born to parents who are descendants of Aharon the Kohen. In actual practice the son will be a kohen from the sons of Aharon, exactly as the Torah rules that only the sons of Aharon are kohanim, but his soul will be the soul of a Levi, and then their greatness will be revealed. This is what the Alter Rebbe is adding when he says that the Leviim of now will be kohanim in the future: they will be born to kohanim, for otherwise, Heaven forbid, there would be a change in the Torah, and there is no change in the Torah.
Along the same lines, similar questions are raised about another three or four matters, where it appears on the face of it that something will change in the time to come, and yet we know there is no change in the Torah. For example: today the halachah follows Beis Hillel, and it is said that in the time to come the halachah will follow Beis Shammai. Here too it is the very same idea: Beis Hillel is chesed and Beis Shammai is gevurah. In our time the world is not a vessel for the intensity of Beis Shammai, and just as we have no capacity to make use of gold, so we have no capacity to grasp the opinions of Beis Shammai, because he is above us; in the time to come, when the world will be elevated, the halachah will follow Beis Shammai.
And how will this change come about? Some explain that the change itself takes place according to the rules of the Torah: when a Sanhedrin rules on a halachah, and in a later generation there arises a beis din greater than they in number and in wisdom, that beis din is entitled to reopen the same question and arrive at different conclusions, and this is entirely according to Torah. The holy Arizal, who revealed to us that in the time to come the halachah will follow Beis Shammai, saw with his ruach hakodesh that in the future, when the Sanhedrin take up afresh the matters disputed by Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel, they will deliberate anew and reach different conclusions. So although there will be things that change, this is not a change in the Torah, since the change itself is anchored in the rules of the Torah.
To summarize: in this section we reviewed the difference between the love that runs from above to below, whose entire aim is to strengthen the keeping of Torah and mitzvos, and the love of chapter 50, a love like fire, in ratzo and kelos hanefesh, whose superiority is like that of gold over silver and like that of the Levi's soul root in gevurah over the kohen's soul root in chesed. From here comes the root of the Leviim below, and in the time to come they will be the kohanim, meaning that the souls of the Leviim will be born to the sons of Aharon the Kohen, since «zos haTorah lo tehei muchlefes». And the same applies to the halachah following Beis Shammai in the time to come: the change comes about through the rules of the Torah itself.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in this chapter, and we will see that the practical conclusion is not meant to be the way of the sons of Aharon.