We have reached chapter 51 of Tanya, found on folio 71a (page 141). With this chapter we enter the final cluster of chapters of part one of Tanya, Likkutei Amarim: chapters 51, 52 and 53. These three chapters form a single continuous unit, one block of material devoted to explaining a single subject at length and in depth. Chapter 51 returns to and continues a point that was begun back in chapter 35, so it is worth prefacing our study with a quick review of the flow of the chapters from 35 until here. In any case, summarizing and recalling the whole progression of the chapters is itself a very valuable exercise.
A review of chapters 35 through 50:
In chapter 35 the Alter Rebbe began to explain the final word of the verse upon which the entire Tanya is built: «כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאוד בפיך ובלבבך לעשותו» (For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it). The whole of Tanya comes to show a Jew how it is in fact «very near to you» to fulfill the will of G-d at every stage: in your mouth, in your heart, to do it. The last word, «לעשותו» (to do it), is the summation and therefore the most important of them all: what the Holy One really wants from a Jew is that His will be carried out in actual deed. The earlier stages mentioned in the verse, «בפיך ובלבבך», which correspond to thought and to emotion, are certainly important too, but the main thing is «לעשותו».
To explain this, the Alter Rebbe brought there a passage from the Zohar in parashas Balak, from the words of the Yenuka on the verse «ושמן על ראשך אל יחסר» (And let oil not be lacking upon your head). The oil is a parable. Just as a flame can take hold of a wick and keep burning only if there is fuel, namely the oil, and without fuel the fire will not catch, so too, in order for the Shechinah (the fire) to rest upon a person's body (the wick), «oil» is required: the person must do something that will cause the Shechinah to take hold in his body. And what is that oil? Says the Zohar: «עובדין טבין», good deeds, the practical mitzvos.
The Alter Rebbe explained there why specifically mitzvos, and not the emotions of love and fear. Emotion, however important and however fine, is the person's own world: «I love», «I fear». That is the «you», the person as he exists in his own world, the way in which he loves the Creator and the way in which he fears Him. The Shechinah, by contrast, is not the «you» at all but the revelation of the Creator, and a revelation of the Creator demands that the person's «I» step aside, so that what shines and stands out is the Creator. That is why this is not accomplished through a person's emotion but through doing the Creator's will in good deeds and mitzvos. When a person performs a mitzvah he nullifies himself, sets his own selfhood aside and declares that right now he is doing the will of the Creator, and that is what enables the Shechinah to rest upon him.
The Alter Rebbe raised a question there: granted that love and fear are the person's own personality, but Torah study is the wisdom of the Holy One Himself, and when a Jew learns Torah he nullifies himself to G-d's Torah. Why then did the Zohar single out «עובדין טבין», good deeds? That question is answered at length in chapters 36 and 37: true, Torah study also accomplishes this, yet the mitzvos have an advantage over it:
Torah study conquers mainly the higher faculties of the soul: thought, and at most speech.
Action conquers the lower, physical part of the person, the part with which the mitzvos are actually performed. And here is why conquering the lower part matters: the Holy One wants a dirah betachtonim, a dwelling in the lower realms, that He should reside here in this physical world, and that residing is brought about through physical action done in a sanctified way. It will become openly revealed with the coming of Moshiach, but we are the ones who create it now, through our mitzvos.
In chapters 38, 39 and 40 the Alter Rebbe taught that although action is the main thing, one must not dismiss emotion or imagine that it carries no weight at all: one needs both love and fear. Its importance, however, is not as the goal and not as the essence, but in this: a mitzvah performed with feeling is a far more elevated mitzvah. This is the parable of the bird and its wings. With wings the bird can soar, and even though the wings are not the essential part of the bird, since according to halachah a bird without wings is still kosher, they are nonetheless of great importance.
From that point on, the chapters took up the question of which emotion is required:
Chapters 41, 42 and the first part of 43: fear of Heaven and its levels, yirah tataah (lower fear) and yirah ilaah (higher fear).
From the middle of chapter 43 and chapter 44: love and its levels, ahavah zuta (lesser love) and ahavah rabbah (great love).
Chapters 45, 46, 47, 48 and 49: various levels within love, among them the level of «נפשי אויתיך» (My soul desires You), and the level of «כברא דאשתדל בתר אבוי ואימיה» (like a child who exerts himself after his father and mother).
Chapter 50, which we studied last time: a very lofty level of love, the love of kelos hanefesh, the soul's expiring in longing, and mesirus nefesh.
So all the chapters from 41 through 50 inclusive deal with the various levels of love and fear. And the overall summary of all of them is this: the main thing is the doing, the performance of mitzvos, which is what brings about the resting of the Shechinah, like the oil, the fuel, that allows the flame to rest upon the body. Torah too accomplishes this, but the mitzvos have the advantage of dirah betachtonim, which is the goal of everything, whose completion comes with Moshiach, and which we build today through the mitzvos we perform. And on the other hand, emotion is important as well, with all the levels it contains.
Chapter 51: returning to the words of the Yenuka:
In these last three chapters the Alter Rebbe comes back and says: now that the matter has been summed up clearly, and it is understood that the deeds are the essence, let us return once more to the language of the Yenuka, explain it at length, and examine several points in it closely.
One of the questions on the Yenuka's words is this. The «oil» mentioned in the verse is, according to him, a parable for good deeds, the fuel that lies in action. Yet normally, both in Chassidus and in the Gemara, oil, and olive oil in particular, is a parable for chochmah, for wisdom and intellect. The Gemara says of a place called Tekoa, where Scripture indicates there were wise men: «לפי שרגילין בשמן זית, חכמה מצויה שם» (because they are accustomed to olive oil, wisdom is found there). It is likewise known that eating olives causes forgetfulness, and the remedy is to pour olive oil over the olive, since the oil is a segulah for memory and restores it. From all of this we see that oil is practically a synonym for wisdom, while the Yenuka in the Zohar says that oil means deeds and action, which at first glance does not fit. And there are further points in his words that call for precise examination.
In the Alter Rebbe's own words at the opening of the chapter: «והנה לתוספת ביאור לשון הינוקא דלעיל» (Now, for a fuller explanation of the words of the Yenuka cited above), where «cited above» refers to chapter 35, where the Yenuka's words were first brought, «צריך לבאר תחלה להבין קצת עניין השראת השכינה» (we must first explain, in order to gain some understanding of the matter of the resting of the Shechinah).
For the Yenuka is speaking about the oil, the fuel, which causes the flame to take hold of the wick, and in the analogue, causes the Shechinah to rest upon a person. There he explains that this is also the idea of walking with one's head covered, since the Shechinah rests upon a person's head, and the oil is what brings about its revelation.
But what exactly is «the resting of the Shechinah», and what does it mean that the Shechinah rests somewhere? We find the expression that the Shechinah «שהיתה שורה בבית קדש הקדשים» (rested in the Holy of Holies), «וכן כל מקום השראת השכינה מה ענינו» (and likewise every place where the Shechinah rests, what does it mean), as in the saying «כל בי עשרה שכינתא שריא», that wherever ten Jews are gathered together, and especially when they are learning Torah, the Shechinah rests there. What does this mean, seeing that «הלא מלא כל הארץ כבודו ולית אתר פנוי מיניה» (the whole earth is full of His glory, and there is no place devoid of Him)? The Holy One is present everywhere, whether ten people are there or three, or one, or none at all. If so, what room is there to point to a particular place and say that specifically there the Shechinah rests?
«אך הענין» (But the explanation is). Here begins a lengthy explanation, or more precisely a lengthy parable that runs for a page and a half, followed by the nimshal, the thing it illustrates, with the whole subject reaching its conclusion only at the end of chapter 53. So we have before us chapters 51, 52 and 53 as one continuous unit, filled with extended explanations and clarifications aimed at understanding this one concept. The Alter Rebbe begins with a parable, and we will focus on understanding it thoroughly: a parable drawn from the body and soul of a human being. Before we speak about the nimshal, which is in Elokus, let us understand how matters work in the mashal itself.
And what is the basis for using such a parable? «כדכתיב ומבשרי אחזה אלוק» (as it is written, from my flesh I behold G-d), a verse in Iyov, meaning that by contemplating the body and the flesh one can perceive Elokus, and that the human body is a parable from which the nimshal can be understood. Now seemingly there is an earlier verse, in Bereishis: «נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו» (Let us make man in our image, after our likeness). Why does the Alter Rebbe not cite that one, but travels all the way to Iyov? The answer is that the verse in Bereishis is the explanation and the reason behind the verse in Iyov. The verse in Iyov is the one that speaks to our subject and states the fact that from the flesh one can learn. And if you then ask why it should be possible to derive a parable from the human body, the answer is that it is written «let us make man in our image, after our likeness». But the verse in Bereishis by itself does not yet tell us that the body can serve as a parable for Elokus, whereas the verse in Iyov is sharp and clear: know that whatever you wish to understand about Elokus, look at the human body, contemplate it, and it will serve you as a parable.
It is worth noting what the famed chassid Reb Hillel Paritcher said, as quoted by the Previous Rebbe in one of his talks in Likkutei Dibburim: at first I thought the human body was something repulsive, since it only interferes with grasping G-dliness fully. It has cravings, inclinations and problems, and its whole role is to get in the way. But when I saw the verse «ומבשרי אחזה אלוקה», I understood that the body is a means and a parable for Elokus, and I began to cherish the body. The body's entire importance lies in its serving as a parable for G-dliness, and when one looks at it that way, it is a parable for Elokus and nothing else.
It is known that a person's neshamah does not enter the body in its entirety. The essence of the soul remains above, and what enters the body is only a spark and a radiance that clothes itself within it.
And regarding that part of the soul which does enter the body to animate it: «שכמו שנשמת האדם היא ממלאה כל רמ"ח אברי הגוף מראשו ועד רגליו» (just as a person's soul fills all 248 limbs of the body, from his head to his feet). In the printed editions it reads «רגלו», and in the list of corrections it should be «רגליו». The soul is present in all 248 limbs equally and with the same intensity, from the highest stratum, the head, down to the feet. «ואף על פי כן, עיקר משכנה והשראתה היא במוחו» (and nevertheless, the principal seat of its dwelling and its resting is in the brain). The brain is the first station, and there is the soul's main presence.
And as we will see further on, even when we say that the soul's principal dwelling and resting place is in the brain, this refers to a lower level within the soul. That is, within the very soul that animates the body there is a mode of which one cannot say that it is mainly in the brain, for it is present from head to foot without any distinction; and there is a lower mode, and it is of this that we say that its principal dwelling and resting is in the brain. There are many details here, so let us first lay out the overall picture, from which everything will become clearer.
The way the soul influences the limbs of the body operates and shines, broadly speaking, on two planes: a general vitality and a particular vitality. The general vitality is called the light of the soul (or hanefesh), and the particular vitality is called an influx from the soul (shefa min hanefesh).
And what is the difference between light and influx? When something descends from a higher level to a lower one, it can happen in one of two ways:
One way: even though the thing descends from the higher to the lower, the emphasis and the essence remain with the higher. The lower receives, but the main thing stays above.
The second way is the opposite: the emphasis is on the lower.
To summarize: In this section we reviewed the flow of chapters 35 through 50: the explanation of the word «לעשותו»; the Yenuka's teaching that the oil which brings about the resting of the Shechinah is «עובדין טבין»; the advantage of mitzvos over Torah in that they conquer the lower part of a person and create a dirah betachtonim; the importance of emotion as «wings»; and the levels of fear and love up to the kelos hanefesh of chapter 50. From there we moved to the opening of chapter 51, where the Alter Rebbe returns to the Yenuka's words to explain them at length. We raised the question of why oil is a parable for deeds, when ordinarily it is a parable for wisdom; and we examined the question of what «the resting of the Shechinah» means at all, given that the whole earth is full of His glory and there is no place devoid of Him. To explain this, the Alter Rebbe opens with a lengthy parable drawn from the body and soul of a human being, on the basis of «ומבשרי אחזה אלוקה»: the soul fills all 248 limbs equally, and nevertheless the principal seat of its dwelling and resting is in the brain. And in the overall picture: the soul's influence upon the body operates on two planes, a general vitality (the light of the soul) and a particular vitality (an influx from the soul), corresponding to the two ways in which something descends from a higher level to a lower one: a mode whose essence remains above, and a mode whose essence is below.
In the next section we will bring examples of these two modes, and go deeper into understanding the general vitality and the particular vitality of the soul, as an introduction to the nimshal.