In the previous section we examined the principle that light is in a state of bittul, nullified, within its source, exactly as the Alter Rebbe explains it in the next part of Tanya, Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah. If there is light here in our world, light drawn from the sun, is there light inside the body of the sun itself? Logically there certainly must be: if the light travels and reaches us hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, it is surely present in its source. And yet, while it is there, we do not call it «light» at all, because there it is completely nullified in its source.
The same holds in the nimshal, in what the mashal comes to teach. Had the created beings received directly from this light, there would be no creatures and no worlds, because they would be in precisely the same condition and the same status as the light within its source: just as the light is batel in its source, so they too would have no existence of their own. For there to be creatures, for there to be limit and a seder hishtalshelus, an ordered chain of descent, there had to be tzimtzum, contraction. Revelation comes specifically through the power of the tzimtzum; without it the worlds would be utterly nullified within their source.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "שלא יתבטלו במציאות לגמרי במקורם, כביטול אור השמש במקורו בגוף השמש, שאין נראה שם אור זולת עצם גוף השמש המאיר בלבד" (so that they would not be entirely nullified out of existence within their source, like the nullification of the sun's light in its source in the body of the sun, where no light is discernible other than the body of the shining sun itself). The light inside the body of the sun is so nullified to it that there is no way to call it «light» at all. So too, had the creatures received directly from the light of the Shechinah without the tzimtzum, they would not have been able to receive anything whatsoever.
This is where we stopped last time, and now we have to clarify what that sheath and garment is through which created beings can receive. This is not a question that can be dismissed with a name, «the garment is called such and such.» It is a question that is entirely about understanding.
The question is straightforward. When there is an overwhelming light, so powerful that whoever stands beside it is consumed, something is needed to shield him, and that shield must itself be made of a material that is not consumed, that is, strong enough to withstand the light. But here we face a built in contradiction:
If the thing doing the enclothing is on a lower level than the light itself, then it too would have to be nullified and consumed.
And if it is on a higher level than the light, then the recipients would once again be unable to receive even from it.
So if we set up something greater as the garment, that garment will itself need a garment; and if we set up something smaller, the garment itself must be nullified. That is the question.
At the beginning of the chapter we learned that the revelation of the Shechinah is, by way of mashal, like the brain, in which the center of vitality for the entire body resides; correspondingly, the revelation of the Shechinah is found in a divine level called mochin, the «brain» levels. And where is this revelation revealed, this immense divine power from which all the worlds live? In Torah and mitzvos. The Torah is, as it were, the wisdom of the Holy One blessed be He, and just as the center of vitality for all the limbs resides in the brain within the body, so in the Torah there is revealed the divine vitality from which all the worlds live. The Torah is the loftiest divine revelation that can possibly be.
If so, the question returns in full force: what, then, is the garment?
The Alter Rebbe's words: "ומהו הלבוש שיוכל להסתירה ולהלבישה ולא יתבטל במציאות באורה" (and what is the garment that can conceal and enclothe it and not be nullified out of existence in its light). What garment can conceal the infinite divine power in such a way that created beings will be able to receive, and in such a way that the garment itself will not be nullified out of existence, and consequently the creatures will not be nullified either? And the answer is surprising: "הוא רצונו יתברך וחכמתו וכו' המלובשים בתורה ומצוותיה" (it is His blessed will and wisdom etc. that are enclothed in His Torah and its mitzvos). The garment is the Torah and the mitzvos.
At first glance this is puzzling. The shining power is the Torah, and the concealing garment is also the Torah. How do the two go together?
Here is the explanation: the Torah is both the light and the garment at once.
What is Torah? From one side, we could say that we have no idea at all. The Torah is the wisdom of the Holy One blessed be He, and since He is infinite, His wisdom too is infinite, and there is no created being, from whatever lofty world, that could grasp the infinity of the Creator's wisdom. By this reckoning, the answer to the question «what is Torah» ought to be: something abstract that there is no possibility of grasping.
And from the other side, every child knows how to answer what Torah is: «In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,» «From when do we recite the Shema,» Shulchan Aruch, a bookcase full of seforim. This looks like a contradiction. Is the Torah infinite, or is it a bookcase holding finite volumes that have a beginning and an end?
The truth is that both answers are true. The Holy One blessed be He took the Torah, which is His unlimited, infinite wisdom, and enclothed and contracted it within a limited, constricted framework that created beings could grasp, creatures from every world, for Torah, as we will see further on, is studied on every level and in every world.
It emerges, then, that when a Jew learns Torah, every single line he learns holds two things at once: on one side, infinity, and on the other side, something he actually absorbs and understands. In that very same Torah is found the greatest power there is, containing the vitality from which vitality spreads out to all the worlds, the entire seder hishtalshelus receives its life from the Torah, and at the same time it is itself the garment.
This is the meaning of the verse «עוטה אור כשלמה נוטה שמים כיריעה» (He wraps Himself in light as a garment, He stretches out the heavens like a curtain). «Light» means revelation, and «salmah» is a garment, a covering. How do the two fit together? The Holy One blessed be He revealed His light precisely by way of the salmah, by way of the covering: He gave the Torah in a garment, and placed inside it His own boundlessness, His infinite power. In the language of Chazal: «He contracted His Shechinah between the staves of the ark.»
A mashal for this: imagine a cake the size of a table, and beside it a small infant who can manage nothing more than tiny crumbs. If I want to give him the whole cake, it is simply not in my power; I have no choice but to give him a crumb. But imagine that someone were able to take the entire cake and compress it into one crumb, and hand the infant that crumb, and in that crumb he would have the whole cake. Physically this is fantasy and cannot be. But the Holy One blessed be He, who is infinite, can, and that is exactly what He does: He takes all of His infinity and places His whole Essence into the tiny crumb. A person who has learned one line of Torah has a «crumb,» and in that very crumb lies all of infinity.
And so the Alter Rebbe folds the entire explanation into his continuing words: "הנגלית לנו ולבנינו" (which is revealed to us and to our children). On one side the Torah is revealed to us and to our children, and every small child says: I know, I understand, I am learning. And on the other side, "דאורייתא מחכמה נפקת" (for the Torah issues forth from Chochmah), the Torah emerged and was revealed from the divine wisdom of the Creator, "היא חכמה עילאה דלעילא לעילא מעלמא דאתגליא" (it is the supernal Chochmah, far, far higher than the world of revelation), for Chochmah is the highest level there can be.
What is the highest faculty in a person, the one of which we can say that it is the person himself? The innermost faculty in a person is his understanding and intellect, and so it is explained in chassidus. Let us lay out the order of the faculties from below upward:
The faculty of speech, the lowest of the inner faculties, because its entire use is only for the sake of another. For himself, when a person is alone with himself, there is no need for speech. Speech is indeed one of a person's faculties, but it is wholly directed outward.
Emotion, a higher faculty: a person's feelings are already his own and within him, and yet they too belong to another. Emotion arises in response to another and because of another, and were there no other, emotion would have no one to act upon.
Intellect, the faculty of a person himself with himself, and not with his surroundings.
You can see this in real life. Emotion does not exclude one's surroundings: when a person is happy, more people joining in does not diminish his joy; on the contrary, it enlarges and intensifies it, and with every emotion the surroundings help. With intellect it is the opposite: when a person wants to delve in and contemplate, the presence of people talking to him disturbs him, and he wants to be alone with himself. It turns out that Chochmah and intellect are the innermost faculty of a person with himself.
In summary: in this section we learned that the light within the body of the sun is so nullified in its source that it is not called «light» at all, and from here, that had created beings received the light of the Shechinah without tzimtzum, they would have been unable to receive anything and would have been nullified out of existence. We examined the question of the garment, that a garment lower than the light would be consumed and nullified, while a garment higher than it would itself require a further garment, and we saw the Alter Rebbe's answer: «His blessed will and wisdom that are enclothed in His Torah and its mitzvos.» The Torah itself is both the loftiest divine revelation and the garment, for His infinite wisdom was enclothed and contracted within a limited framework «revealed to us and to our children,» as hinted in «He wraps Himself in light as a garment» and in the words of Chazal, «He contracted His Shechinah between the staves of the ark,» and as in the mashal of the entire cake entering into a single crumb. Finally we began with the mashal from the faculties of the soul, speech, emotion and intellect, from which we learned that Chochmah is the innermost faculty in a person.
In the next section we will continue with the explanation of the mashal from the faculties of the soul and the loftiness of Chochmah, «Chochmah Ila'ah,» the supernal wisdom, and with understanding how His blessed will and wisdom are enclothed in the Torah and its mitzvos.