In the previous section we established that the Torah is the garment for the light of the Shechinah. Now we go deeper into what the Torah actually is, and we begin with the difference between the chochmah (wisdom) found in a person's soul and the chochmah of the Holy One, blessed be He.
In a human being, wisdom is not the person himself, and it is not part of his essence. The proof is simple: one person has wisdom and another does not. Wisdom is, in the end, a faculty that the Holy One implanted in us. True, compared to all the other faculties it is the highest and most inward of them: the other faculties are «us for someone else», while chochmah is «us for ourselves». And yet it is still not the essence of the person.
With the Holy One, by contrast, the Tanya already states at its very beginning: «והוא יתברך וחכמתו אחד» (He, blessed be He, and His wisdom are one). The Torah is His wisdom, which is to say, it is He Himself, for He and His wisdom are one. This level is incomparably higher than anything we are capable of grasping in the wisdom of a human soul. That is why it is said of the Holy One, «דאיהו חכים ולא בחכמה ידיעא» (He is wise, but not with a knowable wisdom), not with the wisdom familiar to us, but with an infinite wisdom that is utterly beyond comprehension. And as stated in chapter 2: «אור אין סוף ברוך הוא מלובש ומיוחד בחכמה עילאה» (the light of the blessed Ein Sof is clothed in and united with the supernal chochmah), the infinite light of the Creator is revealed and found within the sefirah of chochmah, «והוא יתברך וחכמתו אחד».
If the Torah is an expression of His wisdom, then it is far loftier than the level we called «Shechinah», which is the intermediate stage. And here we have the very condition we discussed regarding a garment: the garment must be higher than the thing it covers, for otherwise it would simply be nullified before it (batel). The Torah is the very Essence of the Creator, higher than the level of Shechinah, and at the same time it is itself the garment.
And this is the continuation of the Alter Rebbe's words: «רק שירדה בסתר המדרגות» (only that it descended through concealing levels), that same Torah which is the Essence of the Creator descended through many levels, «ממדריגה למדריגה בהשתלשלות העולמות, עד שנתלבשה בדברים גשמיים» (from level to level in the hishtalshelus of the worlds, until it became clothed in physical things). This is not merely a descent into understanding and intellect, where a person sits and learns and takes pleasure in grasping Torah, but a descent all the way into actual physical objects, «שהן תרי״ג מצוות התורה» (which are the 613 mitzvos of the Torah): the parchment of tefillin, the wool of tzitzis, the foods of Shabbos, and the like. So the Torah contains a thing and its opposite: it is the very highest, and at the same time it has come down to the very lowest. Precisely for that reason it is the garment that covers over that intensity called the light of the Shechinah.
And from it all the worlds live. The Torah is the source of life for every world, and what is said of the Torah, «כי הם חיינו» (for they are our life), is meant quite literally. And not only the life of this physical world: in every single world there is the layer of Torah appropriate to that world, and the Torah revealed there is the source of vitality for that entire world, each level according to what receives from it.
«ובירידתה בהשתלשלות מעולם לעולם גם השכינה ירדה ונתלבשה בה בכל עולם ועולם, וזהו היכל קדש הקדשים שבכל עולם ועולם» (and in its descent through the hishtalshelus from world to world, the Shechinah too descended and became clothed in it in each and every world, and this is the chamber of the Holy of Holies in each and every world):
In every world there is a layer of Torah. There is the Torah studied in the upper Gan Eden and the Torah studied in the lower Gan Eden; and within this world itself, there is the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu learned during forty days on Mount Sinai, and there is the Torah that a small child learns in kindergarten. Even in the upper worlds they study this very same Torah, only in abstract terms: when the Mishnah discusses one who exchanges a cow for a donkey, up there it does not mean the cow we know but a different concept entirely, and so it is in each and every world. And in every world to which the Torah descends, in the terms of that world, the Shechinah descends along with it.
And what is the Shechinah? It is the source from which vitality is drawn to all the particulars that come after it, like the analogy of the human soul: the vitality in the brain is the same vitality from which the 248 limbs and 365 sinews will emerge.
At the beginning of chapter 51 we learned where the Shechinah rests: in the Holy of Holies. In our awareness, the Holy of Holies is the one in the Beis HaMikdash in Jerusalem, and so it is; but there is a Holy of Holies in every world, and in each world it is the place where the Shechinah rests, the source that contains the vitality of that entire world. And what grants the Shechinah the ability to be revealed? The Torah, the Divine wisdom. In every single world, the revelation of Torah belonging to that world is what is called its Shechinah, and it is what is called its Holy of Holies.
In the order of hishtalshelus there are four worlds: Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and broadly speaking they divide into two groups. Atzilus is the world called Elokus, Divinity; and the three worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are called in chassidus by their acronym, the worlds of BY״A. All the vitality of BY״A comes from the Shechinah that shines upon them. Like the analogy of the body, where every limb receives what is suited to it and there is a brain that enlivens all the limbs, so there is, as it were, a «brain» of BY״A, and that is their level of Shechinah. And in the order of the sefiros this level has a name and a title: the sefirah of malchus of the world of Atzilus, the revelation of the Shechinah from which illumination comes to Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.
In the Alter Rebbe's language: «וכמו שכתוב בזהר ועץ חיים שהשכינה שהיא מלכות דאצילות [the explanation of the parenthesis will come later; we will skip it for now] היא מתלבשת בהיכל קדש הקדשים דבריאה, שהיא חכמה בינה דעת דבריאה, מוחין דבריאה, ובהתלבשותן במלכות דבריאה נבראו הנשמות והמלאכים שבבריאה» (and as it is written in the Zohar and Etz Chaim, the Shechinah, which is malchus of Atzilus, becomes clothed in the chamber of the Holy of Holies of Beriah, which is chochmah, binah and daas of Beriah, the mochin of Beriah, and through their being clothed in malchus of Beriah, the souls and angels of Beriah were created).
It works like a chain, where the end of the upper link is the beginning of the links beneath it: the end of the world of Atzilus gives vitality to the beginning of the world below it, the world of Beriah. The Holy of Holies of Beriah is, as it were, its mochin, the place that holds the concentration of every detail of that world. It receives from malchus of Atzilus, and from there vitality is drawn to all the creatures of Beriah.
In every world there are sefiros and there are created beings. The sefiros are the Divine faculties that are the source of vitality, and the created beings receive from the sefiros. Take the analogy of the human soul: a person has inner faculties, understandings and emotions, and from them come his actual deeds («Why did you do such and such? Because I understood, because I loved»). So too in the worlds: the created beings are, as it were, the deeds, and the ten sefiros within the worlds are what enliven them.
From the sefirah of malchus of the world of Atzilus there is a drawing down to the Shechinah of the world of Beriah, which is the Holy of Holies and the mochin of the world of Beriah.
From the mochin of Beriah the order of hishtalshelus continues: chochmah, binah, daas, chesed, gevurah, tiferes, netzach, down to malchus; and from malchus of Beriah its creatures are created, the souls and angels of Beriah.
And from there it is drawn to the world of Yetzirah, where the very same process repeats: to the Holy of Holies of Yetzirah, which is its mochin, and from there through the entire order of hishtalshelus down to malchus of Yetzirah, from which the creatures of the world of Yetzirah are created, and so on in the world below it.
The same pattern appears in the way a person influences his surroundings. A king may have a great many plans and feelings within him, but if he does not speak, no one will know what he wants and nothing will get done. Speech, as brought in Pasach Eliyahu, is called malchus, the last of the sefiros, the mouth as it were, and from it all deeds will come. And when he speaks, what is it that he speaks? Everything that was in his mind and in his heart, after a whole order of hishtalshelus. So it is in every world: at the beginning of a world, in its Holy of Holies, the Divine energy of that entire world is revealed, like plans taking shape in the mind of the king; from there it descends through the whole order of hishtalshelus of the faculties, down to speech, from which the actual deeds come. This is the order of hishtalshelus of every world, where from its sefirah of malchus all its creatures are made.
That, in brief, is the idea of the revelation of the Shechinah in the Holy of Holies, which comes about through the Torah: the Torah is both the essence and the covering, in the sense of «עוטה אור כשלמה» (He wraps Himself in light as a garment), and the two together come and accomplish the whole matter.
In the Zohar and in Etz Chaim the word «Shechinah» does not appear, only «malchus of Atzilus», while the Alter Rebbe calls it Shechinah. That is why he added an explanation in parentheses: «שהיא בחינת גילוי אור אין סוף ברוך הוא וחיות שמאיר לעולמות, ולכן נקראת דבר ה' ורוח פיו כביכול, על דרך משל כמו שבאדם הדיבור הוא מגלה מחשבתו הסתומה ונעלמה להשומעים» (for it is the aspect of the revelation of the blessed Ein Sof's light and the vitality that illuminates the worlds, and therefore it is called the word of God and the breath of His mouth, so to speak, by way of analogy, just as in a person speech reveals his closed and hidden thought to those who hear). Shechinah is the vitality that dwells and clothes itself, that comes to be revealed in particulars, and that is precisely the matter of malchus: to come down and be revealed below. For that reason malchus is called speech, since the whole function of speech is to reveal what is hidden and bring it down.
To summarize: in this section we learned that a person's wisdom is not his essence but a faculty the Creator granted him, whereas with the Holy One, «והוא יתברך וחכמתו אחד», He and His wisdom are one, «דאיהו חכים ולא בחכמה ידיעא». The Torah is therefore incomparably higher than the level of Shechinah, and nevertheless it «ירדה בסתר המדרגות», descending until it was clothed in actual physical things, and for that very reason it is the garment for the light of the Shechinah, and from it all the worlds live. We also learned that in its descent from world to world the Shechinah descended with it, and this is the chamber of the Holy of Holies in every world, as explained in the Zohar and Etz Chaim: malchus of Atzilus becomes clothed in the Holy of Holies of Beriah, the mochin of Beriah, and through their being clothed in malchus of Beriah the souls and angels were created.
In the next section we will learn that just as the hishtalshelus exists for the sake of the creatures of each world, so too the Torah itself descends into every world, and because of this descent the Torah has different parts: Chumash, Mishnah and Gemara. Why did the Holy One not reveal His wisdom on a single level? The divisions within the Torah correspond to world after world, and our privilege of learning Gemara, Mishnah and Chumash is a taste of the world of Beriah, the world of Yetzirah and the world of Asiyah, as we will see, with God's help.