In the previous section we learned how Torah and mitzvos clothe the soul and encircle it, and how great the advantage is of actually performing them. To close the chapter, the Alter Rebbe raises the obvious question, the one every student runs into the first time he hears this: how can we say that fulfilling a mitzvah with physical objects brings a person closer to the very Essence of the Creator than the soul's own spiritual delight does? After all, the Torah came down and clothed itself in lowly physical things rather than remaining spiritual and abstract. The Alter Rebbe answers with a simple response, by way of a parable.
The parable: embracing the king
A person tells you that he merited to embrace the king, or that the king embraced him. Now suppose someone comes along and asks: when did this happen, in the summer or in the winter? Was the king wearing only a thin shirt, or a sweater and a suit as well? The question is absurd. Whoever asks it has shown that he does not know what a king is. It makes no difference at all how many garments the king was wrapped in, one or eight, because the whole point is the king himself who is inside them. He is the one embracing and being embraced, and the garments neither add nor detract.
So too with the Holy One, blessed be He. He is the King, and He is the One who clothed Himself in garments: in tefillin, in tzitzis, in the verses of the Torah. What difference does it make that the garments are physical, when the King Himself is inside them? A precise point is in order here: this does not apply to any physical object in the world. A person holding a piece of wood is not holding the King. But a person holding tefillin is holding something in which the King revealed His will; and a person saying a verse of Torah is not merely pronouncing words, but words into which the Holy One, blessed be He, placed Himself. There the King Himself is found, clothed within the thing.
In the language of the Tanya:
"הרי זה כמחבק את המלך דרך משל, שאין הפרש במעלת התקרבותו ודביקותו במלך, בין מחבקו כשהוא לבוש לבוש אחד בין שהוא לבוש כמה לבושים" - "This is like one who embraces the king, by way of example, where there is no difference in the level of his closeness and attachment to the king whether he embraces him when the king wears one garment or when he wears several garments." There is no difference in the intensity of the closeness and the dveikus, and the reason is: "מאחר שגוף המלך בתוכו", "since the body of the king is within them," and that is the central point. And the same holds in the opposite direction: "וכן אם המלך מחבקו בזרועו, גם כשהיא מלובשת תוך מלבושיו", "and likewise if the king embraces him with his arm, even when it is clothed within his garments."
Why does the Alter Rebbe present both directions?
Throughout the discussion we have been learning that Torah and mitzvos clothe the soul and encircle it, in the language of the verse, "כצינה רצון תעטרנו", "You will encircle him with favor as with a shield." According to that, the King is the one embracing the person, not the person embracing the King. Why, then, does the Alter Rebbe open specifically with the side in which the person embraces the King, and only afterward add the side in which the King embraces him? Following the flow of these lines, he should have spoken of one direction only: that the King embraces the person.
And the question goes deeper still: what does it mean that a person embraces the King? It means that the King enters into him and the person encircles Him, as it were, encircling the Holy One, blessed be He. So which is it: does the Holy One, blessed be He, encircle the person, or does the person encircle the Holy One, blessed be He?
This is precisely the question that all of chapter 5 comes to address. These lines are the introduction to that chapter, where we will learn something fascinating: that in Torah study, an advantage found in Torah alone and not in mitzvos, both processes happen at once. The person embraces the King, and the King embraces the person. Both directions are hinted at here, and they will be explained in the lines that follow at the beginning of chapter 5.
"וימינו תחבקני":
Where do we find that the King embraces the person? In the verse in Shir HaShirim: "וימינו תחבקני", "and His right hand embraces me." Shir HaShirim is stated as a parable, and its meaning is that the Holy One, blessed be He, embraces us: His right hand embraces us. And what is His right hand? "שהיא התורה", "which is the Torah," called the right because it was given from the right, as the verse says, "מימינו אש דת למו", "from His right hand, a fiery law for them." The Torah is fire, that is the Written Torah, and "דת למו" contains the letters of the word "תלמוד", the Oral Torah, which was likewise included in the giving of the Torah.
And why was the Torah given from the right? Because "שהיא בחינת חסד", "it is the aspect of chesed," kindness, as it says in Mishlei: "פיה פתחה בחכמה ותורת חסד על לשונה", "she opens her mouth with wisdom, and a Torah of kindness is on her tongue." The Gemara in Sukkah asks: is there then a Torah that is not one of kindness? And it offers several explanations, among them that it depends on the one learning. For one who learns Torah lishmah, for its own sake, it becomes a Torah of chesed; for one who learns not lishmah, he does not merit to see the Torah of chesed in it. But in its essence, the Torah is entirely a Torah of chesed.
And why does the Alter Rebbe add that it is the aspect of "water"?
Chesed: the wealthy man does kindness with the pauper, the higher one with the lower one. The giver always feels that he has lost time or money, and that he has no choice but to bestow upon the one below him. He remains with the sense of being above, and the recipient with the sense of being below.
Water: water descends from a high place to a low place by its very nature. It does not feel that its place is above and that its descent is a matter of having no choice. It seeps downward because it is its nature to be below.
With this the entire thrust of the chapter is complete: the Torah too has its essential place down here below. Torah is studied above as well, but there they have only sparks of it, whereas the Torah as it truly is, is found here in this world. "לא בשמים היא", "it is not in heaven." As we find in the Gemara, when a heavenly voice came forth to decide a matter of halachah, it was rejected with the claim "lo bashamayim hi," that halachah is decided here below. And even the heavenly court comes down to hear when the earthly court has fixed Rosh Chodesh. In the World to Come there is a radiance, a ziv; in this world there is the Torah itself, like water that descends from a high place to a low place.
Therefore a Jew who learns Torah in this world is in the state of "וימינו תחבקני": the Torah surrounds him and embraces him, and he becomes bound up with the King in an inner way.
The place of chapter 5 in the flow of the sefer:
End of chapter 1: it was revealed that a person has two souls, a nefesh ha'elokis and a nefesh habahamis, and in a few lines at the end of the chapter we touched on the nefesh habahamis.
Chapter 2: the greatness of the nefesh ha'elokis, the loftiness of its root and how wondrous it is.
Chapter 3: its faculties, intellect and emotion.
Chapter 4: its garments and their advantages.
So up to this point a full circle has been completed: what the nefesh ha'elokis is, what its faculties are, and what its garments are. Seemingly the time has come to move on to chapter 6 and deal with the other side, with the nefesh habahamis. But before that comes chapter 5.
In summary: in this section we learned the Alter Rebbe's question, how a physical mitzvah brings a person closer to the Creator than a spiritual delight does, and his answer in the parable of one who embraces the king: it makes no difference how many garments the king is wearing, since the body of the king is within them, and therefore it makes no difference whether he embraces the king or the king embraces him with his clothed arm. We noted the precise point that he brings both directions, as an introduction to chapter 5, and we explained "vimino techabkeini," that the Torah is called the right hand, the aspect of chesed and the aspect of water that descends from a high place to a low place, since the essential place of Torah is here below. Finally, we reviewed the flow of the chapters until now.
In the next section we will take up chapter 5 itself: why the chapter enters specifically here, and what the unique advantage of Torah study is, in which the person embraces the King and the King embraces the person as one.