In the previous section we learned that forbidden food draws its life force from the three impure kelipos, and that a person has no power to elevate it to holiness, even if he ate it unknowingly or with the purest intention. In this section we continue with the words of the Alter Rebbe and see that the same is true even of a rabbinic prohibition, and we will learn the difference between the faculty of desire directed at forbidden things and the faculty of desire directed at permitted things.
"Even a rabbinic prohibition":
The Alter Rebbe continues: "אפילו איסור דרבנן" ("even a rabbinic prohibition"). Food that is forbidden only by the word of the Sages has the status of forbidden food in every respect. The example brought earlier, a firstborn animal whose blemish was not shown to a sage, is precisely such a case: the blemish may well be a genuine one, yet the Sages forbade eating the animal as long as it has not been brought before a sage. Even so, the food is bound up with the three impure kelipos and cannot be elevated.
But where do the Sages get the power to change the source of a thing's life force? It is the Torah that determines which divine vitality rests in each thing. And by Torah law this food is permitted, meaning its vitality comes from kelipas nogah. All that has happened is that the Sages, by virtue of the authority the Torah granted them to make safeguards, boundaries and distancing measures, declared it forbidden. Take fowl cooked in milk: the Torah says "לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו" ("do not cook a kid in its mother's milk"), and the Torah prohibition applies only to the meat of an animal, while the Sages went further and forbade the meat of fowl as well. Can the Sages really shift the vitality of an object away from kelipas nogah and over into the three impure kelipos?
To this the Alter Rebbe answers yes: "שחמורים דברי סופרים יותר מדברי תורה" ("for the words of the Scribes are weightier than the words of the Torah"). Indeed, the halachic authorities debate exactly this point regarding rabbinic prohibitions: does the object itself become forbidden, or does the object remain as it was and only the person is barred from eating it? From the Alter Rebbe's words it is clear that this is not merely a restriction placed on the person. The object itself receives a new vitality, from a different place, from the moment the Sages forbade it.
Why are the Sages called "Scribes," and in what way are their words superior to the explicit words of the Torah?
Think of a bestseller, a book so unusual and so engaging that everyone buys it and reads it. One man has read the book and knows everything written in it, and he also merited to meet the author himself, who told him a few things from behind the scenes: a handful of lines that were never written in the book and are not for publication. Which is more precious to him? The contents of the book are open and known to all, while the things the author revealed but never wrote are the most intriguing and the most treasured of all.
So it is Above. The Holy One, blessed be He, wrote a book, the Written Torah, and He is the Author, the "Sofer." And there are things He did not write in the book but revealed to the Sages, upon whose tongues rests the word of G-d, so that they are the channel that conveys the words of the Author Himself. That is why their words are called "divrei sofrim," the words of the Scribes, and they are weightier than the words of the Torah. It emerges that the Sages are not changing the divine vitality at all; they are revealing it. When they determine that a given item is forbidden, this means that the divine vitality of that object has changed and it has become part of the three impure kelipos. Before they forbade it, it stood as it had been; once forbidden, the matter no longer depends on the eater's knowledge or on his intention, as explained above.
The two kinds of the faculty of desire:
Desire for forbidden things: "שד משדים נוכראין" - a demon of the alien, gentile demons. A Jew's nefesh habahamis, his animal soul, has its source in kelipas nogah; that is its entire essence and content, and therefore all of its cravings should by right be for things of nogah alone. A craving for forbidden food has no place in him from his own side at all. If a Jew is drawn to what is forbidden, it is a sign that a power of impurity has clothed itself in him, taken from the yetzer hara of the nations of the world, whose souls are from the three impure kelipos.
Desire for permitted things: "שד משדים יהודאין" - a "Jewish demon," one of our own... "לפי שיכול לחזור לקדושה" ("because it can return to holiness"). A person who eats permitted food purely to satisfy his craving, as explained in chapter 7, brings it down into the three impure kelipos, but the food itself is permitted and it can be restored to holiness.
It is worth adding that every transgression stems from a "ruach shtus," a spirit of folly, as the Sages said: "a person does not transgress unless a spirit of folly has entered him." Even when we are speaking of things that in themselves come from kelipas nogah, the pull toward them comes from that same spirit of folly.
And what exactly is this "craving"? A person who is hungry and eats in order to sustain his body and soul is not craving; his will was of nogah and remained in nogah. Craving begins when he is no longer eating out of hunger, but having already had his fill he takes the extra bite, that last bite he could just as easily have left on the plate with nothing lost. That eating is already for the sake of craving, and that is the food that descends into the three impure kelipos. And a rule to hold on to: better that the leftover food should go to waste than that the soul be ruined.
And where does a Jew get this "demon of the alien demons" from in the first place? From an abundance of cravings for permitted things. Every time a person craves permitted food, he himself brings the three impure kelipos inside him, and after enough times the matter no longer strikes him as anything terrible, since he is living with it constantly. From there he can come to crave even something that is from the very outset of the three impure kelipos. So it turns out that the person brings this upon himself; one simply has to know the source: this one comes from the alien demons and that one from the Jewish demons.
The main point is this: something bound up with the three impure kelipos cannot be elevated, whereas permitted food, whose source is kelipas nogah, can return to holiness, as explained in chapter 7. When? When the person does teshuvah and resolves to use all the strength he has received and stored up over the course of his life from permitted foods for Torah and mitzvos, channeling his energies from now on into holiness. "אך מכל מקום, קודם שחזר לקדושה הוא סטרא אחרא וקליפה" ("but in any case, before it has returned to holiness it is sitra achra and kelipah"). Even someone who ate food with the most meticulous kosher certification: if his intention was for the sake of craving, then in the meantime the matter stands with him on the level of the three impure kelipos, and he carries with him the forces of kelipah and sitra achra that his eating produced, until he elevates them through his teshuvah.
In practical avodah:
It is hard to define precisely where need ends and craving begins, and separating the craving from the eating is no simple work. Simply being aware that such a thing exists is already an accomplishment, and there are people capable of reaching this level. One should not look at life as "all or nothing." Rather, at every point and at every meal there should be an awareness: "right now I need to hold back," or to wait another two or three minutes while the food is already sitting in front of him on the plate. Even that brief holding back is called breaking the craving and the chase after it, and every such step lessens the grip of the three impure kelipos.
The Alter Rebbe adds that even afterward, once a person has elevated everything to holiness, "הרשימו ממנו נשאר דבוק בגוף" ("an impression of it remains attached to the body"). A trace remains in the body, as was discussed in chapter 7: the blood and flesh that were formed from that eating which was done for the sake of craving have already become part of him, and a decision that from today onward everything will be as it should does not undo them. The spiritual energy has been transferred to holiness, but the physical cells that were formed in the body remain attached to it.
And the reason: "להיות כי מכל מאכל ומשקה נעשה תיכף דם ובשר מבשרו" ("because from every food and drink there is immediately formed blood and flesh of his flesh"). At the very moment a person puts the food into his mouth, it becomes blood and flesh of his flesh.
In summary: in this section we learned that even a rabbinic prohibition brings food down into the three impure kelipos, since "the words of the Scribes are weightier than the words of the Torah": the object itself receives a new vitality, and the Sages are not changing the divine vitality but revealing it, like an author revealing what he did not write in his book. We also learned the distinction between the faculty of desire for the forbidden, which is a "demon of the alien demons," and the faculty of desire for the permitted, which is a "demon of the Jewish demons" and can return to holiness; that an abundance of cravings for permitted things is what gives birth to the pull toward the forbidden; and that even after teshuvah the impression remains attached to the body, because from every food and drink there is immediately formed blood and flesh of his flesh.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 8 and go deeper into the impression that food leaves in the body and the ways of refining it.