In the previous section we examined the two ways of understanding the phrase "bnei aliyah": first, a person who refines himself from below and rises upward; second, the yichud of Kudsha Brich Hu u'Shechintei, drawing G-dliness down here below. Now we will learn the great principle that shows these are not two separate stages at all, but a single matter, each side depending on the other.
There is no influence from above without an arousal from below:
This is how the Holy One created His world: no influence is drawn down from above except as the result of an arousal from below. From here we see how the two meanings of "bnei aliyah" are bound up with one another. When a person refines himself below, turns evil into good and rises upward, that very act immediately draws G-dliness down here. It is not that stage one finishes and only then stage two begins; rather, these are two sides of one process that move together. Every drawing down from above depends on the arousal and the investment from below, and the one brings about the other.
The mashal of the giver and the receiver:
To express this idea, the Alter Rebbe uses a concept taken from the Zohar and Kabbalah, one that appears again and again in maamarim of chassidus, and whose root is already in Tanach: Shir HaShirim of King Solomon is one long extended mashal about the Holy One and the Jewish people. The Holy One is compared to a husband and a groom, and the Jewish people to a wife and a bride. Why? Because the difference between husband and wife, between groom and bride, is that the man is the one who gives and bestows, while the woman is the one who receives. Therefore every influence that comes from above is spoken of in the masculine, and every arousal and service that comes from below is spoken of in the feminine.
In the Zohar, every influence and drawing down is called "water," since it is the nature of water to flow from a high place to a low place. From this come two terms:
Mayin nukvin (mem-nun): the arousal and the deed that come from below, from the side of the receiver.
Mayin dechurin (mem-daled): the influence and the drawing down that come from above, from the side of the giver.
In maamarim of chassidus these terms appear in their abbreviated forms, mem-nun and mem-daled, and they depend on one another. What causes mayin dechurin to be drawn down from above? The raising up of mayin nukvin from below. The very same idea can be stated in the language of Kabbalah, and it can equally be seen in the plain language of everyday life.
The wording of the Tanya:
The Alter Rebbe writes that "על ידי הבירורים שמבררים מנוגה" ("through the refinements that are refined out of nogah") one raises up mayin nukvin, and supernal unions are brought about which draw down mayin dechurin. To understand this, we first have to explain what a "birur," a refining, actually is.
In the earlier chapters we learned that this world contains klipas nogah as well as the three impure klipos. All the objects of the world are on the level of klipas nogah, and they are called that because it is possible to sanctify them and raise them into holiness. Before a person sanctifies them they are a mixture of good and evil, and when he sanctifies the world he extracts the good out of the evil. This act is called "birur," refining, just as separating food from its waste is called bereirah, and on Shabbos it is one of the forbidden labors, the melachah of borer, sorting.
Every act a Jew does in order to sanctify himself and his world is a refining of the sparks out of nogah: putting on tefillin, wearing tzitzis, affixing a mezuzah, making a blessing before eating, keeping Shabbos. In each one of these a person conquers another portion of the animal side and raises it up into holiness. This is the raising up of mayin nukvin, the arousal that comes from below.
This is true even of the simplest act. Take a cup of water. A person could have drunk it without a blessing, and by doing so he would have dragged that innocent water down into klipah. Once he made a blessing over it and drank, he has refined it and raised that plain, ordinary water into holiness. And so it is with every single act.
The arousal from below acts immediately above: "ונעשים ייחודים עליונים" ("and supernal unions are brought about"), the yichud of Kudsha Brich Hu u'Shechintei, in which a person draws the Creator down here below. In plain terms: once there is someone to bestow upon, the arousal is given from above. Every act a person arouses from below immediately draws forth an influence from above, the bringing down of mayin dechurin.
In the words of the Tanya: "שהם מימי החסדים שבכל מצווה ומצווה מרמ"ח מצוות עשה" ("which are the waters of kindness contained in each of the 248 positive mitzvos"), for they are all on the level of chassadim and mayin dechurin, that is, the drawing down of the holiness of His G-dliness from above to below, to be clothed within the lower realms. Every mitzvah is a drawing of Divine flow into this world: the deed of the mitzvah that a person performs is mayin nukvin, and the drawing down that it brings about is mayin dechurin.
It is worth noting that these effects take place even when a person has never learned what the Tanya says and has no understanding of what his deeds accomplish. The very performance of the mitzvah does its work, like a person who presses a button and the result follows of itself. Here we are learning what is brought about through it, but the very same result is produced by a simple person who does it without any of this. This is the whole point of the mitzvos: to sanctify the world and draw the Creator into it, and all of this drawing down is accomplished through the doing of the mitzvos.
It emerges, then, that the two meanings of "bnei aliyah," raising evil up into good on the one hand, and the yichud of Kudsha Brich Hu u'Shechintei on the other, are not merely two stages in a person's service. In essence they are literally one matter, each one dependent on the other.
Summary of Chapter 10:
In chapter 10 we dealt with the inner levels of those who are called "tzaddikim": the tzaddik she'eino gamur, the incomplete tzaddik, which is itself a lofty level, and the tzaddik gamur, the complete tzaddik, which is a level entirely in a class of its own. What they share is an inner service in which there is no sin in actual practice, and not even a desire to sin that has to be wrestled with. On the contrary, all of the person's wants, cravings and feelings are for holiness alone, and the difference between the two is in how complete that level is.
Introduction to Chapter 11:
Chapter 11 deals with the opposite extreme, the bottom end. The purpose of the sefer, as is well known, is to be a "book for beinonim," for intermediates. The level of the beinoni is what is truly demanded of every Jew, and we should only be so fortunate as to come close to it.
And here is the chiddush of this chapter: the beinoni is not merely someone who keeps the mitzvos in practice. That alone is not enough. It is possible for a person to keep all the mitzvos and not transgress even once, and still be a rasha. The definition of a beinoni is kabbolas ol malchus shomayim, accepting the yoke of Heaven's sovereignty, meaning that sin is simply unthinkable to him.
Someone who actually stumbles into sin is certainly a rasha. But even someone who does not stumble in practice, who when it comes down to the deed says "No, I don't want to," if the thing is not unthinkable to him, then the very fact that his soul entertains the possibility of stumbling is itself a throwing off of the yoke of Heaven's sovereignty. That is a spiritual condition which defines him as a rasha. The beinoni is one who not only does not stumble in practice, but for whom the thing is utterly unthinkable, that is, it simply does not exist for him at all.
Every person can find in his own life severe transgressions where it is not only that he does not stumble in practice, but that he cannot even entertain the thought. If he studies in Torah about the sin of murder and places himself opposite it, he will say: it is not merely that I would not do it in practice, the thing is unthinkable. But there are other matters that seem lighter to him, and even though they go against the will of Hashem, he will say of himself: I don't do that, yet I don't feel that I stand on the other side of the barricade from it. Ask him, "Is it possible that you might one day speak lashon hara?" and he will answer, "Possible; maybe in practice I'll be careful, but the thing is not unthinkable to me." That is a sign that his soul does not flee from it the way one flees from fire.
And the same in reverse. There are Jews for whom eating non-kosher meat is absolutely unthinkable, and they need no external safeguards at all; yet when it comes to food whose kashrus is not one hundred percent mehudar, a person will say, "It's nothing, a lower standard is good enough for me." Each person, at his own level, finds things that are unthinkable to him and things that are not. The beinoni described in chapter 11 is one for whom everything is unthinkable: anything at all that goes against the will of Hashem. This is the work we must do on ourselves as a result of learning Tanya, that anything which contradicts the will of the Creator should become unthinkable to us.
Two questions arise from this. If everything is unthinkable to him, is he not then a tzaddik? And further: in a beinoni the yetzer hara is in full force, so how can it be that sin is unthinkable to him? The analysis of the level of the beinoni will come in chapter 12, in its proper place.
To summarize: In this section we learned that there is no influence from above without an arousal from below, and therefore the two meanings of "bnei aliyah" are one matter, each dependent on the other. We examined the mashal of the giver and the receiver in Shir HaShirim and the concepts of mayin nukvin and mayin dechurin; we explained the concept of "birur" within klipas nogah, how every mitzvah and every act of holiness raises mayin nukvin out of it and draws waters of kindness into the world, the drawing down of the holiness of His G-dliness to be clothed within the lower realms. We also summarized chapter 10 and opened chapter 11, whose chiddush is that even one who does not stumble in practice, if sin is not unthinkable to him, has within him a throwing off of the yoke of Heaven's sovereignty.
In the next section we will learn, with G-d's help, chapter 11 itself, with its detailed definitions of the rasha and of kabbolas ol malchus shomayim.