In the previous section we studied the difference between chochmah and binah as they exist in the soul, and we saw why the Alter Rebbe calls them "father and mother": because they produce offspring, the emotions of love and awe. Now we go on to see how meditation (hisbonenus) on the greatness of G-d actually gives birth to the branches of love and fear.
Chochmah is like seeing, binah is like hearing, and from the two of them the offspring are born: feelings of love or of awe. When we speak of hisbonenus, that is, of chochmah and binah applied to the greatness of G-d, the Alter Rebbe lists the points a Jew contemplates: memale kol almin (the Divine light that fills all worlds), sovev kol almin (the Divine light that encompasses all worlds), and kula kamei kelo chashiv (everything before Him is considered as nothing). Contemplating these gives birth to emotion: first awe and dread, and afterwards a powerful love, a love like flames of fire, reaching a longing and a thirst to cleave to the Creator of the world.
"והצימאון הוא מיסוד האש שבנפש האלוקית" - "And this thirst comes from the element of fire in the nefesh ha'Elokis":
The Alter Rebbe concludes the matter with a ruling: "והצימאון הוא מיסוד האש שבנפש האלוקית" ("and this thirst comes from the element of fire in the nefesh ha'Elokis"). The thirst and the love that a Jew arrives at through contemplating the greatness of the Creator come from the element of fire within the G-dly soul.
We already encountered this in chapter 1, where the four elements of the nefesh habahamis were listed along with several examples. The nefesh ha'Elokis, too, contains four elements, and its element of fire is what gives birth to the love of G-d: it is what causes a Jew to have a burning love for the Creator of the world.
Why is this great love specifically called "thirst"?
Thirst and fire are bound up with one another: fire produces dryness, and thirst comes from dryness. A Jew feels how far he is from the greatness of the Creator, and out of that feeling he thirsts to come close. This thirst, to be absorbed into and cleave to the Creator of the world, comes from the element of fire in the G-dly soul, and from it the love and the thirst are born: "כמו שכתבו הטבעיים" ("as the natural scientists have written"), meaning that even the scholars of the natural world write that fire is located in the heart and it is what stirs the emotions, "וכן הוא בעץ חיים, שיסוד האש הוא בלב" ("and so it is in Etz Chaim, that the element of fire is in the heart").
The element of water in the soul:
The Alter Rebbe adds two lines to teach us that the nefesh ha'Elokis also contains an element of water, and he describes where it is located: "הוא מקור המים והליחות" ("it is the source of water and moisture"). Water is something moist, as opposed to fire, which is dry, and the source of the element of water in the soul is the brain, as explained "בעץ חיים שער נ', שהוא בחינת חכמה הנקראת מים שבנפש האלוקית" ("in Etz Chaim, Gate 50, that this is the faculty of chochmah, which is called the 'water' of the nefesh ha'Elokis").
Here is the reason: the nature of water is coolness, and the nature of fire is heat. One of the essential differences between the mind and the heart is that the mind weighs everything coolly and dispassionately, without personal interests and calculations, and considers the matter as it truly is, while the heart takes everything emotionally, with closeness and enthusiasm. Therefore the element of water, whose character is coolness, belongs to the mind, and the element of fire, whose character is heat, is connected to the heart.
Why does the Alter Rebbe introduce the element of water precisely here, in a chapter dealing with the arousal of love?
With this he is hinting at the proper order in a Jew's closeness and love for the Creator: after the fire, the water must come. In the language of chassidus this is called ratzo v'shov, running forward and returning. A person who is aroused with a great love, with enthusiasm and excitement, if he remains only on the line of fire, is liable out of the intensity of his love to forget himself, his surroundings, his family and his mission in life. He loves the Creator and wants to abandon everything, sit in a corner and be in a state of kelos hanefesh, the soul expiring in longing. Heaven forbid that a person should follow that line alone, like Nadav and Avihu, who ascended heavenward in their attachment and departed from this world.
The fire is necessary and the enthusiasm is necessary, but immediately one must remember the matter of water, which extinguishes the fire. The meaning of water is this: a person indeed must be aroused with love, with longing, with thirst and with enthusiasm in all their expressions, but immediately he must remember to return to his mission in the world, to his role and to his body. A person must not say, out of his enthusiasm in the service of G-d, "From now on I will fast for two weeks and barely eat, because I want to be attached to the Creator of the world and forget about physicality." That is not the correct path.
Therefore, right after the thirst, he must pour the water over himself, and know the proper order of ratzo, which is immediately followed by shov, the return to the framework. This is in fact a higher level: the heart is stirred with a lofty arousal, but one must know how to bring the water down upon it from above. That is why, immediately after presenting the exaltation and the thirst, the Alter Rebbe stresses that there is also a matter of water here.
"ושאר המידות כולן הן ענפי היראה והאהבה ותולדותיהן" - "And all the other middos are branches of fear and love and their offspring":
Having brought the example of love of G-d and fear of G-d, which are born of chochmah and binah, the Alter Rebbe goes on to clarify that the heart contains other kinds of emotion as well: "ושאר המידות כולן הן ענפי היראה והאהבה ותולדותיהן" ("and all the other middos are branches of fear and love and their offspring"). A person's emotional arousal is not love and fear alone; there are additional middos. If so, why does the Tanya take specifically love and fear as its example? Because all the other middos are like branches attached to a root: love and fear are the basic emotions, and all the rest are branches that extend out of love and fear, that is, they come as their offspring and result, "כמו שבארנו במקום אחר" ("as we have explained elsewhere").
Let us illustrate what the branches of love and fear are and how they too are active in the service of G-d. There are several ways of diagramming the structure of the ten sefiros, and one of them is in three lines: a right line, a left line and a middle line. On the right line stands chesed, which is love, and on the left line stands gevurah. And these are their offspring: beneath chesed, on the right line, is the middah of netzach, and beneath gevurah, on the left line, is the middah of hod. These are the branches of chesed and gevurah, the branches of love and fear.
Where do these branches express themselves?
The example given in chassidus is this: a person was aroused during davening with love of G-d or fear of G-d; he had chesed or gevurah, love or fear. After davening he went back to his business and his daily life, and the enthusiasm he had during davening was forgotten. That is human nature, and no one remains after davening the way he was during it. Here we say to the Jew: true, the chesed has fled and the love has fled, but at least let the branch remain.
Netzach, the branch of chesed: the person continues along the line of love of G-d even though the revealed feeling has disappeared. And even though he now faces obstacles, delays and disturbances that run counter to the love he once had, he stands firm and overcomes (menatze'ach) them all and continues along that very same line. He has no revealed feeling of love, but he lives on the line of netzach, and at the very least he carries out the conclusion that the love produced in him: keeping the mitzvos in practice.
Hod, the branch of gevurah: above hod stands gevurah, which is fear, yiras Shamayim. A person who has yiras Shamayim as a revealed feeling, fortunate is his lot; and if it has faded somewhat and is not present with the same intensity, at least let there be hod. Hod is an expression of hoda'ah, acknowledgment, as in "hodu laShem," and like the phrase in halachah "מודים חכמים לרבי פלוני" ("the Sages concede to Rabbi so-and-so"), meaning that they disagreed and in the end one concedes that the other is right, even though he did not fully understand and was not entirely convinced by the other's reasoning. There is a state in which revealed yiras Shamayim does not shine in a person, but at least he is in a state of bittul before the Creator of the world to the degree that he "concedes" that G-d is right. He does not have the active feeling, but he still holds the conclusion drawn from the hour when the emotion of fear shone in him openly: that he is nothing and nothingness, that he fears the Creator of the world, and that the Creator is the essential thing and the truth. When the real intensity of the emotion vanishes, at least the acknowledgment remains that the Holy One is the true and correct one, and not the person himself.
This is what the Alter Rebbe means when he writes that all the other middos are branches of fear and love: a branch of fear and a branch of love, and all these branches come as a result of chochmah and binah, for through hisbonenus the emotion is born.
In summary: in this section we learned that the thirst and love for the Creator come from the element of fire in the nefesh ha'Elokis, which is located in the heart, and that opposite it stands the element of water, whose source is the mind and chochmah, whose character is coolness and the shov that follows the ratzo. We saw the need for the proper order: after the fire and the enthusiasm must come the water and the return to the framework. We also learned that all the other middos are branches of love and fear, as illustrated by netzach as the branch of chesed and hod as the branch of gevurah, and how even when the revealed emotion disappears, the practical conclusion of the hisbonenus remains.
In the next section we will deal with daas as the root of emotion: how daas is the foundation and the depth from which the feelings of love and fear flow and draw their strength.