In the previous section we learned that the garments, Torah and mitzvos, stand higher than the soul itself. How are we to understand this? In chapter 2 we learned that the soul is "חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש", literally a part of G-d above, drawn from His wisdom, and He and His wisdom are one. If so, the neshamah is a part of G-d, and Torah and mitzvos are an expression of the Holy One, blessed be He, so what exactly is the difference between them? The Alter Rebbe teaches that the two are not at all the same. The distinction is fine and subtle, and we will arrive at it both from the wording of this chapter and from the precise differences in language between chapter 2 and chapter 4, for in Tanya every expression is exact and deliberate.
The language of the Zohar:
As the Zohar states: "דאורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד", the Torah (which includes the mitzvos) and the Holy One, blessed be He, are literally one and the same.
A Jew once asked the Rebbe: there is another well known expression, "תלת קשרין מתקשרין דא בדא", three bonds are bound one to the other, Yisrael, Oraisa and Kudsha Brich Hu. If so, we are speaking of a threesome that is joined together, not of two that are one. The Rebbe answered him in a letter that one must be precise in the wording: "מתקשרין דא בדא", bound one to the other, is a phrase that can be used even of two things that remain essentially separate from each other. Of the Torah, however, it is not said that it is bound with the Holy One, blessed be He, but rather "אורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד", the Torah is G-d Himself. Regarding Yisrael no such sharp expression appears, and the Rebbe writes there that he had not found anywhere the phrase "כולא חד" used about Yisrael and Oraisa.
In the same vein one must be precise in the phrase "חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש": the neshamah is a part of G-d, whereas the Torah is G-d Himself, not a part. The precision of these expressions teaches that the level of Torah is incomparably higher than that of the neshamah.
The Alter Rebbe continues and explains: "דאורייתא היא חכמתו ורצונו של הקב"ה", for the Torah is the wisdom and will of the Holy One, blessed be He. And we already learned in chapter 2 that His wisdom and will and He Himself, in His very Essence, are kula chad, entirely one. In the words of the Rambam: "כי הוא היודע והוא המדע", for He is the Knower and He is the Knowledge, as was quoted above in his name.
A precision in the order of the Rambam's words:
This very phrase of the Rambam was already brought in chapter 2, but not in the same order. There it reads "שהוא המדע והוא היודע", He is the Knowledge and He is the Knower, and here "כי הוא היודע והוא המדע", He is the Knower and He is the Knowledge. Why did the Alter Rebbe reverse the order?
In chapter 2, which deals with the neshamah, the starting point is the "מדע", the Knowledge: the soul is the wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, and from there it connects to the "יודע", to G-d Himself. Here, where he is speaking of Torah, the order is reversed: he begins with the "יודע", with G-d Himself, and from Him is drawn the "מדע", His wisdom, which is the Torah. This precision is brought in Likkutei Levi Yitzchak, by the Rebbe's father: even the citation from the Rambam changes, in order to show that nothing compares to the power of Torah.
Let us return to our subject. The soul as it is in itself is certainly a part of G-d above, and it is bound to the Creator in all its qualities. But a soul that makes use of its garments, thinking and learning Torah, speaking and acting and fulfilling mitzvos, takes hold of the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, and not merely a point of connection on one level or another. The difference between the two is infinite, utterly beyond comparison.
And yet it remains true that the neshamah of a Jew is rooted in G-dliness on a higher level than Torah. This is one of the reasons that a Jew who has sinned, G-d forbid, and has transgressed the Torah, has still not severed his bond with G-dliness: "ישראל אף על פי שחטא, ישראל הוא", a Jew, even though he has sinned, is still a Jew. We find wonderful expressions on this theme, such as the words of Tanna d'Vei Eliyahu: "Torah and Yisrael, I do not know which of them came first", and it is stated there that Yisrael preceded the Torah. Here in chapter 4, however, we have learned that the level of Torah is far higher than the level of a Jew's soul.
The truth is that there is no contradiction here at all; everything depends on which situation we are speaking about. The soul as it is in its root, before it descends into a body, is incomparably higher than Torah. But once the neshamah has been clothed in a body here below, there is no way to bond and connect with G-dliness other than through Torah. A Jew cannot claim: I am a Jew and I am connected by my very essence, so why do I need to learn Torah? True, in his root above he is bound to G-dliness in his very being, but here below the connection must pass through Torah and mitzvos.
This principle applied to ahavas Yisrael:
There are two famous statements of our Sages that at first glance seem to contradict each other:
"ואהבת לרעך כמוך - זה כלל גדול בתורה", "Love your fellow as yourself, this is a great principle in the Torah." From this expression it emerges that the Torah has many principles and many details, and "love your fellow as yourself" is one of the principles of the Torah.
"זהו כל התורה כולה", "This is the entire Torah." Hillel the Elder said to the man who asked to be converted while standing on one foot: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow", and he added that this is the whole Torah in its entirety. Not one principle within the Torah, but all of it.
Here too the two statements are reconciled by the same principle, and everything depends on which situation is being spoken of. In terms of the ultimate truth, in terms of the root of things, certainly the entire Torah is ahavas Yisrael, since the Jew is loftier than the Torah. But we are here as souls in bodies in this world, and in this situation the Holy One, blessed be He, determined that everything, including ahavas Yisrael, must pass through the Torah, and that the Torah is what sets the rules even in ahavas Yisrael. Thus both statements are true.
How does the Infinite fit into a few words?
How can it be said that a person who learns a single line of Torah, a verse such as "In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth", a finite verse that even a small child understands, is thereby grasping G-d Himself? A large barrel cannot be poured into a small cup, an entire ocean certainly not, and something infinite surely cannot enter a small vessel. How does the Infinite, the utterly boundless, enter into a few words of Mishnah, of Gemara, of a chapter of Tanya, or into the performance of a single mitzvah?
These are the Alter Rebbe's words: "ואף דהקב"ה נקרא אין סוף ולגדולתו אין חקר ולית מחשבה תפיסא ביה כלל", even though the Holy One, blessed be He, is called Ein Sof, without end, and His greatness is unsearchable, and no thought can grasp Him at all. These three expressions correspond to the three levels we learned in chapter 3: memale kol almin (filling all worlds), sovev kol almin (encompassing all worlds), and kulhu kamei kelo chashivin (before Him all are considered as nothing). "וכן ברצונו וחכמתו", and so too with His will and His wisdom: just as there is no grasp of the Creator Himself, so there is no grasp of His will and wisdom. And corresponding to those same three levels he brings three verses: "אין חקר לתבונתו", His understanding is unsearchable; "החקר אלוקה תמצא", can you by searching find G-d; and "כי לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם", for My thoughts are not your thoughts.
From here comes the question: if there is no grasp of Him and no understanding of Him whatsoever, how can we say that by learning two words of Torah a person takes hold of the Creator Himself? This seems to be a thing and its very opposite.
"Where you find His greatness, there you find His humility":
Here a great wonder takes place, and about this our Sages said: in the place where you find the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you find His humility. One who looks for His greatness in greatness will not find it; one who looks for it in His humility will find it there. If a person searches for G-d in Atzilus, in Beriah and in the upper worlds, he will find many lofty levels, but they are all levels that have a limit. Humility means descent and tzimtzum, contraction: precisely in this physical world, in physical mitzvos and in a Torah given over into limited frameworks, there His true greatness is found.
This is what he writes: "וצמצם הקב"ה רצונו וחכמתו בתרי"ג מצוות התורה ובהלכותיהן ובצירופי אותיות תנ"ך ודרשותיהן שבאגדות ומדרשי חכמינו ז"ל", the Holy One, blessed be He, contracted His will and wisdom into the 613 mitzvos of the Torah and their halachos, and into the combinations of the letters of Tanach and their expositions in the aggados and midrashim of our Sages, of blessed memory.
What is this tzimtzum?
Sometimes "tzimtzum" is used in the sense of reduction: a teacher sitting with a first grader reduces the depth of the idea, gives up on details and offers only a summary, because if he were to give the child the full depth the child would not understand. That is not the meaning here. The tzimtzum before us is a matter of compression and concentration, like an atom, whose tiny size contains tremendous power. The quantity is small, but within it the entire Ein Sof is concentrated, and that is the force of this kind of tzimtzum.
"בתרי"ג מצוות התורה", in the 613 mitzvos of the Torah: the very number, six hundred and thirteen, is already a tzimtzum as compared with one infinite thing.
"ובהלכותיהן", and in their halachos: the halachos too are a tzimtzum. A mitzvah such as "love your fellow as yourself" is seemingly a spiritual mitzvah, since love is an emotion; but the halachos place it into a defined framework of what to do and how to do it, so that it is not enough to say "I love" without expressing it in practice.
"ובצירופי אותיות תנ"ך", and in the combinations of the letters of Tanach: the letters of Tanach are counted and exact, and their combinations carry holiness. That is why a Jew who opens a Tehillim and says the words without understanding a single word has accomplished something real by saying them; and one who is called up to the Torah and recites the blessings, even though he does not understand what is being read, has not made a blessing in vain, since he is saying the very letter combinations of Tanach. The letter combinations themselves are a divine power that has contracted itself into them.
"ודרשותיהן", and their expositions: all the derashos and midrashim in the aggados and midrashim of our Sages, of blessed memory.
It emerges that the Holy One, blessed be He, concentrated His Infinity into these limited points. Therefore one who touches such a limited point, through the garment of thought, the garment of speech or the garment of action, which are the only way to touch those divine contractions, connects with the Ein Sof, with the Creator of the world Himself.
The purpose of the tzimtzum:
Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, contract Himself into these frameworks? "כדי שכל הנשמה או רוח ונפש שבגוף האדם תוכל להשיגן בדעתה ולקיימן", so that every neshamah, or ruach and nefesh, that is in a human body should be able to grasp them with its understanding and to fulfill them. Every Jew, on whatever level shines within him, neshamah, ruach, or even the lowest of them, nefesh, as these levels were explained in chapter 2, and specifically as it is within a human body, is able to grasp the divine Infinite with its understanding and to fulfill it. "להשיגן", to grasp them, is through the garment of thought; "לקיימן", to fulfill them, is through the garments of speech and action; and the three together correspond to the three garments.
And who gains from all this? The soul itself. The intellectual faculties clothe themselves in thought and the middos in speech and action, and when a person fulfills the will of the Creator through the three garments he enables his soul to connect with the Ein Sof: "ועל ידי זה תתלבש בכל עשר בחינותיה בשלושה לבושים אלו", and through this it becomes clothed, in all ten of its faculties, in these three garments. The ten powers of the soul, the intellect and the emotions detailed at the beginning of chapter 3, become clothed in the three garments explained at the beginning of chapter 4.
From here we can also understand the words of Pirkei Avos, "ועל כורחך אתה מת", against your will you die. A person wants to remain in this world, not in order to eat and drink, but in order to fulfill the will of the Creator. The neshamah knows that here, specifically within a body and within this world, it connects with the Ein Sof.
And for this reason, then, the level of the garments is greater than the level of the soul, incomparably and infinitely so.
In summary: in this section we clarified the difference between the neshamah and the Torah. The neshamah is "a part of G-d above", while the Torah is G-d Himself: "אורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד", and not merely "מתקשרין דא בדא", bound one to the other. We noted the precision in the reversed order of the Rambam's words between chapter 2 ("He is the Knowledge and He is the Knower") and chapter 4 ("He is the Knower and He is the Knowledge"), as pointed out in Likkutei Levi Yitzchak. We learned that although His greatness is unsearchable, "where you find His greatness, there you find His humility", and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, contracted His will and wisdom into the 613 mitzvos, their halachos, the letter combinations of Tanach and their expositions, a tzimtzum that is a concentration and compression of the Infinite into a limited point. And all of this so that the soul within the body should be able to grasp and to fulfill through the three garments, and thereby become clothed, in all ten of its faculties, in those garments, whose level is incomparably higher than that of the soul.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's precise words in chapter 4.