In the previous section we learned that mundane acts, and even a milsa d'bedichusa (a light, humorous remark), can rise up into holiness when they are done l'sheim Shomayim, for the sake of Heaven. Now we will look at the example the Alter Rebbe brings for this, and at the remarkable precision hidden inside it.
"As Rava did for his students":
The Gemara in Maseches Shabbos relates that before Rava would begin his lecture to his students, he would first say a milsa d'bedichusa before them, "u'badchei rabbanan", and the sages sitting before him would laugh. Only afterward would he open the study session itself.
The Gemara raises a difficulty: a student sitting before his teacher is required to sit in awe and reverence and in complete seriousness, and it is said of him that "his lips drip myrrh." How, then, could Rava open with a joke? The Gemara resolves the question by pointing to the timing: before the lecture begins, the joke has a job to do, to open the hearts of the listeners and awaken in them the desire to be students and to listen. Once the heart has been opened and the students have taken on the stamp of studenthood, the lecture itself proceeds with the seriousness it deserves. Had the students sat in a lighthearted mood during the learning itself, it would have been impossible to teach them anything. So here we have an example of a milsa d'bedichusa that becomes a matter of holiness.
A precise reading: Rabbah or Rava?
Here lies a beautiful point of precision, one that only a person thoroughly at home in the Gemara and its variant texts would notice. The Rebbe discussed it at length at the farbrengen of Yud Shevat 5724: if you open the Gemara in Maseches Shabbos looking for the source of this story, you will find a difference of one letter. The Gemara reads "Rabbah" with a hei, while the Alter Rebbe writes "Rava" with an alef. Rabbah and Rava are two different people, and Rabbah has already come up in our study of the first chapter of Tanya: he is the one who said of himself, "someone like me is a beinoni."
The Rebbe first answers that there is no disagreement here at all, because in terms of the facts there is no room for one: there are indeed versions of the text that read "Rava," and in practice both of them acted this way, both Rabbah and Rava would preface a milsa d'bedichusa for their students.
Still, the precision demands explanation. The common version in all the familiar places is "Rabbah" with a hei, while the version "Rava" is rare and appears in only a few scattered places that only someone fluent in the entire Torah would locate. Why did the Alter Rebbe deliberately choose the less common version? It is well known that he weighed every single letter in writing the Tanya, and he even testified about himself that he sat six weeks over a single letter. The Rebbe gives a fascinating explanation, but first we need to appreciate the personality of each of these two sages:
Rabbah: It was said of him "d'lo posik pumei migirsa", his mouth never ceased from Torah study for even a moment, to the point that even the Angel of Death had no power over him, as we learned in chapter 1 of Tanya. One might have assumed that precisely he would not preface a milsa d'bedichusa, since that same time could have been used for learning Torah. So the Gemara teaches us something new: even he reduced his own learning for the sake of his students.
Rava: As we learned earlier, his own learning, unlike Abaye's, was full of vitality and delight. One might have argued that precisely he has no need for a milsa d'bedichusa: someone whose learning is dry needs an opening that awakens, but someone whose whole learning is saturated with vitality would seem not to need it at all. So we are taught something new: even Rava, whose learning was entirely alive, opened with a milsa d'bedichusa.
Why, then, did the Alter Rebbe choose to bring specifically Rava? Because Rabbah's level, a man whose Torah is his whole occupation and whose mouth never pauses from learning, is rare and not relevant to every person. The Alter Rebbe prefers an example from what is common: people whose learning itself is full of vitality, and even they will sometimes preface a milsa d'bedichusa before learning. And when its purpose is to open the heart, it is positive and good. All of this teaches us how exact every letter of the Tanya is, down to the smallest detail.
Let us return to our subject. We have seen that any act a person does, if it is a neutral act performed for a bodily need, stands in kelipas noga, and the one and only way to elevate it into holiness is to do it for the sake of Heaven.
"But one who is among the gluttons of meat and the guzzlers of wine":
The Alter Rebbe now describes the other side: someone who eats that very same meat, but not the way Rav Nachman ate it, for clarity of mind, and not on Shabbos and Yom Tov to fulfill the halachah of eating rich meat, but purely out of gluttony. "Gluttons of meat" is a person who loves meat and eats it out of appetite; "guzzlers of wine" describes someone who drinks wine because it pleases his palate and keeps adding cup after cup. Such a person is not looking for the G-dly purpose in the thing but for the bodily pleasure in it, to fill the craving of his body and his nefesh habahamis, the animal soul. That craving comes from the element of water among the four evil elements of the nefesh habahamis, as we learned in chapter 1, the element from which the trait of desire flows. And this is not limited to meat and wine; it applies to any food and drink, even bread and water, whenever it is consumed for the sake of the craving.
And what becomes of the vitality within the food? "Hinei al yedei zeh yored chiyus habasar v'hayayin shebekirbo", through this, the vitality of the meat and the wine inside him descends. Before being eaten, the food stood on the level of kelipas noga; once it is eaten for the sake of craving, the person has caused it to fall: "v'nichlal l'fi sha'ah b'ra gamur shebeshalosh kelipos hatmei'os", it becomes absorbed for the moment in the outright evil of the three impure kelipos. If the animal could speak, it would cry out: I was better off left on the shelf on the level of noga! What have you done to me by dragging me down?
And more than that: "v'gufo na'aseh lahem levush u'merkavah l'fi sha'ah", the body itself becomes, in that moment, a garment and a chariot for the three impure kelipos, because the vitality and freshness within it come from what he ate and drank for the sake of craving, which means that the craving is what is now steering his body. This is an extremely serious situation, because every single moment, with everything that enters the mouth and every word that comes out of it, if it is done for the sake of bodily craving it falls into the three impure kelipos.
But the Alter Rebbe adds words of reassurance: "ad asher yashuv ha'adam v'yachzor l'avodas Hashem u'l'soraso", until the person turns back and returns to the service of G-d and to His Torah. If the person rouses himself and regrets it and says: why should I remain on this level? The strength and vitality are already inside me; it is a shame that I ate for the sake of craving, but at least let me use the strength I received to learn and to pray right now, then he uproots that vitality from the state of the three impure kelipos and raises it upward. A single sentence can repair it, though not completely, as we will see shortly.
From here we also understand the place of saying, "May it be Your will... just as I have eaten, may He give me strength for Your service." If it is nothing more than an external recitation, there is nothing to it. This is not a question of reciting a formula but of thought and feeling. There are tzaddikim who are careful to say "in honor of the holy Shabbos" over every single bite at the Shabbos meals, and what that means is that they are not merely saying it, they are saying it and feeling it. But someone who says such things without thinking about what he is saying has accomplished nothing with his words.
Why can the vitality be raised back up?
There seems to be a difficulty here. We learned at the outset that the difference between kelipas noga and the three impure kelipos is that kelipas noga is an intermediate category, it can rise and it can fall, whereas the three impure kelipos have no ascent at all. If so, how can food that was eaten for the sake of craving and descended into the three impure kelipos be drawn back up?
To this the Alter Rebbe answers: "ki l'fi shehayah basar heter v'yayin kasher, lachach yecholim lachzor v'la'alos imo b'shuvo la'avodas Hashem", since it was permitted meat and kosher wine, therefore they are able to return and ascend with him when he returns to the service of G-d. The possibility of elevating the food depends on the food having been kosher and permitted.
This also explains the meaning of words we use all the time without stopping to consider what they mean:
"Assur" (forbidden) - the word means bound, like a person held in prison, beis ha'asurim, and bound in chains. Forbidden food is bound to the three impure kelipos, and therefore it cannot rise; the lock is locked and the key is not in the person's hand. Although there is a special way to elevate such food nonetheless, as we will see later on.
"Mutar" (permitted) - meaning untied, not bound to the three impure kelipos, and therefore able to return and ascend together with the person when he returns to the service of G-d.
Even so, we must note in advance that not everything returns and ascends. When food enters the body, parts and cells are formed from it that become part of the person himself, and since it was eaten with craving, those parts were formed by the power of the three impure kelipos. Cleansing them is not easily done, and this is the reason for the concept of chibut hakever after a hundred and twenty years, like beating laundry with a stick in order to clean it. But the vitality itself can indeed rise and be lifted up.
By Divine Providence:
In the sicha of Yud Shevat 5714 the Rebbe brings a passage that touches on our subject, and it is interesting that the explanation cited above about the milsa d'bedichusa was also said on Yud Shevat, a decade later, in 5724.
The Midrash on Shir HaShirim relates that Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi was sitting and teaching, and the audience began to doze off. Wanting to wake them, he said: "One woman in Egypt gave birth to six hundred thousand in a single womb," one woman gave birth to six hundred thousand in one birth. When the audience heard something so astonishing, they woke up, and then he explained his meaning to them: Moshe Rabbeinu, who is equivalent to six hundred thousand.
And the Rebbe concluded with something striking: "Since the audience is dozing, and the one delivering the discourse is not Rabbeinu HaKadosh but a person of my stature, then even saying something astonishing will not wake the audience." He therefore instructed that a lively niggun be sung, the niggun "Mimitzrayim Ge'altanu," in order to rouse the crowd. Here we have a living illustration of what we have been learning about a milsa d'bedichusa and the opening of the heart.
In summary: In this section we saw an example of a milsa d'bedichusa rising into holiness, Rava's practice of prefacing his lecture with a humorous remark in order to open his students' hearts, and the Gemara's resolution that it all depends on the timing. We examined the precision of the version "Rava" specifically, and the Rebbe's explanation that the novelty applies even to someone whose learning is full of vitality, and not only to Rabbah's rare level of a mouth that never ceased from learning. We also learned that one who eats and drinks in order to satisfy the cravings of his nefesh habahamis brings the vitality of the food down into the three impure kelipos, and his body becomes for them a garment and a chariot for the moment, whereas when he returns to the service of G-d he raises that vitality along with himself. And all of this is possible only because the food was permitted and kosher, since "assur" means bound and "mutar" means unbound.
In the next section we will go deeper into what remains in the body from eating done with craving, and the way in which these things are refined and elevated.