Tanya: Chapter 5

Here we drive home the concept that performing the mitzwoth, whether through speech or action, enclothes us in HaShem's divine Will. This echoes the concept of being hugged by HaShem mentioned in the previous chapter. Later on towards the end of the sefer he describes more of the metaphysics involved. That each of the 613 Torah ordinances and the 7 Rabbinic ordinances make up one of the 620 (gematriah of Keter) columns of pure light radiated from Keter. (the highest of the Sefirot) Each one of these columns of light enclothes one aspect of the soul's 613 limbs and sinews. These columns of light are the clothes of our soul in the world to come.

Still, the focus of this chapter is a deeper even more unique relationship that can be had with HaShem. Through the speech of one's lips during Torah study these spiritual clothes are formed, yes. But, through the depth of our understanding of the Torah's system of thought, our mind is impregnated with HaShem's divine Will. Torah learning, in this way, creates a union otherwise impossible in this physical world: To be totally encompassed AND encompass something to be touched and be touching every part of something simultaneously. This experience is possible only through Torah study.

[Intellectually] Grasping HaShem's Torah fills us with HaShem's Will, and just like food, it becomes a part of us, and makes us a part of Him. (We learned elsewhere [see a waxing wellspring: if you cant join em beat em] that food has the power either to become more like you or make you more like it. In the case of God's Will as food, I have to conclude that the relationship always works to make you more like God and not vice versa.) This Torah, the Baal HaTanya explains, is the food of the world to come.

For this reason, Torah needs to be read aloud when learning. The reading aloud is the action and the action itself becomes the clothes of our soul in Gan Eden. The lesson we internalize, the thought becomes the food of our soul in Gan Eden. The Zohar/Arizal explains that this is the essence of learning Torah "l'shmah" for its own sake - learning Torah for the sake of the soul.

Tanya: Chapter 4

What is the Torah? The Torah is HaShem's Will, tightened, focused, constricted until from Its humble presentation as ink on paper, we can bear witness to His true greatness.

HaShem is crouching impossibly low so that His first born son can reach up and grasp at Him with the tips of his stubby little newborn fingers. When we reach up, He picks us up, embraces us ever so gently and fills us with light.

Every time we open our mouths to say a berachah, open our hands to give tzedakah, open our minds to explore the Torah, we are reaching up. Thought, Speech, and Action. Three ways to bring the Torah into us, three ways to wrap the Torah around us. Each way appropriate and essential to a corresponding part of our soul.

Our souls are rooted (the Alter Rebbe explains towards the end of the sefer) in HaShem's Wisdom, two steps from th essence of creation. But the Torah is the first leap, it is God's Will. Our little Godly soul, rooted in the supernal Wisdom takes infinite pleasure being wrapped up in its source, the Divine Will.

This is an extravagant pleasure available to the soul only here in this world. In the world to come, our souls will enjoy without bound the flow of divine influx -- each soul in accordance with what their merits will bear. But in this world, this dark place of absolute opposites, a lofty soul of light in a body hewn of darkness, here God embraces us totally.

There isn't anything else like it. Not even in the world to come.

With every moment of mitzwah performance and Torah study we are experiencing spiritual ecstacy, performing what is patently impossible -- hugging the Creator, the Sustainer of all that is.

Note that the quality and depth of this experience is directly related to our mitzwah performance in thought and speech as well as in deed. The thought component of a mitzwah is learning the Torah, the halachoth that pertain to that mitzwah. The speech component is the Berachah, where relevant, or the speaking of the halachot aloud while you learn. The action component is the physical act of mitzwah performance, sometimes this is as little as the motion of one's lips while learning.

Again the highest level of this experience depends on the depth of one's study of the halachoth pertaining to each mitzwah, and the coincident performance and perfection of all the mitzwoth.One incomplete mitzwah holds us back from our true potential. The mitzwoth have a cumulative and amplifying affect, performing 612 is not even comparable to performing all 613. All the same, even just a single mitzwah effects the union we described here, and this union is inconceivable, incalculably precious.

Tanya: Chapter 3

In this chapter the Alter Rebbe introduces the three intellectual faculties, and the mochin (brains) / middot (attributes) duality.

The main point to focus on here is that since the 'brains' give birth to the 'attributes,' any work on the attributes has to start from the brains and work its way down.

In this view Da'ath, Knowledge really seems like the odd man out. If Hochmah is the father, and Binah is the mother, where does that leave Da'ath? Da'ath we're told is the connection between the two.

What's not immediately evident here is that Hochmah and/or Binah on their own can be abused as intellectual pursuits. Hochmah can be channeled into an obsession with new ideas, new flashes of insight. Binah can be lost in developing and designing increasingly complex systems.

The modern world, and especially the art world are rife with examples of these types of self-delusions. Something hinted at in the very end of this chapter.

This is where Da'ath as Connection, comes in. If you aren't able, willing, and constantly involved in tying all of your thoughts and ideas back to HaShem, you run the risk, or rather flirt with the certainty that you will get lost in your own imagination.

Once you have learned to return to HaShem through every flexing of those intellectual muscles, you must work on combining both Hochmah,novel insight, and Binah, planning and composing. When you succeed in combining these two different innate mental states, your efforts will bear fruit. That is why they are referred to as Father and Mother.

Either one on their own can have tremendously harmful side effects -- too many ideas without bringing any of them down to the level of expression can lead to anger, too much structure without inspiration can lead to depression.

This leads to the natural balance of the Jew: knowing when to speak and when to be silent. When to let a thought grow and develop inside, when to let it fly free in the world, spoken aloud for all to hear.

This is why Da'ath is so crucial, only through binding yourself constantly to Godliness, can you gain insight into when and how to combine these two innate abilities.

Once combined with divine insight, our attributes are already well on their way to accomplishing their purpose.

Tanya: Chapter 2

There are two crucial issues mentioned in passing in chapter two both of which are not necessarily central to the general theme of the Tanya but which can be life changing ideas:

The first is that spiritual things never truly leave their initial environs. Sure, we do descend into this world in order to rectify sparks of our Neshamah, but when it comes down to it, we are always connected to our root - to the point of being literally a part of God.Yeah, the Baal HaTanya says "literally." (Mamash)

The second is that leaving aside the particular greatness of your child's soul, the thoughts that you think (kavanah) and the preparations that you make (kedushah) which lead up to the conception of your child, create a garment which your child's soul will wear for its entire stay in this world. 

This garment, as far as I understand, is often referred to as your child's "mazal" his "luck." (for lack of a more accurate translation) Every flow of livelihood is brought down by this mazal, every mitzwah performed is performed through this mazal. In other words, having the best of intentions during the conception of your child is a major step you can take to positively contributing to their wellbeing all the days of their life.

The Talmud says on at least one occasion that one's financial situation in the world is independent of one's deeds and directly related to one's mazal.In simpler terms, if you want your child to be set for life, think holy thoughts when you are conceiving him/her.

Maybe we can try and draw a connection between these two ideas: If the mazal is dependent on the holiness of our act, and blessing is a fundamentally related to a revelation of Godliness, then the fact that this mazal originates in a holy place, and knowing what the Baal HaTanya explains that nothing ever leaves its original spiritual circumstance entirely, perhaps by virtue of the mazal being so high up spiritually it is that much easier to deliver down holy blessing which shares its same spiritual origins.

Tanya: Chapter 1

The glaring question at the end of the first chapter, especially for people living in our current world is what's this about non-Jews not having souls? They don't have souls???

Believe it or not there is a really good answer to this question and its our responsibility to puzzle it out.

Alongside this question we can ask a nice parallel question: What does it mean in general when HaShem calls us, the Jewish people, a light unto the nations?

It turns out these two questions are very directly related, so by way of answering the second question we'll arrive at what I believe is an excellent answer to the initial question.

In the Kabbalistic phrasing of how the world works, on a very basic level, there are always two levels of reality, the outer reality and the inner reality. In the case of a person you have the body, the outer expression of a person, and the soul, the inner expression. Often, in the mystical Jewish teachings, these two realities are called the vessel, (the outer context which contains the inner context) and the light. (the inner context contained within the outer context)

Life is infinitely more complex than simply two levels or experiences of reality, and there are countless levels of subtlety in God's creation. Most of life happens in the transitions between these levels of reality, going from one outer context to an inner context, only to discover a still deeper context within.

A great example of all this, in that it is the primary commandment of the Torah, is having and raising children. We learn later on in the Tanya (and in many other sources including the Talmud) that a child is born into the world with a body animated by a simple animal soul, sometimes referred to as the Evil Inclination, the Yetzer Hara.

This body, along with the 'animal soul,' is a vessel, an outer context, but they initially lack an inner context. The function of the animal soul is mainly to animate and unite the body to function as a collective whole. Only upon the maturation of the body, at the age of mitzwoth, (12 for a girl, 13 for a boy) is the body imbued with a genuine light of its own, an inner context.

So where does a child (a body with no light of its own) receive its light? From its parents. The parents are the very soul of the child until the child matures and can grow spiritually on its own, when it receives its own light, its own inner context, its own soul.That is a radical concept, but it is the accepted reality of the mystical traditions of Judaism as brought down by the Zohar (Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai) and the Arizal. (Rabbi Yitzhak Luria)

Now it is all a lot more complicated than that, and to start with, while the child's body has no soul of its own until it reaches spiritual maturation it does have the imprint or residue of a soul, called a roshem (in hebrew) or reshimu. (in aramaic)

This imprint is what enables the child's vessel to eventually contain the light (soul) imbued within it, upon maturation.

So, coming back to our second question. What does it mean that the Jewish people are meant to be a light unto the nations? It means that the nations receive their life force through the Jewish people, as a child receives its life force through their parents. We are litterally a light for the vessel that is the nations of the world, until such time as the nations of the world reach spiritual maturation and receive their own light.

Which answers our first question. The nations of the world don't have a soul, yet, until such time, we act as their soul, and our responsible for giving life to the whole world.

About Knowledge of one

בס"ד
This blog has a very specific purpose. I've merited to review the Tanya a number of times in my life and it has had a tremendous and healing impact. As I go through the Tanya this year, I would like to (with HaShem's help) offer a meditation on each of its more than one hundred chapters.

Who am I to comment on such a lofty composition, and what can I possibly add? I don't have Rabbinic Ordination nor do I have the knowledge necesary to attain such, nor am I even a Lubavitcher Hassid (in any classical sense) but I am a Jew engaged in the purposeful study of Torah to bind oneself to the Infinite Light of Godliness.

The seventh and final Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that in this generation it is our responsibility to pass on whatever knowledge one has. This blog is my commitment to Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson's mandate, the transmission of one person's knowledge however limited this knowledge may be. A Da'at Yachid.