Ch. 17

“Nearly Everybody”: The Inner Life and Struggles of the Jewish Soul

(Based on “Tanya: Collected Discourses of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi”)

by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
__________________________________________

Ch. 17

1.

Realizing by now where we fit within the rasha-benoni-tzaddik continuum and knowing as well how we can become benonim and bolster our benoni-ism [1], we’re in a position to start elucidating the verse that serves as Tanya’s motto, “For the matter is very near-at-hand to you -- in your mouth and in your heart -- so that you can do (i.e., achieve) it” (Deuteronomy 30:14).

Now, the truth be known, it just doesn’t seem valid to say that getting close to G-d on any level is easy and “very near-at-hand”, despite the verse, and notwithstanding the fact that everything enunciated in the Torah is true for all of us and for all time [2]. For we often don’t find it easy to upend our emotions and love G-d over all the things we tend to love in this world.

And though it’s in fact written, “And now, O Israel, what does G-d your L-rd ask of you but to fear G-d your L-rd …” (Deuteronomy 10:12), didn’t our sages themselves pointedly ask, “But is fear (of G-d) such a simple thing?” (Berachot 33B), let alone the love of G-d [3]? And didn’t they indicate as well that only the very few tzaddikim there are in the world at any one time can control their emotions (Breishit Rabbah 34:10, Zohar 3:290B) -- not benonim, and certainly not rashaim [4]?

2.

But RSZ takes the term “so that you can do it” in the statement “the matter is very near-at-hand to you … so that you can do it” as alluding to the native love for G-d that lies deep and nameless in our hearts, and which can lead us to actually do mitzvot [5]. His point is that while this sort of love isn’t open and aboveboard or passionate, it would still-and-all be genuine and could be used to prompt us to do good things (Biur Tanya).

He also means to underscore the fact that the ability to cultivate that sort of love is indeed “very near-at-hand” and easy for anybody to do. For while we aren’t all in command of our emotions, so we can’t elicit just any feeling we’d like to, we do though have it within us to focus our minds on whatever we care to, and to not think about what we don’t want to or shouldn’t (see Biur Tanya) [6].

His suggestion thus comes to this: reflect deeply and at length upon G-d’s actual greatness, and a sense of love of Him will automatically arise in your heart and you’ll want to cling to Him by fulfilling His mitzvot and studying His Torah as a matter of course. For our minds control our hearts by nature, which then controls our actions (see 12:4 and Ch. 51 below).

For if we’d fully concentrate upon G-d’s greatness, it would occur to us that observing G-d’s mitzvot is our raison d’etre at bottom. After all, aren’t we bidden to “observe all the mitzvot, statutes, and judgments, that I (G-d) command you this day” (Deuteronomy 7:11) meaning in this world (see Eruvin 22A) [7]?

3.

But this option is only available to benonim and ordinary wrongdoers who lapse from time to time -- not to out-and-out rashaim (see Ch. 11).

After all, rashaim of that ilk are invariably controlled by their heart (Bereishit Rabbah 34:10) as a consequence of their sins, rather than in control of it; they’re utterly cut off from G-d for that reason, too; and they’re considered “dead” for all intents and purposes (Berachot 18B) [8] since they’re not doing what they were born to do [9]. So the option would be useless.

What utter rashaim would have to do first off in order to benefit from the opportunity (or any chance to draw close to G-d) would be to do teshuvah for what they’d done wrong (see Iggeret Hateshuvah 7) by realizing their plight, and becoming broken-hearted and embittered as a result (see Zohar 2:116B). That would sever the husks that separate them from G-d so starkly, and undo their heart’s impurities (see Zohar Pinchas p.240 and Vayikrah p.8, as well as p. 5A according to Ramaz).

And that will then enable them to hold sway over their heart and begin to draw close to G-d [10].
_____________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Especially after knowing that even our inborn fear and love of G‑d helps to bolster our observance (Shiurim beSefer HaTanya).

[2] As Tanya Mevuar points out, the idea that Torah is relevant to all of us across the board and throughout the generations is stated in several places, including: Rambam’s Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 9:1 Hilchot Teshuva 3:8; Hilchot Malachim 11:3 (at end); and Perek Chellek, Yesod 9. Also see Taz to Y.D. 74:4, Rav’s Shulchan Orach 2:2 (at end), and Ch. 25 below.

[3] For while both fear and love are inborn, fear comes upon you suddenly and severely, and usually only asks you to stay in place or run away for a while, while love demands effort and great change (see Biur Tanya). It’s also true that while you can be afraid of things you haven’t any real knowledge of and are in fact more likely to be afraid of such things, you really can’t love things you’re not aware of (see Likutei Biurim).

[4] So, how can the Torah indicate that the love of G‑d is very easy to come by, which would signify that our hearts are under our control and that we could easily love Him rather than all sorts of material things (Shiurim beSefer HaTanya)?

[5] It’s as if he’d translate the phrase “so that you can do it” as “since you can activate it”, i.e., you can in fact easily enough activate the love in your heart so as to help you fulfill mitzvot.

[6] See 12:4 above, and note 8 there. Refer to what was said in the previous chapter about our inborn love.

[7] The point of loving G‑d isn’t just about fostering the feeling of love itself, but rather about using that feeling as a means of fulfilling G-d’s mitzvot. For what matters most in this world is actually doing constructive concrete things (Shiurim b’Sefer Tanya). That's to say that while the love of G-d is a lofty, magical thing it’s nonetheless a selfish urge often enough; and at bottom we’re asked to subsume our desires to His will.

[8] It has been said quite intriguingly that rashaim bring a sort of “hell on Earth” upon themselves in life with their insatiate yearnings. For they can never get everything they want and are thus are always discouraged and perturbed, wont and unfulfilled -- and like a soul in a foreign realm, they haven’t any control over their situation (Biur Tanya).

[9] Shouldn’t it have said that they would have been better off not being born, as in the statement that "A person would be better off not being created than being created. But, now that he has been created, he should do good things for himself and for others" (Eruvin 13B)? Why term them “dead”?

The point is that they were in fact created, yet they didn’t “do good things for (themselves) and for others”, so they they might as well be dead.

[10] What comes along here in the original is a fairly complex mélange of Kabbalistic explanations of how a rasha of that ilk can come to control his heart, which we’ll try to lay out and explain here.

The explanation touches upon a number of Kabbalistic premises. First off, that each of the four Hebrew letters of G-d’s name: yud, heh, vav, and heh, represents a single sephirah or a cluster of sephirot. Yud stands for Chochma; heh – this upper, higher heh specifically, as opposed to the other lower heh to follow – stands for Binah; vav (which has a numerical value of six) stands for the six sephirot of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod; and the other, lower letter heh stands for Malchut. And that Malchut itself represents the Shechina, the Divine presence as it manifests itself in our experience (see Maskil l’Eitan).

Thus, when RSZ says in our text that the sort of teshuvah (translated literally as “returning”) required in this instance is termed “lower teshuvah”, that’s not only because it’s a less-lofty degree of teshuvah, but also because it involves “returning” the “lower heh” to its rightful place in the Divine name (see Zohar 3:122A). For when one does that he also returns the Shechina to its rightful place in the Divine order of things, and releases it from its “exile” (see Iggeret Hateshuvah 6, Megillah 29A, and Ch’s 37, 45 below).

By virtue of the fact that a rasha is “out of control” if you will, he’s said to act like an “Edomite” (i.e., like one who has undone the Holy Temple and placed the Shechina in exile as a consequence). So, once such a person realizes what he has done both to the Shechina and to his own soul by his actions becomes broken-hearted as a result, the husks surrounding his heretofore unbending heart break in resignation, and he’s then able to reign over that heart.

(c) 2007 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************

Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued and can be ordered from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Ch. 16

“Nearly Everybody”: The Inner Life and Struggles of the Jewish Soul

(Based on “Tanya: Collected Discourses of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi”)

by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

__________________________________________


Ch. 16

1.

Both this chapter and the next, then chapters 18-25, will expand on two suggestions offered here as to how we’re to advance in our benoni-ness and be “one who serves G-d” in the ever-fresh, original, inspired ways mentioned in the last chapter [1]. And both touch on our relationship to G-d, though from different perspectives.

The best way to do it -- though it’s certainly not the only one or even the only one fully expected of us -- is to resist temptations and to come to fulfill all of the Torah’s imperatives (most especially Torah study) and avoid all its prohibitions by allowing our mind to hold sway over our hearts [2].

And we do that by reflecting deeply upon G-d’s Infinite, unfathomable greatness, and by fostering an attachment to Him and an all-consuming loving, reverential sense of intimacy with Him in our heart that way [3].

But again, that’s what we’re to do optimally. There’s a less lofty, less exquisite method too, though, which is very important to know of.

2.

If we can’t manage to galvanize our beings by deliberately fostering the sort of urgent love of and reverence for G-d that would have us attach on to Him with our minds as above, then we can always draw upon the innate love for Him already sequestered in our hearts instead [4].

For we’re taught that each one of us realizes somewhere deep in his or her heart, on one visceral plane or another, just how infinitely vast G-d’s presence is; how everything is considered as naught by comparison to Him; and that the idea that “surely G-d is in this place, but I didn’t know it” (Genesis 28:16) is true wherever we stand. And that we each can sense instinctually just how right it would be to simply surrender to His Presence, to stand subsumed in His light, and to submit to our soul’s deeply felt desire to leave the narrow confines of the body it has become confined to, and cling onto Him instead [5].

Doing that would convince us once again how much better it is to study His Torah deeply and fulfill His mitzvot fervently. For we’d understand that we could attach onto Him and take hold of Him when we do that (see 4:5), and we’d be spurred on.

Understand of course the point is that while we’d have certainly dwelt upon all that before in order to achieve benoni-ism [6], the only way we’d be able to reinvigorate and bolster our benoni state and keep it ever-fresh would be to dwell on it again and again. Because there will be times when, despite the fact that we know how true all that is, the impulse would be weak for the moment nonetheless, our beings wouldn't be quite touched to the core, and we’d need reinforcement (see Maskil L’Eitan).

So, if we’d dwell upon these details about G-d and our relationship to Him this second way at least, enunciate them to ourselves (and others) and then act upon them, we’d be giving full expression to them -- even if we’d have only come to a detached, and external realization of them rather than the full one we could have achieved by using the first method (Biur Tanya and Maskil L’Eitan).

And that would enable us to dwell upon G-d's Torah and fulfill His mitzvot with new fervor and a spirit of refreshed love, which would itself then invigorate our worship and furnish it with the sort of “wings” we’d need to soar upward (see Ch. 40 below) since our Divine service could never ascend without such wings (see Tikkunei Zohar 10).

While our doing that wouldn’t foster as quite extraordinary a degree of loving and reverential sense of intimacy as the first method would, it would nonetheless serve us almost as well. Because we’d at least have come to fulfill our obligations thus by, rather than just tended to our bodily needs instinctively [7].

3.

RSZ then contends that our sages alluded to the fact that using our minds to reinvigorate our relationship to G-d is better than using our hearts.

The sages said that a person is credited with having done a good deed even if he hadn't managed to, if he *meant* to do it from the first but was prevented somehow, for some good reason or another. But they prefaced it with the following statement: "A good thought is ‘attached’ to the deed" (Kiddushin 40A). The statement should have read something like, "you are credited with having done the good deed" he points out.

But in fact it's worded the way it is, RSZ surmises, to indicate that the latent fear and love of G-d in our hearts do indeed function in the physical mitzvot we do, and do in fact give them the sort of "wings" they’d need to ascend upward, since the heart is itself physical [8]. It's just that the love and fear that comes about when we allow our minds to hold sway (i.e., the preferred method) is much greater and far above physical acts, so they really don’t function in physical mitzvot. And so they're termed good thoughts (i.e., the “good thoughts” that are “attached to the deed” we meant to do) rather than the deeds themselves.

It's just that G-d chooses to "attach" those "good thoughts" to actual mitzvah deeds and to Torah study, so as to allow them to ascend higher [9], which is why the sages depicted it as “a good thought” being “attached” to the deed.

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Notes:

[1] Like ourselves, some indicate that this chapter expands upon the ideas of the previous one (see Biur Tanya and Maskil L’Eitan) while others say that the principles laid out here stand alone as separate, overarching pieces of advice (see Likutei Perushim). But it seems clear-cut that this chapter and the last one are indeed linked given the parallelism of terms used at the end of the last one and here at the beginning of this in the original text.

[2] The text is quite fecund in this chapter (as it is elsewhere, where it’s nevertheless more apropos) and adds many things that are so rich in implication that they befog the essential message it means to convey, which we’ve thus set aside. Purists will argue that we’re skimming the cream and leaving behind a bland remnant of the original, and they’d be right in essence. But our job in this work is to allow RSZ’s spiritual and psychological insights and wisdom to shine through, and to only grant access to his more esoteric insights here, in these notes so as not to clutter the screen, if you will.

Here is the sentence as worded above.

“The best way to do it -- though it’s certainly not the only one or even the only one fully expected of us -- is to resist temptations and to come to fulfill all of the Torah’s imperatives (most especially Torah study) and avoid all its prohibitions by allowing our mind to hold sway over our hearts.”

Here’s the sentence with RSZ’s implications left intact.

“The best way to do it -- though it’s certainly not the only one, or even the only one fully expected of us -- *is to take hold of (one’s) natural inclinations* and to come to fulfill all of the Torah’s imperatives (most especially Torah study) *no matter how major or minor the prohibitions are, and be they either from the Torah itself or from our sages* and avoid all its prohibitions by allowing *the Divine light that shines upon the G-dly spirit in our mind* to hold sway over our hearts.”

He uses the term to *take hold of (one’s) natural inclinations* to distinguish it from the idea of turning one’s bad traits into good ones, as a tzaddik would do, since a benoni can’t do that (see Likut Perushim and Tanya Mevuar). He indicates that that’s true *no matter how major or minor the prohibitions are, and be they either from the Torah itself or from our sages* to say that it’s true of absolutely all of them, regardless of any reason we might have to take them either too lightly or too seriously. And he speaks of allowing *the Divine light that shines upon the G-dly spirit in our mind* to hold sway over our hearts so as to refer back to the idea that we’d need G-d’s input in order to control our impulses, as cited in 13:2 (Shiurim beSefer HaTanya).

But all of this beside the operative point that we’re to concentrate on our mind’s input more than our heart’s natural inclinations, as cited here.

[3] The original speaks of fostering a “knowledge” of G-d, in keeping with the Kabbalistic reference to the mind’s Chochma, Binah, and Da’at (knowledge) components (see 3:1). We translated the term “intimacy” instead, because knowledge is frequently compared to intimacy in Kabbalistic literature, in keeping with the verse that reads, “And Adam 'knew' Eve his wife (intimately) and she conceived” (Genesis 4:1).

See 3:3 for more on this. Also see 4:3 about the role of love and fear in mitzvah observance (Shiurim be Sefer HaTanya) .

[4] RSZ provides a note here in the original that lays out the Kabbalistic explanation for someone’s inability to produce a fresh and original love for G-d in his mind on his own.

It seems it’s due to the fact that that individual’s mind (Mochin, in Hebrew, referring to the sephirotic configuration that corresponds to the human mind) and his “soul” (Naran, in Hebrew, an abbreviation for N’ephesh, R’uach, N’shama, which is the sephirotic expression of the three lower aspects of our G-dly spirit) are in a “pregnant” or “hidden” (i.e., a potential) stage inside its Tevunah configuration (another aspect of the mind), rather than being “newborn” and outright (i.e., rather than actualized).

The insinuation here (which is much clearer than the one suggested in the non-Kabbalistic body of the text itself.) is that such a person is unable to actualize his or her potential, and that that’s a spiritual failing (see Biur Tanya). The non-Kabbalistic implication, on the other hand, is along the lines of, “Don’t worry if you can’t foster a love of G-d on your own: you can always fall back on your native love”, which doesn’t suggest a failing so much as a happy opportunity to rely on an alternative, albeit lesser, option.

[5] In the original, RSZ likens the soul’s heart-felt dissatisfactions with its earthly situation quite evocatively to that of a woman whose husband is overseas whom she can’t be with as a result, who is termed a “widow [for all intents and purposes] of a live man” (see Breishit Rabbah 14:4 and Rashi’s comments to Exodus 22:23, based on 2 Samuel 20:3), which frustrates her so. In fact the analogy is apt, since the Jewish Nation is termed G-d’s “bride” and is kept at a distance from Him as a result of our corporeality (Likutei Biurim).

What’s significant here is the fact that the terms that RSZ uses for the sort of mind-based realizations we’re to come to are far less bracing and intense than the ones he uses for his “default” heart-based ones.

He indeed speaks of feelings of love of and reverence for G-d that would have us attach on to Him that we could foster through our mind’s efforts; yet he then goes on to cite how the heart, the source of the second-best process, knows on its own how infinitely vast G-d’s presence is, how everything is considered as naught in comparison to Him, and how right it would be to surrender to Him and to leave the narrow confines of the body and cling onto Him instead, comparing being without Him to be being what’s classically termed a “grass widow” (a woman whose husband is frequently away from home or who deserted her)!

We’d expect RSZ to prefer the more cerebral method, since that’s what sets his Chassidut apart from the others, which are more emotional. Yet he uses rapturous terms for the emotional method as opposed to the rather cool and detached ones he uses for the analytical mode. On one level that seems to reflect an inner-conflict of his, as RSZ was rather emotional and outright ecstatic in his love of G-d at times, yet extraordinarily analytical a great deal of the time as well.

On the other hand, though, he appears to be making the following subtle point. The first process is preferable specifically because it’s lower-keyed; for while the second method is decidedly more idealistic in tone, it’s nonetheless too self-conscious and self-absorbed, which is always out of favor in Chabad Chassidut.

[6] See 3:3, 4:3, 6:3, 9:2, 4, 10:3, 11:5, 12:5, 13:6, 14:2-3, and 15:3-4.

[7] There’s an interesting parenthetical thought in the original at this point that reads, “... even if he’s naturally inclined to be bookish” (see 15:3 above) and would thus find it easy to study Torah on his own -- which would lead us to think that he’d always find it easy to serve G-d as he’s naturally inclined to (at least when it comes to Torah study) -- he’d “nonetheless just naturally love his body (i.e., himself) more” than books from time to time, as even the most studious do, as when they’re very hungry, thirst, or the like, and they need to follow through on those urgings in a G-dly way. The point is that the second process is thus useful even for such a person.

[8] In what's essentially a parenthetical aside, RSZ adds here in the text that the heart itself is capable of acting as an agent of those holy emotions because of the fact that despite it's being a flesh-and-blood organ it's also a source of our inscrutable life-energy, so it can function both as a medium for such exalted phenomena *as well as* for the flow of blood.

In other words, the term "heart" here can either be taken literally as the physical organ it is, or figuratively as a source of emotions. But isn't that self-evident? Don't we often use the terms interchangeably ourselves (much like we use the term "wings" literally and figuratively)? The point that RSZ is making -- which can be said for so much Kabbalistic literature -- is that *most* of our makeup functions both on a physical and a paradigmatic level at one at the same time, thanks to the "inscrutable life-energy" that comprises our souls.

[9] G-d attaches the two much the way that He miraculously links body and soul, so as to affect change in the world and to allow for things to ascend heavenward along the same lines.

RSZ makes several esoteric points at this juncture, both in the text proper and in a note. In fact, this whole section seems rather speculative as opposed to the practical nature of the rest of the chapter, and we were tempted to place the whole last section of the chapter here (see note 2 above and our thinking there along these lines).

In any event he indicates here, at the end of the chapter, that when we use the preferred method of reinvigorating our service, it’s elevates to the world of Beriah, whereas if we’d use the default method they’d only ascend to the world of Yetzirah. As he said, this will be discussed in depth later on, in chapters 38-39, 44. The point of the matter is that while Yetzirah is less-exalted than Beriah, it’s lofty nonetheless, and far higher than the world of Assiyah (i.e., the physical world we experience).

He bases what he says in the note here on a statement made in the Zohar 3, 291A, and in Etz Chaim 15:4) that’s decidedly obscure and touches upon the make-up of Tevunah and its place in the Kabbalistic world system. We refer to the reader to the note itself.

(c) 2007 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Appendix: The Love and Fear of G-d

“Nearly Everybody”: The Inner Life and Struggles of the Jewish Soul

(Based on “Tanya: Collected Discourses of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi”)

by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

__________________________________________

Appendix: The Love and Fear of G-d

1.

“My sole objective” as a rebbe and teacher, RSZ remarked to his son and successor Rabbi Dov Baer on countless occasions, was to allow for “a revelation of G-d’s Presence” -- a clear and oftentimes ecstatic sense of His immanence -- “in (my adherents’) souls” (Kuntress HaHitpa’alut, Introduction).

As such, one of the hallmarks of Chabad Chassidut has always been its stress on such an experience, which they maintained could only come about by arousing a sense of love and fear of G-d in one’s being through reflecting upon His true Being.

For, starting with RSZ, all Chabad leaders have emphasized the idea that each one of us can and indeed *should* be moved to the love and fear of G-d, and are to cleave unto Him as a result (see Likutei Torah, V’Etchanan, p. 7). They especially favored doing that when reciting the Sh’ma (“Hear, O Israel, G-d our L-rd alone is G-d” [Deuteronomy 6:4]) and when articulating the Sh’mone Esrei prayer, since those were the most propitious moments for doing that. They also adjured their followers to see beyond the outward form of things and to sense the Divinity hidden in each and everything in order to experience His presence.

But reflecting on G-d’s Oneness, catching sight of Him everywhere, and reacting to it in love and fear actually goes far beyond those phenomena alone, and touches upon the nature of reality, and on the fact that only G-d exists, nothing else.

This obviously calls for some explanation, which is rooted in the following.

2.


While others understood G-d’s Oneness, belief in which is fundamental to the Jewish faith, to only mean that G-d is the one and only Deity, RSZ wasn't satisfied with that, and based on several esoteric sources including the Zohar and the writings of the Ari and the Ba’al Shem Tov, he stressed that G-d’s Oneness not only implies that G-d is the one and only Deity but also that He is the only actual entity.

After all, didn’t He Himself adjure, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24), with the implication that He does so to the exclusion of everything else; didn’t the prophet say “The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3), with much the same implication? Along the same lines, didn’t the Talmud point out that “Just as the soul fills the body so does G-d fill the universe” (Berachot 10A); and didn’t the Zohar declare that “there is no place devoid of G-d” (Tikkunei Zohar 57, p. 91B)? RSZ’s suggestion is that all of that’s indeed true, but that we’re too blind to G-d’s presence to catch sight of that (though for certain purposeful and specific reasons that are beyond the scope of the subject at hand).

But to fully understand this we’ll need to explain something of the Kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum.

3.


There’s something quite vexing about the whole idea of creation. For how could finite entities -- and even spiritual ones such as angels and the like -- have derived from G-d’s infinite, Divine Being? There had to have been a break in the connection between His Being and our own, a synapse along the way, if you will (see Likutei Torah 46C) in order for things other than G-d to come from Him. And therein lies the conceptual rationale behind the phenomenon of tzimtzum.

The term “tzimtzum” itself implies either a contraction of sorts or a concealment (Aruch). The first definition alludes to the notion that G-d pulled His Presence to the side, if you will, to allow for finitetude, and it’s a satisfying solution to the problem of the finite deriving from the Infinite. The second definition, a concealment, was the one that RZV preferred, though. It alludes to a series of obscurings of the Divine Light that had to have occurred for finitetude to appear (see Zohar 1, 15A and Zohar Chadash, Va’Etchanan 57A; Eitz Chaim, Sha’ar HaHakdamot; as well as Tanya’s Ch’s 21-22 and 48-49, and most especially RSZ’s Sha’ar HaYichud cited below).

The point is that rather than “pull Himself to the side” if you will in order to allow for the existence of things other than Himself, RSV understood that G-d stayed in place in fact, but that He hid Himself to allow for things other than He to shine and not be overshadowed (actually, over-shone) by His Being. (The depiction of G-d stepping aside to allow for other entities also raises a problem, in that it implies a change in G-d’s Being when He Himself said that “I, G-d, have never changed” [Malachi 3:6], and we declare daily that He was “the same before the world was created, and [has always] been [and will always be] the same” [Schacharit service, based on Yalkut Shimoni, V’Etchanan 835].)

And so as far as RSZ was concerned, tzimtzum wasn’t something that actually occurred to G-d; it merely appeared to have. As such, reality as we know it only exists thanks to a series of blockings-off of the Divine Light so it doesn’t exist so much as seems to exist. In fact, the only things that truly exists is G-d (see Shaar HaYichud Ch’s 3 and 7). As we’re taught, “There is no place devoid of Him” and Him alone, “neither in the upper or the lower worlds” (Tikkunei Zohar 57), and that He ”fills all worlds and surrounds all worlds” (Zohar 3, p. 225a).

That’s not to say, though, that reality doesn’t in fact exist, since we know it does. It’s only to say that it’s real -- very real -- for us, but no further. That’s to say that we do exist, of course, but as it’s put classically we’re like “a tiny candle in the face of a mighty torch”, or “a single sunbeam in the face of the sun itself” (see Tanya Ch. 33; also see Shaar HaYichud Ch’s 3 and 7).

There are needless to say *all sorts of* profound and recondite implications to all that, but that’s beside our point here. We’re to take heart from the fact though that “all this is beyond the power of speech to express, the ability of the ear to hear, and the human heart to (truly) comprehend”, and that we’d do best to simply accept it in full faith (Shaar HaYichud Ch. 7).

Nevertheless, we’re charged to dwell on this principle as best as we can, and to apply it to our meditations and our lives. For as RSZ would have us understand it (Shaar HaYichud Ch. 6), we’re implored to, “Know this day and lay it upon your heart that G-d is (not only) the L-rd in the heavens above and on the earth below, (it’s also true that) there is no other (entity other than He)” (Deuteronomy 4:39). That’s to say that we’re to not only “know” about that intellectually, we’re to also “lay it upon (our) heart”, i.e., meditate upon it and internalize it as much as we can.

For by doing that we come to be profoundly moved by -- that is, we come to fully love and fear of -- G-d, and thus experience “a revelation of G-d’s Presence” as RSZ would like us to. Since, what most especially rouses love and fear of G-d “is a genuine and faithful belief in His unity and oneness” (Chinuch HaKattan) as RSZ explains it.

(c) 2007 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued and can be ordered from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"