Transcript
Good morning boker tov, welcome back to ten minutes of meaning. Please help yourself to some coffee, slushies—a little cold outside for a slushie—pastries, Reb Shayala corner at the Holy Boca Raton Synagogue. Ten minutes of meaning series is generously sponsored by our dear friends Marilyn and Michael Fidac. Today's shiur is sponsored by Amanda Leinstar for refuah shleima of חיה לאה בת מרי, she should have a speedy refuah shleima, anonymously, מודים להשם שבחר אותי ומשפחתי כל יום. Thankfulness to Hashem who gives us the ability to be reborn every day, in the zechus of everyone doing amazingly on all work and finals, having emunah, focus, and discipline. And by Stash and Janice Jacobs in memory of Stash's father שמחה גרשון בן יצחק, whose yahrzeit was yesterday, Asara b'Teves, whose neshamah should have an aliyah. We are finishing up the sixth perek, chapter six of the holy Sefer Tanya. And the Baal HaTanya, the Alter Rebbe has introduced us to the idea that unlike in halacha where we have three realms where we have something that's a mitzvah, it's noble, it's righteous, or it's virtuous, or something which is issur, it's forbidden, you're not allowed to do it. And there's reshus, that which fits in neither category. Whether you're going to make a coffee this morning—is that a mitzvah? Lav davka. Is it an issur? Certainly not. It's a reshus, it's elective. Says the Baal HaTanya, that's not the way to view the world. The truth is there's only two sides: there's ego and Elokus. Everything we do, every decision we make, every thought we have, every speech that we utter, we are either expressing our ego, we're indulging the ego, and the ego comes from the sitra achra, the other side, the animal in us, or we're expressing Elokus, or we're demonstrating, we're expressing, we're manifesting the godliness in us. Every social media post we put up, every conversation that we start, everything that we do, it either comes from ego or Elokus. And the filter, the way to examine our whole life is to ask ourselves what's driving, what's motivating, why am I doing this thing? Is it ego or is it Elokus? There is no third realm, there is no reshus. And the Alter Rebbe's been developing this idea all through the internal and external, the levush: speech, thought, and action are all external. They're levush, they're the garment that we wear, they're not part of the essence of who we are. And then the Alter Rebbe introduces us to the concept of bittul, the idea that we have to nullify and we have to sublimate, and we have to surrender the ego, that all there is is Elokus. This whole world and everything in it is filled with godliness and our mission, our job is to elevate and transform and to reveal the godliness in everything. And this is not—bittul is not about beating ourselves up or knocking ourselves down. Bittul is not about seeing ourselves as inadequate or unworthy. Bittul is not about denying self-expression. Bittul is about: discover your uniqueness because you are a unique expression of Hashem in this world. And the bittul is: don't be driven by ego, as we spoke about Shabbos Shuva and the book I based it on, Ego Is the Enemy. Ego is the enemy, ego undermines and sabotages relationship and business and so many other aspects and areas, so much of life altogether. I saw Rebbe Shais Taub, my friend Rabbi Taub says bittul is be-tool: be a tool for Hashem, be a vehicle for Hashem. See your life as, \"I'm not independent, I don't have my own identity, it's not about me,\" but bittul means you're a tool, be-tool, be a tool, be an instrument, be a vehicle to express godliness in this world. Which brings us up to the third part of perek vav, we'll finish it im yirtzeh Hashem today. אבל כל מה שאינו בטל אצלו יתברך אלא הוא דבר נפרד בפני עצמו. Anything, however, that has not surrendered its ego to Hashem, anything that does not practice bittul, that thinks it has an independence, that thinks it has its own identity, that thinks it's responsible for its existence, that thinks that it has both a history and a destiny separate from Hashem, אינו מקבל חיות מקדושתו של הקדוש ברוך הוא. If you don't practice bittul, if you think it's all about me, it's all about my success, all about my triumph, all about my effort and initiative, all about my—then that person is cut off from chayus, they don't have life energy and life force that comes from the holiness of Hashem. So the Baal HaTanya makes that statement, that statement alone is not controversial or difficult. The idea that in order to draw life force from Hashem, in order to be plugged in, in order to be a high-speed connection, you need to have bittul, you need to have bittul, which makes a lot of sense, because ego stands for \"edging God out\". So the person who lives with ego, there's not room for them and Hashem. And it's not just the program that came up with that acronym, that ego is edging God out. It's Chazal, because the Gemara says Hakadosh Baruch Hu looks at the baal gaivah, Hakadosh Baruch Hu looks down at the arrogant person with a big inflated ego and says, \"There's not enough room in this world for both me and you. Tell you what, you think you're in charge, you think you're in control, you need all the spotlight, you want all the credit? It's all yours. I'll excuse myself, I'll step out.\" be elsewhere, I'll be with those who want to be with me. So the idea that if we have an ego there is no room for God, we've edged God out, goes back to of course Chazal, which begs the question the Alte Rebbe then asks: how do we see if there is no entity and nothing can exist that doesn't practice bittul towards Hashem, so where does the sitra achra come from? Where does the negativity come from? Where does the impulse and indulgence come from? Where does the dark side, where does the ego side come from? If you're not existing without bittul and Elokus is the result of bittul, so where's ego from? Where's ego from? So to solve this, the Baal HaTanya offers us a kabbalistic insight into how evil forces come to exist. This is how he ends Perek Vav and how he'll begin Perek Zayin. Perek Zayin will establish the idea of the klipas nogah, which is a unique form of the husk of the klipa. But first he establishes the first three klipos. Klipas nogah has something redeeming about it. Klipas nogah can be reversed, can be penetrated, you can reveal Hashem in it. But the first three klipos are absolute shade that they block the godliness, the Elokus. And where does that come from then? Where do klipos, the dark side, the other side, the veil that covers and conceals Hashem, where does it derive its chiyus from if you can't have chiyus without bittul? מבחינת פנימיות הקדושה מהות ועצמות בכבודו ועצמו. An impure entity does not receive its life energy directly from godliness, the splendorous inner essential core of holiness, ela mibechinas achorayim. Where it derives from is the concept of achorayim. What's achorayim? When you see a friend you haven't seen in a long time who you love, when you see a family member and you're reunited with them, you run towards one another and you give a hug and you embrace and you're face to face. And when you see someone who you have no interest in, someone who's hurt you, someone who has been disloyal to you, someone who you don't want to be in the same room with, what do you do? You turn your back. You show them, but you show them your back. You're in the same space, but what they see is not your face, there's no embrace, what they get is your back. You turn your back. Similarly Hashem gives life force to the negative and impure, but he does so achorayim. He does so, so to speak, he shows his back to evil. It has to emanate, there's something in it that has to come from Hashem because there's no existence that happens without Hashem, but it's not frontal, it's not Hashem's face, it's the achorayim, it's from the back. שיורד ממדרגה למדרגה ריבות מדרגות השתלשלות העולמות. And this is the part that's a little bit beyond me, maybe Yoni can explain it. The life force of impure things descends from its initially holy source. It comes down madreiga lemadreiga, step by step, rivos madreigos, tens of thousands of times, hishtalshelus haolamos, and it comes down tens of thousands of times through the spiral of spiritual worlds. I'm not old enough or smart enough to understand exactly what that means. The spiral of spiritual worlds or tens of thousands of times or coming down step by step. דרך עילה ועלול בצמצומים רבים. It's diminished many times through cause and effect transitions. עד שנתמעט כל כך האור והחיות מיעוט אחר מיעוט. To the point where divine light and energy has been so diluted, so watered down, עד שיכול להצטמצם ולהתלבש בבחינת גלות תוך אותו דבר נפרד. It can be diminished, garbed in exile into an autonomous entity, להחיותו ולקיימו מאין ליש to energize and sustain that thing's existence from nothing to something, שלא יחזור להיות אין ואפס כבתחילה מקודם שנברא to prevent it from reverting to the null and void. Now let me explain to you when we're learning Tanya together, there are parts I understand and I'm confident. There are parts I don't really understand, but I make you believe I understand and I can bluff my way through. And then there are the parts, full transparency and admission, I don't really understand. I understand that there's an idea here, but I don't want to even pretend to you that I can explain it. I'm not competent, I'm not trained, I don't have the vocabulary. The Alte Rebbe here is describing that where does this come from? The chiyus in the klipa, it comes from, it originated in something divine and pure, but somehow it descended through the spiral of spiritual worlds, it was diluted tens of thousands of times, it was diminished and garbed in exile, it was energized and sustained, it went from ayin to yesh, not yesh to ayin, it went from ayin to yesh to prevent it from returning to the null and void from its primordial state. I know we have it now and it came from somewhere and everything has to come from Hashem and there was some system or process through which it came, which I can't fully describe. But Rabbi Miller in his commentary explains, and Rav Steinsaltz does elaborate as well, the logic here follows a principle which will be established in the second book of Tanya that creation is a continuous process. We just said in our davening, or those who are about to daven, we... the world and set it in motion and now it's on autopilot and he went on to other projects. He maintains a relationship with the world in such a way that if he would not will it to continue to exist, poof, we would disappear. The mashal the Alter Rebbe later in the second book of Tanya, we should all live long enough together to get to it, the mashal the Alter Rebbe is, if I tell you right now to imagine something, he doesn't give this mashal, but if I tell you picture a red Ferrari, picture a red sports car. Does the red sports car, the image of it exist? Absolutely. Where? In your imagination. Is it real? Yes, there's an image in your imagination of a red sports car. If the moment I distract you and you stop thinking about it, does it continue to exist? We are an image in the imagination of Hashem. As long as he has a relationship and wills us to be, we, the image, frankly illusion, or in the Matrix, in the imagination of Hashem, we continue to exist. If he ceases or stops to imagine us, we're gone, we're done. He's המחדש בכל יום טובו מעשה בראשית. So here's the problem concerning evil. If Hashem is not present in evil, how can its existence constantly renew? Good we understand how it renews because Hashem wants and wills it to renew, but how can evil, if he doesn't want it or will it, it only has his back, it was some diluted diminished entity that came down through the spiral of spirituality tens of thousands of times, it's not part of what he wants to renew, so how does evil continue to exist? And when I say evil I don't just mean evil people and podcasters, I just mean even the evil in us, the impulse and urge to look at or eat or say or go or do or behave in a way that is not our best selves. So Tanya answers, Hashem's presence is to be found in evil but in a very diminished form, diminished, garbed and exiled, such that it exhibits no divine properties at all. And that's how we finish. ולכן נקרא עולם הזה ומלואו עולם הקליפות וסטרא אחרא. It exists and it has to come from Hashem but its manifestation, the way it appears in the physical world and its contents is Sitra Achra. It's the other side. It's set up as the antithesis of Hashem and of goodness and godliness. The natural disposition of physical beings is to sense their own autonomous existence, to see the world as having inherent reality outside of Hashem. The predominant energy of the world then is the klipa of Sitra Achra. So that urge inside us that makes us mistakenly want to think that we exist, yeah, I remember Hashem in the morning, and then I come back to remember Hashem in the afternoon, but all day in between, it's all about me, what I want, what I need, what I crave, my drive, my ambition, my aspiration, my work, my initiative, my success. That predisposition, that energy to want to think I have an identity independent of Hashem, that's coming from the klipos and the Sitra Achra. ולכן כל מעשה עולם הזה קשים ורעים והרשעים גוברים בו. And that is why all the affairs of the world are tough and evil and wicked men prevail כמו שכתוב בעץ חיים שער מ\"ב. In other words the default, that's why we have to fight it. The default, what drags us down, is this world tries to convince us that we have this independent identity. That's the language, that's the urge of the klipa and of the Sitra Achra. I've quoted many times I heard from Shlota, I'm sorry from Rabbi Avrum Yehoshua Heschel, the Pnei Menachem, the Gerrer Rebbe said: why do we have gravity? Everything in the physical world has a corollary in the metaphysical world. So what's the lesson to learn from gravity? What gravity teaches is there's something pulling us and dragging us down. And if I want to hold something I have to fight the pull of gravity. If I want to lift something I have to really express energy to fight the pull of gravity. Because the default is if I let go of something it falls. That's what gravity teaches. Spiritually, if I let go, there's a spiritual gravity, I fall. And to fight it I have to lift. That's why a Yid has to always be climbing and be a ben aliyah, we have to be lifting. So ולכן כל מעשה עולם הזה קשים ורעים והרשעים גוברים בו. There's a spiritual pull of gravity in this world. And unless we're resisting it and unless we're fighting it and unless we're combating it and unless we're overcoming it and lifting against it, we're going to fall. אלא הקליפות הן נחלקות לשתי מדרגות זו למטה מזו. And we're just going to finish up. הקליפות הן נחלקות לשתי מדרגות זו למטה מזו. The klipos are divided into two levels, one lower than the other. Again, klipos is the name we're giving for the default lowest base level in us that has somehow been diluted and diminished, it only has Hashem's back not his front, it has to come from him and it has to be willed to repeat existence, but it is so distorted that it lacks divine properties. And that's that part of us. And it can be divided into two categories. המדרגה התחתונה של שלוש קליפות הטמאות ורעות לגמרי ואין בהם טוב כלל. The lower three levels of the lower three klipos, they're impure and evil; they have no overt good at all. If you still don't know what a klipa is, we're going to get to it. It's exactly what we're going is to better define what a klipa is. ונקראו במרכבת יחזקאל רוח סערה וענן גדול. And in the Ma'aseh Merkava of Yechezkiel HaNavi, in the first perek of Yechezkiel his vision, they're called the stormy wind, a great cloud with a flashing fire. Those are the three klipos that are categorically bad. Nothing redeeming about them. You can't reveal Hashem in them. They're categorically bad. And Yechezkiel's vision of the chariot, the Ma'aseh Merkava, they're the stormy wind, the great cloud, and the flashing fire. ומהם נשפעות ונמשכות נפשות כל אומות העולם. And now, if you want to know where you see klipa, these three categorically bad, negative, nothing redeemable about them klipos, where do you see them in this world? Says the Alter Rebbe, in the following places: You see them in מהם נשפעות ונמשכות נפשות כל אומות העולם וקיום גופם. Metaphysically, they power the souls and sustain the bodies of all the wicked nations of the world. You want to know where you see klipa, the three lower klipos, nothing redeemable, pure evil, sitra achra, they're the dark side and the other side. In essence, you know where you see it? You see it in Sinwar, and you see it in Tucker Carlson, and you see it in Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and you see it all over. ונפשות כל בעלי חיים הטמאים והאסורים באכילה וקיום גופם. Second place you see it is in all the impure living creatures that we are prohibited to eat. Anything that categorically we're not allowed to eat, it's because they have in them the midah, the quality of these klipos. And number three: וקיום חיות כל מאכלות אסורות מהצומח. Also the sustenance and life force of forbidden foods that come from the ground, from the vegetable kingdom, from tzomei'ach. כמו ערלה וכלאי הכרם. Like orlah, you're not allowed to eat orlah. You're not allowed to eat kil'ei hakerem, if you have a hybrid mixed vegetable and vine, כמו שכתוב בעץ חיים. So these things that are categorically bad, where do they derive their categorical evil? From the klipa, the lower three klipos, that's where it's coming from. And yes, I did call those people that. וכן קיום וחיות כל מעשה דיבור, plenty unfortunately to add to that growing list. וכן קיום וחיות כל מעשה דיבור ומחשבה של כל שלוש מאות ששים וחמש לא תעשה וענפיהם. And the fourth: the three klipos are also the sustenance and life force of every action, spoken word, and thought prohibited by the 365 negative commandments and their derivatives. So lest you think here we are sitting in judgment, we're going to label all these others the lower three klipos because we were perfect, we derive from Elokus, we... No. Also, if a Yid were to violate the 365 negative commandments, those 365 negative commandments are highlighting 365 things that we must avoid categorically because they have klipa in them, because we have klipa in them. So those are, that's the end of Perek Vav. Those are the lower three klipos that are categorically bad and evil, so diminished and diluted there's no godliness almost in them at all. They emanate and stem from Hashem, otherwise they couldn't exist, but so diminished and diluted there is no godliness in them, categorically bad. We have to combat and purge and eliminate, and that brings us up to another type of klipa that looks bad, is bad, comes from an urge for bad, but yet is redeemable. It can be transformed, we could penetrate, we could reveal the godliness in it. And that fourth klipa is called Klipas Noga, and that's what we begin Perek Zayin with Im Yirtzeh Hashem next week. Have a wonderful and warm Wednesday.
