LM 24.2 — Emtzausa d'Alma, Part 2 of 5 · תורה כ״ד

Be'ezrat Hashem, we're going to be starting the second shiur, Torah כ״ד. We are going to start reading from the beginning, although we're not going to be beginning again. We're going to be riding on the wings of the ideas, the concepts that we mentioned by way of introduction last week. I was by Kiddush on Simchat Torah and or on Shabbos Bereishis rather, and a chashuve Yid, R'' Zisha Leibowitz, said an idea. I don't remember if it was his own or if he was quoting somebody else. He said, what is the unbelievable simcha in completing something? There's a siyum, but it's also, or specifically hadran alach v'hadrach alan, the ability to start again.

But a person is not starting again. He's not learning the Torah that he learned a year ago, and 5 years ago, and 10 years ago. He's going back to פסוק א' and riding on everything that he's learned in between, riding on the fact that he's gone through a cycle, and now we can relearn פסוק א' with all of that information, with the with the maturity, with the insight, like a spiral coming back around, but at a different altitude. We discussed this idea in in other ways also, teshuva and then doing תשובה על התשובה, going back over over over the same thing, but it's not the same.

It's it's going at a different level and being able to appreciate it and the depth לטוב ולמוטב of of where a person's holding. So, we're going to dive back into this Torah, and as we read through it, I'm also going to mention a couple of other points that we didn't that we didn't say last time. Again, I think we quoted Rabbi Natan, who said that as complex as this Torah is, every Torah is written for every Yid. We all have a חלק אלוק ממעל. The Torah that we're going to be learning is going to resonate within each one of us כפי wherever we're holding, and therefore as as complex as these ideas are, we will try to give enough information to be able to understand the insights and the ideas that the Torah is putting before us, but to understand also the terms and the terminology so that we can appreciate the lens through which

we're looking at this Torah. אמרו ליה אמציעותא דעלמא היכא, they again the Athenian scholars asked רבי יהושע בן חנניה, where is the center of the universe? זקפה לאצבעיה, and רבי יהושע בן חנניה held up, he pointed up his finger, ואמר להו הכא, and he said, over here. As we as we come off of this passage, this Gemara from Bechorot דף ח עמוד ב, I I I did see a couple of things this week that just that that really spoke to me for for this line, and therefore I I want to just share them. Where is the center of the universe?

The center of the universe is right here. So, by way of by way of introduction, when we think about the universe, אמציעותא דעלמא, we think about the the olam. Olam is a לשון of העלם, it's לשון of hidden. We think about creation. We think about the unbelievable world that הקדוש ברוך הוא gave us, הקדוש ברוך הוא created, and two ways of looking at it are either there's a blank canvas, הקדוש ברוך הוא created yesh me'ayin, and Hashem created a world and everything in the world, and He is the בורא, מחדש בטובו תמיד מעשה בראשית in an ongoing way, and Hashem gave us a stage on which to do avodah on, a stage on which to shine on, and הקדוש ברוך הוא creates us.

Another way to or an entrance point to be able to talk about the world is not that we started off with nothing, yes yesh me'ayin, in a certain way it's אין ויש. Before so to speak the world, whatever the word before means, before there was even an idea of time, there was only the אין סוף and the אור אין סוף, whatever these terms mean, we're not going to be going into for right now, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu, kevayachol, had to make room for anything else to exist. So, if you can imagine by way of analogy, last time we used an example of utter daylight, where which is bright trillions of watts, so to speak, to the point that no other flashlight would be able to even shine any light, and if you would shine a screen at a projector that nothing would be able to show up, not because it wasn't shining any light, but

because the circumstance, the מקום, the המקום, right, where it was, is brighter and subsumes anything else that could possibly be, and therefore there's no there's no מקום that even allows anything else to exist. So, I'll I'll use a little bit of a different analogy. For our purposes, imagine this canvas is full of paint, black paint, so that it's like if you would mix all colors together, it would just make a big black goop. This is darker than anything that you could imagine, but substantial, it's there, so that there's no room for for anything else to show up.

Everything else would just be canceled out by the paint that's there. And the sometimes you can see artists do this. Instead of painting on the canvas, what they do is they actually peel back so that the picture is in the negative. So now, when we look at the world that we have, we can say, and again, just the analogy is not all-inclusive, but it's just trying to to bring out a particular point, everything that we see is in the עולם. What we're actually doing is looking at the areas where Hakadosh Baruch Hu peeled back to allow anything to exist.

Now, why would Hakadosh Baruch Hu do this? It's not a question that we could ask in terms of why Hashem would do anything, that's beyond us, but with the world as we have it, anything that we could do was already included in the original in the original אור that was there, in the original אור אין סוף. Hakadosh Baruch Hu had to, as it were, be מצמצם to peel away, and not not getting into מחלוקת צמצום כפשוטו, צמצום לא כפשוטו, whatever that is, Hakadosh Baruch Hu had to, so to speak, create a perception that we can have to have some sort of a dimming of that light to allow us to exist, to allow us to shine.

But Hakadosh Baruch Hu didn't need that. The אור אין סוף was all-inclusive of everything. Therefore, the entire point of this system would be for us to to because Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted to create to be מגלה, to create a דירה בתחתונים, חוק הטוב להיטיב, however you frame that. So now that we say that the entire point of the בריאה is not to innovate, to create, to give something that wasn't there before, this would mean that as we stand, the point of the entire system can only be for us. And therefore, when we ask, what is the center of the universe?

What's our focus? The answer is, as far as I'm concerned, כל העולם נברא בשבילי. The point of the universe is me. That's what I have to understand. I'm not going to be able, other than to fulfill רצון השם, to give Hakadosh Baruch Hu נחת, to bring a gilui of Hakadosh Baruch Hu to the extent that I can, that's because Hakadosh Baruch Hu left me room to do that, but that my point of avodah is going to be wherever I am. I'd like to just quote a couple of things that helped that helped me feel it this week when I saw them.

One of them is going back to to Rabbi Akiva Tatz. In one of his ספרים, he has a chapter, it says, who are you? Defining your role in life. And he discusses the idea, in avodah, a lot of us are always striving to correct our failures, which is important, and to correct mistakes and address our weaknesses, yes, but he comes at it from the other from from another point, he says Hakadosh Baruch Hu put us in the world. Before we get to things that we have to correct, He also gave us tools. Now if you went on to a a building scene, and you wanted to know what was a person's job, you would say, where are they placed, what are the tools that they are given, now I can look in a broader way and say, oh, this is where that person plugs in.

So before we focus on our weaknesses, our deficiencies, where we might have messed up, what we have to correct, the first thing a person should know if we're going to define our role in life, is what are the tools that we've been given? If one person is tall, one person is short, one person has a beautiful voice, one person doesn't have a beautiful voice, well, the person that doesn't have a beautiful voice, maybe he gets stuck in a mode where he wishes he did and he wants to be a chazan, but he's going to be doomed for failure.

And not even worse, the bigger tragedy than the fact that he might not be able to do a task that he doesn't have the tools for, is that since every person is unique and they're given the tools that nobody else has, they're also going to leave their גדלות on the table. And he has an unbelievable paragraph here, he says, if you've ever felt jealous of anyone who has gifts or talents that you wish you had, you will lose that jealousy. If they have been given those talents, it is only because they need them for their role.

If you do not have those particular gifts, it's because you do not need them. You've been given the tools that you need, period. You could not use someone else's tools because they are irrelevant to your life's purpose. That person needs them, you do not. Just a few other lines, just also similar to this idea, he says, if you think that you lack the tools that you need for life, you are wrong, you're mistaken, either because you have those tools and you're simply unaware of them, or you're mistaken about your task in life. You have the tools that you need to fulfill your role, you are pursuing the wrong role.

The role you imagined to be yours is in fact someone else's. He finishes off, and you need to do some serious work to discover your role. Stop longing for someone else's role and get busy finding yours. So first of all, I think that we could probably just pause here and be מתבונן on on on that forever, but I wanted to quote one other idea, also from a different angle, it was the the Piaseczner, the Eish Kodesh, the Chovot Hatalmidim's yahrzeit this week. Recently they printed an Eish Kodesh in English called The Fire in the Darkness, and I'm going to quote a few a few lines from a piece he writes it in English.

English, it's from פרשת ראה, the דרשה's given in the Warsaw Ghetto from 5701, 1941. He asks a question: ראה אנכי נותן לפניכם היום את הברכה ואת הקללה, see, I set before you today blessings and curses. And the question he asks is what the word ראה is doing in there. I put it before you. Why, what is the instruction, what's the ציווי, ראה, that you have to see? And he explains that the world is full of pleasure. Every pleasure in life has some sort of a price tag, and we have to figure out what pleasure we want and what price tag is worth it.

On the most basic level, if a person wants an item, that costs money. If a person wants to develop a relationship, that's going to take an investment of time, energy, of whatever it takes. If a person wants to excel at something, they're going to have to put in the time and energy to learn it. If they want to get in shape, they're going to have to put in the time and energy to eat right and to exercise. There's always going to be a cost and there's always going to be a benefit. But, says the Piasetzner, it's all part of one process.

The question is going to be: are you looking at pleasure, I'm picking pleasure A or pleasure B, and I look at the process as part of that and I embrace the process? Or am I always looking at the price tag and no matter what, everything is hard. I'm choosing which hard is the least desirable, but I'm just always grumbling. And based on this, he wants to answer a contradiction based on two different pesukim, one of them that talks about suffering as הסתר פנים, and the other one that says עמו אנכי בצרה, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is with us in pain.

Which is it? Is it הסתר פנים, is there no גילוי, or is Hakadosh Baruch Hu with us? And he says the answer is really both true. It's up to us to decide, it's really just a matter of perspective. If we have the If we work on the level of emunah to say that whatever I'm going through is the price tag, but it's a price tag for ultimate pleasure, then we're redefining something. It might be hard, but it's not bad, it's עמו אנכי בצרה. The emunah can actually bring the light into the הסתר פנים so that there is no הסתר פנים, it's עמו אנכי בצרה.

On the other hand, if we're living a life where we're always just based on the cost, and yes, there's going to be a benefit, but that that's just the tool I use to figure out what's least desirable, everything is just always paying a price, paying a price, then I'm that's going to be a מצב of הסתר פנים. I'm never focused on the pleasure, I'm always just focused on the pain, and therefore, I'm really just living a very painful life, rachmana litzlan, unfortunately, and I'm just figuring out which pain I would prefer not to have in favor of of the other one.

But again, all of that comes back. That means how am I going to define my life? How am I going to define where I come into contact with Hakadosh Baruch Hu? Where is the הסתר פנים? Where is the עמו אנכי בצרה? Where is my avodah? Where am I going to bring God into the world? Where am I going to see that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is all good and Hakadosh Baruch Hu, כביכול, held back some of that אור אין סוף in order to create a מקום of העלם, a מקום of darkness, so that I could participate in building the world, so that I could be part of the process of of of having Godliness?

How could I do that if there's אור אין סוף everywhere? By Hakadosh Baruch Hu creating a מצב of of חושך to allow me to bring about a גילוי מכח אל הפועל. We we said a lot, but I think that that is directly relevant to understanding. So where is the center of the עולם that Hakadosh Baruch Hu provided, allowed to be? It's wherever I am. That's where my מקום עבודה is. That's what Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave me as a tailor-made gift to bring about a גילוי of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to bring about a tikkun that nobody else in the world, from the beginning of time until the end of time, can ever have the opportunity to do.

Feeding into what we said last week, that once you have a system where the entire machine is designed for a function, in our case to bring about a גילוי יחודו יתברך, if you have a machine that needs every piece in order to work, so it needs every other piece, but every other piece needs it. And that's where a person can earn his נצחיות, can take on eternal meaning, can take on the value of the entire שלימות, when he's willing to find and embrace his individuality of wherever I am. To hold up his finger and say, "My avodah is where I am.

This is the piece that's going to contribute to the שלימות of of of the of the entire universe from the beginning until the end. I cannot fulfill my function without everybody else, but everybody else is not going to be able to fulfill their function without me." And therefore, says רבי יהושע בן חנניה, זקף ליה אצבעיה, held up his finger, אמר לו הכא, it's right here. This is I am in the center of the universe right now. With my tools, with my life circumstances, with my family circumstances, my community, my shul, the entire universe, the entire שלימות of the system is dependent on me.

That screw can become the most important piece of the machine. Some people have a bigger piece, some people have a smaller piece, but when you need shleimut, like we've said before, something that's 99% complete is 100% lacking in shleimut, and therefore, says Rabbi' Yehoshua ben Chananya, where is the center of the universe? What is everything dependent on? And any one of us could say this: It is dependent on me. He held up his finger and he said, the center of the universe, דאמצעותא דעלמא, where is that? הכא, it's right here. אמרו ליה, they said, מי יימר, who says?

אמר, אייתו אשלו משחי, bring a rope and measure it. We'll have to see what that means. Period. לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה, we are back to paragraph א', where we will start to learn together. דע, you should know that's take as axiomatic, it doesn't have to be proven, but it's not dependent on external factors, I am putting this in front of you: שיש אור, there is אור. אור is something that emanates from something else, it's an expression of something. There is an אור שהוא למעלה מנפשין ורוחין ונשמתין. Like we explained last time, there's different levels, as it were, to a person.

נפש, רוח, נשמה, for our purposes, are going to be different altitudes at which a person exists, has a personality, you could say the basic the basic life energy, the emotions, the intellect. For our purposes for right now, we'll call those the פנימי, things that have been internalized into the person. And there's also, for we can call them goals, we can call them aspirations. As a person grows, there are going to be areas that he's going to expand, reach, and then internalize, and then he's going to move on to what was previously beyond even what were the direct מקיפין, the direct things that were surrounding him, that were encompassing, and move on to the next one.

So as relates to this Torah, we can say that there is an אור, there is an expression of godliness, of energy that a person has internalized, and then there's that which he can grow into, things that are not where he's holding now, but the things that he will move, that he will, that he will be able to expand and ultimately incorporate. והוא אור אין סוף, and that is the אור that is not yet quantified, it's not yet מוגבל, it's not yet within the person, but rather it's out there, it's more abstract, it's not yet attained, and there's no תפיסא in it.

Now this is going to be a moving target, we went into this deeply last week. The אור אין סוף is always going to exist, so that if a person is holding at one level and he expands to incorporate what was previously beyond him, so now he's still going to be within this dynamic of נפשין, רוחין, ונשמתין, which now have grown to incorporate what was previously אור אין סוף, and now he's going to continue on in his avodah towards the אור אין סוף, which will always exist. ואף על פי שאין השכל משיגו, even though there is no השגה of the אור אין סוף, we're going to see that there's different levels of how a person can can react, can interact with this אור אין סוף.

For our purposes, we're talking about השגה, we're talking about an intellectual involvement, we're talking about something that we've identified as a place that we want to work towards, we want to reach, we want to be able to be משיג, to encompass, to not only identify, let's say, from a חכמה that there is an idea, but to move towards a בינה, to move towards being able to break it up into its pieces, to understand each one, and then to build it back up. And at this point, our שכל sees it, it wants to reach towards it, it's אור אין סוף, it's beyond us, we're not משיג it, we haven't reached it.

אף על פי כן, רדיפה דמחשבה למידף אבתריה, we're chasing it, we're looking towards, it's our goal, it's our ambition, we're harnessing the forces within us to be able to move towards it, but we can't reach it, and we can never reach it, that's part of our process, to constantly be shooting and moving motivated to move beyond where we are, to get closer to the אור אין סוף using whatever tools and not just limited by going one step at a time, but davka to go one step at a time. In fact, if a person would try to jump two steps at a time, either it would be something that's not relevant for the person, or it could be damaging.

Think about a you know, think about somebody at a basic level who is saying word for word advanced formulas in physics or advanced concepts in קבלה, or they're engaging in acts of chesed that are not just expanding the type of person they are, but it's something that they're going to resent, it's something beyond where they're holding, it's something that doesn't speak to them, at a certain point, either they will snap or it's just won't affect them and they'll just snap back into place. One way or the other, they're not going to be growing. So this person has identified the אור אין סוף that's directly beyond them, they don't reach it, but where is a person going to have a רדיפה towards that first level of אור that's directly beyond them?

We talked about this earlier in terms of מקיפין and מקיפין דמקיפין. So what we have is a person who, like we said, is מציאותא דעלמא, wherever he is, there is there is his current status, there are the things that he's previously conquered, maybe in a position to give over to the to the next level, if he's a rebbe can give it over to תלמידים, and there there are those things that he's looking to expand into. And as far as that area that's אור אין סוף, the place where he's trying to expand, to incorporate, to grow, he has a רדיפה towards it.

ועל ידי הרדיפה אז השכל משיגו סובב בבחינת מטי ולא מטי. Like we explained last week, through this רדיפה, the רדיפה, so to speak, the chasing is not a necessary evil, as it were. The רדיפה itself is the עבודה, the ambition, the yearning, the השתוקקות, the thirst for, through that desire, the רדיפה is what creates the attachment. The רדיפה, the chasing, I'm not complete and I need that, that is the מקום of חסר, that is the העלם, that is the universe, that's the world that now needs to be fulfilled. If a person is going to going to strive for שלמות, that means he's not שלם yet.

What's that מקום חסר, that thirst, I need that, that is the expression through the רדיפה. That רדיפה itself is what is going to facilitate, what's going to allow for and create אז השכל משיגו, so then the person is going to reach and create a relationship with what's beyond him, but what's beyond him is, we said, forever beyond him. So how does a person create a relationship with what is what what is beyond them? Through the yearning for it. Now they can never really reach and incorporate it, because what they're shooting for is the אין סוף, they're trying to use this motivation to create a רדיפה, they're forever chasing the horizon, they're forever chasing to see what's just beyond, to get a taste of it, and at the same moment that they achieve it, that they accomplish it, that they've they they have attain a perspective and an appreciation for truth, and they're מגלה אור that

that brings it to a this climax what they were shooting for yesterday, at the same moment, they now simultaneously create a realization and a that there is even more out there that previously just wasn't even on their radar, and now there's a new השתוקקות, there's a new רדיפה, there's a new thirst and a drive created, and therefore, as they reach it, אז השכל משיגו סובב בבחינת מטי ולא מטי. At the same time that they grow and they expand and they have that that almost that satisfaction, it also goes to a deeper, more meaningful, more profound by orders of magnitude, there's more there, and they're forever chasing and they're achieving בבחינת מטי ולא מטי.

They reach that they didn't reach, again, it's a little bit of a borrowed term because this is a technical term that's used by the ספרים in the creation of כלים, which isn't far off from what we're describing. A כלי that needs to be filled, that needs to be filled with אור to achieve שלמות, that at the very same time that they're achieving a שלמות of one level, they're creating a כלי for the next level that needs to be fulfilled, that thirsts to be fulfilled. כי באמת אי אפשר להשיגו כי הוא למעלה מנפש רוח נשמה. בעצם, if what they're moving for is not a particular point on the map, they're moving towards the אור אין סוף, they're moving towards what is perpetually beyond them, so then it's always going to be למעלה מנפש רוח נשמה, and at any point that they achieve, they're also going to simultaneously be creating a new כלי, period.

I'm going to read from a few pieces in Likutey Halachos just to help supplement this idea, which is something that I think we're maybe of heard hearing for the first time and we're we're getting comfortable with. Likutey Halachos, הלכות גילוח, says, עיקר הוא האמונה כי האמונה היא התחלה ופתח ושער ליכנס בעבודת השם ובהשגת אלקות. Emunah, anything that we understand as emet, anything that we understand with our sechel is not something that we need emunah for. And it's somewhat subjective, and it's also not in a level of avodah, it's not on a level of hitbatlut, it's something that we're only subscribing to because it's something that we understand wherever we're holding.

The idea of being able to move beyond ourselves is taking something as truth, but not because we've already internalized and understand it, but rather it's with the light of emunah, and we've spoken about this at length, how emet and emunah go together, I believe in the last Torah as well. ואסיפת תכלית של כל הידיעות והשגות בבחינת תכלית הידיעה אשר לא נדע, שזהו בבחינת אמונה. Emunah is the idea, this is how I'm reading it, of internalizing, getting comfortable with, subscribing to something that is actually beyond us, something that we don't have the tools yet to appreciate on our own on our own terms, through our own da'at and our own sechel, other than to understand We all have places that we get our information.

A young child might take everything that his parents say. They are establishing whatever the givens are that this person is going to be working with for life. Everything that comes afterwards is going to be evaluated against this against this backdrop. People could look at textbook, people could look at other sources of information, media. Now, there's a fine line between what emunah is and what what is foolish. Either way, somebody is subscribing to X. Where is the difference between emunah and foolishness? It's something that we've discussed before. Emunah is built on emet. Whether a person is opening up a Sefer Emunot ve-Deot, whether he is opening up a Rambam and going into the deep philosophical arguments, whether a person is validating with his with rational arguments the masorah, and taking an approach, I believe the Sefer HaChinuch talks about it in the הקדמה, ArtScroll prints it, and a person says, "I have validated the masorah.

This masorah goes back to a national revelation. To the extent that I validate this masorah, that is actually worth way beyond my perception. I'm limited by whatever I see. Over here, we had five, six million people that had a direct revelation to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The only gap between that and where I am is understanding, well, how can I how can I take as truth something that I have no basis to evaluate? But now that I've validated the transmission, I can take that as fact. Therefore, what what is the ultimate in da'at? My da'at is really limited by my perspective.

The ultimate in da'at is תכלית הידיעה אשר לא ידע, understanding where the limitations of my da'at are, and understanding where I should be looking towards. Where is there a source of objective truth? We have the נביאים, the אבי הנביאים is Moshe Rabbeinu, we have תורת משה, we have the Torah that was given on הר סיני, there was a national revelation. And now what I'm doing is I'm expanding what I can now take as truth, something that's actually beyond me. So I'm using emet as a jumping-off point for emunah to fill that gap towards what I can now relate to as emet that is actually beyond what I can otherwise substantiate.

And that becomes the bechinah of אני ראשון ואני אחרון. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the the the starting point, so to speak. It's the basis against which against which I can evaluate or understand or perceive anything. I live within a world of HaMakom, the universal context. It's no longer relative. I live within a world of objective reality and truth, even though my perception is subjective and limited. And also אני אחרון. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the end, the goal. ציפית לישועה, it's the end of the beginning point of where anything from my perception started, and it's the end point of where everything is leading towards, and there's nothing outside of that.

That is totally that is totally HaMakom. And that is because that idea is outside the realm of anything that I have a frame of reference for, it's something that doesn't exist within the world, it's something that the world exists within, I can talk about it, but it's really בבחינת מטי ולא מטי. I can't wrap my mind around it. What I can do is I can talk about it, I can address individual aspects, I can break it up, and then I can put it back together into a general idea. And every time that I understand the importance of what we're talking about at whatever level, whatever depth I'm at, every time I'm מטי, then I go into לא מטי.

But it's simultaneous, and I think it works very well with the idea we discussed in the beginning of the shiur of sort of living within the negative, where, on one hand, my exposure is to the יש מאין, my my exposure is to what's before me, and on the other hand, since the starting point of all of creation was something that was infinitely deep, without any גבול, incorporating anything that could possibly be, the way that I relate to the יש, the way that I relate to the creation is only at a particular altitude, but since everything is encompassed within the אור אין סוף, I can go towards infinite levels of appreciation with with what's before me.

So just to give an example, whatever it's meaningful, I was trying to come up with something, I can't say that I understand the full scope of it, let's say you have a a five-year-old and he looks at putting a seed into the ground. There's a cause and effect. You put in a seed, and then it grows. You can look at the same exact thing on a biological level. A person puts the seed in, it germinates, whatever happens that leads to shoots and so on. A person can look at the same process on a biochemical level, where enzymes are being broken down, and that leads to certain other processes.

It could be on a molecular level, it could be on a quantum level, and so on that until a person in our world will ultimately come to the the end point of of רצון השם. But what where is that point? We can't truly understand and embrace רצון השם other than as הקדוש ברוך הוא made us privy to. What that means is that the תכלית הידיעה is אשר לא ידע. There's infinite levels of pleasure that we can grow closer to the אין סוף with appreciation of the world that we live in, and be in touch with the divine wisdom to be able to embrace it, like the Baal HaTanya talks about, the the idea of תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם, where we're where we're embracing Torah, being משיג, we're wrapping our mind, no pun intended, so to speak, around Torah and integrating it into wherever we're holding at the time, and on the other hand, we're immersed

in it with infinite levels to grow and be able to incorporate מטי ולא מטי, where at the very same time we are immersed in whatever we're engaged in and we are also encompassing the the ideas that we're growing into. And of course the Baal HaTanya talks about it based on on a Rambam, based on ideas that we've discussed before, because הקדוש ברוך הוא and his חכמה are one, so to speak. This is not just a matter of learning information. If you learn about a building, you learn about a blueprint, you're not incorporating and wrapping your mind around the building itself, it's just whatever is reflected in the blueprint, but because the but because everything that is is is בעצם אין עוד מלבדו, because when we learn the Torah, when we learn the רצון השם, the חכמה of Hashem as it's מצמצם in the Torah, then we are, and this this takes emunah, it's hard to

even know what we're talking about, then we are actually becoming one with הקדוש ברוך הוא himself, and at the same time achieving and appreciating deeper and deeper levels of of integration as we go further further towards the אור אין סוף that we can forever forever grow towards and grow into. And of course there's ups and downs in life, there's ימי אהבה, ימי שנאה, there's רצוא ושוב, we talked about about Moshe Rabbeinu during the time of Mincha on Shabbos I think in one of the earlier תורות, that as a person gains this perception then at certain points comes down to earth, we were we are able to use these things that we have been able to incorporate, and at some point we were able to be משיג, and then at some points we feel like we're in the darkness, we feel so much more distant, but we know for a fact that there were levels that

we did appreciate, and that we were growing towards, and we're able to bring that back with us to help us fight into the מלחמה, to help us cut back through the darkness, to help bring in that light, to help know that it's not הסתר פנים, that it's עמו אנכי בצרה, to help us grow further in all stages of our growth. Paragraph ב׳: ודע, again the same the same introductory word ודע, like as in paragraph א׳, שאי אפשר להשיג אותו, אי אפשר, the only way to reach to develop a relationship with this אור אין סוף, which how again, how does one develop a relationship with something that's out of their grasp?

Through the ambition, through the reaching, through the desire. When you have a desire for something, then that that desire creates a relationship with the focus of your desire, אפילו בבחינת מטי ולא מטי, even with this idea of מטי ולא מטי, this chasing the horizon, everything we've been discussing, אלא על ידי עשיית המצוה, that the only way to reach towards this אין סוף is through doing mitzvot, and well we're going to say doing מצות בשמחה. Just a plug or a reference to the shiur we had from last week, where we discussed I think in a very powerful way mitzvot and specifically מצות בשמחה and simcha in general, and the different ways of engaging and creating a דביקות with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and avodah, each of which has its own unique capacity and ability to to create a connection with Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

Learning תורה, תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם, תפלה, creating a relationship, opening those channels with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and mitzvot, מצות מעשיות, using and catalyzing within this world, the עולם העשיה, where the where it's so to speak the most choshech, the most גס, the most physical, and catalyzing and creating a גילוי of Hakadosh Baruch Hu in a דירה בתחתונים, not despite, but specifically in the circumstances of the עולם העשיה, and doing that simcha in all of its aspects, like we said, specifically finding the שלמות and embracing the avodah of of bringing the גילוי of Hakadosh Baruch Hu into this world.

Over here the the note that he brings and it's really foreshadowing what's to come, is the the the simcha of the זכות that we were אשר בחר בנו, that we won the lottery, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu chose us as as Yidden, as being able to create this connection with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and to bring נחת רוח, to bring about, we talked about התפארות, I think in Torah י״ז, but to bring about the נחת רוח, to bring about a גילוי of the רצון השם through the קיום המצות, and we will discuss further what actions bring this about and how we can be זוכה through this to create a connection with the אין סוף.

Further: כי על ידי שמחת המצוה נשלם הקדושה, through the שמחת המצוה, so it's not just the action of the mitzvah, but it's also the kavanah and the attitude of the mitzvah, like we like we quoted earlier. earlier from the Piaseczna, and the kavanah of an act really defines the act. So that, as we discussed, the us being at the center of the universe, it's not just the world as we find it, it's Hakadosh Baruch Hu creating the world in order to be able to give, in order for us to engage in avodah, to make ourself a kli for Hakadosh Baruch Hu, it's not just the physical aspect of the world, but it's how we engage with the world and not just in terms of our actions, but also in terms of our attitude.

It's through this שמחת המצוה נשלמה הקדושה, that's how we bring a shleimut, that's how we fill up the kli, that's how we take the void, that's how we take a situation of darkness where there seems to be הסתר פנים, and we're besimchah. We say that this is exactly where we're supposed to be. This is not us trying to bring Hakadosh Baruch Hu into the world, but rather this situation is is Hakadosh Baruch Hu in the world, it's Hakadosh Baruch Hu's embrace, it's specifically presenting itself to us in חושך so that we could be the ones to fill up the kli, we could be the ones to bring light into the darkness.

And that actually, through that attitude, through us embracing Hakadosh Baruch Hu and defining the world as being גילוי פנים rather than הסתר פנים through the light of emunah, through that שמחת המצוה, we are נשלם הקדושה. We now are filling up that void, we're erasing the darkness. We're going to see that when that that the entire world, especially post-Etz Hadaat, is really be'etzem an עירוב, it's mixture, there's nothing that's totally tov and nothing that's totally ra. Our job is, in the kabbalistic language, to create בירורים, to clarify, to relate to the ניצוצות in the entire world, which means that when we take every situation which is packaged up, which has godly energy in it, it has godly purpose, and then there's the the package that it's in, which might present itself as darkness, when we're able to make בירורים, to redefine this object as part of Hakadosh Baruch Hu's plan, part of His creation, and we

identify, we make בירור, we clarify the ניצוצות in any particular part of this world, that now sort of isolates the ניצוצות, we now are able to identify and elevate the kedushah within any item, and once you're able to make those בירורים, everything else falls away. Lemashal, if you have a package that's meant to protect the contents, and now you engage you you take the contents for a particular purpose, then the package is no longer useful. If the world is there for us to cut through the darkness and find the godliness, and we're able to to embrace and engage with that godliness, so now the package of חושך just falls away, it withers away, it was being it was being vitalized by the kedushah in it.

Now that we have embraced that kedushah and we've made those בירורים, clarifications, distinctions, so then it no longer has any kiyum on its own. The kiyum was as a kli for the kedushah so that we can we can engage it for avodah. ומעלה החיות והקדושה שבקליפות, as we just described, a person now elevates, for our purposes, I guess we can relate to מעלה, to elevate, to connecting it, כביכול, upwards towards הקדוש ברוך הוא, and once we're מעלה that divine energy, we take the the existence, the vitality of anything in this world, and we connect it with רצון השם, creating a גילוי in this world of הקדוש ברוך הוא, which is in fact the greatest גילוי, because it's all the way in a מצב of חושך, that we're not just bringing in light, but we're redefining the entire universe and the חושך itself and the קליפה, as it were, itself as really just serving the טוב,

so that there was never really, like we said before, there was never really an A and a B, there was never really רצון השם versus some other רצון, there was never kedushah versus קליפה. What there really was is a presentation of אור in חושך so that we can cut through the חושך and understand that everything was really by design. And therefore, we are מעלה קדושה that was in the קליפות, and the קליפות are מבוטל ממילא. Okay, there's a lot here. I mean, this Torah is just very, very rich and dense, but we're trying to unpack the best we can.

So as we develop a relationship with the אור אין סוף בבחינת מטי ולא מטי, and the way that we do that is through mitzvot and מצות מעשיות בשמחה, that now we're going to connect with the idea of קטורת. So this is a בחינה of אחד עשר סמני קטורת. We're going to have to explain why the קטורת, and specifically the 11 ingredients of the קטורת, what that represents, כי הקליפות הם בבחינת מותרות, that a דבר שבקדושה is is represented by the number 10, when you have something that's more than that, when you're dealing with שלימות, anything more actually serves to take away.

If you have something that's in a perfect balance and now you add something extra, then that will throw it out of a balance. More is not necessarily better. So he says, כי הקליפות הם ב... בבחינת מותרות והם בבחינת עצבות. So we have these, these concepts of 11 of the קטורת and a בחינה of עצבות, which are counter מצוות בשמחה, ובבחינת בכל עצב יהיה מותר. It's a בחינה, brings a pasuk in Mishlei that associates the concept of עצבות with the concept of מותר, והם תוקפא דדינא, and this is the strength, as it were, of din, בבחינת ויתעצב אל לבו, where we just had פרשת נח talking about din in the context of the מבול, and now he ties together atzvut and and לב, which is going to be the seat of simcha versus atzvut.

So let's, let's unpack this a little bit. I know that we're spending a lot of time, but hopefully we're also exploring things, ideas that are just incredibly foundational. So with regard to the קטורת, the Likutei Halachot brings: וזה בחינת עשרה אחד עשר סממני קטורת שעל ידם מבררין כל הניצוצות הקדושה מן הקליפות. We said that when a person performs מצוות בשמחה, that is how we engage with the אור אין סוף. What are we doing? We are essentially engaging in a clarification, in a refining process where we can isolate the ניצוצות, the kedusha, the vitality within the עולם העשיה, within the world around us, so that the קליפה, the forces that would otherwise present itself as being מותר, of being past שלמות, of being thrown, throwing the בריאה out of balance to create conflicting priorities and so forth, we now have the עבודה of creating those clarifications, so those בירורים so that we can bring a גילוי

of Hakadosh Baruch Hu into the world. The kedusha is representative of a בחינה of עשרה. There's a pasuk, among others, in Vayikra: העשירי יהיה קדש לה׳. An עדה is, we know that a מנין is 10 people. Kedusha is associated with the number 10. קליפה is associated with the number 11. First of all, it's 10 plus, so if we have 10 plus, the first number after that would be 11, but further, Rabbi Chaim Kramer brings in a note, more or less, although I'm going to supplement, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is אין סופיות, כביכול, infinite, we can't even speak about Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

When Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates the world, the world is going to be a בריאה, יש מאין, it's going to be finite. If something infinite creates, then it's going to create in an infinite way. What was the mechanism, what was the vehicle whereby Hakadosh Baruch Hu created a בריאה? This is the ספירות, we're going to talk about it more soon. That means that the world of קדושה relates directly to the ספירות, which relate, in a way, directly from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. When you have things in the בריאה, which again are קליפה, they don't stand on their own, but הקדוש ברוך הוא created them to to give us a package, a choshech, to give us a physical world, as it were, so that we can engage in the avodah of relating to the kedushah within, that's going to be one level removed, and therefore he presents, he says, while the sefiros of holiness draw vitality directly from

the upper worlds, the sefiros of the sitra achra must get their vitality indirectly by drawing it through the realm of holiness. Therefore, although there are 10 sefiros, the realm of evil comprises of 11 sparks: 10 sefiros plus the spark of holiness that gives them life. So again, these ideas are very high, but if we can just understand the the the nekudah underneath them enough that we can bring out the points that Rabbeinu is trying to give us so that we can relate it to our own avodah wherever it is that we're holding. Therefore, הקדוש ברוך הוא is creating a matzav of choshech, a matzav of sitra achra in order that we should have the world in the perfect way that's suited for our avodah.

How does הקדוש ברוך הוא create this? Well, הקדוש ברוך הוא is kulo tov, so kivayachol, if this is a good analogy, like broken telephone, if something is kulo tov, how do you create something that appears to be different? Through a series of distortions, or at least creating some sort of an indirect relationship where, at least in appearance, it seems to take on a life of its own. What's the what's the ultimate remedy for that? What's the ultimate mituk of that? Well, it's not really something different, it's just that it's a distortion, it's a misrepresentation of the kedushah of of of the gilui of הקדוש ברוך הוא that was there originally.

What you have to do is essentially bring light, you have to eliminate the distortion. Therefore, what you do is you take the ketores, as R' Chaim Kramer says, the daily offering of 11 spices, which is a means for countering the 11 forces of evil. If we're saying that the sitra achra, and there's a lot of sources in the sefarim, relates to 11, whether like we said it's because of something outside of shalem which serves to take away, really the entire world is shalem, the entire world is retzon Hashem, but anything that presents itself as being extra really serves to take away, it's something in a dition to shleimut, which means it stands on its own, or the idea that we just quoted from ר' Chaim Kramer, so therefore the way to be mevatel this would be to bring a mituk of that 11th ingredient.

ר' Abba Tzvi Neiman has a kunteres on the ketores where he talks about, at least he has a chapter over here, talking about a lot of sources of 11 representing sitra achra. 11 sins for which one is cursed in פרשת כי תבוא with the 12th pasuk, which is really a summary of the 11. אהבל אחיכה, אלף and יוד are 11. Haman and his 10 sons representing the 11 forces of evil. But he discusses in the קטורת that there was one ingredient which was the חלבנה, which had a bad odor, but when it was together with the other 10 ingredients, they together created a good smell.

And in fact, we know that any, that it represents the resha'im and any fast day, any תענית that doesn't have the resha'im along, we've quoted before, is not considered a תענית. That, by definition, we have to be including the, so to speak, bad-smelling ingredient in order to convert it, and that together creates a כלל. When it's mevatel itself to the other 10, it becomes part of the kedushah. The Baal HaTanya already discusses in his own way the difference between being mevatel something and between converting it. But in any event, when we take the חלבנה it joins the other 10 ingredients to ultimately create a שלימות and a sweet smell, so that is able to counter the 11 forces of the סטרא אחרא, of קליפה.

And again, R'' Neiman brings that Kaddish begins with יתגדל ויתקדש, which is 11 letters, and Yaakov meets Esav and takes his 11 sons to counteract the 11 forces of טומאה. Other sources as well. So we see that this avodah of the קטורת, and the Kitzur Likutei Moharan brings that now that we don't have קטורת anymore, ונשלמה פרים שפתינו, that we could be ma'aleh the קליפות and זוכין לשמחה through saying the פרשה of the קטורת בכוונה גדולה, if we need a little bit of extra motivation, whether you're saying it in קרבנות before פסוקי דזמרה or after davenen.

But this avodah of the קטורת is able to create this בירורים, create this dynamic to bring out the kedushah and counteract this קליפה. Now, as we said before, what happens when somebody encounters something in this עולם העשיה, when somebody encounters this package that has vitality, it has kedushah, but it also has סטרא אחרא, it also has קליפה in it? When a person is ma'aleh the ניצוצות, he relates to the kedushah, he relates to the fruit, as it were, and now the peel is no longer attached to the fruit, it's separated from the package, the peel is going to wither up and dry away, it's going to be מבטל ממילא.

Perhaps we can suggest that this is the connection between klipah or מותרות, it's extra. Something that's extra is not usable when there's extra pieces in the box. If you have shleimus, every single piece has the value of the entire thing. Every piece is necessary. When there's extra, so then it has its own identity, it stands on its own. But if the entire function of whatever that extra thing was was to house the kedushah, now that a person engaged with the kedushah as part of the shleimus, it falls away. We relate that over here to a בחינה of atzvus.

Now, atzvus is, I'm going to suggest, the difference between, what is atzvus as the opposite of simcha? Atzvus is עפר, עצבות is lethargy, atzvus is sadness, despondence. That's very different than, let's say, anger. Anger is something that's fiery, it comes from אש. Jealousy also is motivated. When a person is be'atzvus, they're just, they're מתייאש, nothing else matters, there's no purpose. And we've talked before, the difference between, let's say, a שבועת שקר - I want something, it might not be the right thing, and therefore I'm lying about it - or is there a שבועת שוא, it's meaningless.

That actually is, in a certain way, much worse. It's one thing if I go after the wrong priorities, but at least, chas veshalom, I'm utilizing my energy, I'm utilizing my personality, my strengths, just for the wrong purpose, I'll have to replace my priorities. But when somebody just gives up all meaning, he's not interested, he's not enthusiastic about anything, he's be'atzvus, in certain ways that gap is much harder to cross. Atzvus is meaninglessness, and therefore we relate, if simcha is sameach bechelko, is shleimus, is relating to one's chelek - yes, it's only a chelek, but it's part of the greater structure and every single chelek is as meaningful as the entire structure because it's all necessary, it's shleimus, there's no מותרות, every part is necessary - the opposite of that would be atzvus, which is what's left over after you take every piece that's part of the structure, what's left over is going to essentially wither

away, that relates to atzvus. And while a person can be complex and have multiple motivations going on, some good, some not as good, at the same time, a person can't be motivated and despondent at the same time. Both of those reside in the lev, the opposite of simcha for our purposes would be atzvus, and both of those would reside in the lev, so that going back to the way we've been discussing it, when there's simcha a person is relating to purpose, ambition, goals, understanding every chelek is part of a process, then whatever situation a person is in in this world, a person sees the purpose, he clarifies, he makes the birurim, he attaches himself to the kedushah, he's maaleh the kedushah, and everything falls away, and this this just raises up in levels to be able to go to the next to the next level and achieve even greater heights.

But where a person is not relating to the purpose, where where somebody has atzvus in his lev, he's not engaged with with with sameach bechelko, he's not engaged with understanding everything is part of a shleimus and finding finding meaning and finding vitality, that's where the atzvus is in the lev, and therefore that's going to bring, rachmana litzlan, that's going to bring din instead of instead of there being rachamim, instead of there being a situation where even if things are not necessarily all operating in the appropriate way, there's room to wait for a person to do teshuva, there's room to bring a kapara, there's room to say not everything is perfect, but Be'ezrat Hashem it's going to go the right way.

At that point, there's nothing to we've lost our motivation to find God in the darkness, and therefore the the good, so to speak, is being buried, it's not being related to, and the heavenly response, unfortunately, in that case would be din. ועיקר השמחה היא בלב. So this dynamic between simcha versus עצבות, these both reside in the lev, כמו שכתוב נתתה שמחה בלבי. Okay, I think we're going to stop over here. So just in two lines to use Rav Chaim Kramer's summary of the two paragraphs that we've been working on, basically number one, although a person's mind races to attain the אור אין סוף, it cannot be grasped except in the aspect of מטי ולא מטי, so it's that desire, that chasing, that's how a person develops a relationship and is able to attach to the אור אין סוף, but how does a person attain that אור אין סוף even with the מטי ולא מטי?

That is going to be through performing מצוות בשמחה. And as we explained, simcha is that vehicle through which the kedusha reaches שלמות, so that at any point we are in a state of חושך or a state of חסר, a state of of having a void that has to be filled, our purpose is really to function as a כלי to bring in that kedusha, to bring in that simcha through that simcha, through that aligning ourselves with רצון השם through performing mitzvot and מצוות מעשיות בשמחה, we bring about that שלמות so that at any particular level, we now become שלם.

If we're שלם, then there's no עבודה unless and until with that שלמות of kedusha, we are essentially reaching toward the next level, and whereas at one level we are in שלמות, that simultaneously is מטי ולא מטי, and simultaneously we've reached one level and brought the next level within our scope, so that we've become a כלי and created a relationship with the next level, but we're also חסר כלפי the next level so that there's a מקום for עבודה, and therefore this performing the מצוות בשמחה is ultimately a trigger reaction, and it's a it's a process that has infinite room for growth to get closer to the אור אין סוף, and as Rav Chaim Kramer puts it, which is where we're going ultimately, and we're going to have to explore, while the שכינה is in גלות, whatever that means for now, our performing מצוות בשמחה is able to redeem, to get the שכינה out of galut, to

redeem the שכינה from the the the מצב of being among the קליפות, and when the שכינה, when the מלכות is elevated, it arouses the ספירות above it, like in this process that we're describing, where as one כלי becomes filled, as there's שלמות at one level, it now reaches up and causes a trigger reaction at the next level, where we can now do the same process and create a שלמות at the next level, and as it goes upwards, it's also going to arouse a trigger reaction, it's going to arouse a response at the at the uppermost levels to now send שפע down, and this is the process where we trigger, we create we've used words similar to it'aruta diletata, we've discussed מ״ן and מ״ד, the idea of of of of causing a reaction from from above through our avodah, through our מסירות נפש, through our mitzvot, through our Torah, through our tefillah also, to bring שפע

into the world. Okay, let's stop over here, and be'ezrat Hashem we will we will put it together next time and go on. A lot of a lot of very deep, complex concepts, but I think that we'll, im yirtzeh Hashem, work towards coming out with something very meaningful and hopefully something that we're able to apply to ourselves.