LM 25.1 — Achavi Lan Mana, Part 1 of 5 · תורה כ״ה

בעזרת השם יתברך, we are beginning Torah כ״ה together. This is going to be the first shiur. The Torah is the third of those in the series discussing the מאמרי חז״ל with the discussions between the Athenian scholars, the סבי דבי אתונא and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, which go deep on many topics. We gave a broader introduction before Torah כ״ג. As far as this Torah is concerned, Rabbi' Chaim Kramer points out in the note that there is no information regarding specifically when it was given, although it was most likely between 1803 and 1806, when most of the other lessons based on this מאמר חז״ל with the סבי דבי אתונא were given.

The main themes are, and I'm going to read from the English, although it's going to be much more meaningful as we go through the language inside, overcoming one's illusions—we'll have to see what that means—attaining acquired intellect—again, we'll have to see what that means—rising from level to level, and charity, and Rabbi Nachman also includes a veiled reference to the enactment against the Jews, which was issued by the Russian Czar and had disastrous effect on the financial stability of the Jewish community in the Ukraine and beyond. So with that, we begin. לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה. The תורות that are לשון רבינו, as we've mentioned before, tend to be a little bit more terse, they're a little bit more packed and less explanatory than some of those that are in Rabbi' Natan's language.

We start with the Gemara in Bechorot: אמרו ליה, so the סבי דבי אתונא said to רבי יהושע בן חנניה, אחוי לן מנא, show us a כלי or some sort of an item, דלא שוי לחבלה, that's not worth the damage it causes. אייתי בודיא, he brought a mat, פשטוהו, he extended it, unrolled it, ולא הוה עייל בחרתא, and it was unable, it was too wide to go through the doorway. אמר להו, he said to them, אייתו מרא, bring me an axe, some sort of a כלי, a sledgehammer, סתרו, and he demolished the doorway. היינו מנא דלא שוי לחבלה, the mat was not worth the damage it caused when they had to break down the doorway.

Rashi: אחוי לן מנא דלא שוי לחבלה, show us a כלי that's not worth the damage it causes, הראנו כלי שאינו שוה הפסד שהוא מפסיד. בודיא, a mat, is a מחצלת, defines it, לא עייל בחרתא, wasn't able to get into the doorway, שהיה ארוך ורחב יותר מן הפתח, the mat was longer and wider than the entrance. אייתו מרא וסתרו, bring a sledgehammer and knock it down, בנין הפתח והכותל עד שיכנס, the door frame and the wall until the until it goes in, until the mat is able to go in. Next, he brings a line from a Mishnah in מסכת Sotah: משחרב בית המקדש בטל, from the time of the destruction of the בית המקדש, the following three things were בטל.

And this is going to form the basis for the beginning part of our discussion. What was batel? The שמיר worm, the נופת צופים, and אמנה. We'll just to explain these three things, at least for now, we're going to use R'' Chaim Kramer's note. The שמיר worm, based on a Gemara in Sotah, where a number of items are listed that became non-extant with the destruction of the בית המקדש, some with the first בית המקדש, some with the second. The שמיר, he says, was a one-of-a-kind worm-like creature the size of a barley kernel, created during בין השמשות on the sixth day of creation, which we won't go into the significance of now.

The special power was the ability to cut through stone simply by placing the שמיר on the stone, and it was used for engraving the precious stones of the Kohen Gadol's breastplate and for cutting the stones to measurement for the construction of the Holy Temple. Next is נופת צופים. צופים, a מצפה is a watchtower, we have this לשון in ציפית לישועה. The area was called צופים or צוף because of the many tall mountains from which people could צופה, could see long distances, and the honey produced there was very thick and sweet, and its taste was easily detected in whatever baked foods it was used.

And the last is אמנה, men of faith. The men of faith were those who trusted that God would always sustain them. Rashi explains that they were benevolent people who unstintingly gave charity and were generous with the money they expended for mitzvot, the honor of Shabbos and the Yamim Tovim. Rabbeinu is now going to first go deep into the פנימיות of this Mishnah in Sotah, and then we will come back around, not necessarily tonight, to discussing the Mishnah in Bekhorot with the סבי דבי אתונא. By way of introduction, I don't always read these little notes that introduce the paragraphs from R'' Elazar T.A., but maybe they'll be helpful in projecting, he brings יבאר שישנן ג' בחינות של שכל.

שכל בכח, he's going to say, is חכמה, we'll explain this in a second, so the שכל, the intellect in the potential, is going to be aligned with חכמה, the שכל בפועל, that that שכל as it becomes actualized, is going to be aligned with בינה, and the שכל הנקנה, the acquired intellect which we mentioned in the introduction, is da'at. Now, what are these chachmah, binah veda'at? At a high level, we can we can suggest that as far as the process of information development is concerned, A person first encounters chachmah. The chachmah is not self-generated, but it's information that is received, and for our purposes we could say that that's axiomatic.

So before a person engages in any sort of analysis, comparing, contrasting, pattern-matching, there have to be those pieces that are that are the pieces that he's dealing with. If a person is going to be engaging in some sort of a math problem, then the idea of 2 + 2 is 4 is not going to be something that's going to be up for a question. That's going to be one of the chachmah, one of the pieces that he's dealing with. Where does this chachmah come from? For our purposes we could say that it's information that comes from one's teachers, and mesorah from one's parents, from an external source of information.

It could come from the Torah, it could come from nevuah, it could come from ruach hakodesh. Wherever this chachmah is going to come from, it's the information that comes to a person that leads towards binah. This is where a person's contribution comes from. It's also going to be the next step in terms of a person's growth from that information, so that after a person receives chachmah, now he can be mevin davar mitoch davar, different people, which literally means understanding one thing from another, and this is where, depending on a person's intellect, experience, personality, different people will put this together in different ways.

Binah, I guess you could say, has an advantage and a disadvantage over chachmah if we want to if we want to use that type of a framework, although it's not either-or, we say חכם עדיף מנביא. On one hand, the integrity of the information that a navi receives, and the navi obviously has to be on a very high level in order to receive this information, and hitbatlut, and he has to be ra'ui for that madregah, but the integrity of the information is going to be much higher. On the other hand, there's no personal contribution, which again, in certain ways is a ma'alah, because it's a degree of hitbatlut that he's ra'ui for such a message, but there's no personal contribution to that message.

On the other hand, binah is going to be limited, or it's going to be somewhat subjective by the way that any particular person is able to, like we said, compare, contrast, pattern-match, understand, analyze. Two different people might analyze the same the same data set in different ways. So there's going to be the שכל בכח, this is the the the information that's sort of in raw potential, it's not yet dealt with, it's not actualized. There's going to be binah, there's going to be actualizing that information, and then there's going to be שכל נקנה, there's going to be da'at.

After a person takes that information and they they chew it up, they flesh it out, now they take that and it becomes acquired information. What does it mean to be acquired? What's making a kinyan? It's where you make it yours, it's where you make it part of yourself. We've discussed in the past, really I'm taking from the from from the Tanya, that the middot and the emotions are really an extension of the mochin, they're really an extension of the intellect, and the bridge is going to be the da'at. What does this mean? The way that a person feels about something really is an extension of the way that they understand it to be.

The example that I've used before is a person is at an event, how do they feel about that event? If it's a wedding, then the celebration, they feel happy. If it's a funeral, they feel sad. Those emotions are an extension of the reality that they understand. A person who is happy at a funeral or sad at a wedding, we would say is either emotionally unstable or they don't really understand what's going on. Now just agav, I can add parenthetically, since the the Torah is the truest expression, statement of objective reality, the the the truest understanding of the world is through Torah, and therefore תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם.

If we want to understand the appropriate, the correct way of relating to the world emotionally in in the truest sense, that is going to be an extension of Torah. Our mind has to have the truest, most objective view of truth, and then that will flow through to our emotions. Perhaps this is also one way of expressing the idea of somebody going to דעת תורה, not מצד רוח הקודש, not מצד נבואה, but a person going to somebody with quote-unquote דעת תורה for perspective, for an etzah, for an understanding of something going on in their life that might otherwise be mundane, it's not a Torah question per se, because they want a Torah, and they want a true, objectively true understanding certainly without any negiah, certainly without any particular bias, but the Torah, which is objective truth, ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא, the Torah is the blueprint of the world, they want the Torah understanding of of whatever it is that they're asking about.

This medium that connects the chochmah and binah the way that we described it, and flows through into into the emotions, and ultimately into into the action, ultimately into the way that we interact with the world as we perceive it is going to be daat. Now before we go forward in the text of Likutei Moharan itself, I think I do actually want to take a few minutes to discuss at a very foundational level the make-up of a person. We'll quote a little bit from Likutei Halachot, maybe from Baal HaTanya as well. But just at a high level.

If we think about it, there's really three aspects of a person. On one hand there's going to be, we'll call it, the nefesh Elokit in the language of the Baal HaTanya. The Likutei Halachot talks about the ישראל מצד עצמם בשרשם הם רחוקים לגמרי מכל העוונות ואין שום עון שייך לאיש ישראלי כלל לפי קדושתו משרשו, that a Yisrael at his shoresh is totally removed from any aspect of sin, any aspect of of something that goes against ratzon Hashem, something that goes against truth, against the true reality. Now, again, we're going to speak about this at a high level.

We're not we're not talking right now about HaKadosh Baruch Hu's creation of the world, and tov and ra at this altitude, and the battleground. But for now, there is that element of ישראל, אורייתא, וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא, that a Yisrael at his shoresh, his Elokut, his intellect, his neshamah, however you want to discuss it, is 100% totally aligned with God. At the at the other extreme, I guess we could say, there is the guf. There is the physical component of a person's body. It's not animated. When it's alive, it's animated by a life force.

But the the guf itself, like there's there's דומם, צומח, חי, מדבר, there's a rock, there's plant life, there's animals, there's people, but there's the actual physical guf, the keli of the body. Those two things together don't actually have any bridge between them. For instance, I'll give two two examples if they help. One example would be rachmana litzlan if there is a paraplegic, the person could be 100% aware, but and yet, despite the fact that he's awake, he's conscious, he wants to move his limbs, his consciousness does not have any connection to actually move his limbs if there's no connection between his active seichel and his physical body.

Another example would be, in more of in more of the context that we're going to be discussing, let's say, okay, funny example, a person wakes up and all of a sudden they're in the body of a dog, but they they think of themselves as a person. They they don't have any physical ta'avot that relate to that guf. The person doesn't have any desire for dog food. The person doesn't have any desire, he doesn't have any inclination towards any desires that are associated with this particular guf. What is that drive, either I guess we could say in the first example that we gave that there's going to be a life animation towards the body, or in the second example that we gave, what is going to be that abstract life force, it is in a certain way intellectual, that animates that it should have the desires associated with a particular guf?

That is going to be the koach ha-medameh, and we're going to explain. Rav Chaim Kramer talks about the medameh, he brings almost as a contradiction from the way that Rabbi Nachman talks about it in some places that the medameh is a koach of the lev, it's a koach of the heart, and in other places Rabbi Natan talks about it as a function of the intellect. And let's explain. If we go back to our introduction where we explained that the emotional faculty, or in our case let's link that with this koach ha-medameh, or let's link that with what we'll call the nefesh habehamit, the nefesh, the intellect, emotional, whatever you want to call it, this life force associated with the גוף, in a healthy person, this should really be a automatic flow-through extension from the intellect.

So that if a person were healthy, and they have a true sense of understanding, they should have a desire for things that were in line with that. Let's give one example. Let's say that a person saw a piece of candy, a lollipop, a piece of food, whatever it is, and they tasted it, and the food tasted good. Let's say they had an additional piece of information: they knew that that lollipop fell into a garbage dump the second before they saw it. Not only would they decide that they don't want to eat it, it would actually make them nauseous.

It might give them a gag reflex. The information would flow through to the way that they related to something on a physical, on a physiological level. Let's give another hypothetical example. Imagine if a person would have a taste for something that would be in line with the nutritional information, so a person would actually enjoy eating something that was healthy. and they would actually be disgusted by something that was unhealthy. If we were to go down this line and you could think about a hypothetical or a real example, then we would say that this כח המדמה, the נפש בהמית, this intellectual faculty that was not at the level of the שכל אלוקות, it was not the the pure intellect, but it was that capacity that animated, that related, the bridge towards the physical, we would say that that was a full extension, it was בטל, it was the שליח, as it were, of the שכל אלוקות that translated itself towards the body and that would really be a intellectual function.

On the other hand, let's let let's flip it upside down. Now, keep in mind, I think while we're giving examples that are somewhat simplistic physical so that we can understand them, these ideas would reply would apply equally to something like קנאה, תאוה, כבוד, if somebody had a taste for theft, a taste for ill-gotten gains, a taste for כבוד. Let's say instead of a person having a taste for something that was reflective of the true שכל, of the true Godliness within a person, the the somebody had a taste for something that was junk food, and again, that junk food for our purposes could be כבוד, whatever that was.

Now, in an inverted way, they would employ their שכל in order to feed that drive, so their כח המדמה, as it were, which we're going to say is illusory. Why is it illusory? Because true emotions are linked to the שכל, linked to the intellect, as we discussed all the way at the beginning. The truest form of intellect, what's נצחיות, something that's related to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, something that's a Torah'dik mind. By way of contrast, if something is associated with the body, there's something that I want now, will I want it tomorrow? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Will the an 80-year-old want the same thing that a 40-year-old wants? In a physical sense, probably not. The idea of כבוד certainly changes by who a person's friends are, their society, or even just because this world in in its current form is temporary. For a million reasons, we could explain that a desire that is a beheima'dik desire, a this-worldly desire, is not essentially rooted in אמת, it's not rooted in נצחיות, it doesn't have קיום, and therefore, if a if what was driving the bus, if the שרירות הלב, if what was pulling a person's consciousness and his desires was actually this bridge, instead of the the the כח המדמה, the illusory force, the which we're saying is the bridge between the שכל and the בהמה, just being an extension of and leading the גוף to fall in line with the שכל, with the נפש אלוקות, but rather it was the other way around, this this force that was actually a נפש בהמית, it was animating the גוף, but it's a guf'dik type of consciousness is actually what's leading the שכל to feed it, well, that's inherently illusory, and that becomes the שרירות הלב, where the mind is going after the לב component, as it were, instead of the לב being drawn after the mind.

Let's see inside a small section from the Baal HaTanya and then a small section from Likutei Halachot, and then we will begin. The Baal HaTanya, it's a small piece from פרק ל״ה, and he says, "ואזי גם כח נפש החיונית שבגופו ממש שמקליפת נוגה..." This level of the גוף that's animating the גוף, what we've been talking about in in in in a Yid, the what animates the גוף, what we call קליפת נוגה, for now, we will say that there's something that's not, for argument's sake, inherently אור, it's not inherently light, and it's not opaque, it's not black to the point that it won't let any of the light through.

For our purposes, we can say that the נפש אלוקות, that Godliness, is going to be reminiscent of or, and something that's ra, something that's not kosher, something that's associated with aveirah, that can be the the other three levels of kelipah. Kelipat nogah would be something that's translucent, that allows light to go through. If you have, let's say, clear glass and you shine light through the glass, it will be employed towards or. A person can take a palm branch, and they can use it for a mitzvah, they could take wine and they can use it for kiddush.

It's something that is inherently neutral and it can be employed towards retzon Hashem. On the other hand, if it's used either something between for aveirah, chas veshalom, or something that's self-serving, so then it will not be associated with or, it will not be raised up, but rather it will be it'll fall down. So he says, when a person takes this kelipat nogah and he's מתהפך מרע לטוב, it's בעצם something physical, but instead of it just by default going to towards this-worldly affairs, but he's מתהפך, he utilizes it, he transforms it into something that we said is a flow-through.

It becomes an extension of טוב, ונכלל ממש בקדושה. It inherently is נכלל, it's absorbed within. If you would take the light and shine it through the clear glass, which part, let's say you'd cut that glass open, where is the light and where is it not? It's נכלל. All of a sudden, it becomes an extension, it loses its identity, it's בטל to the אור, כנפש אלוקית ממש. And it actually is even greater because it now allows a physical expression of that נפש אלוקית. So it accomplishes something that couldn't have been accomplished without this system. In other words, the אלוקות was there before it had any association with the physical body or with this world.

What happens now is that the אלוקות is actually extending to convert something and be מגלה Godliness in something that beforehand was expressive of of קליפה, in whatever form it was. מאחר שהוא הפועל ועושה מעשה המצוה, what is actually animating the body, what's actually the פועל? This kelipat nogah. So it comes out now that the נפש אלוקית is coming to perform mitzvot ma'asiyot, but through this bridge of whatever it is that's animating the גוף. שבלעדו, here it is, without this power, this נפש בהמית, this כח המדמה, this animation of the animal soul, as it were, לא היתה נפש אלוקית פועלת בגוף כלל.

The נפש אלוקית would not have any impact on the גוף, כי היא רוחנית, because the נפש אלוקית, the Godliness is pure רוחניות, והגוף גשמי וחומרי. Going back to our paraplegic example, what is it that animates the what what is it about a שכל that's able to animate a גוף? If you want to give almost a funny example, if I were to sing you a song or I were to sing you a love poem, that might impact your emotions. If I were to turn a car on and put the key into the ignition, then the car would turn on.

If I were to sing a love song to a car, it would not turn on. It's operating on a different level. It's not my example, by the way. I heard Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky use it in a different in in one of his shiurim. But the point is is that I think he was talking about מפליא לעשות, the wondrous connection between the רוחניות and the גשמיות, and he was he was discussing that. But it applies very directly over here also. What is it that allows anything that's רוחניות to have any sort of an impact on the גוף?

So in in our in in our terminology, this is the נפש בהמית, this is the קליפת נוגה, and without that, there will be no bridge. But with it, it allows the נפש אלוקית to impact the guf, and to ultimately convert the קליפת נוגה, and to convert and elevate the guf so that the guf can be engaged in מצות מעשיות. והממוצע ביניהם, what is this bridge? היא נפש החיונית הבהמית המלובשת בדם האדם שבלבו וכל הגוף. Or in what we're going we're going to be discussing in the context of this מדמה. Likutei Halachos, and this is the last piece.

Again, I think we started it before, דישראל מצד עצמם בשרשם הם רחוקים לגמרי מכל העוונות. ישראל מצד his shoresh has no shayachus to עון at all. Skipping a couple lines, כי ישראל הם עצם הטוב והם רחוקים מן הרע בתכלית הריחוק בשרשם. The the שכלי, the נפש אלוקית, the Godliness has no shayachus with any sort of not-God priority, with anything that's going to attribute any sort of a value to to sin. ועל כן אין להסטרא אחרא שום אחיזה ושייכות לפתות שום ישראל, חס ושלום. Where is the yetzer hara going to even be able to seduce a Jew at all?

כי אם על ידי כח המדמה. It's this כח המדמה which takes on a life of its own, this middle ground which is supposed to be the bridge between the שכל and the guf in order to animate the guf towards מצות מעשיות. When that becomes a שרירות לב, when that when that instead of becoming an extension of the intellect, becomes an aspect of the לב, of the emotion, and that is what's driving the bus, and then the the the לב employs the שכל, and it becomes upside down, כי המדמה מטעה את האדם, that becomes what seduces the person, שהוא מדמה דבר לדבר.

At first, maybe what it has to do is convince you that you're really doing something in the name of a mitzvah. We talked about this even in the first Torah. And little by little, it's going to chip away until you mamash have transformed values, ומשים רע לטוב, אור לחושך. And then he and he goes on that this כח of illusion, it doesn't happen overnight, but it chips away until you start replacing little pieces. You start having a little justification, you start having a little reframe, and all of a sudden, you don't realize it one day at a time, but after a while, maybe a person, you know, to give one example, maybe it's לכבוד שבת, a person has to enjoy himself, a person has to have a little shtoltz, a person has to have a שמינית of a שמינית שבגאוה, and all of a sudden, time passes and, lo and behold, they look back and they have no idea how they became so materialistic.

Everything was l'shem shamayim, until it wasn't, and it was that כח המדמה that was switching out their priorities little by little. So now, let's go into the text, and I think that this introduction took some time, but I think it was worthwhile. Paragraph א': כי צריך כל אדם להוציא את עצמו מהמדמה, every person has to take himself out of the מדמה. Again, he might be employing as a bridge the נפש בהמית, but he's not from within it, he's outside of it. He's not the תאוה בהמית is not what's driving, is not what's driving his actions and his decisions, ולעלות אל השכל, he has to elevate it to the שכל.

וכשנמשך אחר המדמה, but when he is drawn after the מדמה, זה בחינת שרירות לב. And I'm reading a little bit quickly through it now because we just described this process at length. שהוא הולך אחר המדמה שבלב. When he is on the outside of this system, he is, everything is elevated towards the חכמה, בינה, ודעת, which are rooted in נפש אלוקית, which are rooted in Torah, and therefore, there is a flow-through where, where, where his emotions and, ultimately, his מעשים will be an extension of, of his שכל. But where he is within, instead of being on the outside, that's how I'm reading of to be מוציא, it's a little bit of reading into the words, but I think it's in line with פשט, where he is being subject to, we'll say, the מדמה, so then his תאוות בהמיות, instead of, instead of linking the בהמה to his שכל, are actually driving him in a different direction.

וכשיוציא משרירות הלב, when he takes himself out of the נפש בהמית, the לב, the emotions being what are driving his decision-making and his תאוות, ומשבר לבו האבן, the note over here discusses based on a פסוק in Yechezkel, contrasting לב אבן with לב בשר. לב בשר means that it's soft, right? לב בשר, meat can be cooked, it can be prepared, it can be in line with the שכל. Something that's an אבן can't be impacted. So what does a person have to do? He has to break his לב האבן so that the לב can be in line with the שכל.

What is he using to break the לב אבן? זה בחינת שמיר. This is, again, when we, we're going to explain that when we had the בית המקדש, which was the מעין החכמה, that was the source of חכמה, so then all of these other things would fall in line. That goes back to the מאמר חז״ל that we started off with, that once we had no בית המקדש, we lost access to all these things. The שמיר, this that breaks the אבן, is the כח that's able to melt the heart, so to speak. שעל ידו נכנע אבן, through this, the לב האבן, the stone heart, is able to be subjugated to the שכל, ואינו הולך אחר תאוות המדומות, and it's not going to go after the illusory desires, והולך אחר השכל, which has קיום.

The seichel is, it's not illusory. The seichel, like we said, the pure seichel is rooted in Torah'dik values, that is the only netzchiyus truth. וכל זמן שלא הוציא שכלו אל הפועל, as so long as a person does not bring his seichel to, to, to become actualized, so what happens over here? We said that there's chochmah, binah, v'da'as. Chochmah is the seichel, the intellect in potential before it's actualized. So a person breaks down his לב אבן, and therefore the lev is no longer driving the bus, but there is the chochmah, he also has to actualize it.

So as in so far as a person has not actualized these ideas towards עבודת השם, שלא ישתמש בשכלו עדיין, he didn't utilize it. Now, it's reciprocal: when a person is subject to his lev, his emotions, his ta'avot behemiot, then there's nothing to talk about in terms of chochmah. He's being drawn after his lev, he's being drawn after his animal self. But once a person breaks that, he still has to engage in a positive way the chochmah. Now he has access to the objective truth, but he has to engage it, he has to be mevin davar mitoch davar, he has to understand how it applies to him, and ultimately, he has to integrate and associate within himself.

So as long as a person has not taken this chochmah now, he broke his lev and now he can engage with the chochmah, but he has not yet actualized it towards binah, which, again, we're not going to speak out again, שלא ישתמש בשכלו עדיין, אז אצלו השכל בכח, it's still latent. אף על גב שכבר שבר המדמה, even though he's not being drawn after the behemah, he still has to now engage the seichel in a positive way. אז נתקומם תכונת שכלו, so the, the chochmah has come out, it's surfaced, he now has access, he can engage it.

כי כשזה קם זה נופל, when, again, it's a reciprocal relationship, so now that he was, broke his physical desires, he got himself out of being addicted to the animal desires and allowing the his animal self to drive the bus, so now the seichel can come out. אבל השכל עדיין בכח, but nevertheless, it's still only in its potential form in chochmah. ואחר כך כשחוקר בשכלו, once he activates this the chochmah, he activates the godly seichel, mishtamesh bo, he starts to use it, he starts to be to investigate, he starts to be mevin davar mitoch davar, and to dig deeper, and to understand the ideas, אז השכל בפועל, now he activates the שכל, וזה בחינת נופת צופים.

That is the sweet honey. He's margish, he feels the metikut, the sweetness. And the way that we discussed it before is first there's a piece of food, something that's sweet is something that I desire to eat, it's something that I desire to apply to myself. If I just see, you know, a piece of candy, a piece of sugar sitting on the table, then I can understand that it's something that I'd like to eat, but it's only once I start applying it to myself that that I actually gain a personal attachment with it, בבחינת נופת תטופנה שפתותיך, literally, your lips drip like a honeycomb, שהוציא מתיקות שכלו מכח אל הפועל, he takes this metikut, the sweetness in his seichel, this information, but now he brings it מכח אל הפועל, he actualizes it, it comes out.

וזה, in brackets really cuz this is an explanation from Rav Natan, this is not the language of רבינו, שפתותיך הוא בחינת מוציא מכח אל הפועל שהוא בחינת הדיבור. Rav Chaim Kramer brings in the notes that in terms of the intellectual process, a person has an idea, when that idea is actualized, that comes out in dibbur, right? Right now we're giving a shiur, we're going to be speaking about probably for about an hour. Before we gave the shiur, if we understood the ideas, we probably could have thought in under 60 seconds the general scope of what we wanted to talk about.

Then as you want to break it up, give examples, articulate it, go from step to step, build the structure, it takes an hour to go through all the pieces. If we were going to summarize everything we said right afterwards, it would also take 60 seconds or less. So the the dibbur, when you take an idea, right, that's somewhat abstract, and now you want to unpack it, you want to actualize it, you want to bring מכח אל הפועל, that that construction is dibbur, and that's why over here it's associated with sweetness on the lips. Okay, be that as it may.

ואחר כך כשמשיג בשכלו כל מה שיש בידו ויש לו להשיג, once a person grasps with his intellect all that he is able to, כפי his מדרגה, אז שכלו שב שכל הנקנה, then he is able to acquire it, to internalize it, to make it part of his kishkes, כמו שכתבו המחקרים שיש שכל בכח ושכל הפועל ושכל הנקנה. Now he brings a source for this framework. Rav Chaim Kramer also brings in note 14 the difference between between knowledge of Torah and knowledge of God. He says that knowledge of Torah means that a person learns Torah, studies the intricacies of Torah, comprehends and acquires this knowledge, but this does not say anything about his knowledge or closeness to God.

In fact, there are people who have studied Torah but are actually very distant from the Ribbono Shel Olam, because they have made erudition their goal, and they use Torah knowledge that they have attained as a tool for their own benefit. Conversely, those who study Torah for the sake of serving Hakadosh Baruch Hu, who use the knowledge to come closer to Him by learning to fulfill the Torah and the mitzvot in order to recognize Hakadosh Baruch Hu's dominion and the divine providence over every detail of creation, receive what is known as acquired intellect. So this note really fits very well into what we're saying and takes it even a step further.

We've been discussing until now the idea of whether the intellect drives the emotion or whether the emotion drives the intellect, with the with the truest expression of intellect being associated with objective truth, with something that is קיום, with something that's אמת, with Hamakom, with Torah, and something that is driven by the emotions or by the animal soul, as it were, being something that's associated with תאוות of a בהמה. Over here, with this note, it takes it, I mean it's profound, it takes it even a level above. It says even when a person is studying Torah, a person could, chas v'shalom, be, if we could say, let's say, מגשם the Torah.

We talked about this in an earlier Torah as well, I forget which one, meaning that if they relate to the Torah's information, but they're studying it through their eyes, they're not trying to be מבטל their דעת to God's דעת. They read a statement in a Gemara, מאמר חז״ל, a statement in Shulchan Aruch, and they they understand it כפי their subjectivity. What they're really doing is instead of trying to expand and be מבטל their human intelligence towards infinity, towards godly intelligence, what they're really doing is taking a particular statement of Torah and then plugging it into their own limitations.

And therefore, he says, if a person wants to be rooted in אמת, be rooted in Hakadosh Baruch Hu all the way at the שורש, they need to be plugging themselves into Torah as an understanding of רצון השם. But if they learn Torah as information, and now they understand it with their own כלים, they can actually learn Torah without achieving this level of שכל נקנה, of acquired שכל, as it relates to the true חכמה, they could still, it takes חשבון הנפש. You almost not even realize that you still might be engaging in שרירות הלב, although instead of an animalistic תאוה, it could be a distortion of Torah concepts.

But a person really has to understand that they are that they are subjecting themselves to the universal, objective truth of רצון השם, of Torah, rather than allowing their own subjective מדמה to form their their visions, which, again, could really be happening on a Torah level also. People can take Torah and misquote it and conform it to their own ideals and philosophies. מעשה בכל יום, unfortunately. והעיקר קיומו של אדם לאחר מיתתו. So next, the עיקר קיום now that we divided it up into the שכל, which really has nothing to do with the body, the שכל, as we've been describing it, exists independent of the גוף.

We could say that the that the נפש בהמית, that the animal personality is associated with the גוף. But the true שכל of a person, both, I guess, in terms, we'll say, of what they acquire and also what they what they contribute, is not associated with the גוף. When a person gets into his later years, right, a person becomes elderly, are they less powerful? Are they less strong? Are they less of a mentsh because their body starts to decline? Chas v'shalom, right? So, and even after the body goes to rest, b'ezrat Hashem there's going to be תחיית המתים, so the body's going to come back.

When a person goes on to receive their reward and punishment, the body's dead. So, if the body's dead, what's receiving reward and punishment? The true עצם person is their דעת. So, he says, עיקר קיומו של אדם לאחר מיתתו אינו אלא שכל הנקנה. This is the בחינה of דעת. וזה השארתו. This is what remains לאחר המיתה, which we see מעשה בכל יום. Just to read this note over here from Likutei Halachot, he says, אחר מיתה מתבטל המדמה. The גוף is obviously in the ground, and the מדמה, that aspect of the personality that is driven by the תאוה בהמיות also is is בטל, כי הוא כח בטל ואין שליטתו כי אם בחיים בשביל הבחירה.

The reason that that exists is to provide a person a battlefield so that we can achieve, which is not our discussion for now. אבל אחר המיתה, הכח המדמה מת ובטל לגמרי. That, I'm just reading from Likutei Halachot, this כח המדמה is בטל, כי שם עיקר סטרא דמותא ולא נשאר ממנו כלום. That this this aspect of the animal self, both the guf and what the the animal personality is is not existent anymore. כי אין נשאר מהאדם אחר מותו כי אם שכל הנקנה שהוא שכל האמיתי. Now, this is this is profound. I sort of alluded to this before, but I'll tell you the way I'm reading it.

Let me just finish the paragraph and I want to speak at one point. שעיקר ההשארה של אדם אחר מותו הוא שכל הנקנה. כי מן כח המדמה שממנו כל השינויים, this כח המדמה that was illusory and it changed. It was a it was a moving target, like we said, kinah, ta'avah, kavod, it depends on stage of life, it depends on community, it depends on a million things. It's rooted a person growing up now versus 100 years ago. It was it was what appealed to him at the time that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave every individual person so that he would have a a stage on which to have this battle and ultimately prevail and get closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

כבר נתבטל כנ״ל. So, that resistance, that those animal ta'avot are gone. כי כל אחד מישראל, אפילו איש פשוט, יש לו איזה נקודה טובה שנשאר ממנו, has a נקודה טובה that will remain. שהיא בחינת שכל הנקנה, שעל ידי זה יזכה לחלקו לעולם הבא, כי כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא. So, I want to just explain the way that I'm reading this because it's it's it's actually unbelievable. The one thing you could say is, okay, so if the guf is gone and the תאוות בהמיות are gone, so what's left, we said, really the sechel for the נפש אלוקית, the Godly sechel.

In that case, so why did we need to come down to this world to begin with? Because So, I I think what he's focused on is is really much deeper. We'll see how we develop this through the Torah, but I'm going to suggest something, and I think there's a נקודה of truth and I think he's alluding to it. The HaKadosh Baruch Hu didn't need to put the neshamah into the body at all. The neshamah, before it came into the body, like we said, was 100% kadosh and aligned with God, independent of this world. Coming into this world, by definition, is going to be a downgrade.

So, what's the advantage, why go through the process? The answer is going to be along the lines that the point of being in this world is not to be kadosh, if it was to be kadosh, then we were kadosh before we came to this world, malachim are kadosh. We don't really need to downgrade our existence and experience into physicality at all. Unless you say that the person that the point is not to be kadosh, the point is to become kedushah, the point is to transform. The point is not to be born on the peak of the mountain, the point is to climb, even if we don't necessarily climb as high as if we would have been born on top of the mountain.

The malachim are at a particular stage of kedushah. On one hand, we could say that malachim are much, much more kadosh, much purer, much more spiritual beings than a person. On the other hand, tzadikim certainly, but people, a yid is much more is much more valuable than a malach, because a malach can't change himself and a malach can't change the world. The idea of fighting against the סטרא אחרא, of engaging in the challenge of climbing the mountain, that is something that only takes place in this world. That is the building of the שכל הנקנה, not just in the abstract having the chochmah.

Going through the process of the chochmah, binah, and da'at, of transforming the emotions, of transforming the נפש הבהמית, that is what's acquired, and that goes into the bank, that goes into the into the godly side, that's the שכל הנקנה that now lasts, that that that those gains that were made from the battle, from the conversion, that every single member of ישראל has, that's what becomes their חלק in עולם הבא. It's not reward for what you did, it's actually building our חלק, even though we don't have the כלים to experience it in this world. What we're going to be experiencing in עולם הבא is the שכל הנקנה that we acquired through engaging in our experience in this world.

When we related to the כח המדמה appropriately, when it was converted, when like we said in the Baal HaTanya, when it was נתהפך and it was נכלל into kedushah, then we acquired those gains, that's what's going to remain in עולם הבא, and that בעצם is what remains in this world as well. That says שפתותיו דובבות בקבר. When when Abaye and Rava have a machlokes, and we pasken today whether something is asur or mutar, and then that takes on that takes on a halachic significance and a reality that's going to change the world today, then what's נשאר, they are they are as much alive today as they ever were, and that reality is נשאר in the world.

Okay, be that as it may, let's move on. וזה בחינת אמנה. This is the third thing. We had said that the שמיר, which is what breaks the לב האבן and allows the חכמה, בינה, דעת to come out. We said the the נופת, תטופנה שפתותייך, the sweet honey, which is what brings מן הכח אל הפועל, that goes from the חכמה to בינה, and now and the the שכל הנקנה, וזה בחינת אמנה. לשון קיום דבר, it's a לשון of something that has קיום, it's a לשון of something that is has stability, that's everlasting, כמו יאמנו דבריכם, it's a לשון of the words should be everlasting.

But if you think about an אומן, somebody who's trained for a task, it goes much deeper than like a knowledge expertise. Very often in even in conversation, if somebody presents a certain way, somebody would say, "Oh, the way that you analyze something, are you an accountant? Are you a lawyer? Are you an actuary?" When a person has a certain type of training, then that goes to, if not their personality, but it goes to the framework in which they see certain things. It's integrated. כי שכל הנקנה הוא קיום של אדם לאחר מותו. This שכל הנקנה, something that now forms the person's way of thinking, their personality, becomes part of their מהות, that actually goes to the essence of what a person is, what they acquire.

Now we had we had distinguished and added on before if really the essence of a person is their נפש אלוקית, it's the godly part of them, why are we talking about the שכל הנקנה? So the the way that I'm learning this, what has a stronger קיום? If a person says something that's true, this is aligned with God, this is aligned with Torah, or if it's so ingrained in them to the point that when they encounter something else that it's able to be מהפך it, it's able to impact it. When when when I am faced with something, my understanding, my personality, my point of view is so aligned with Hakadosh Baruch Hu that I I am not only not impacted by something negative or that presents to the contrary, but I'm actually able to see the godliness in everything.

That is acquired. I have now taken everything and I've made it mine. I see wine, I see kiddush. I see making a l'chaim by a simcha, not chas v'shalom getting drunk for personal pleasure, but I see making a l'chaim after a siyum. Everything becomes the godliness with in it, and that is something that I have taken and acquired. If you think about an acquisition, it's something that before I acquired it, I didn't have yet. Now that I acquired it, I've internalized it. I've taken something out that's outside, and I've taken it, taken it in. ושכל הנקנה נקרא מה שאדם יודע הרבה דברים בידיעה אחת, when a person has one ידיעה, we'll be patient for a second and we'll see how it plays out, כי קודם צריך לידע הרבה הקדמות קודם שידע איזהו דבר.

Before a person knows something, there have to be a lot of individual הקדמות. ואחר כך כשמשיג את הדבר, once a person is משיג, they reach, they have an understanding of something, משליך הקדמותיו, the introductions fall away, ויודע את הדבר בידיעה אחת, and they know it with one knowing. Let me explain the way that I'm learning this. At the outset, let's say that you wanted to convey a picture to somebody, a circle. You I can't just give you an idea. I would plot out a bunch of points, like the paint-by-number, right? I would or not paint-by-number, rather the like those for kids, I don't know if they still have them, each dot would have a number and you connect one dot to the next with a line until a picture would emerge.

So, if you wanted to plot out a circle, you would make a bunch of individual points, and then if you would have, you know, 100 individual points, then what emerges? A circle. Once a person sees the circle, they no longer see the individual dots, right? Or they used to say about a FedEx truck, if you look at a FedEx, either you know what I'm talking about or not, there's an arrow in between the E and the X. You could see it. Once you see it, you're unable to not see it anymore. In other words, it's in the negative of the picture.

There are certain things that if I wanted to describe them to you, you either know it or you don't. It's like riding a bike. I could describe what riding a bike is to you, you kind of get on, and you start pedaling, and you go a little to the right, and you lean to the left until you pick up equilibrium. And then, at some point, you understand what it is, and it's like riding a bike. I think I saw, or I heard, a study one time that they gave a college assignment to a room full of people to write step-by-step instructions to tying a person's shoe, and like, no two of them were identical.

But if you had to describe somebody, it's the way that you tie your shoe. Maybe there's two ways of tying a shoe, okay, but it's the way that you tie a knot. Once you know it, then there's a certain sentiment. If I wanted to describe a song, "Oh, this is hard music, soft music, emotional music." Once you have that emotion, I no longer have to dance around the idea in order to tell it to you. I can just reference it, and it will mean something from within. This is where שכל נקנה becomes alive. The individual data points paint a picture and begin to emerge where now it becomes part of a person, and now I only have to reference it.

Because if I'm describing it from without, then it's not really associated with you. I'm giving you something that you can relate to intellectually, but it's nothing that really resonates. Once it does resonate, right, it's the smell of apple pie, right, it has a classic look, right? I don't know if these examples help. Once you acquire שכל הנקנה, the descriptions no longer mean anything. They fall away. They become totally irrelevant. And if anything, they take away from the experience. A person has this chochmah, they break it up into binah. "I have this idea. We've just been giving a shiur for an hour.

If we are successful, this will now translate into שכל הנקנה, and now, when you go to the next thing, this will be in your toolbox. It's something that now is part of you. It's something that you can take to the next level, because you no longer identify with it as information, but it's something that's in your kishkes, and now it's something that you can, instead of trying to internalize from without, it's something that now you are it's inwards, and now you can use it as you as you interface with something outside of you. ועיקר מעין החכמה מן המקדש יצא.

Now, the influx of chochmah, the influx of we said that chochmah is like the seeds of information of truth, Torah, נבואה, רוח הקודש, where is it that Heaven kisses the Earth? Where is it that that the influx of of truth comes into the world? Because everything in this world is b'etzem subjective, but the Torah is one of the things that the Mishnah tells us was created before the world was created. The pasuk in Yoel says מעין מבית השם יצא, there was a wellspring that came out of the Beit HaMikdash. The Beit HaMikdash is where it was not 100% within the confines of reality.

There were miracles that happened every day in a constant basis, Beit HaMikdash, because it wasn't fully within this structure of טבע, כי שם היו מקריבים קרבנות. Over there is where we were מקריב קרבנות, שהם הבהמיות וכח הדמיון. Generally speaking, when I look through my eyes, I am looking out through my knowledge, experience, emotions, the way that I see the world. Like we saw before, the Shamir on the אבן. How am I going to have room for the chochmah, for if everything that I look at is subjective, farshteyt zich, right? Everything is subjective because I'm the one who's looking.

Two people will look at the same thing and they'll look at it differently. I believe that there's a halachah, at least in one context, that if they're they're investigating עדים, and they say exactly, word for word, the same thing, they know that they're lying, because no two people see things the same way, especially there are certain things where, let's say, two עדים come to witness a contract, they know that they're going to be מעיד. But if two people see an event, they weren't necessarily planning on seeing the event, they saw it, you know, however they happened to see it, at different vantage points.

So, I need to be able to sacrifice that part of myself in order to let in the objective truth. The Beit HaMikdash is where this נפש בהמית, the way that we relate in individual בהמה'דיק level, was sacrificed, כמו שכתוב: זבחי אלקים רוח נשברה. What is the through the זבחי אלקים, through the korbanot, our ruach, our דמיון, the emotional aspect of ourselves, the נפש בהמית part of ourselves, נשברה, it becomes broken, ששבירת הדמיון, that this כח המדמה that comes through the שרירות הלב, this is the יצר הרע, this is the inclination towards the בהמה'דיק aspect, which, again, we're we're going to use because that's going to become the bridge between the שכל אלקי, between our neshamah and our guf, but is that just an an extension of the of the objective truth, or does that take on its own autonomy, its own רצון?

That שרירות הלב, that יצר הרע, that דמיון, that נפש בהמית, that needs to be broken as having its own personality. הם הקרבנות. Where we're מקריב, we come close to הקדוש ברוך הוא, we sacrifice that part of it. When we do the סמיכה, we fully lean on the animal, we convey from ourselves onto the animal, then we give it over, that is a tremendous impact. ובשביל זה אמרו חכמינו זכרונם לברכה כשחרב בית המקדש, when we no longer had this access to chochmah, to the מעין and by extension to the process of the שמיר, and the נופת צופים, and the אמנה, where we were able to to align ourselves so completely with the חכמת אלוקות, then we we once we didn't have the the בית המקדש and korbanot, so then we we no longer had in the same way, we do avodah, we try to align ourselves, but we no longer had in the same way access to this process.

לכשיבנה בית המקדש, אז יתקיים ומעין מבית המקדש יצא. We will go back to the way like the pasuk said, that there will be a a spring coming forth from the בית המקדש, and we'll just quote the Zohar: בסטר דרומא בעזרה דא, in the northern in the southern side rather of the עזרה, אתיליד חד מעינא דמיא, there started a wellspring of water, מאן דשתי מיניה יתחכם, somebody that drank from it would become wise, ויתפקח בחכמתא, and chochmah would be opened up. And just quoting from Likutei Tefillos: שמהר ותחיש לגאלנו ותבנה בית מקדשנו ותפארתנו במהרה בימינו, the בית המקדש should be rebuilt, ושם נקריב לפניך כל קרבנות שיכפרו בעדנו, we should get a kaparah, what does a kaparah literally mean?

To be clean, to to to get out of this the שרירות הלב, ויחזרו לנו שלשת דברים שנתבטלו משחרב בית המקדש, בעזרת השם יתברך, very soon, we're going to have back these three things that were batel from the time of the destruction of the בית, which are the שמיר, the נופת צופים, and the אמנה, and we'll be זוכה אל שכל דקדושה, we will be zocheh to the שכל דקדושה which will flow through to the rest of our our personality, our intelligence, our emotions, למעין החכמה היוצא מבית השם, כמו שכתוב: ומעין מבית השם יצא, ונזכה בעזרת השם, right, לעבוד אותך תמיד בחכמה בינה ודעת דקדושה באמונה שלימה באמת, קיימינו לעולם, אמן ואמן.