LM 31.2 — Is Lan Birah, Part 2 of 7 · תורה ל״א

Be'ezrat Hashem we are learning together the second shiur in Torah ל״א, we are up to paragraph ה, and we will mention some of the points that we need in order to move forward. So, we said at the beginning of the last shiur that there is a system of גלגלים, מזלות, governance, gears, pipes, whatever works for you, through which Hakadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. Now, like any system, if a person is a subject to that system, then they will be limited by whatever those rules of governance are. If a person is attached to the source, they are outside the system, then they will be able to affect how much shefa, how much berachah is pumped in through the system, and even sometimes exceptions, how how it's utilized, right?

We mentioned last time אין מזל לישראל, that the other nations are an altitude below, they're within the system, they don't have that direct attachment point to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and Klal Yisrael is בני בכורי ישראל, we have a direct relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and therefore it's perfectly appropriate within the rules that govern our relationship that we can appeal directly to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But in any event, what is the mechanism? What is the way that we are able to effect this shefa that's coming into the world, that we're able to attach to the source?

So the the Torah started off from the entrance point of tzedakah, but I'm going to say we talked about emunah is where we emunah is where we are attached directly to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and we are aligned with the source that's outside the system. And there's two components to emunah, we said, there is emunah in Hakadosh Baruch Hu as a creator, associated with Shabbos, Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day as it were, we discussed this last time, and then there's הנהגה, there's that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is mashgiach, there's hashgachah in the world, how Hakadosh Baruch Hu runs the world, and that would be tzedakah, that's that interaction.

If chas v'shalom a person, we said, had emunah in Hakadosh Baruch Hu as the creator and there was chas v'shalom to say a clockmaker's universe, set the world into action and left it alone, then that would be kefirah. So too, if a person would be able to say that there is a world that was קדמון, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu is managing the world, he was the most powerful force chas v'shalom to say that's in the world, but not that it was אין עוד מלבדו, not that it was a creator and so on, then that would also be kefirah.

So tzedakah and Shabbos complement each other so that that creates the shleimus of emunah, which attaches us to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Then, we moved on and we said that in in order to achieve this shleimus of emunah, that comes together with bris, and that's what we're going to start talking about now. Now, as we begin to talk about bris, I just want to make a couple of points to think about. First of all, it makes sense, I think, that bris and emunah go together, because how did we how did we start off with the Torah?

In order to not be subject to the rules, the structure of הנהגה, but in order to be able to affect how HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world and to be able to bring berachah into the world, a person has to be really living at at a level outside the system. We we operate physically inside the world, but we are a בן עולם הבא, we associate with something greater. Emunah is where we are mevatel ourselves to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we live a level above, and ברית קודש also is another aspect of living a level above. If we think about physical beings, animals, right, so then the what are the two most basic, let's say, animal types of behaviors and necessities?

One would be eating, where we find a lot of kedushah associated with ideas of eating, and the other would be procreation, just the to have the species perpetuate itself. The idea of relating to פרו ורבו, of of the איש אישה, משפיע מקבל, male female relationship as a function of kedushah rather than all the way on the most base level as a as an expression of self-centered desire, but even just at the at the level of the physical species procreating and perpetuating itself, but for us to have that be a keli for kedushah, to bring shefa into the world, those either one of those two things is an expression both philosophically, השקפה'דיק, אמונה, to align ourselves with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and in terms of, you could say, hashgachah, in terms of our governance, how we relate not to ourselves as a physical being, but as a as a גוף ונשמה.

These two things take us out of the world. So the we're now going to talk about the idea of bris and how that complements emunah. Now, I was thinking, I think that this that this will help us in our approach to the following paragraphs. If we think about a bris, a covenant between two parties, there's one level is we're working towards התבטלות, where there would be total yichud, where there would be total alignment and everything is really part of one, but the idea of bris itself really necessitates that there's more than one party. You have to have two parties to a covenant, two parties to a bris.

This means that we're going to be drawing distinct tions, and we'll be talking about two levels of bris. The the the bottom level, if you will, the basic level of distinction is between איסור והיתר. A person has to be סור מרע ועשה טוב. This is required of every of every Jew, of every person who's a bar mitzvah, where there's going to be הלכות of איסור והיתר. We have to stay away from aveirot and we have to do mitzvot. So this is the base-level black-and-white distinction. After a person is at the level where they are doing the right thing, they understand that they have to they have to stay away from the negative, move towards the positive, so now they can enter into a life of growth.

Now, it's not just binary. It's not that there's bad versus good. Engaging in growth necessitates that you're growing from point A to point B, which means that there also have to be levels. So the base-level bris, the ברית תתאה we will describe as איסור והיתר, this is the the first level of defining between good and bad. But then the upper levels of bris are also distinctions, but those levels are going to all be within kedushah. It's all going to be growing towards HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And before we begin, I'm just going to mention one vort, because to me, I found that I found that it was very inspiring.

I was talking with with somebody the other day, and they were a little bit down in terms of where they were holding, and so on. And I was in the middle of learning this Torah, and I told the person, you know, life is really cycles, ups and downs, ימי אהבה, ימי שנאה, רצוא ושוב, however you want to put it. But let's even say in a perfect world, we all want to just grow, constantly getting ever closer to הקדוש ברוך הוא, imagine a world where just for sake of simplicity, you would never have a bad day, and every day would only be getting better and better.

Going to say something that's maybe a little counter-intuitive in a certain sense, but that means that every day you will be the farthest you will ever be, going forward, from הקדוש ברוך הוא. So now you can ask yourself, well, how can I ever be happy? I'm never where I want to be. At any point in time, I'm always the most distant from Hashem I will ever be. That's, if you frame it like that, that's sort of depressing. I feel like I'm never close to Hashem compared to where I'm looking forward. The flip side is it's really a little bit of a reframe.

When we look up towards the top of the mountain, we're trying to grow, we're trying to get close to Hashem, happiness is not associated with being on top of the mountain, that would just be death. That means that there's nothing more to accomplish. The top of the mountain directionally is where we're trying to get to in order to structure how we are trying to climb. But the being engaged in growth is the simcha. Where we're trying to get to is not the goal, it's where we're trying to get to is a place where we are constantly engaged in movement and in growth.

So therefore, a person can always feel simcha as long as you're looking towards the right direction, and you are engaged in movement, that is actually what הקדוש ברוך הוא wants from us. That is our self-actualization. That is where we can express ourself as a ben chorin in terms of not being held back from accomplishing our purpose in this world. And that is actually what the ברית עילאה is about. So that we're going to frame, perhaps, the ברית תתאה as good versus bad, right? In other words, just a line down the page. And we're going to frame the ברית עילאה not as choosing between good and bad, but between choosing a directionally positive motion going towards a higher place versus not being engaged directionally in growth.

Now, I'm not sure if that's going to be an exact fit or an exact peshat, but let's let's try it on and see if we have to if we have to tweak it. Strong opinions, loosely held. I think that I think that this is a true vort, whether or not it will fit in, we'll have to see. We are up to paragraph ה. ויש שני בחינות ברית. There are two aspects of ברית that we will need for the קיום of emunah, a בחינה of בחינות אברהם ובחינות אליעזר. It's interesting, he doesn't say בחינת, he says בחינות like a plural.

So בחינת would just be is this an aspect of this or that, and בחינות is different levels, right? Nothing is ever static, and we're always we're always in a position, hopefully, of growth and in movement. So בחינות אברהם ובחינות אליעזר, who was an עבד אברהם. אברהם הוא ברית עילאה. Avraham is representative of the ברית עילאה. The first Avraham Avinu was the first one that ever had the ציווי of brit milah. Avraham Avinu was the father of emunah. Avraham Avinu, by the way, also represents chesed. When we have this emunah and this ברית coming together, this we said is going to bring the chesed into the world, into the system.

שהוא רקיע. רקיע is that that level of division between what is above and below. There's a kabbalistic explanation for why רקיע is at the level of יסוד, צדיק יסוד עולם, so that יסוד is representative, it's sort of like the bottom of the funnel of all the ספירות coming above, and then the מלכות below, but I don't want to get into that for now. So Avraham is the ברית עילאה, which is representative of the raki'a. Again, you need these divisions, this for directionality, for growth, for a system of growth, המבדיל בין מיין עילאין למיין תתאין, that is going to divide between the upper and lower waters, we can say between משפיע ומקבל, between זכר ונקבה.

But again, we're not going to get too involved in that, suffice it to say that, again, you need these aspects in order for there to be a brit, because you're going to need משפיע ומקבל, זכר ונקבה coming together, that's what שמירת הברית is. והוא בבחינת בן חורין. In order for a person to be engaged in ברית עילאה, in working towards kedushah, the way that we described avodah, then a person needs to be a בן חורין. What is freedom? Freedom is essentially the ability to accomplish the purpose for which you're designed. There's no reason that anything wouldn't do that, unless something else was holding them back, pulling them away, an obstacle, a distraction.

So a lot of times we relate to freedom as the ability to do what we want, but with perfect clarity, nothing should ever want to do anything other than its purpose, because that's the maximum value proposition, that's what they're here for. Anything else that's pulling them away is actually a lacking of freedom. So when somebody is a בן חורין, they will be directionally always moving towards purpose. Being a בן חורין from desire will allow a person to engage in שמירת הברית and קדושה, בבחינת אשרי ארץ שמלכך בן חורין. So at the most basic peshat level of this pasuk, we would just say that if the melech is the one who is נמלך, he's the one who's giving etzah, giving governance to the land, so then the one who is dictating the way that the land will be governed, going back to the system of גלגלים and so on, is the one who's not held back by anything else.

Fortunate is the land that is going to be governed by by purpose rather than being held back by any other priorities. If we wanted to fit it a little bit, perhaps we could suggest Kabbalistically into what we said, if you think about שמים וארץ or the raki'a, so malchut is at the bottom of the system, where we have חסד, גבורה, תפארת, נצח, הוד, and yesod. That, at that level, there would be the raki'a, and then malchut would be on the bottom. אשרי, the melech where there's full alignment, where the malchut is in line with the ספירות that come beforehand, that the malchut is reflective of the inputs, there are no other considerations, ועביד תולדין.

And now where there is this zivug, there is this possibility for ברית עילאה for kedushah, then that will bring kedushah into the world. This entire system is designed to bring berachah, to bring chayut from הקדוש ברוך הוא into the world, בבחינת ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן. Avraham Avinu represents what we said represents ברית עילאה, and Avraham Avinu and Sarah brought נפשות, they brought life, they brought ברכה, נפש אשר עשו בחרן which represents ben chorin. Over here, it brings a it brings a Zohar that Avraham and שרה בזמן שהיו עקרים, it's a Zohar in Shelach, that before they had children, then what was what were they bringing into the world, what were they מוליד?

They were still bringing bracha into the world. That was the נשמות of גרים. So again, we see that Avraham Avinu, representative of ברית עילאה, which when combined with emunah, Avraham Avinu was also the father of emunah, this also represented chesed, and this is how we bring שפע into the system, how we started the Torah. וכי החירות תלויה בברית, בבחינת בדם בריתך שלחתי אסיריך מבור. That cheirut is תלוי in brit. Again, cheirut, if something that's holding a person back, if we're supposed to attach ourselves to Hakadosh Baruch Hu through kedusha, so then desire, things that pull us away from from שמירת הברית, from kedusha in the area of brit, are going to hold us back.

Brit is going to allow us to attach to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and we have a פסוק in Zechariah which says: בדם בריתך שלחתי אסיריך מבור. With the dam of brit, I sent you from being trapped, being imprisoned in the בור, and so we see brit associated with freedom, with not being held back, with ben chorin. ואליעזר הוא ברית תתאה. Eliezer Eved Avraham is representative of the basic level brit. Now, just before we read the next few words, we're going to associate Eliezer Eved Avraham with the Malach Matat, who we're going to associate with Chanokh, and חנוך לנער על פי דרכו with תורה שבעל פה, with issur ve-heter.

We'll see how this gets fleshed out also in the second half of the Torah. So there's a pasuk by Avraham Avinu: ויאמר אברהם אל עבדו זקן ביתו. The Midrash in Bereishit Rabbah says that אליעזר היה זיו איקונין שלו דומה לו, that the features, as it were, of Eliezer were similar to Avraham Avinu. המושל בכל אשר לו, what does it mean? שהיה שליט ביצרו כמותו. Eliezer was like almost to some degree an extension of Avraham Avi- of Avraham Avinu. By the Malach Matat, the pasuk in Shemot says, הנה אנכי שולח מלאך לפניך לשמרך בדרך, Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, I think this is after the egel, he's going to send a malach in front of the Klal Yisrael to lead them on the way, ולהביאך אל המקום אשר הכנתי, to the place that I prepared, השמר מפניו, the pasuk says, guard yourself from his פניו, ושמע בקולו, and so on, the end of the pasuk says, כי שמי בקרבו.

Rashi over there associates the כי שמי בקרבו going back on השמר מפניו, why should you guard yourself from the פניו, from this malach that I'm going to send in front of you, which is the Malach Matat? כי שמי בקרבו, by the way the Malach Matat is associated with with the name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu of Shaddai, which is also associated with brit, but it says כי שמי בקרבו because my name is associated with him or is in him, Shaddai, therefore השמר מפניו. So there is an association with the name, the likeness, a certain character with Avraham Avinu and Eliezer Eved Avraham, and with Hakadosh Baruch Hu saying השמר מפניו to the malach that he was designating to do this.

So now inside, ואליעזר הוא ברית תתאה בבחינת כי שמי בקרבו, again, שמי בקרבו is not a pasuk by Eliezer, it's a pesuk by מט״ט, ששמו כשם רבו, שהוא חנוך, we'll see in a second from the pesukim how we associate Eliezer and חנוך, בבחינת וירק את חניכיו, so that's the association between Eliezer and Chanoch, when Avraham Avinu took his חניכיו, the 318 people to war against the in the war between the four kings and the five kings, so Rashi over there says that it was actually Eliezer Eved Avraham. So וירק את חניכיו, חניכיו is a reference to Eliezer, and the and also there's a reference of Chanoch to Matat.

Over here brings from the pesukim, brings over here from Sha'ar HaGilgulim, could be other places also, that חנוך בן ירד, חנוך, who was one of the 10 personalities between אדם and נח, was taken before his time, and he he ended up being the malach Matat. So over here again, we're tying together Eliezer, the malach Matat, and Chanoch. And therefore, we're going to say that this brit of אליעזר, ברית תתאה, בבחינת חנוך לנער, בבחינת אי לך, אוי לך ארץ, woe is to the land, pasuk in קהלת, שמלכך נער. So really we said that the the מלכך, אברהם אבינו, who's a בן חורין, that's going to be ברית עילאה, but אוי לך ארץ, where it's not that the מלך is a בן חורין and a level of ברית עילאה, but the מלכך is a נער, the מלכך is a, נער literally translates as being as being like childish, or on a lower level, but we see that חנוך לנער, חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, so we're we're saying as opposed to the higher level of the מלך בן חורין, over here we have that the מלך is a נער, which is associated with the lower level.

והוא תחת ברית עילאה בבחינת שים נא ידך תחת ירכי. By Eliezer and Avraham, אברהם tells Eliezer when he's making the bris that he's going to go and he's going to find a wife for יצחק, שים נא ידך תחת ירכי, put your hand under my thigh, under the bris, so this level of bris associated with Eliezer is under the ברית עילאה of Avraham Avinu. והוא רקיע המבדיל בין מיין דכיין למיין מסאבין, and he learns over here that this is a division, not like we said before between the upper and lower waters which are both at the level of kedushah, but rather this is between the מיין דכיין, the tahor waters, and the מיין מסאבין and the impure waters, so it's a lower level division, בין איסור והיתר, בין כשר ופסול, בין טמא וטהור, וזה בחינת חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, with על פי דייקא, היינו תורה שבעל פה.

So, again, working our way from the bottom up, even though he addressed it the other way, we have the lower level of bris associated with Eliezer Eved Avraham, and we explained how Eliezer to Avraham is in a certain way similar to the Malach Matat to Hakadosh Baruch Hu in those pesukim, and we associate the Malach Matat with Chanoch, and חנוך לנער, so as opposed to Avraham Avinu, who's the מלך בן חורין, the higher level of bris dividing between the two upper levels of water of kedushah, we have the lower level, חנוך לנער, which is dividing between the tahor and tamei waters, חנוך לנער על פי, תורה שבעל פה, which is a bechinah of issur v'heter, which is base level.

Now, ברית עילאה, back in the text, הוא שמירת הברית קודש, וברית תתאה הוא שמירת איסור והיתר, the way that we explained. וצריך לאדם להיות לו אלו שני בחינות ברית, היינו שיהא צדיק ולמדן, כי לא עם הארץ חסיד. There's two aspects of how what a person would need in order to reach tzidkus, or I guess over here he flipped it around, in order to reach chasidus, but a person needs to be a lamdan, they pashut need to know what to do, they need to know the halachot, that's step one, and they need to have chasidus, they need to be going above above the letter of the law towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

Now, לא עם הארץ חסיד, if a person doesn't know the baseline of what to do, so then there there's going to be not necessarily emesdik considerations in terms of where they're going to apply their efforts. So it's impossible to go above the letter of the law if you don't know what the law is. So baseline is issur v'heter, is being a lamdan, is חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, you have to know what to do. Once you're in the range of knowing what to do, so then you can move towards chasidut and towards ברית עילאה. So therefore ברית עילאה includes ברית תתאה.

Working, getting ever closer towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu on the range of kedushah assumes that you're in the range of kedushah, that you already know what's issur veheter, what you have to stay away from, and what you have to move towards. צדיק נקרא על ידי שמירת הברית קודש. Tzaddik is called, צדיק יסוד עולם, יסוד is ברית, above the רקיע. Like we say קדש עצמך במותר לך, that's moving upwards in levels towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu. והלמדן על ידי איסור והתר that he knows what to do, pashut. Vezehu, this is the pasuk, pasuk in Malachi, just read the pasuk, it says תורה יבקשו מפיהו כי מלאך ה' צבאות הוא.

And the Gemara says in the Gemara in מועד קטן, אם הרב דומה למלאך ה' צבאות, then you should learn from him. The person that you the person that's going to be the your source of of shefa coming from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, this is your Rebbe, this is who where you're getting your ruchniyut from, there's two components. First of all, the information has to be right, there has to be the correct issur veheter, and second of all, if they're going to be the mashpia, they also need to have this chasidut, this tzidkut. And therefore, whoever it is that you are going to learn from needs to have two aspects: the malach, we said מלאך מט״ט, איסור והתר, that's the lower level, and then צבאות, they have to be אות הוא בצבא דיליה, they have to be a a member, an אות, אות ברית קודש in Hakadosh Baruch Hu's army, so to speak.

צריך שיהיה צדיק ולמדן. Malach means זה בחינת למדן בבחינת מט״ט כנ״ל, like we just described, you need to have the first basic level of lower ברית, and צבאות is representative of אות הוא בצבא דיליה. אות is representative of ברית, in צבא, in Hashem's army. The notes over here align it with a kabbalistic explanation that נצח, הוד, יסוד, that יסוד is in the army of נצח והוד and so on, but it's I don't want to confuse us. בחינת צדיק אות ברית. ובכל מקום שמזכר צדיק גם ברית תתאה נכלל בו. Wherever we talk about צדיק יסוד עולם, צדיק the upper level of ברית of קדושה, that is נכלל the also איסור והתר.

Before you start improving on the good, you have to make sure that you know what's good and what's not good. כי התחתון נכלל בעליון בבחינת ידך תחת ירכי, that Avraham Avinu tells Eliezer ידך תחת ירכי. So that is paragraph ה, explaining the idea of ברית and the two levels of ברית that we are going to pair together with אמונה, which is the שלמות of צדקה in order to bring חסד into the system. Now if אות ברית קודש is going to bring שפע, it's going to bring ברכה into the system, so now let's speak that out in paragraph ו.

מי שהוא בבחינת ברית, אזי חסד נתגלה בפומא דאמה, that one who excels in the midah of ברית, so in the ספירות, in how Hakadosh Baruch Hu brings שפע into the world through the ספירות, we know that there is חב״ד, חכמה, בינה ודעת, this is the מוחין, and then there are the emotional ספירות, which is the מידות: חסד, גבורה, תפארת, נצח, הוד, יסוד. That is a set, okay? We sometimes refer to that as זעיר אנפין, and then there's מלכות. Now if the set is חסד through יסוד, חג״ת נה״י, if you will, right? As the ראשי תיבות, that means that the חסד at the top of it will have a גילוי, what it it will have a revelation, it will find its expression in yesod.

So when a person excels at yesod, they have the full alignment of chesed through yesod, the chesed from the top of that system will find a giluy in the פומא דאמה, which is the that part of the body that is representative that aligns with yesod. ובבחינת לעולם אשמור לו חסדי ובריתי נאמנת לו. It's a pasuk in Tehillim, which associates chesed and brit and emunah. So we see that again chesed and brit are aligned, they're associated, will guard the chesed u-vriti, so the chesed through yesod, and also it ties it together with emunah, which we said brit and emunah go together.

ובשביל זה נתנה מדת חסד לאברהם. That is why Avraham Avinu had the middah of chesed because he excelled in emunah and ברית, כי הוא היה ראש למאמינים וראש לנימולים. So so far we are we are seeing that there's integrity to the system, it's reflecting right, how brit and emunah go together in order to bring shefa into the world. Further, וכשנתגלה החסד, when chesed has a giluy through שמירת הברית, אברהם אבינו representing chesed as the input that's at the top of the system and the giluy is in yesod is in צדקות, שמירת הברית, היינו אהבה והשתוקקות בבחינת כי חולת אהבה אני.

So, the חולת אהבה אני is a pasuk in Shir HaShirim, but but Rabbeinu says that when there is a giluy in chesed, so now that is going to essentially, I think we could say, create a keli for berachah. What is אהבה והשתוקקות? So perhaps we could say ahavah is when two things want to come together, that is chesed is an expression of ahavah, it's love, a dynamic between two things, and השתוקקות is like thirst, right? I can have let's say dessert or I can have a drink that I enjoy, but I'm not necessarily thirsty for it.

I could either have the pleasure of it or I would not have the pleasure of it. If a person is thirsty, השתוקקות for water, then nothing else will quench that thirst, and only water will quench that thirst. If a person is not thirsty, then water probably won't taste that great. So therefore it's not only ahavah, but it's also exclusivity. It's a full alignment of a desire for HaKadosh Baruch Hu. When a person excels in שמירת הברית, it's not a matter of anything being able to fulfill that desire, they have a desire only for kedushah, only for HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

I think that that's a nice way of reading this. כי חולת אהבה אני, there's a it's almost a person is lovesick for HaKadosh Baruch Hu, because only HaKadosh Baruch Hu can fill that void kivayachol. אזי הוא עושה נפשות בבחינת ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן. Once a person excels at שמירת הברית, and therefore they they create this this ahavah v'hishtokekut, this desire to attach to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, so now they're a ben chorin from other avenues of fulfilling that desire, they bring an avenue to bring shefa and chiyut and life into the world. The world is בעצם a physical thing, like a body is a physical guf, but the chiyut, the attachment אלוקים חיים, the attachment to HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the berachah, is the shefa, is the godliness that gives that gives life, that gives energy into the world.

Otherwise, it's just it's just dead. So over here, when a person has the שמירת הברית, את הנפש אשר עשו בחרן, right, through the ben chorin, through the שמירת הברית, he's able to bring life into the world, היינו שעושה נקודות לאותיות התורה. This is going to be represented by the נקודות on the letters of the Torah. When you if you open up a Sefer Torah, we see the letters. There's a system called תנת״א: טעמים, נקודות, תגין, and אותיות. The אותיות we see in the Torah, the תגין also, we're not going to be speaking about those now, but an אות without any נקודה doesn't is not really a functional letter, right?

In order for a letter to to be able to be spoken out, it needs to have inflection, it needs to have vowels, otherwise it's just an empty kli. The idea of נקודות, the vowels that go under the letters in Hebrew give them life, they give them the ability to express, and ultimately they give the ability of two letters to have an attachment, to go together. Otherwise, you just have two letters next to each other. So they give the the opportunity for expression for those letters to have life. כי אותיות בלא נקודות כגוף בלא נפש. If you have a letter without a נקודה, it's like a body without any life, ושאין להם שום תנועה ופעולה בלא נפש.

There's no functionality, there's no life to this this kli that doesn't have any chayut in it. כן הצטרפות וזיווגם של אותיות ברל״א שערים לעשות איזה פעולה אין להם כח אלא לפי הנקודות. So too, the combination of letters in the 231 gates, which we'll explain in a second, also does not have any functionality but for the nekudot, which represent life, which is what a person's able to bring into the world when they have shemirah of ot brit kodesh. What is the 231 gates? So it's really just the way that the letters fit together, the permutations. If there are 22 letters, then each letter can pair together with 21 other letters.

In other words, unless we're not pairing together like an א and an א, just an א with ב, א with ג. So the permutation of the amount of combinations would be 22 * 21. There's 21 combinations for each of the 22 letters. 22 * 21 is 22 * 10 is 220 * 2 is 440 plus another 22 is 462. Now 462, we're going to divide that in half, because we're only going to count combinations one way. In other words, we're not going to count a ב and a ג and then a ג and a ב.

So therefore, since we're going to get rid of half of those, 462 in half is going to be 231. So therefore, the letter combinations, which we're saying are only meaningful with the nekudot, these building blocks of the world, if you will, have chayut only through the nekudot. That is the life of the letters which we bring to the world through through brit. והנקודות הינו אהבה והכיסופין בבחינת נקודות הכסף. He brings is a pasuk in Shir HaShirim which associates נקודות הכסף like pieces of silver, but we're going to associate the nekudot, which we said is the life, with kisufin, with yearnings, right?

That is really movement. If I'm just static, then there's no growth. If a person, when they always say in a hospital, the line in the heart rate monitor is always going up and down, if it's static, then it's dead. So nekudot are associated with kisufin, with yearning for growth. והכיסופין הן הנפש, בבחינת נכספה וגם כלתה נפשי, it's all my desire for HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but it's associated with kisufin and נפש, ולפי הכיסופין כן הנקודות. And according to the kisufin, to these desires, so too is going to be the nekudot, the vowels. אם כוסף לרע, if a person desires for bad, נעשה נקודות רעים, ואזי נצטרף מהאותיות ונדבקים לעשות פעולות רעות.

If the letters are really the Torah is the blueprint of the world, the letters, if you will, are the code, right, if you had a computer code, something's on the screen, then the code is going to dictate what's there. Now, if you're going to have, you know, zeros and ones, as it were, whatever ends up on the screen will just be different combinations of those pieces. If the letters are the building blocks of the world, the kisufin or the energy that goes behind the letters will dictate how how that energy comes into the world. There's nothing inherently wrong with the letters, it's a question of the formulations of the energy.

And according to the desires, the kisufin that bring in that the life, that bring in the nekudot to the world, those nekudot will be behind the letters, and that will bring in either positive or negative manifestations and consequences into the world. The the sefarim say that, you know, in different ways, I think one example is oneg and nega. Oneg is pleasure and nega could be sickness or, you know, destruction. We gave we gave one of these examples in an earlier Torah, I don't remember offhand which Torah, where we said understanding how these letters go together, there's nothing so heebie-jeebie about it, it's really just spiritual physics, it's a science.

If a person would understand what the code is behind things in the world, they would be able to see, you know, what's happening in the world, good or bad, and they would see what we have to be metaken. It's just a study that we have to know how to how to understand. ואם כוסף לשוב בתשובה, and if a person has desire for teshuvah, for getting close to הקדוש ברוך הוא, נעשה נקודות טובות, היינו נפשות טובות, then it's going to cause good energy to come into the world, good life force to come to the world, ומשתנעים האותיות ונדבקים לעשות פעולות טובות.

And the letters, so to speak, will move, they will function together, and they will come together when there's a zivug, and that causes peirot, that causes תולדות to come to the world, and that will bring positivity and berachah into the world. וזהו, this idea that the nekudot, that the כיסופין are really the engine that drives the movement, the hitorerut, what ultimately is the zivug, and it brings peirot into the world, this is what the pasuk means: תורי זהב, chains or necklaces of זהב, נעשה לך, we will make for you, עם נקודות הכסף, with the points of silver.

But we'll see that we're going to relate זהב, which the Zohar explains is the hitorerut for zivug, with נקודות הכסף, the yearning that comes even behind that hitorerut. כדאיתא בזהר: אתערותא דזיווגא מסטרא דצפון, that the hitorerut, the arousal for zivug comes from the צפון, comes from the north. For our purposes, if a person is looking towards the east, the north will be on his left and the south will be on his right. So if we think about right and left, as right is chesed and left is gevurah, we're actually relating to the hitorerut for zivug as coming from the צפון, is coming from the left, ומצפון זהב יאתה, and from the north, the gold will come, so now we're saying that the north, which for our purposes is on the left, it's the gevurah is hitorerut for zivug, it's also a reference to זהב, so תורי זהב, זהו תורי זהב נעשה לך, necklaces, chains, bringing things together, two isolated points.

It's like for for argument's sake, if this is helpful, you can have pieces of data, but in order for it to be information, it's when those two things come together or a string of things come together in order for information, for something substantive, something meaningful to emerge. So תורי זהב נעשה לך, we will make the chains of gold, היינו אתערותא דזיווגא, this hitorerut to get together so instead of staying as isolated points, something meaningful comes together, והצטרפותן של אותיות התורה, the individual letters which are kelim, which on their own, individual letters need to make a word, words need to come together and make a sentence, paragraphs to have the development of a story.

But what is it that creates the idea of movement so that each letter can ultimately make a sound and then two letters can combine in order לפעול איזה פעולה? אינו אלא על ידי נקודות הכסף. This comes because of the דייקא כסף, because of the כסף, אין להם שום תנועה אלא על ידי נקודות שנעשה על ידי כיסופין, that this movement which allows things to combine into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts, the meaning of a word, the meaning of a sentence, it's not just a sentence is not just a bunch of letters strung together, now there's meaning, it stands for something, this comes from the כיסופין, from the desire.

I'm just going to read a small note over here. It's interesting, these ideas are way beyond us, but the way that we are relating to hisorerus being זהב and the כיסופין being chesed comes from a Zohar. He says, אמר רבי יצחק אין יצר הרע בטל מן העולם, אף על פי שכולו לא נמצא קצת נמצא. The יצר הרע, as it were, is not going to become בטל totally, there will be a point, תא חזי, what does this mean? Come see, בתחילה כשיהיה מות בעולם הזה נקרא לייט. The יצר הרע was originally represented by לייט, but לעולם הבא יבטל מן העולם, and that יצר הרע will become בטל מן העולם, אבל לא כולו, ונקרא לבן, לא מנוול כראשונה, אלא כמאן דסחי מניבולו.

The idea of לבן at the highest levels, over here it's manifest as negative, but the idea of לבן at its core will remain. לבן למה אצטריך? Why do we need this? אמר רבי שמעון, למיעבד פריה ורביה אצטריך. We need this to function so that there will continue to be פרו ורבו, דאמר רבי שמעון אם אין יצר הרע נמצא, פריה ורביה אינו מצוי. So again, the way that we relate to it as yetzer hara, but if you think about the engine that drives things, so many of the things that we do wrong, there is a certain yearning for more.

If that is filled and directed in the positive, then that could be filled with spirituality. On the other hand, if a person is not directed towards spirituality, it's an insatiable desire, if it's not being filled with the right thing, then it's not going it's not ever going to stop, and therefore this desire for connection, if it's channeled towards ruchniyus is positive, and if it's not, then a person is going to try to fulfill the desires with something that's negative for him, and that becomes manifest at the at the altitude of this world. Ruchniyus we said earlier, kedusha and emunah is higher, but if a person is in this world and they're trying to fulfill that desire which is unfillable, then that will result in the yetzer hara.

So what this is the way I'm reading it, what we relate to as yetzer hara, בעצם that desire which is insatiable at the level of this world, because there is no ruchniyus per se in this world, that's only something coming from above, but that desire will stay. וזהו אם הרב דומה למלאך ה' צבאות כנ''ל, this is what we said, if a person has a rav, a rebbi, that is both מלאך ה' and צבאות, he's a מלאך, he's a lamdan at the level of תורה שבעל פה, he understands איסור והיתר, the basic level, בירורים of going away from bad and turning towards good, but also צבאות, the אות and the צבא ה', in a that that also there's distinctions and levels, even just totally directionally upward, but constantly making בירורים so that he can go upward closer to kedusha, this person is a tzadik and he's a למדן, אזי בוודאי חסד ואהבה מתגלה, then the chesed and the אהבה, the desire to, we said, connect, that will be מתגלה בפומא דאמה, which we said represents ברית, ברית קודש, והשתוקקות נתגלה שהם נקודות, but the השתוקקות, chesed is desire for two things to connect, we said there's also an aspect of השתוקקות of thirst, when something is a cavity, if there's a vacuum, it has to be filled, and it has to be filled appropriately, if there's anything left over, if it's not the right fit, then it's it's like we said before, it's going to be it's going to be unfilled and it's going to continue to desire, so therefore, the chesed and the השתוקקות, which can only be filled by the right fit, אזי תורה יבקשו מפיהו, then the Torah itself is going to be מבקש from this from this Rav, from this Rebbe.

אזי אותיות התורה בעצמן מבקשים ממנו שידבר אותם כדי שיהיה להם נקודות ונפשות. The letters of the Torah themselves stand to be strung together, they stand the they stand to be able to speak out and represent and bring into the world to be a kli for רצון ה'. When there is a chesed and a השתוקקות, somebody who understands how to have these כיסופין that will bring the letters together, the letters of the Torah, which are a kli that stands to be filled to have a נפש, those letters themselves will desire the the נפש to come in from this זיווג.

Just to mention an idea that really comes from the Mesilat Yesharim, on one hand, this sounds awful, right? To have a desire that in this world can't be filled, it sounds like we're set up for failure, it's actually exactly the opposite. If we had a desire that could be filled at this world, we could end up, chas v'shalom, ignoring our purpose and ignoring our רוחניות, the idea that we have a desire that can only be filled by turning to רוחניות, for a thinking person and somebody who has the Torah and חכמה direction, so that they understand exactly what's going on, this actually sets us up really בעצם for success.

It's just a point of התבוננות. The the idea that the only real path to fulfillment is fulfillment of purpose tied to רוחניות, something that will allow us to rise above the world, to become a בן עולם הבא, somebody who really is living at a higher altitude and just operating in this world, בעצם, is the חכמה of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, is really a tremendous benefit to us. So we'll just do one more paragraph. So again just taking stock, we have צדקה and אמונה together, which allow us to have a say into the inputs in how Hakadosh Baruch Hu runs the world, and to bring in שפע and ברכה into the system of מזלות, which is actually the pipes and the gears that allow the world to run or by which Hakadosh Baruch Hu governs the world.

אמונה really goes hand in hand with ברית, and ברית is two parts: there's the ברית of איסור והיתר, the the ברית תתאה, stay away from bad and do good, and then there's the ברית עילאה that allows us to move higher and higher in levels of kedushah ever forward to the אינסופיות, to bring ever ever more brachah into the world. And in terms of that upper ברית, that ברית will reveal chesed, the chesed is what bring the brachah into the world, and the degree to which we have the כיסופין and desire, that will dictate the degree to which we can attach ourselves to kedushah, accomplish accomplish what we need to with this ברית עילאה in order again, ultimately, how we started off the Torah, to to bring shefa and brachah into the world.

וזהו, this is the pasuk in Kohelet: יש הבל אשר נעשה על הארץ. Shlomo Hamelech is referring to the idea that there are יש צדיקים אשר מגיע אליהם כמעשה הרשעים ויש רשעים שמגיע אליהם כמעשה הצדיקים. When when we our viewpoint is this world, it seems that there's הבל, it's meaninglessness, it's שוא, it's much worse than than a lie. If a person wants specifically to go in the wrong direction, then that's his choice, and he has the wrong reasons, but at least it's calculated. When something is whimsical, it's שוא, it's without meaning, it leaves you without any sort of a system of cause and effect, it's essentially paralyzing because everything becomes pointless.

The the answer to this would be that, yes, you cannot reconcile any sort of a system within a particular perspective, but if you rise above and you're able to see that the the cause and effect was spread out, let's say, over a longer period of time or a broader perspective, within your narrow point of view, then it was irreconcilable. This is a lot of the discussion of גלגולי נפשות and so on, but let's see what Rabbeinu is coming to tell us: יש הבל אשר נעשה על הארץ, זהו בחינת גלגולי נפשות. גלגולי, we said גלגלים, is transfer, it's a it's a system.

This is the system of גלגולי נפשות, which we're going to say is כיסופין of of which is a transfer, which is a getting together, it's an interaction and a dynamic between two things. וכשהאדם משתוקק לאיזה דבר, when a person has a השתוקקות, a thirst, a desire, there's a vacuum there, and he needs something, there's going to be a נפש created. That movement, that that vacuum rather, that desire creates a נפש, it creates the the life force that is going to bring two things together, so that there's going to become meaning from this זיווג. ומוציא השתוקקות אחר כך בהבל פיו כנ״ל, and then there's going to be a השתוקקות that was in potential, and ultimately he articulates it, right?

The letters come together to be words which are still בכח until there's dibbur, until there's מלכות, until a person brings it out of his mouth in order to actualize it. אזי נעשה הנפש, now the נפש בפועל come out, now the letters jump off the page, they become meaningful, they become a communication. והנפש הזאת היינו הרוח ממללא. This נפש, that first there was these loose pieces, they translated into speech, so now that there's communication, now not only do the words come together, now a one person can connect with another, a person can connect to הקדוש ברוך הוא, this is the רוח ממללא, this brings life into the kelim, life into the world.

This is what is unique to Adam, speech, where we have the opportunity and ultimately the obligation to fulfill. הולכת באויר, these words now go into the air, ומגיעה לאדם אחר. We had a previous Torah that talked about this, I can't remember offhand exactly which Torah, but these words now we think that the words leave my mouth and now that it's passing, it's lost, but no, think about it more like an arrow, something something leaves the the mouth and there's an effect. It cuts through the air, the airways might move around until it's received by another.

So the the words leave a person's mouth, ומעוררת את האדם אחר לתשוקה. And now, when I put an idea into words and I say this and you hear the words, I have this tashukah, this desire which was able to create a nefesh in order for me to bring life into the kelim, life into the letters and the words in order to have it leave my mouth, that now is going to cause an effect on the recipient. So when you hear something, that can cause a corresponding tashukah by you. ולפי התשוקה, לפי הנפש, לפי הרוח ממללא, according to this desire that was created and the nefesh, the life force, the movement now, according to the כח הדיבור and the speech, כן נתעורר האדם, the person now who hears it, who now heard the result of these כיסופין, אם התשוקה בא מצדיק לרשע, through the tashukah that came, just in in my example, it's representative, I'm using my, you know, words, not that I'm a tzadik, but coming from the tzadik now it's going to hear something, and now that person is going to hear רוחניותדיק words, something that causes hit'orerut, it causes a corresponding tashukah, now that keli is going to have to be fulfilled, and that's going to cause a hit'orerut in him.

אזי נתעורר הרשע בהרהורי תשובה, בבחינת יש רשעים שמגיע אליהם כמעשה הצדיקים. What Rabbeinu is doing, this is unbelievable. There is resha'im that come to them כמעשה צדיקים. Something left the tzadik, that caused an effect. A word, an arrow, a bullet left the tzadik's mouth, and it was received, it impacted the rasha. That impact, now the rasha, who is also a human being, is also a חלק אלוק ממעל, all of a sudden he was exposed to this, it caused this hit'orerut, and now there's a corresponding kisufin that he wants to receive it, and therefore this rasha, it's going to be מגיע, it's going to reach him כמעשה צדיקים.

ולהיפך, חס ושל- Lehefech, chas v'shalom, it could be the other way around also. So that a person's words in either direction, it could be יש צדיקים אשר מגיע אליהם כמעשה הרשעים, that that could be the reverse. When a rasha does something, it could also cause a cloudiness, things a person who previously was a tzadik, they could also be impacted, which which causes pause, just depending in terms of where we live, what school we go to, a bungalow colony, what שול, whatever it is. You see, the world could have billions of people in it, whatever it is, but who you choose to be in your ד' אמות, and this could be across the world also, but certainly in an immediate sense, has a tremendous impact in your growth.

So besides all the cheshbonot, it's incredibly important who we surround ourselves by, because that will impact not only our actions and what we're exposed to, but our very desires. והכל נעשה על ידי הבל פיו. All of these things are done through the hevel, which now we're saying is not just hevel which Shlomo Hamelech suggests was vanity, things we don't understand, but the hevel of tzadikim coming to מעשה רשעים is the breath, it's the words, the גלגולי נפשות, the attachment point between two people which now impacts the nefashot both in either direction coming into the world, שהוא הנפש.

כי זה ידוע לכל שעיקר הדיבור הוא שכלי הדיבור מכין באויר. What really be'etzem is dibur? It's the dibur that comes out that actualizes something from one person. Those words go into the world, and they, like we said, they have an impact on the air itself, like an arrow flying through the air. והאויר הזה פוגע באויר הסמוך לו והסמוך בסמוך עד שמגיע לחבירו ושומע חבירו האותיות. These otiot, which beforehand were kelim, they were empty kelim, they were empty otiot. I saw them, I had had an idea, there was כיסופין, there was נקודות, it put each letter now had movement, the letters got together, they became an idea, they came out of a person's mouth, that caused dibur, and now it's a real thing, it's flying through the air, and there is an actual impact.

It's there's physics, we can't see it, it doesn't mean that it's not real, and it causes an actual cause and effect process, וכשהוא מקבל דיבורו, until it gets to somebody else's ears, which is the keli to pick this up, הוא מקבל נפשו, he will receive the nefesh of the medaber, of the speaker. That life force that gave that gave a nefesh to the original words, that nefesh will translate across, ונתעורר לדבר הזה, and the person who hears it will now have a hit'orerut that was the nefesh of the speaker. So we're finishing a sort of We just introduced a new idea, but also it's a little bit on a high, just being extremely empowered.

We started off the Torah talking about how we can impact the שפע and the berachah coming into the world through our emunah, through tzedakah, through the acts that we do, and through working on brit, which we explored at length. And now we see that how is it that we bring things into the world? It's really be'etzem the power of tzedakah, but the power of speech, which is able to actualize all of the כחות in this world. But not only between us and Hashem, even between us and our fellow person, when we when we say our words, not only to a person directly, but we just bring things out into the world, that causes changes at every single level, both in terms of tefilah, in terms of התבודדות, in terms of talking to Hashem in our own words, and in terms of just perhaps, you know, having a smile and saying something, saying good morning, saying something nice to somebody, that actually creates a keli for berachah.

but not only a kli to receive bracha that's coming down, a kli in that it's a vacuum that needs to be filled, it's going to pull bracha down into the world, and it's going to affect other people to create a kli for bracha. So you get up in the morning, you're thinking something nice or not so nice, and as you're walking down the street, you talk to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you say thank you, hakarat hatov, gratitude, you speak to others, and you simply actualize and articulate positive words, you're mamash bringing positivity into the world, mamash changing the world. It's a tremendous koach worth being מתבונן on, and Be'ezrat Hashem we will continue next time.