LM 34.1 — V'atem Tihiyu Li, Part 1: The Nekudah — The Tzaddik Within · תורה ל״ד

Be'ezrat Hashem, we are beginning the next step on our journey with תורה ל״ד לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה. Some of the Torot have a more or less clear connection with the Torah that came before it. I think we will see many of the ideas that we discuss in this Torah to advance on and be in connection with, parallel, complement many of the ideas that we discussed in תורה ל״ג. As far as a few words of historical context, reading from Rabbi' Chaim Kramer's note, it's not clear exactly when this Torah was given.

It seems that Rabbeinu did not want the Torot, the lessons that he gave prior to when he went to Eretz Yisrael, to be included, which means that because this Torah is brought down as being given in Medvedivka, it would have had to have been in a particular year, in the year 1800 when he came back from Eretz Yisrael and then moved on to a place called Zlatopolya, don't know if I'm saying these places right. On the other hand, it seems that this Torah was taught when Rabbi' Aharon, who was later to become the rabbi in Breslov and one of Rabbi Nachman's closest followers, first joined Rabbeinu.

At their first meeting, Rabbi Nachman spoke about a pure heart, guarding against shattering it with disgrace. We will see we will see inside all the language and how it fits together, and rectifying it through the nekudah applicable to one's heart at that moment, and about the tzaddik as encompassing the root of all Jewish souls. The problem with this is that the meeting with Rabbi' Aharon happened earlier, before Rabbeinu went to Eretz Yisrael, so one potential answer is that the Torah was prepared earlier, but not ultimately delivered until later on. In any event, Rabbi' Chaim Kramer brings that the main themes of this lesson are going to be the inner nekudah, the nekudah tovah of a person's heart, conversing with one's friend, one's chaver about the avodat Hashem in order to receive this nekudah.

We're going to go into this. Everybody has their own avodah. On the other hand, everybody is a piece of a puzzle, and each piece also receives its meaning by being in connection with with others, with a community, with we'll see Rebbeim, chaverim, one's own self, in which case a person is able to relate to another and ultimately have a resonance, have things awaken within oneself based on conversing with others. So we'll go into the the idea of having avodah with chaverim and speaking about avodat Hashem, even though different things light up different individuals, but everybody could light their own self up by having these chavurot, by having these chaverim, binding oneself to a tzaddik in order to receive his nekudah, a comment that we've discussed many times, understanding different aspects of the relationship between a person and the tzaddik and how one's own avodah is enhanced or defined by that relationship, repairing one's own shattered heart: learning Torah, prayer, and hitbodedut.

We're also going to speak about an idea, the שבירת הכלים, which has a lot of kabbalistic connotations, but we'll reference it. We'll speak about Yosef, and the כהונה, שמירת הברית, and a lot of these כוונות are also within tefillin. There's a series of תורות that all talk about the כוונות of tefillin. So our work is cut out for us. In fact, Rabbi' Chaim Kramer mentions that Rabbi' Levi Yitzchak Bender, who was a leader of the Breslov community in Jerusalem and a major source for Breslov tradition, would say that this Torah was considered fundamental to following Rabbeinu's teachings generally, and therefore was reviewed regularly by Rabbeinu's chasidim of previous generations.

And we will begin. So, לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה: The pasuk says, the pasuk in שמות י״ט:ו', "ואתם תהיו לי ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש", you'll be a kingdom of כהנים, a kingdom of priests, it's translated, and a גוי קדוש, a holy nation. All these things lose something in the translation. "אלה הדברים אשר תדבר אל בני ישראל", and we will see how important the idea of dibur is. These are the things that you should tell Klal Yisrael. Paragraph א': As a rule, Rabbi' Chaim Kramer explains that Rabbi Nachman begins every Torah by setting forth in the opening paragraph the objective of that particular teaching.

And then the Torah goes on to sort of unfold a lot of ideas and come back to it. So we will see, again, this first paragraph packed with ideas that we're going to explore. Maybe we'll just mention as ראשי פרקים some of them as we as we go into the Torah, but the first paragraph is generally short and packed with a lot of ideas that will ultimately build in to be able to read read back into the the first paragraph and ultimately into the pasuk that the Torah starts off with.

כתיב, the pasuk says, the pasuk in תהלים ס״ט, "חרפה שברה לבי", disgrace has broken, has shattered my heart. "היינו החרפות ובזיונות", this is the disgrace and the humiliation, "שוברין לבו של אדם", these things break a person's heart. Okay, we'll we'll come back in a minute and discuss. So, first of all, the idea of, what is this talking about? What is this חרפה and these בזיונות that come to shatter a person's heart and what are the implications of his heart being broken, of his heart being shattered, right? Is that even a good thing?

Is that a bad thing? Sometimes we say things, there's nothing as whole as a broken heart. So, the and also are these things within a person's control? If a person's embarrassed externally, are we talking about what happens to a person or his response? So, but in any event, these are things that shatter a person's heart. What is the tikkun? What is the remedy for this? הוא על ידי שמקשר את לבו that a person has to bind himself להנקודה to the point השייך ללבו that is relevant to his לב, this is לב that got shattered, so he has to find this point that is relevant to his heart בעת הזאת in that time, ועל ידי זה and through finding this נקודה that is relevant to this person at that time, ועל ידי זה נתבטל החרפה השורה על לבו, there the חרפה that is resting on his heart will be will will become בטל.

Which is interesting. Well, is his heart still broken or is it simply that his heart is stopped up? We בעצם are intact, we're a חלק אלוק ממעל and so on, once this חרפה is is becomes בטל, so does that mean that now we can reattach ourself? So I'm just going to mention a couple of ראשי פרקים as we move on to the next paragraph. First of all, Rav Chaim Kramer brings, and we'll see Rabbi Attiya as well, the חרפה, the disgrace that we're talking about is the חרפה that is caused by the yetzer hara, specifically in the עריות realm, we're gonna talk about Yosef and Yosef Hatzadik and tzadik and שמירת הברית, we're talking about the yetzer hara, the אהבה נפולה, the love for עריותדיק things, for פגם הברית type things that brings disgrace to one's heart.

And he brings over here in a note, Rabbi Attiya brings in a note which we're going to see later in the Torah as well, that love will cover over iniquities, על כל פשעים תכסה אהבה, it's pasuk in Mishlei. Even if a person does something negative to his friend, if their relationship is intact, when a person has a a close relationship, a family member, and that person makes a big mistake, that mistake happens at a more external, a more surface-deep layer than the relationship itself, and therefore when the ahavah is intact, that can cover over the פשעים, that can come over negative things.

But what happens when the ahavah is not intact? It's misdirected. In that case, it will bring disgrace, and I think the easiest example that we can say is if you have a husband and a wife who have a strong bond, people make mistakes all the time, that doesn't affect the relationship when when the husband and wife have a have a strong shalom bayit and so on, then whatever happens is not going to actually bring a disgrace, it's not going to disturb that ahavah, that love, that beauty. However, let's say the person's mistake is that they were going after another woman chas v'shalom, those are reciprocals, that's the other side of the coin, that is a אהבה נפולה, something that directly has a reciprocal, an inverse relationship with the love that he has for his wife, and therefore if a person has this אהבה נפולה, that will bring a disgrace that is the opposite of the underlying ahavah, which which is שובר את לבו that impacts

the heart itself. Now as far as the tikkun, so we could think, well every all of us are trying to work towards a relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it's true that every one of us is a different person, but in so far as we're trying to reach the objective truth, maybe the tikkun is all the same? The example that we've used before is if there's math, two plus two is four, that objective truth what we're trying to learn doesn't change between a person and another, on the other hand, the methodology, the way that different people can need to learn it can change.

So when we're talking about restoring this ahavah with Hashem, is it a matter of the tikkun for everybody is the same, is it a matter of the way to address this אהבה נפולה is the same, everybody can read the same book, the same מאמר חז״ל, to see the same movie and it's going to restore us, it's all going to bring us back to home base? And Rabbeinu tells us, no, that the תיקון הוא על ידי שמקשר את לבו, the way that we tie each one of our own's heart, now when you tie two things together, that means that the bond between them is going to change depending on what it is that you're try to tie, להנקודה ששייך ללבו בעת הזאת.

So the the avodah is subjective, and it's not just subjective to each person's heart, it's also subjective to any particular time, and this has different implications. First of all, we're going to see that when we talk about getting in touch with a נקודה, that's going to have different implications. We're going to be talking about an attachment to a Rebbe figure, we're going to be talking about attachment and conversing in avodat Hashem with one's חברים, and we're going to be talking about getting in touch with one's own self. Whether or not there's a priority or there's a sequence or they're simply the right thing to lean into at a particular time we'll have to see.

Second of all, the At the עת הזאת is there's a pasuk, the pasuk in Tehillim that gets quoted in Berachot as relating to tefillah: על זאת יתפלל כל חסיד אליך לעת מצוא, in the עת, in the time period, in the context in which one finds themselves. And this is a topic that is deeply meaningful and threaded throughout many of the torot that we've seen and spoke about, is the ability to get close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not only during the periods of clarity, and the periods of ambiguity when things are clouded over, when a person has ירידה, you just try not to lose too much ground so that you can lean back into avodah.

No, there are there are aspects of closeness with HaKadosh Baruch Hu that a person, even though they'd rather not go through those times of challenge and of adversity, but there are things that we can only develop, there's strength that can only be cultivated during those times. I don't know if we quoted it in the last Torah, that it says, במקום שבעלי תשובה עומדים, even a צדיק גמור, and again, a baal teshuvah does not mean the way that we use it in a contemporary way, a baal teshuvah could be anybody that has ירידה in a particular area and they do true teshuvah, that is a baal teshuvah.

This person is going to have the ability to have an avodah and a closeness with Hashem that could never have been accessed by another person or by him himself had he never fallen into that place. So nobody wants to fall down, nobody is looking to fall into aveirot. On the other hand, in any place where a person finds themselves, the response is not to just close one's eyes and hope they wake up and have it be gone, the response is every single place where I am in is, like we saw in the last Torah, ultimately is coming from HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

Some places are more clear, some of those things are much more ambiguous, some of them seem to have been brought on externally, and some of them seem to have been brought on by me, myself. And yet, wherever I am at this one snapshot in time presents me with an opportunity to come close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to have hitbodedut, to Daven to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to see new aspects of myself and how I respond in certain ways that I could never have otherwise done. And therefore and it's an opportunity, because once this passes, even if you could close your eyes and have things be gone and this challenges no longer exists, I would lose the opportunity to find certain greatness within myself and to develop those strengths, and therefore the avodah is subjective between people and between one person at a particular time, the tikkun is subjective between people and within one person at a particular time.

And therefore we have the opportunity and the gift of being able to lean into every single moment and build our life and the world at large in every piece of the puzzle that will form the greater שלמות, which which definitely was was paragraph one of the last Torah. So now taking a step back, going into paragraph two, we had mentioned that there's three different נקודות so to speak that a person could attach themselves to: one is attachment to a Rav, to a tzadik, one is with chaverim, and one is with one's own self.

And we're going to begin talking about the attachment to the tzadik. כי הנה, paragraph two, הכלל, the general idea is that שהממשלה ביד הצדיק, the aspect of rulership is in the hand of a tzadik. For now, there's different aspects to a tzadik: one is we align a tzadik with that person who has been מכניע the yetzer hara that we spoke about. Tzadik is יסוד, שמירת הברית. Another aspect of a tzadik or the role of the tzadik is that once they have access to this kedushah, they are able to be משפיע.

We'll see that a tzadik should bring the teachings and the fear of Hakadosh Baruch Hu into the people. This person who is in the role of the tzadik is the one who is לפעול פעולות כרצונו, he's able to effect things in line with his רצון, כמו שדרשו חכמינו זכרונם לברכה in the Gemara in Moed Katan: צדיק מושל, it's a פסוק in שמואל, מי מושל בי? צדיק. הקדוש ברוך הוא says, "Even when I make a gezeirah, who has the ability to affect Hakadosh Baruch Hu's הנהגה with the world? A tzadik." וזהו בחינת ויוסף הוא השליט.

Yosef, who represents צדיק, צדיק יסוד עולם, that Yosef was the shalit, Yosef was the ruler. I believe in Torah ב׳ already we talked about that Yosef was the משביר, he was the משפיע, he's the one who supported Yaakov when we talked about it in a different context, but Yosef himself was the צדיק, והוא שורש כללות נשמות ישראל והם הענפים שלו המקבלים ממנו. Because the tzaddik is in a position, when we view the entire nation as an organism, the tzaddik is in the position to bring שפע into the world, he is the one who is able to steer that שפע.

So it seems even if a person, me, at the end of the chain, did something, either individually or the world at large, where there's a gezeirah, because the tzaddik is that conduit of bringing kedushah into the world, and like we saw, one of the roles of a tzaddik now is to be able to feed into the ענפים, to light people up, to elevate the entire world, his talmidim, those around him, the tzaddik will have the ability sort of from a higher place to be mevatel the gezeirah. They can go higher higher in the line as the שפע, as Hakadosh Baruch Hu is sending certain הנהגות to the world, and they will change it at that place as they bring kedushah into the world, and that will affect how Hashem is מנהיג the world.

Now, just going to give a thought that I've mentioned in an earlier shiur also, I think that this is one of the hardest things that many people have as they approach Breslov, or as they approach chassidus in general really, is this attachment to the tzaddik, and where's the line between everybody has התבודדות, everybody has davenen, everybody has their own individual avodah, attachment to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We're going to see now this aspect of a נקודה that's internal, and yet, it's as if I attach to a tzaddik without even truly understanding what that means, and then the tzaddik sort of dictates my my avodah, but the tzaddik has his own avodah.

And without answering the question, I would like to sort of reframe so the question is just not as strong, we we see in all areas of life that the person who is at a higher altitude, higher on the corporate chain, the person who's the mashpia, can definitely dictate the avodah for people in their charge. You can see this by a person born into a particular family, the head of household will certainly provide the environment within which the person grows up. A person who works for a company, and then there's a certain manager or a CEO, and let's say there's a CEO change, that can define the direction of the organization, that will affect a tremendous amount of things as to how how things are impacted at the desk level.

So, if you understand Klal Yisrael as a organism, as a company, as a machine that is meant at the individual desk level and at the organizational level to be able to respond and live within the world at a particular time, and respond everybody at their individual level, everyone will have their own employee review, and also at an organizational level, it's מעשה בכל יום everywhere in the world that the impact on a larger level that will dictate the direction of the company itself and even any individual job will be impacted in a much more micro way, bottom-up than at the leadership level from top-down.

So again, we're not diving directly into every nuance of this, but the the the understanding that the tzaddik is at the leadership level, the הנהגה level, the one who Hakadosh Baruch Hu is entrusting, he is the conduit, as it were, between the שפע, the kedushah that's coming down, the leadership level to be me'orer people in his charge, I think that this is something that if we plug it into, whatever our frame of mind is, is something that we can all relate to. ועיקר הממשלה, and I think that this is consistent with the next words, what is the עיקר ממשלה of the tzaddik, that the tzaddik will dictate the direction of the machine of how Hakadosh Baruch Hu is now going to relate to the world and how those gezeirot will be impacted?

להאיר ולהעורר לבם לעבודת השם יתברך, to the extent that he's in this leadership role, that he's me'orer people down-line from him, כמו שכתוב: שמע השם קול יהודה ואל עמו תביאנו. That Hakadosh Baruch Hu will listen to the voice of Yehuda, Yehuda was a melech, he was in a rulership position. There's discussion over here why it brings a pasuk of Yehuda rather than Yosef when we're talking about the tzaddik, but without getting into that, the Yehuda represents the מושל aspect, ואל עמו תביאנו, and bring him to his people. So, there is this connection in a rulership capacity, שמע השם קול יהודה, and this connection between Yehuda and his people.

היינו להאיר הארת הצדיק בענפים, so that the tzaddik, the one who's more at the root, the one who's defining this connection with אלקים חיים and the people, he is going to be the melech and he will be me'orer at the branches, he's going to connect those things that are more down-line, היינו בלב ישראל, וזהו אל עמו תביאנו, that he should bring the הארה to Klal Yisrael, he should be me'orer within their לב. Just to mention a line from the Kitzur Likutei Moharan, he says that the עיקר הממשלה, when we talk about the מושל, we're not talking about a dictator, somebody who's more powerful, the עיקר ממשלה, the control, the rulership is actually להאיר ולעורר לב ישראל לעבודת השם יתברך, it's to the extent that he's able to bring an awakening, to be me'orer the לב of those in his charge.

ועל כן, העיקר שיתקשר לצדיקי האמת, the עיקר is that we should connect ourself with this tzaddik who is the conduit with the shefa, both, I guess you could say, bringing the shefa down and also sort of collecting that response, he's me'orer from bottom-up that will dictate how Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to have an הנהגה with the world, ולדבר עמהם בעבודת השם יתברך, ומהם יקבל כח והתעוררות לעבודת השם יתברך, עד שישובו להשם באמת, until we are all able to return to Hashem. Torah ד׳, we mentioned last time, has a lot of discussion about attaching oneself to a tzaddik or to a talmid chacham, in terms of saying vidui and so on, and finding oneself and one's avodah through this relationship with the talmid chacham.

But in any event, we go one step further with paragraph ג׳, where we're going to introduce already something that becomes borderline of a פנימיות התורה'דיק nature, and we go forward. So בבחינה זאת, היינו ויוסף הוא השליט. Yosef, we said, is a bechinah of tzaddik, bechinah of yesod, שמירת הברית. Yosef was also a provider; he was giving over shefa, he provided for for Yaakov and for Klal Yisrael in Mitzrayim. So this idea, this bechinah of יוסף הוא השליט, of a tzaddik, הוא בחינת מלופם. We'll explain in a second, כמו שכתוב: ברית מרכבה ליסוד, the brit is where yesod expresses itself, אשר הוי״ה שלו בניקוד מלופם.

When we talk about the ways that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a הנהגה in the world, this is to to speak about anything not related to Ein Sof, to HaKadosh Baruch Hu himself, but when we speak about anything of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu connects to the world, we have to speak only from within a perspective that we can relate to; otherwise, nothing we say can potentially even be accurate, and therefore there are certain משלים, there are certain mechanisms, vehicles through which we discuss it. One of those is a mashal of Adam.

A lot of times we talk about the מוחין, the the head, the arms, the torso, and we align the ספירות, הנהגת השם, with different relationships as they would present itself in the צורה of an Adam. Other ways that we talk about it are with the mashal of אותיות, and if you look in one of these siddurim, you'll see different שמות of Hashem, and in for instance, the מקובל'דיק סידור, you'll see the Y-K-V-K, but with different נקודות, and those נקודות will represent different ספירות. Now the מלופם, which is the oo sound, it's a ו and a dot in the middle, we're saying over here represents this הנהגה called yesod, this הנהגה called tzadik.

In the outline of the ספירות, the יסוד would be sort of at the bottom of that funnel, the last ספירה that's נכלל everything before it, in order to be משפיע, in order to deliver over to מלכות, to the recipient, to the כלי. So he says over here, again, a little bit abstract, this idea of Yosef, of שמירת הברית, of tzadik, of יסוד, is represented by the נקודה called a מלופם, which the shape will be important in a second. Everything is ultimately follows a structure so that we can learn from it, which is a ו and a dot in the middle.

But the the language of what the נקודה is called is very important. The word מלופם is spelled as if two words put together: מלא פום, like a full mouth, כי המלופם הוא אותיות מלא פום. להורות, why, in order to teach us, שכלי השפע, this כלי of shefa that's going to deliver the energy, I guess you could say, but this bounty from above, היינו הפה של הצדיק, which aspect of צדיק יסוד is it that delivers the שפע from above, it's directly tied to the mouth, and the mouth of the צדיק הוא מלא מאלקות של השם יתברך, that the mouth, as it were, my mouth expresses and articulates what's going on in my brain, in my heart.

The tzadik is somebody who has total התבטלות to Hashem, and therefore, when the tzadik uses his mouth to articulate, to teach, to be me'orer people, it is full, purely the articulation of Godliness. And that is how he's going to be me'orer to the people in his charge, like we said before, to bring them all back and attach them to the source. כי לכאורה קשה, the Rabbeinu continues, there's a question, the notes over here quote that the Maharal asked the question already, and he says: why do we have to pray? Hakadosh Baruch Hu has a plan for the world, he understands exactly what every one of us needs, and he's going to deliver that, he's going to bring us along, what function does prayer serve, if anything?

If Hashem decides in his infinite wisdom that a person, רחמנא ליצלן, should be sick, I think we talked about this maybe even in תורה ז׳, then if, because a person prays, I don't see what Hashem's plan is, so I am going to pray that something else should happen, will Hashem change that plan that's for the person's ultimate benefit? What what purpose does prayer serve? And second of all, even if it would be with my thoughts, why does it have to be בדיבור? Why does it have to be with a פה?

Why does it have to be articulated? Says Rabbeinu: למה אנו צריכים לתפלה? והשם יתברך יודע מחשבות. First of all, we said why need tefillah at all, and second of all, why do we need to articulate it? אבל מחמת שהדיבור הוא כלי השפע שבהם מקבל השפע. So he begins to answer and says that there is a delivery mechanism to the shefa, there is a way that Hashem relates to the world, and part of that requires that the world is able to connect to Hashem. It's our challenge and our avodah to develop.

Right, if you have a rebbe who has unlimited knowledge, or for that matter if you have a power plant or a reservoir of water and you want to deliver some of that blessings, some of what the mashpia has to offer to somebody at the end of the line, there's going to have to be a delivery mechanism in place that's able to receive and bestow, and ultimately, it's only going to land as much as the כלי קיבול at the end is able to receive it. If you try to pour something extremely hot into a cup that's going to melt, so then that is not going to be berachah.

So our entire job, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is אין סופיות, is to develop the ability to attach ourselves to Hashem. The tzaddik is the one who is the conduit, if you will, he has his בטלות, he is able to attach to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and ultimately to deliver like we said to those talmidim, to those in his charge, he's able to be the rebbe. He's able to teach, to understand what each talmid needs and bring them on their own terms as it were back to Hashem. So because the dibbur, the articulation, the presentation of these abstract ideas, we put them into words, become the כלי שפע, therefore, כמו שכתוב ויברך אתכם כאשר דבר לכם.

So translated, this says, a pasuk in Devarim, and give you berachah, bless you, as it were, as He said to you, but we see that the berachah is tied to dibbur. היינו, לפי הדיבור כן השפע. So to the extent that there's a כלי, to that degree there will be shefa, and in this case, the כלי to deliver shefa is going to be the words. אם הדיבור, היינו הכלי שפע, הוא בשלמות ובמלואו, if the כלי is intact, אזי יכולין לקבל בהם רוב השפע. Now, what are these dibburim? הדיבורים של הצדיק בוודאי הוא בשלמות ובמלואו.

The tzaddik, who is the one that has been mevatel himself to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, he has conquered that yetzer hara, that אהבה נפולה that we said is really the reciprocal, ahavah is what is the foundation, the bedrock of the relationship, and this other ahavah, the שמירת הברית פגם, is going to be the opposite of that, so those two things are going to have an inverse relationship, the tzaddik who has perfected himself in שמירת הברית is the person who has this ahavah, and therefore, he is the one who has the פה מלא, the מלא פום, he's the one who has these words that are able to receive shefa from הקדוש ברוך הוא and then deliver it to where it needs to go.

ולכן יכול להמשיך השפע לישראל, he can give over that shefa to כלל ישראל, so he brings the shefa into the world and then he's able to deliver it. ועל ידי זה נקרא בבחינת מלא פום להורות שהפה שלו במלואו ובשלמות. That's why צדיק יסוד, this הנהגה of הקדוש ברוך הוא called יסוד, which represents the משפיע into the מלכות, משפיע into כנסת ישראל, which we're not going to go into now, is represented by the נקודה called מלא פום, because it is the mouth, it's the פה, it's the דיבור that's able to be משפיע, and as we sort of referenced before, the כלי will also define the shefa, meaning as much as a כלי in a certain sense is limiting, if you have something אין סופיות and then you embody it into a packaging, into a כלי, so that is limiting, but it's also מגלה, in a certain sense it's expansive because it allows expression, and therefore as much as there's a גזירה and הקדוש ברוך הוא has

a plan in order to deliver shefa in a particular way, to the extent that we have an עבודה to build up the כלי and attach ourselves to the צדיק who is going to attach us back to our source, then we are going to be able to dictate, in a certain sense, how that גזירה will find expression in the world. I will just mention over here from the, from Likutey Halachos in Choshen Mishpat, it's quoted in the note from Rabbi Atia, that ikar His language is עיקר התפילה הוא לתקן כלי השפע בשלמות, so this is in line with how we just explained it, the primary aspect of tefillah is to be מתקן the the the כלים so that the shefa can come can come in, and later on in the piece he says that this really lines up with emunah.

Tefillah itself, we talk about shevach, praising הקדוש ברוך הוא, understanding to the extent that we can our relationship with Hashem, requesting from Hashem, understanding that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the source and that He knows best, and ultimately hoda'ah, and we go to all of the steps of tefillah, that essentially builds up and is an expression of the emunah within each one of us so that the tefillah and the emunah really are going hand in hand, I guess we could say to create those kelim, or really are the kelim themselves, in order to be mamshich the shefa into the world.

Okay, we're up to paragraph ד. I'm just going to, now that we're already three paragraphs in, just going to introduce paragraph ד with, I guess, a little shoulder note, as it were, over here from Rabbi Atiya. So he explains: לאחר שביאר, now that we already explained, in paragraph א, that the דרך לתקן את עצמו משבירת הלב מחמת החרפה, once a person has desires of this תאוה נפולה, these this this love, so to speak, for negative things, for אהבות רעות, and that caused a breakage of the heart, it was a disruption.

And now a person comes to be metaken. How? He has to tie his lev to the nekudah that's שייך to his heart. And we spoke outside that there's it's the nekudah that's שייך to his heart at a particular time, and that nekudah could take on different forms, so to speak, or different avenues to reach that nekudah, to reach that one point which is pure enough that he can sort of, I guess, go deeper than the תאוה נפולה and come back to a source so that now there's a keli to receive the shefa.

One of those nekudot is the nekudah of the tzadik represented by מלא פום, who has developed the פה, the dibur, in order to be a keli, in order to be a receptacle to express Godliness into in the world so that we restore that connection. We're now going to explain that this nekudah can also be within every single individual of Klal Yisrael, both in terms of with oneself and with one's חבר. And it's interesting because the perhaps we can suggest, these are not really going to be three different things. We always talk about a tzadik not only as a particular individual that could be the tzadik, but as a particular role.

So to the extent that a person has this role or this aspect of a בחינה within himself, and really we could say that to the extent that the tzadik is this aspect of his בטלות of the the a keli with the utmost of integrity, of fidelity, of attachment to HaKadosh Baruch Hu that's able to receive the shefa and then be me'orer to others, to be able to deliver it and attach them to the source, this is really the same aspect of a tzadik of this nekudah, just we'll see how it applies between two Jews that get together to talk about avodat Hashem and to a person who's speaking also בינו לבין עצמו.

So let's see paragraph ד. וכל אחד ואחד מישראל, every individual Jew, יש בו, has within him this בחינת צדיק מושל. Now, that's an extremely important point, and I think at least one presentation or framing of it follows ideas that we've discussed many times. There are certain structures by way of a blueprint how HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a hanhagah with the world, how HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world, and things in the world will follow that structure. So inasmuch as when we discussed the Jewish people as a whole, Knesset Yisrael if you will, which is not necessarily, or necessarily not, talking about a bunch of individuals, but we're talking about at the source there is a organism called Knesset Yisrael, there's an organism that is the root of the Jewish people, and when we look at the Jewish people as a whole in any particular generation, any particular time, there's going to be the head of that generation, the leaders, there will be the people in

their charge who are the followers, and there will be those, let's say a chesed organization, which will be responsible for chesed, gevurah, however you want to picture this. At the same time, every individual human being, for instance, follows that particular structure. So when I go do something, I have my head, my rosh, that will govern, you know, what I want to do, that will be the leader of my body, I will have my legs that follow along. Again, we're not being extremely detailed, but we get the idea, I think, that both on a macro level and on a micro level, there is a certain structure that will exist.

So on a macro level, we deal with the tzadikim, the צדיק הדור in any particular generation. Maybe we can even go across generations and say that Moshe Rabbeinu is the ultimate tzadik, the ultimately the ultimate conduit that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is מדבר שכינה מתוך גרונו, and therefore in every generation, like רבינו has taught us, then the tzadik of that era will be called the משה משיח because in a micro way that will be the משה of that generation. So on a macro way we have the idea, the bechinah of a tzadik, and in every generation it will be the person that embodies these principles for that generation.

But on an individual way, everybody also has that bechinah of a tzadik, which we are associating with צדיק מושל, שהוא בחינת מלא פום, which is the, again, totally filled up with, right? This snapshot, this micro idea of a צדיק מושל, this bechinah that's in every single Jew, which has a bechinah of tzadik, will be מלא פום. It will be full of the words. It will have the kelim to connect directly to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, which will also have the ability to be moshel, to be me'orer, to be me'orer either things within my own lev, be me'orer myself, or we'll see, to be me'orer others, כמו שכתוב ועמך, or ועמך ישראל, depending on the גירסא, כולם צדיקים.

Every member of Klal Yisrael is all with a bechinah of tzadik, and in fact the Gemara discusses, even in a halachic context, the way that it's referred to, that even a Jew that Rachmana litzlan, or for whatever for whatever reason medical reasons but does not have a brit milah, could be referred to as מולים, and even a gentile that does not that does have a brit milah, many people for various reasons have a brit milah, are referred to as ערלים. This bechinah of שמירת הברית, this bechinah of of צדיק יסוד applies in some way to every member of Klal Yisrael.

וזהו פירוש ישראל ממשלותיו, it's a pasuk in Tehillim, that Klal Yisrael, everyone in Yisrael has this aspect of being able to be מושל, היינו מי מושל בי? Tzadik. Who is it that's able to be מושל בי, so to so to speak rule or govern the way that Hakadosh Baruch Hu will have a הנהגה with the world? A tzadik. But every member of Yisrael has this bechinah of tzadik. כי יש בכל אחד מישראל דבר יקר שהוא בחינת נקודה, every person if you break it up, the same structure, the same complexity, the same makeup of the Jewish nation as a whole will in a micro way, like fractals, in a micro way be represented in every member of Klal Yisrael.

So this nekudah called tzadik will will be present in every member of כלל ישראל, מה שאין בחבירו, that exists within every person has their own unique structure and their own tzadik. So is everybody now the same, right? Is everybody just a bunch of clones of each other? No, because each person's if you think about it in a global way the tzadik is totally unique. This is that person that conduit that that is attached in a way of total התבטלות to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and in a way that's able to be me'orer things that are down line from them that doesn't exist anywhere else in that structure.

Every individual from Klal Yisrael has this in a totally unique way. We'll we'll finish a part of the paragraph and then I want to focus on this for a little bit. כמעשה דאביי ואבא אומנא. There's a ma'aseh in the Gemara in Ta'anit where Abaye, who is the ראש ישיבה, Abaye was the גדול הדור, Abaye would hear a a בת קול, he would hear a heavenly voice that came to him once a week, and Abaye recognized that there was a person named Abba Umna, who was an Umna is a bloodletter, he was a doctor, and he was not at the level of Abaye, a tremendous individual for sure, but when the ראש ישיבה looks at a person, a working professional, a meaningful nine-to-five so to speak, definitely helps people out, but Abaye but when comparing people at that level of רוחניות, we're not going to compare the the Abaye that you can't have, you know, three daf in Shas, I think they say, without Abaye v'Rava

coming up. We're not going The The Bavli is literally called הויות דאביי ורבא, we're not going to compare Abaye to somebody as high on a level as he is as a doctor to compare those two. And yet, we're not giving the Gemara in Taanit full justice, you can go look it up, and yet, this Abba Umna was receiving שלמא ממתיבתא דרקיעא כל יומא, he had this bat kol as it were that said שלום every single day. Now, interestingly, I'll I'll just read a couple words from the Gemara. So, Abba Umna is getting this this message from שמים every day, Abaye once a week, and it says Rava also every Erev Yom Kippur.

And Abaye didn't understand. אמרו ליה, so they told Abaye: לא מצית למיעבד כעובדיה, you're not able to perform the avodah that he does. And then the Gemara goes on and says what were these deeds, what did Abba Umna, Abba the doctor, the bloodletter do? And explains that he would bring the men separately from the women for reasons of modesty, for reasons of tzniut, and he had a special way that he did his medical procedures to to preserve these attitudes of tzniut, and also there was a place the way that he took his doctor's fee, he would do it in a way to not embarrass people that didn't have money, that weren't able to pay the fee.

But be that as it may, this means that there was a certain avodah that Abba Umna was able to fulfill. Separate and aside, we could potentially say that what Abba Umna was able to fulfill on his level, maybe it was extremely hard, maybe there was even a certain גדלות that he was able to achieve in terms of how hard it was for him to overcome his yetzer hara, that even on a on a linear scale was harder than some of the things that Abaye on his level was able to do.

I I don't know, it's I have no idea how שכר ועונש work. But I think even more literal, and by the way the reason that I'm mentioning that is because Rav Chaim Kramer learns it like this. He says it could be that the even though Abaye was the towering figure of his generation, considering his spiritual level, there were certain things that his deeds could not match those of Abba Umna on his level. But I don't think that we have to read it sort of in a A linear scale that, you know, for Abba Umna it was harder than Abaye, I think we could also just say on a horizontal level, on a lateral level, there were certain things to be מתקן, certain slots on the board, on the on on the things that have to be metaken by Klal Yisrael, and every member has their job, and like we saw in the Gemara: לא מצית למעבד כעובדיה.

Abaye did not have that opportunity to do what Abba Umna did. A person that למשל never left a certain neighborhood, he has pure eyes, he's never seen anything inappropriate, there are certain things he's not exposed to. To be sure, the level of taharah that this person is on and the level of perception in learning in the Ruach HaKodesh, whatever you want to say that they will have access to, will be in a certain way far more and broad than somebody who lives in the gutter. And yet whatever avodah it would take to climb out of a gutter, to redirect themself from using things in a negative way and being able to to to both change one's outlook and to ultimately convert those aspects of oneself, right, במקום שבעלי תשובה עומדין, the person that is on that level of taharah will simply not have that opportunity.

So whatever that area of avodah is that one person has, now broadly speaking, simply does not exist for any other individual, either in any particular generation or across all generations. The avodah that a person has, even in within the same family, different birth order, different perspective, their parents who are raising them will be a different age when one child is five than when a child who's five 10 years younger is five, they'll be different with dealing with a totally different dynamic, maybe different financial issues going on in the house. No two people will ever have the same avodah, which means that if this bechinah of tzaddik, of צדיק מושל, צדיק is where at the height that period that that point of connection that any particular has with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and the way that that connection will translate into being moshel with himself, and we'll speak about in a moment with with others, that bechinah of tzaddik does not replicate itself with any other individual.

Now to be sure, at a broad communal level there will be one tzaddik who has those people in his charge, but the individual pieces of tzidkus from where a person is coming from and what it's able to bring into the world is totally unique and not replicated, which is an extreme privilege and it's extreme responsibility and accountability for all of us to be able to leverage our own lives, and again, every single moment. No moment will be replicated for one between one and another, which also parenthetically gives a tremendous amount of hisorerus, because it means no matter what happened last year, last month, last week, five minutes ago, even if I had a fall, because of whatever led to this particular moment in time, never before and never again and never with any other individual will somebody have the opportunity to make the right choice, the appropriate choice right this second with the bechinah of tzaddik.

Further, ובחינה הזאת שיש בו יותר מחבירו, so now that every single person has this unique aspect of a tzaddik more than anybody else in in in the Jewish people, right, even though we all have this bechinah of tzaddik, and if you go up a level it can be נכלל in something higher, the same way that we've used the example of white light is נכלל all of the colors of the spectrum, but none of the colors of the spectrum, while they all come from the same DNA, present themselves as any other as any other color, so there could be something that is נכלל all the neshamot of Klal Yisrael, but each member of Klal Yisrael will present, have have his own area of צדקות, הוא משפיע ומאיר ומעורר לב חבירו, every single person will have the ability to light up, to bring out a gadlut of somebody else.

This is extremely fascinating and insightful and worth being mitbonen on: I have something that you don't have, and you have something that I don't have, so we have different avodot, but I will be able to bring out your gadlut. So there is, in a certain sense, we all have our independent avodah and there's potentially an interdependency. וחבירו צריך לקבל התעוררות ובחינה הזאת ממנו, כמו שכתוב: ומקבלין דין מן דין, we say by kedushah that one received from the other. So this is, now again, I don't think, you know, this sounds pretty wild, right, I have something that's totally unique, what do I need you for?

Within the context of relationships, you can have somebody who is a leader, somebody who's a coach, somebody who is a teacher, and I have something that is latent within me, and I'm just not going to bring it out through the koach that you have, and the koach that you have as applied to me, or even a certain relationship dynamic that will force me to respond in a certain way, or or or otherwise trigger certain things within me, again, מעשה בכל יום that one person can bring out things in another person, and each person can be defined by the other, whether it's in a context of a spousal relationship or a parent-child relationship, until a person, let's say, has children, the koach of motherhood, the koach of fatherhood, the koach of being a provider, of being responsible, that is going to be a dormant koach, and where a person finds gadlut might be waiting for somebody else.

So, we see this koach of צדקות, again, from from a national perspective towards the tzaddik, we see that every individual has this koach of being a tzaddik, and this individual of being a koach of being a tzaddik, whereby a person can be a conduit for shefa and influence others, or influence something down line, applies both within oneself, within their own life, that will govern how I act within the world and my own avodah, but also it will be connected to those to to to those around me. So, this צדיק מושל can be accessed in different ways, at different times, by different people, depending on what the avodah is, and what the tikkun is necessary in in any particular time.

Further, כי קודם מתן תורה היה הממשלה ביד השם יתברך. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world, and continues to create the world, and this structure, ואחר מתן תורה, and once Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave the Torah, and there was a קבלת התורה into this world, נתן הממשלה ליד כל ישראל. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave this aspect of rulership, of having some level of control, of influencing the הנהגה, to כלל ישראל, and to each member of כלל ישראל, כל אחד לפי בחינתו. Now, Reb Chaim Kramer points out, this does not mean that we are empowered to alter the מצוות of the Torah and so on, chas v'shalom to say, but rather there is a structure that that is loose enough that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave us the ability to bring the world ourselves, our communities, and the world to tikkun, to achieve what is supposed to be achieved.

The entire exercise, kivayachol, of creating the world is so that we can be partners in creation, so that we can earn our נצחיות by doing this. There are various ways. There's enough slack in the system how this can come about, right? If you think about certain puzzles, maybe it's set up with enough with enough flexibility built in that there's room to put it together in different ways. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave over the privilege and the ability for us to again build up our kelim to define how that's going to come about, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu will, so to speak, be reactive, to some degree, to us.

This, by the way, we say אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים. How could it be that there are multiple opinions according to Torah that are all right? Because they had a different worldview within, subject to Torah. There's שבעים פנים לתורה, but not שבעים ואחד, right? But within the Torah, there is room for different people, different kelim, different points of view, different valid מסורה to have different approaches, even within the area of halachah. Why? כי אותיות התורה הם התלבשות רצונו של השם יתברך. HaKadosh Baruch Hu put the letters, which represent this is the code to the world, but they embody רצון השם, and these letters of the Alef Beis embody the רצון השם within them, כי רצונו של השם יתברך שהמצוות יהיו כך.

What does it mean that the letters embody רצון השם? HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a certain ratzon, that ratzon will translate into Torah, into ד' אמות של הלכה. How do we how do we understand this as it presents itself in our world? למשל, מצוות תפילין, היה רצונו שיהיה בארבע פרשיות. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted that tefillin, which, like we went into deep in the last Torah, is represents the connection between us and HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to the point that the Gemara has a piece of אגדתא, or whatever it means, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wears tefillin.

We have tefillin that have פרשיות about HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu has tefillin that talk about the גדלות of Klal Yisrael. ובתים של עור ולא של כסף, the material that the tefillin has to be. וכן רצונו, נמצא שרצונו מלובש בכל התורה. The the way how is it that we are able to relate to HaKadosh Baruch Hu? who Hashem, however it was, was מצמצם, He was able to take His infinite ratzon and create a הלבשה, create a keli, a container, as it were, a presentation within this world that if we attach to something within this world, through these things, the physical, tefillin is a piece of leather, as if to say, tzitzit are wool from a sheep, through things in this world, through the finite, we can attach ourselves to the infinite.

But we have to do it in a very specific way. It can't be on our terms. A person can't have gold tefillin. We do this by following, by making ourselves an extension to carry out the presentation, the the הלבשה, as it were, attaching ourselves to the הלבשה of רצון השם in this world. ועכשיו שהתורה מסורה בידינו, and now that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave over the Torah to us, He took the רצון השם and embodied it into the letters. The letters are presenting themselves in the Torah, and the mitzvot, and so on.

Now we have the Torah. גם הרצון של השם יתברך מסור בידינו. Like I said, within parameters, right, within a certain tzurah, within a flexibility, we are able to build up the kli and translate רצון השם into how it will come into this world. The the best example of that is the Jewish calendar. When is it that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will have an hanhagah of of of Yom Kippur? Yom Kippur is the most powerful day of the year. Maybe we can say Rosh Hashanah is the most powerful day of the year, but certainly Yom Kippur is up there.

When is it? It depends on, not just on the moon, it depends on on בית דין. If let's say the moon came out, you could look on a on a calendar at the time that בית דין was functioning to to judge on the calendar, depending when they declared the year, that will influence the hanhagah in shamayim in when this occurs. שאנו מושלים כביכול לעשות רצונו כפי רצונינו. We are able, subject to the fact that HaKadosh Baruch Hu put the system in place, this is what He desires, right, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is giving an hanhagah according to the way that Klal Yisrael is has an hanhagah, has has a ratzon.

וזה בחינת ישראל ממשלו כנ״ל. So, Klal Yisrael as a as a whole now, and as individuals, has this bechinah called tzaddik, which is the conduit, which attaches to Hashem and then it's moshel how things are going to go in this world. וזהו שדרש רבינו זכרונו לברכה, רבות עשית אתה ה׳ אלקי, that רבות עשית, you, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, did, the pasuk in Tehillim is קודם מתן תורה, but ואחר מתן תורה, נפלאותיך ומחשבותיך אלינו. HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us us the koach, and you see stories of mofetim and so on, but the the Gemara has post-מתן תורה stories of Pinchas ben Yair, when people were able to do unbelievable things that were outside the gedarim of nature, because for a person, again, on their level that has this bechinah of tzaddik, they are able to influence things in the world.

היינו שהכל בידינו. Through מתן תורה, הקדוש ברוך הוא put this into the בריאה. So, where are we holding? We've said a lot, but let's bring it back to to where the the Torah's holding. We said that a person there's an aspect of a person that's chesed, that's ahavah, that's love, that's the ability to attach. We are in this world to attach back to our source, to love Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to love one one another. We'll speak about that soon, right, ואהבת לרעך כמוך, and to love oneself, right, love your friend as you love yourself.

So, we have this bechinah of love. We said when a person directs this ahavah to the wrong things, that is an inverse relationship. I can love you and make a mistake, but if I love somebody that's your competition, that actually takes away from how I love you, and this causes a שבירה in the לב. How do we restore that שבירת הלב? By attaching ourselves to the נקודה of tzaddik, the נקודה of התבטלות back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And we're explaining that this bechinah of a נקודה of of a tzaddik is not just in the broad sense of attaching oneself to the צדיק הדור, to the תלמיד חכם, to one's teacher, or whatever the tzaddik is כלפי the leader of the generation, but also this bechinah of tzaddik exists in various areas, and how do we know when to employ which, we'll see, and we're understanding what this bechinah of tzaddik means and how it represents itself not only in a macro way, but only also

in a micro way. We discussed in the last paragraph the the tzaddik himself, and now we're talking about this bechinah of tzaddik even within a person. And then no two people have the same bechinah of tzaddik. Each one is able to attach to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to be מושל, to bring Hakadosh Baruch Hu into one's own life and into the world in a totally unique way. And then we're bringing sources for this, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave over this כח ממשלה to Klal Yisrael. Not right, not just not not just to a particular individual, but Klal Yisrael, who we said all שעשה שמירת הברית, is also מולים, צדיק יסוד, attach שמירת הברית.

Klal Yisrael has this כח ממשלה that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave post מתן תורה. וזהו אנכי ה' אלקיך המעלך מארץ מצרים. I am הקדוש ברוך הוא that took you out of ארץ מצרים, היינו קודם מתן תורה היה הכל אנכי. Everything was was בתורת אנכיות, ואחר מתן תורה הרחב פיך ואמלאהו. Open up your mouth, which we said is the keli for shefa, ואמלאהו, and I will fill it. And now הקדוש ברוך הוא is giving over that koach memshalah to affect the briyah, how that אין סופיות, how that that that shefa is going to present itself in the world, זה בבחינת מלופם, which is one of the nekudot, as we said, מלא פום, הרחב פיך into your mouth, שהוא בבחינת יוסף הוא השליט.

Yosef is what, is a צדיק, Yosef Hatzadik, and Yosef is the shalit, he is the one who has control, the one who has memshalah, the one who brings shefa into the world, the one who is the provider, that's a bechinah of צדיק, היינו מי מושל בי. We said the tzadik, who is the one who governs over me, so to speak, who influence הקדוש ברוך הוא's הנהגה, היינו שהשפע הוא לפי הרחבת הפה או לפי כלי הדיבור, that the way that הקדוש ברוך הוא puts the shefa into the world is going to be according to the keli, and who has the ability to form that keli, and who has the ability to attach themselves to to to make that connection, to create that catalyst of how shefa is going to come into the world, the כח הדיבור, כל אחד לפי בחינתו. Each person is able to do his own avodah and to create a connection that will bring shefa in a way that nobody that nobody else has.