Part 2 · Chapter 2

Intro: Chapter and page reference 0:00

We're in פרק ב'. We're on the second page, right? Yeah, we're on the second page. Yeah, so

והאמנם, is that where we're holding? About like a third of the way down, כלפי זכות or כלפי חוב? This is where we are: אך לכאורה אנו רואים שיש בה עצמה בחינת מדות. That's where we are. Right, so, right. So he explained up to now that תבונה is the power of בינה to spread out, and that means that he can bring the עצם ההשגה, one thing he says למטה הימנה and he says וכל דבר נבדל הימנה, and also into the מדות and stuff like that.

However, the power of תבונה really it's it's one of the עניינים it can go up also, the same like בינה can go up. Like he says, in בינה itself there's בינה and תבונה. תבונה is really a full בינה all by itself, and it can go up also.

So basically, actually, the the power of חכמה שבבינה originates in תבונה. You know what חכמה שבבינה is? חכמה שבבינה is to discover a new thing within the same thing. Right, off the side. That's really in a way the same ענין as תבונה. It originates from תבונה, to come out the width, even though תבונה is really a length, but when it goes up, the width really is a new thing, that the the the power of בינה in the עצם of the ענין is spreading out to a new thing in the same ענין.

Right. And like he said over there that the power of חכמה of בינה relates to the power of בינה of חכמה which is להבין דבר מתוך דבר, which that's also ענין of תבונה. Right. Not only that, what do they call a בינה שבחכמה? A נבון. A נבון means somebody has תבונה. Right. That's what they call him. They don't call him a a מבין חכם or something like that, they call him a נבון.

The term נבון for a בינה שבחכמה 2:10

Because to understand something from inside of something is really תבונה going up. Right. So the same thing like the power of בינה שבבינה

is the one that activates all the powers, including תבונה, but the thing of the repetition of going it over and over and over again to the point where you have the קליטה the the thing like he said the levels is first is בינה שבבינה and then there's חכמה שבבינה. How the levels go up, right? Now he's talking how the levels go down. Right. But the the חכמה שבבינה comes דווקא from the קליטה.

Right. It doesn't really come from the בינה, cuz the בינה is only into the thing itself. It's not even into a new thing in the thing.

It's only to understand the concept itself. A width is already something else, and it comes דווקא from the קליטה. When you have a good קליטה, that's when the power of חכמה שבבינה gets activated. Right. So really that and also the thing of the height, to go up, that's also something different. That's a spreading of the בינה and that's the general explanation is the spreading of of the בינה into other things, the spreading of the light of בינה into other things, including up.

Right, like you see if you see where he says in the that's the first sentence there that תבונה is בחינת התפשטות אור הבינה מצד קליטתו היטב בכלי המקבל.

Right. He doesn't say the spreading down. Right. He says the spreading. Spreading means in all the different directions. It's all really that's the ענין of תבונה really. Okay, so אך לכאורה, so so now he's starting a new thing, אך לכאורה אנו רואים שיש בבינה עצמה בחינת מדות, there's the like what what he explained before was חב"ד of בינה.

מדי בינה: מדות within בינה 4:30

Now we're talking the ז' תחתונות of בינה, the מדות of בינה, and that's the 49 שערים,

ונקרא מדות שבשכל המכה כלפי זכות, השכל מכה כלפי חוב. In other words, when you when you analyze something, you also come up with besides the fact of understanding it, you also come up with a thing of this is good thing or it's it's a bad thing. Right. Beside just understanding the intellectual thing of exactly what it is, so for instance like over here where we're learning the חסידות, so we're also by analyzing it we're learning and and we're coming up with a decision that this a good thing.

That's a שכל מזכה כלפי זכות, and that's already a מידה, that's not the actual שכל of what the חסידות is. It's a decision of whether it's good or bad. Right. And that decision of whether it's good and bad is what's going to awaken the דעת, whether the דעת will be into the thing or against the thing. Right. היינו כמו שהמידות שבשכל הן בעצם ההשגה

עדיין בהעלם. In other words, it's not the thing that it's a actual מידה that you actually like it, it's just a mental decision that this seems like it's a good thing that I should like. Right. But it's a שכל. The מידות of the שכל is is not a מידה, it's a שכל. These are שכלים. Right. אבל להביא בבחינת התגלותם בדבר נבדל, כמו להורות בענין מקרה דבר מה על פי השכל והסברא הזאת, להטות המשפט של זה הענין לחסד או גבורה שבו דוקא, הרי איש תבונה דוקא יוציא לאור מן המידות שבינה.

In other words, in the מידות שבינה there's like, basically all there is there, there's in בינה there's forty-nine מידות, שבע מידות whatever. So, you know, like in Fiddler on the Roof, on the other hand, Right. it's a good thing.

But on the other hand, from this סברא, it's a bad thing. Right. And on the other hand, from that סברא, it's a good thing.

Right. So, as long as it's in the intellectual brain of בינה, there's many other hands. And you can understand that in in this such and such a way it's a good thing, and in that such and such a way it's a bad thing.

But in order to bring it out so so but finally what is it? Right. That's already תבונה. That's דוקא איש תבונה. In order to come with a פסק הלכה is דוקא איש תבונה.

Decision making and דעת in הלכה 7:35

And like later on he'll explain that the real פסק הלכה comes from דעת. That's why women cannot be rebbes, rabbis, פוסקים, because they don't have a a strong enough דעת, because there has to come a time,

and this is basically why women are indecisive, why they have less דעת. It's not really that they have less דעת than a man does, actually they have the same amount of דעת that a man does.

But the the fact that they have a בינה יתירה messes up their דעת. They always come up with another hand. Right. And they can't stop that thing of coming up with the other hand.

In other words, like the the like in business courses and stuff like that, you know, there's a guy who get who who who thinks too much, he can't be a good businessman, because there has to come a time when you finally have to make a decision, even though you don't know all the details. There's never, you know, in בינה there's always going to be another detail. Right.

Details are infinite. There's infinite details. And that's why women can never, it's not never, I mean, they can make a decision, but that's why they're they're they're קלי דעת, because they always come up with another detail and they can't make that final decision, which the the the the the the מוח of דעת is the is the מוח of הטיה,

that you have that in the in the בינה that tells you all kinds of things like this, like that, but finally you say, "Listen, I gotta make a decision already." Right. And the decision comes sort of almost from a feeling for the thing rather than from the actual In other words, it's it's it's it's influenced by all the different

things in בינה. The סברות. The סברות. And not only that, where the where the סברות are completely weighed to one side, it doesn't take much of a decision, anybody can make a decision.

Like for instance, if you say, "Should I jump off off an airplane without a parachute?" You don't have to bring in a שכל of הטיה. on and get rid of all the other hands, there ain't no other hands. Right. There's only one hand over there. Unless you're suicidal. Yeah, right, if you're suicidal, no no, if you're suicidal, then the answer is yes. Right.

Also a very simple answer. If you say, "I want to kill myself, should I jump out of the airplane now without a parachute?", the answer is yes. Right. Cause you know, if you if you do this, you'll kill yourself.

You know? Right. And if you're a normal person that doesn't want to kill himself, so the answer is no. Right. You don't have to have the the the the בינה itself can, you know, the the thing of the שכל הנוטה is where the the balance is close.

Right. And there's stuff that you don't know that you can't know right now. And you've got to come up with a feeling. Right. Okay, but the basic thing in terms of what he's talking about here is in terms of actually making the decision

in הלכה is דוקא the איש תבונה means that what makes a גדול a גדול, like the רמב״ם or the רי״ף or somebody like that, is they learned it so good that they had the קליטה.

Right. Not just they understood it, they absorbed it. It became part of their brain. And therefore they can come up with a halachic decision. And they can come up with the halachic decision not not just from the feeling like like like רב, you know, the thing that שתק רב? You know, you know the שתק רב? Yeah, שתק רב, right. שתק רב, right, that he he he couldn't give you the whole explanation, and yet he came up with a decision.

Right. And even though the decision was was from חכמה, but the in the brain of דעת, he was נוטה דוקא towards that decision, and he said, "That's the decision."

But they can come up usually with the decision out of תבונה, Right. without without having to resort to a feeling for it. Right. Where okay, מדות... השכל מה שנתלבש בו, היינו אז המדות שבשכל הם בעצם ההשגה עדיין בהעלם. ולהביא לבחינת התגלותם בדבר נבדל into an actual פסק הלכה, כמו להורות בענין מקרה דבר מה in an actual thing that happens, על פי השכל והסברא הזאת, לעשות המשפט שלזה הנוטה לחסד או גבורה, שפה דוקא הרי איש תבונה דוקא יוציא לאור מן המדות שבבינה.

Right. It's דוקא So in other words, to to bring an actual application of הלכה, and in general the the the basic things in תבונה is explanation and application. Right. So like we said before, explanation to bring it out to the sheep, and now he's saying also the application.

Application vs explanation of תבונה 12:53

And this is also in terms of application into doing something, not in just a דבר הלכה, but like let's say you have a scientific application understanding, like what we were talking about the Greeks, Right. with the steam engine, but they didn't think of applying it. ואיש תבונות, what does it mean איש תבונות? היינו כח הקולט בטוב את עצם ההשגה, means the absorption of the השגה.

על כן מתפשטת ההשגה בו לעשות להורות בכמה ענינים נבדלים לגמרי, and that's the כתר of of תבונה is the קליטה. Right. And that also, by the way, comes from the התבוננות, from the double נו״ן, going over and over and over, and it means you go over and over till you understand it, if you stop there, you won't have no קליטה.

וגם ביכולתו להביא את העומק להביא עומק בינה לידי גילוי כנ״ל וכו׳. And so there's two things now: the application and explanation, right? Right. Okay, and so and really he said there's basically three things: the עצם of תבונה is קליטה, and the power of תבונה is to to spread the thing out. Generally when we say תבונה it means downwards, either to bring it down into application, or else to bring it down into explanation to somebody else.

Right. והיינו בחינת אבא תתאה ישראל סבא ותבונה, ישראל סבא is מדות דחכמה ותבונה מדות דבינה. Okay, but it's not just מדות דחכמה and מדות דבינה. It's a special thing. אך באים בבחינת הגילוי לחוץ. Right. That's that's the It's not just the מדות of בינה, because he just told you that the מדות of בינה is not תבונה. They can be You can have מדות of בינה and you can't apply them.

Right. So in other words, the מדות of בינה itself is the מדות of בינה how they stay inside Right. תבונה is the מידות of בינה how they come out of בינה. And it's the מידות, it's not the שכל of בינה. The actual שכל, the התבוננות, the חב"ד of בינה is the actual התבוננות of בינה, which totally stays inside of itself, the חב"ד of בינה.

Okay, but however, even though that ישראל סבא and תבונה is just the מידות of חכמה and בינה, they become a total פרצוף with 10 ספירות. Right. In other words, in תבונה there's also חב"ד of תבונה.

ובחינת מלכות דתבונה הוא השכל הבא במחשבה הנקרא אותיות מחשבת שכל. That's the letters of the מחשבת שכל, the מחשבה how it is still in the שכל, שהשכל מתלבש בה.

Explanation of לאה and מחשבת שכל 15:57

In other words, that's what he's going to explain later is לאה. Right. והוא בחינת כלי חיצוני למחשבה עיונית

שהוא גילוי השגה דבינה עצמה מצד עצם השכל והסברה. The מחשבה עיונית is the actual עיון into the thing which takes place inside the שכל, and it's enclothed in what's called the מחשבת שכל, which is the actual letters.

Right. So it's both almost the same thing. It's a very very refined distinction between the מחשבה עיונית and מחשבת שכל. The מחשבת שכל means the מחשבה of the שכל, the מחשבה עיונית means the actual process of עיון itself, but it's really enclothed in letters. You can't have a מחשבה עיונית without the actual external letters of מחשבת שכל.

But the מחשבת שכל is comes דווקא from מלכות of תבונה because it takes the actual inner עיון and puts it into a דבר נבדל, which is letters.

Right. In other words, words. It puts it into actual words and concepts. שיהיו גילוי השגה דבינה עצמה מצד עצם השכל והסברה כו' ומבחינת מלכות דתבונה נמשך שורש אותיות המחשבה עצמה שנקרא לאה. So the מלכות of תבונה is not actually לאה itself? It's the שורש. No, the מלכות of תבונה is still part of the עצם, Right. of the עצם השכל. As it's coming out. As it's coming out, and in terms of like in terms of the worlds, that לאה is already considered like basically like בי"ע, the actual מחשבה, מחשבה, דיבור, מעשה.

Right. In other words, מחשבה is not part of the עצם anymore, it's a לבוש. Right. Whereas מלכות of תבונה is still part of the גוף.

Right. It's not a לבוש, it's the actual inner שכל.

Like, for instance, right now we're talking. The letters of speech are a totally separate לבוש. Right. That that the letters of speech is really nothing but sounds, and you see that they're traveling over

the telephone, they're being turned into squiggles of electricity,

and then the electricity is turned back into squiggles of of air movement on your side so that your ear can hear it, and then it's turned back into squiggles of electricity in your in in your ear that travels along your nerves, and becomes back into and and my my speech came out of my מחשבה, Right. which was letters, basically the same like letters of speech, it's not really part of me.

Right. It's just that they're a little bit different, it's a more inner enclothment, it's it's in my brain. Right. And it really comes up like also like letters, it it it gets enclothed, what is it, כלבוש יחליף, like a לבוש, it puts it on and takes it off. Puts it on and takes it off. Right. You know.

But the the the מלכות of תבונה is still part of the גוף, it's the actual brain. Right. Whereas the לאה is already sort of like talking inside of your head. Right. is what it is. It's a it's a it's a thing of talking inside of the head and this is all going to be explained. and in in much later parts of the book, he's just bringing it up here.

Where are we? והוא ד' רבתי דאחד. השגת בינה עצמותה bla bla bla נקרא לאה, right. Right, שנקרא לאה, והוא ד' רבתי דאחד. This תבונה, מלכות דתבונה is the ד' רבתי דאחד. וזהו, and that's also going to be explained later. וזהו שנקרא תבונה ב"ן וב"ת. The letters of תבונה if you break them up, you get ב"ן וב"ת.

Three dimensions of תבונה: עומק, אורך, רוחב 20:47

כי ידוע להיות כי גם בתבונה יש ג' דברים: עומק, ואורך, ורוחב. And basically ב"ן וב"ת means חסד and חסד and גבורה. Right. Meaning דעת. Right.

Like like it explains later that the מוח הדעת splits up into two מוחין, חסד and גבורה. So תבונה is where the דעת comes from.

ב"ן וב"ת, the the the thing into bringing it into an actual feeling of מדות comes דוקא from תבונה. And that's the actual mother of the children, it's the lower mother. The the the the בינה does not really bring the children directly, it's only through the lower mother. כי ידוע להיות כי גם בתבונה יש ג' דברים: עומק, ואורך, ורוחב, העומק הוא עצם כח התבונה הזאת שבעת ההשגה כמו שהיא בשעה שקולטת אותה, which is the actual קליטה.

Right. The actual קליטה that it it gets the thing in a way of actual absorption, not just that it hops it and holds onto it.

Holding onto it means you're holding onto it from the outside. קליטה means you're absorbing it like a sponge. Right. It now becomes part of you. ובו יוכל עומק השגה הנ"ל לבא לגילוי כנ"ל. And דוקא through this קליטה, the עומק of of the בינה is קולט the עומק of the השגה, the עומק המושג כנ"ל בפסוק איש תבונה ידלנה וכולו. This comes דוקא from the עומק. והאורך הוא ירידתה בענין אחר הנבדל, להורות בו ולעשות מעשים רבים על ידה,

either the the bringing down into a separate thing, either to teach somebody else, to explain, or else to apply, לעשות מעשים רבים על ידה, to do, to apply it into actual action. והרוחב הוא בחינת התפשטות התבונה בעצם ההשגה להרחיב המחשבה בכמה ריבוי אופנים שונים, ולא כמו שהיא לבד. So he's telling you really the חכמה of the the width of בינה really comes from the width of תבונה.

It's דוקא when you have the קליטה that you can have the actual הרחבה in in בינה itself also.

Okay, and one other thing that he didn't mention here, but he mentioned before, so he says since it's in בינה it's also in תבונה: the height. Right. There's also a height.

That דוקא from the כח of the קליטה you can come to understand a דבר מתוך דבר. And it's דוקא a person who's קולט the ענין that can that can have that thing, not And that's why he's called a נבון. Right. A נבון is actually the root of נבון is תבונה. Right.

Not a מבין. A נבון means a בעל תבונה. Right. ומה שכלולה התבונה מב"ן וב"ת, היינו מה שמתבונה דוקא יולדו המדות חסד וגבורה בגילוי ממש בפני עצמן, into through the through the brain of דעת, כי מבינה עצמה לא היו תולדות המדות.

From בינה itself there won't be a תולדה of the actual מדה because בינה remains totally intellectual, and there's always another hand. There's always another analysis. Right. אף על פי שנקראת אם הבנים, even though it's called אם אם הבנים, because without the original התבוננות there'll be no תבונה either.

Right. אבל היא אימא עילאה, in a way like a grandmother. Right, the original source, but it's not the immediate... Yeah, in other words, the בינה is really the grandmother. It's Right. It should be called the סבתא, like ישראל סבא סבא is called the grandfather.

Metaphor: בינה as grandmother 24:52

But really, the the חכמה should be called the grandfather

in another way of looking at it, because and בינה should be called the grandmother, because it's not the mother of the מדות, it's the mother of the תבונה. It's the mother of the mother of the מדות. Right. In other words, it's the mother of the of the מדות of בינה itself, which those מדות of בינה itself come out as as when they come out, that's תבונה.

So really, בינה is the mother of תבונה really, not the actual mother of the,

what do you call it, of the מדות. Right.

אבל היא אמא עילאה, it's the upper mother, מה שאין כן התבונה נקראת אמא תתאה להוליד המדות, the actually gave birth to the מדות, שהוא בחינת בן ובת, אהבה ויראה, שבאים בהתכללות בתבונה דוקא. It's דוקא in in תבונה that all the other hands come into a התכללות to bring out the actual final מדה. In other words, in בינה, it's still all in little pieces.

Right. And you can't actually, you know, it's just gonna as a piece here and a piece there, you can't put all the to put all the pieces together to come up with an actual product, that's דוקא in תבונה.

שהיא בחינת התפשטות אור הבינה למטה כנ״ל. Which, if you notice, upstairs, he didn't say the למטה. Right. But now he's he's making a more a more definition that, in general, what we call תבונה is דוקא meaning downwards, אמא תתאה. Even though the real power of תבונה, like he said before, התפשטות is really התפשטות in all kind of other ways, except in those other ways there's other names for it.

There's חכמה of בינה, and בינה of חכמה, and various other things.

And also, like תבונה also, same like like חכמה and בינה have a source in חכמה סתימאה and בינה סתימאה, תבונה also has a source in תבונה סתימאה of אריך. Right. Because if there's בינה, בינה has two things: it's בינה and תבונה, so בינה of אריך also has two things. Right. וגם לזה הטעם בחינת המוחין שבמדות נמשך מבחינת התבונה.

And that's why the מוחין of the מדות, like in other words, the מוחין of ז״א, comes from תבונה, not from בינה. כמו שנאמר, ה׳ בחכמה יסד ארץ, דאבא יסד ברתא, מלכות comes from חכמה, כלו כונן שמים בתבונה, not from בינה.

שמים is אש ומים, הם בחינת המדות, אש מים כידוע, חסד וגבורה, וכן ובתבונה תכונן, I don't know what the whole rest of the פסוק is, that it will be it'll be established, established, yeah, but what what what will be established? Because there's a rest of the פסוק. שהוא בחינת קיום המדות מבחינת המוחין דתבונה שבהם. In other words, the מוחין of the מדות is really comes דוקא from the תבונה.

What the verse really says about תבונה 28:18

כי התבונה כמו ממוצע להביא מוחין מבחינת מדות דבינה במדות שבלב. To In other words, the the the מוחין of the מדות come from from the מדות of the מוחין.

So the מוחין of the מדות come from

the מדות of בינה, but in order to come out to become the מוחין of the מדות, they have to go through תבונה. Right. And this is basically what's called a ובכן, you know? Right. The מוחין of the מדות is a ובכן, without the עצם the שכל of בינה, without the חב״ד of בינה, but rather just the מדות of of בינה.

And that's the מוחין of the מדות. And that's the whole ענין

of in עבודת הלב you have to bring it down into the heart because the only thing that goes through is just the end of it, which is only the ובכן of it, not the actual שכל itself, whereas in עבודת המוחין the whole the whole חב״ד of בינה comes into it. The מדות, שזהו כמו כח האב בענין הנבדל,

that that is like to bring it into something different, in other words to bring the שכל into the מדה, which a מדה is something separate, it's a דבר נבדל from the from the שכל. Right. And I was telling you, so the power of בינה does various things. One of the things it does is להורות, to to teach other people.

The functions of בינה: teaching and applying 30:19

Another thing is to apply, and the thing of to apply includes also to bring out the actual מדות, to bring the שכל into an application of actual feeling. I need to flip the... שהוא עיקר ענין... We need to flip the tape.

Yeah.