Part 2 · Chapter 10

Introducing Chapter Ten and the Infinite Light 0:03

This, for this first section, this was an introduction of everything, this was introducing everything we're going to explain from now to the end of the book.

Now, the מיטעלער רבי begins an introduction for this chapter, for chapter 10. In this chapter we're going to explain the אור אין סוף, עצמות אור אין סוף שלפני הצמצום, the essence of the infinite light before the first contraction. And so now the מיטעלער רבי is going to introduce that this idea. אך הנה תחלה יש להתבונן להתבונן במקור הראשון הנקרא מקורא דכולא. But first, before we explain to you all of the details of the השתלשלות, of how the worlds are created out of God's light, it is first necessary for every person that's going to contemplate on Godliness to contemplate on the first source where all of these things came from, which is called the source of everything.

Why is it necessary for him to do that? Because we don't want to just be learning about how the world is created and, you know, like this kabbalistic machine.

The whole thing that we want to learn about the השתלשלות for is to see how it is really not there, how it's really God, it's really a revelation of God.

And the reason that it looks like a השתלשלות is because השם made צמצומים, and He hid Himself like this and like that, and made it look like, you know, like He's pulling a trick on us. But the real thing that we want is to connect everything back to the first source, which is that everything is here to be a revelation of God. שהוא בבחינת עצמות אור אין סוף שלפני הצמצום הנקרא מקום פנוי הנ\"ל.

Which the first source of everything, and this is the source of everything, the first source which is the source of everything, that is the essence of the infinite light the way it is before the צמצום which is called the מקום פנוי. The צמצום is called the מקום פנוי, not the light.

So the first צמצום, it's not really the first one, that's why he specifies, the צמצום that's called the מקום פנוי, for the empty place, because there were really צמצומים before that. So the way the essence of the infinite light is before this צמצום, גם שם דרך פרט דוקא. And even there, even, we said you have to study the השתלשלות in-depth, with all of its details, and this applies even to the essence of the infinite light before the צמצום, that also has to be understood in detail.

Which this is a question, already. Alarm should be going off in your head. How can the מיטעלער רבי propose here that we are going to understand the עצמות אור אין סוף in detail? Because seemingly there are no details there, it's simple.

The Concept of מאריך באחד (Elongating One) 3:12

And this is not just like some Chassidic trick. This is actually a thing על פי נגלה that you're supposed to do. והוא נקרא מאריך באחד. This is what it's called elongating the אחד, dwelling on the אחד. In other words, there is a halachic requirement when you say שמע that you're supposed to elongate the word אחד. Now, especially the way we פסקן, the way that we explain what it means מאריך באחד, the main thing is not to say the word long.

There is a thing of saying the word אחד for a long time, stretching it out a little bit, you'd say אחד, but you can't really do it longer than that because you're not supposed to stretch out the חית too long, you're not supposed to go אחד, you're not supposed to do that, because then it's like you're adding an אלף and whatever, and you're not supposed to go אחדה because that's not the word, it's a דלת, that's adding something after it, yeah.

So really all you can do is say it אחד, and you're supposed to stress the דלת. So you can't really elongate the word. So what you're supposed to do is say it and then afterwards pause and think, and be מתבונן. And this is a הלכה that you're supposed to stop and contemplate how God is one, which is the אלף of the word אחד, over the seven heavens and the earth, which is the חית, the eight, and the four corners of the world, that God is king over everything and He controls everything.

So מאריך באחד means that you're supposed to think about that at length. That means you're supposed to think about all the details. ואחר פשוטה דווקא, that you're supposed to dwell at length on God's simple unity, that itself seems to be a contradiction. How can you do that? Right, how can you think in detail about God's unity when seemingly there would be no details there? It's just like a fact.

That's it. Well, the word מאריך means like, like when it says, like it's explained באריכות, it means it's explained at length. That means that there's a lot of explanations there. You know, otherwise it shouldn't have said מאריך באחד, cuz מאריך means to make it longer. That means that the idea, this belief that every Jew has of God's unity, you should make it long. Like it explains in chapter 1, what does it mean long?

It means you should explain it to yourself very simply. So so the way how do you explain it to yourself simply, that means you give a lot of explanations and a lot of משלים, and a lot of, you know, but how so seemingly how can you do that?

Because it's a simple thing. So now we're going to explain to you we'll explain to you the simple unity, and we'll explain also more, we're going to make this we're going to have this question for a while, cuz this is still the introduction to the chapter, where he's just introducing ideas before he starts to explain it. And it's it's a it's kind of meant to set up this paradox in our mind.

Three Levels of Unity: יחיד, אחד, קדמון 6:18

ונחלק לג' מדרגות דרך כלל, so the עצמות אין סוף before the צמצום, the simple unity is divided in general into three levels. What? It's divided into three levels? How does that how does that make sense? How can the simple unity be divided into three levels? We'll see.

ובכל אחד כולל י' ספירות, and each one of these three levels has 10 ספירות. So now we have 30 levels. So what are these three levels? והוא יחיד ואחד וקדמון. These three levels are called יחיד, which means single, אחד, which means one, and קדמון, which means original.

Because it means that it's an origin. That it's the source of everything. In other words, that that that that origin must exist for everything afterwards to exist. That's the idea of original.

והכל בבחינת עצמות אין סוף שלפני הצמצום הראשון הנ״ל, and all of these three levels are all in the עצמות אין סוף, in the essence of the infinite light that precedes the first צמצום that we mentioned before. The first צמצום was discussed in chapter 9, a little bit. We're we're going to explain what the first צמצום is and how it works in chapters 12 and 13. But it was mentioned in chapter 9.

Now we're going to start to explain a little bit about these three levels, יחיד, אחד, and קדמון. Then we're going to give משלים for them. בחינת יחיד משמעו לבדו ממש. What does יחיד imply? יחיד, single, implies that it's alone.

Understanding יחיד vs אחד 7:57

Like when you say that you have a בן יחיד, you have an only son, an only child, means that יחיד implies that there's only one, it's a single. If you said בן אחד, that would just mean one, implying that there are more, but you're just speaking about one of them. והוא למעלה מאחדות נפרדים שנקרא אחד.

So this is higher than the unity of parts, which is called אחד. אחד comes from the word אחדות, which means that there are different things that are being united, כידוע.

So when you say in Hebrew, when you say אחד, it means two things. It means that there's one that has a two that comes after it, and it also means one that's made up of parts, like 1 million and 1,000.

Whereas יחיד means that it's the only one, that there's no two and there's no three. And it also means that it is totally singular, that it has no parts, כידוע, as is known.

Yeah. So for example, like when you say you have one car, what do you mean? The car is a single unit, a single identity that's made up of many parts. It has wheels and the chassis, you know, the body. It has doors, and and an engine, and a carburetor, and a radiator, and all kinds of things.

And when you put it all together, you say you have one car. If you're missing part of it, so it's it's not really a car, it's a part of a car. It's It's not a whole car, it's a car missing this, a car missing that.

But the fact that it can be divided up into its parts is shows that it's not it's not a real entity. It's not It's not its own thing. The car is not its its own existence. The car is just what you get when you put together a bunch of other things. Like a computer is like that, too. A comp- computer is not really something new.

Before they made computers, they already had screens, monitors, and they had typewriters, and they had calculators, and they had recording devices. The whole חידוש of the computer is that they put them together.

But it's not really like they made a new thing.

But when you say יחיד, that means that it's like a pure thing. Like an elemental thing, it's not made up of other, something else.

So like if you have like pure olive oil or something, that means that it's only oil. There's no ingredients. If you look on the ingredients, it'll only say olive oil.

100% pure olive oil. Now really, in anything physical, you can divide it up into parts. So you could really go and if you look, really the olive oil was made up of, you know, protein and carbohydrates, and you know, different types of molecules.

And those molecules are made of atoms, and you can, you know, really it divides up into more parts. So physically you don't, there is really nothing that's totally יחיד.

And also spiritually really, the only thing that's יחיד is God. Everything else is made up of parts. כידוע, as is known. And this is explained in other places, it's explained, for example, in in in חובות הלבבות.

It's explained in different places. ולפי זה, so based on this, that the idea of יחיד is a higher unity than אחד, that יחיד means totally alone, and אחד means made up of parts.

God is perfect, and he's in, you know, he's in a way of יחיד. That he's, there's just him. So בבחינת העצמות ממש לא יתכן לומר עדיין ענין עשר ספירות כלל. We cannot say that there's an idea of ten ספירות at all in God's essence, in the עצמות. וכמו מלכות דאין סוף, like to say מלכות דאין סוף. שממילא מובן שקודם לזה בחינת כתר וחכמה וכולי. If you say there's a מלכות, like what is the משל for מלכות is speech.

Sefirot Within the Essence of the Infinite Light 12:03

If you if you see that somebody's talking, then he must have had a רצון to talk, and he must have had a שכל of how to talk and what to talk, and all the other things, the מדות. You know, he must have felt like talking. Like when somebody's happy, they feel like talking, when they're sad, they don't feel like talking.

So you must have had all the ספירות. So how can we say a thing of מלכות דאין סוף? Because we can't say there's anything of ten ספירות there, because God is totally singular and he has no parts, there's nothing besides him and he's not made of parts. So we can't say that there's a thing of ten ספירות there. But yet, we see that we do say מלכות דאין סוף.

So how can we say that? Because once we're saying מלכות דאין סוף, that means that there's a כתר דאין סוף, and there's a חכמה דאין סוף.

So how can we do that? How can we say that? So this is the basic question. When we How can we we talk about ספירות, seemingly, it seems like sometimes we to say that there are ספירות even in the עצמות.

And then other places, times, we say that it's not you can't say that there's any ספירות there at all. And of course, it makes sense, how can you say there's ספירות there? ובאמת, and the truth is, גם בבחינת העצמות דאין סוף שנקרא לבדו, that even in the essence of the infinite light, which is called alone, the level of יחיד, כולל בעצמו י' ספירות. Even when you're saying the level of יחיד, that God is totally one, there's no parts, even there you can say that there are ten ספירות.

How can you say that? אך שנקראים חכם ולא בחכמה ידיע, only that we say that they are wise and not with a knowable wisdom, כידוע, as is known, עד דלאו מכל אינון מידות כלל. So we say that oh, that there is חכמה there, but it's not a חכמה that you can know. It's not at all like your חכמה.

But really and really it has nothing to do with any of these מדות. It's not like your חכמה, it's not like your בינה, really God is beyond all of these מדות.

But seemingly, how does that answer the question? So we're saying, oh, the answer is that the ספירות are there, but they're not like we know them.

But if they're there, it's still divisions, right? And remember, the reason that we're getting into this is because we want to explain how the השתלשלות and the ten ספירות are really coming from the עצמות דאין סוף, פשוט לפני הצמצום. So we have to understand how they How they're there, how, and this is the basic question of this chapter, is how can diversity come from simplicity?

How Diversity Emerges from Divine Simplicity 15:03

That how can the world, what's bothering us is that חסידות comes and, not, not even only חסידות, the תורה comes and tells us that there's nothing except for God.

And really everything is Him, revealing Himself in different ways and making it look like different things. So then we have a question, if there's really only God and God is simple, so how is it that I see all these different things? How is that revealing a simple God?

So this is the question that this chapter is coming to help us with, that we should understand how it's possible that the world and השתלשלות are revealing God,

cause they seem to be the opposite. So we're explaining how the world and the ספירות and everything are really coming from Him.