Part 3 · Chapter 12

Introducing the Concept of צמצום (Contraction) 0:02

Now we're going to start explaining the צמצום, and then we'll explain the רשימו. והנה יש כמה אופנים במשלים שונים להשכיל ביאור ענין הצמצום הנקרא מקום פנוי.

There are many different types and ways of משלים to be able to understand, to get a concept of the צמצום, which is called the empty place, כידוע למעיין, as is known to somebody that goes into these things in depth. 'Cause in general, it's just like a very simple, general משל, but if you're going to really understand it properly, the deeper the idea is, the more משלים you need, and they need to be, you know, different ways and whatever.

וכללותו עולה בסגנון אחת, but the general idea of the צמצום comes to one, to one main point. With all these different משלים, they all come up to, to one main, main point, והוא, and that is כדי שיוכל להיות אור אין סוף בבחינת השפעה בצמצום בבחינת קו, that in order for the infinite light, the revelation of God, to be brought out in a limited way, in a measured, limited way, which is the idea of the קו, הוצרך לצמצם עצמות אורו שישאר בהעלם בעצמותו.

So for that, God hid עצמות אורו, He hid the revelation of Himself, שישאר בהעלם, so it should, that it should remain hidden בעצמותו within Himself וכולי, ולא יאיר כולו, and it shouldn't all shine, רק אפס קצהו בלבד, just a little bit of it, כדי שיהיה אחר כך המשכת האור בדילוג הערך.

And through this, that השם hides His עצמות אור, and just brings out a little bit, then there could be a jump, a quantum leap in its ערך, in its quality, in its degree.

So it should go from being an infinite thing to a finite thing, and should go from being like a creator to a creation. והרי זה כמשל אור שכל עמוק ורחב שבעצמות המשפיע. This is like a משל of a deep and broad subject within a teacher's brain, שכדי שיומשך ממנו למקבל הבלתי ערך אליו, in order for him to bring this idea over, to teach it to a student that is much lower than him, it's not comparable to him, הוצרך המשפיע להעלים בעצמו כל עומק השגתו.

Why a Teacher Must Conceal His Full Understanding 3:01

The teacher has to hide within himself the whole depth of his understanding. He can't teach the student the way that he understands. It's too deep, the student will not understand, he'll be confused.

ולא ישאר רק בבחינת רושם כנקודה אחת. So he has to hide everything and only leave an impression like one little point of what he wants to say, what he wants to explain, מכל העומק והרוחב, from the whole depth and the whole breadth with all the details, and he has to boil it down to one little point.

So it's like if a big math genius that knows the math with all the depth of it and all different branches of math, which is the width, the whole broad subject with all the different, you know, there's whole numbers and fractions, and there's rational numbers and irrational numbers, and you know, there's all kinds of things with trigonometry and calculus, and you know, advanced mathematics and everything, and all kinds of things that I don't know about at all.

You know, they do like differential equations or something, and he knows them all. And now he's going to explain it to a little kid. He's going to teach a little kid math, little two-year-old, three-year-old kid, I don't know. So how does he start explaining to him?

Math Analogy: Explaining Complex Ideas to a Child 4:27

So he's going to start explaining to him one little point, a little simple thing: 1 1 2. That's where, that's really what math is all, starts on.

But that is still too abstract. It's not complicated, but it's abstract. What is 1 1? What do you mean? So then he makes it even simpler, and he says 1 fishy 1 fishy 2 fishies.

But we're not up to there, he didn't say that, the one fishy plus one fishy. Right now we're just saying that he brought it down to one little point that he's going to explain.

Like, in Einstein, in his book, he wrote a book about relativity that he says that anybody can understand. He gives like an analogy there of like somebody like bouncing a ball on a train and somebody else standing on the ground next to the train.

So, the person on the train sees it going up and down straight, and the person that's on the ground sees it like going in like these up and down and going forward. So, he sees it like, you know, moving in like this, these little rainbows, you know, whatever. So, he has this whole thing there, and he makes it much simpler.

ולא שנסתלק מן השכל לגמרי. So, even though he takes the idea and distills it to one little point, but it's not like the depth and the width and the breadth of the idea go away completely.

רק כמו השונה בדרך קצרה, שכל העומק, שכל העומק ורוחב הפלפול ישנו בשכלו, that it's not like he he forgot about the rest of the details, but rather it's like somebody that's just saying something over in short or like a summary, that he has the whole depth and the whole width in his head.

He has the whole פלפול in his head. רק שהוא נכלל לפי שעה בהעלם עצמותו, just that it's now hidden within himself. He still remembers it, he knows it, but right now he's not thinking about it, cuz right now he's saying it short. בשעה שאומר הדין דרך קצר, right now he's just saying the point in short. Like if you ask somebody the הלכה, and they just tell you the הלכה, the bottom line.

Giving a Short Halachic Ruling Without Full Details 6:42

Then you ask them why, so then they start explaining to you, "Oh, well, it's a whole thing. You know, we דרש from the פסוקים, and then it's explained like this, and then the גמרא is a מחלוקת, and they פסקן like that, and then the ראשונים, and then whatever, שולחן ערוך, and the ש״ך and ט״ז, and this whole thing, and finally we get to the הלכה."

So, he knows that whole פלפול, but he doesn't say the whole פלפול, he just tells you, "You can eat the chicken. It's כשר." ומיהו שישאלוהו ירחיב דבריו כו׳, but if you're, you know, a תלמיד חכם or something, and you want to know, and you ask him, "Well, about this, why that? Why'd you פסקן that way?" Then he'll explain, and the more you know, the more he'll expand and explain more to you, all the way back to the way that he understands it.

רק בשביל שיובן למקבל דרך זה הקצר מעלים גם בעצמו לפי שעה כו׳, just that in order for the recipient to understand this short way, he has to make it In order for the student to understand, he has to make it short, and even for himself he just focuses on the point.

Chicken‑Kosher Story Illustrating Over‑Explanation 7:56

So like, you know the story where back in like Europe, where people, you know, they would they'd take a chicken, they'd bring it to the שוחט, the שוחט would שחט it, then they'd bring it to the דיין, then he would check it to see if it was כשר, and then they'd bring it home and salt it and, you know, make finish כשר'ינג it.

So it used to be that all the time they'd bring chickens to the רב. So some lady brings chicken to the רב and asks it's כשר. So he starts telling, "Well, the ש״ך says like this, and ט״ז said like that," you know. And she doesn't want to know all that, you know what I mean? So and and then she'll No, yeah, she'll she'll be confused. Like something To be a good רב, you have to just say clearly the הלכה as if that's it.

That is what you're supposed to do. And even if you're giving them a היתר, you're not supposed to make them feel like it's a בדיעבד thing. You're supposed to say, "That's it, that's what you're supposed to do." Like that is that is לכתחילה what they're supposed to do.

Like if you know that whatever, they're poor and things, they can't, you know, so that's it, that's good. You know, like some people they're not such They don't have such a good They're not so good with that. So you ask them like a הלכה, and they start telling you, "Well, ah, not so simple, there's this, there's that," and then you come away you don't really know what the הלכה is.

You're not really sure what they told you cuz they they told you, "Oh, whatever, you know, there's this, there's that, it's complicated." You know what I mean? You don't That's not what you need to hear.

So, like that, the student won't even understand the point if you start giving him all this explanation. He won't get He won't get what you're trying to say. You have to just tell him in very simple terms the point.

וכמו שמבואר במקום אחר באריכות, so as is explained elsewhere at length. ומה שנשאר כמו נקודה שהוא דרך קצרה, and this that the idea is left like a little point, that's just a very short point, you know, like if you make notes for yourself, little short notes.

And what you tell the person, you tell the student this little short way, אין זה צמצום גמור ואמיתי, it's not a true and complete, it's not complete and a true צמצום.

כמו המצמצם ומעלים לגמרי, like somebody that completely hides the idea, שנחסר למקבל לגמרי, then it would be totally missing to the מקבל. That would be if the teacher decides, you know what, this is too complicated for you, I'm not going to teach it to you.

Or if he decides it's a secret, we're going to hide it from you. Then the student doesn't get it at all. We're not talking about where the teacher decides he's not going to tell the student something, we're talking about where he's trying to explain this idea to the student.

But even the way the idea that he wants to explain to the student, he can't just tell it to him the way that he understands it. He has to explain it in a way the student will understand.

So he has to make it short. אלא הענין הוא שכולל בדרך קצר זה כל האריכות. So the idea, the ענין is that when the teacher says this short, simple explanation for the student, he includes the whole, long idea is all hidden within that short explanation. It's all there. ולא יחסר דבר וחצי דבר. And he's not missing a point, and not even a half a point, meaning not even like the little, minute details are missing.

It's all there. So the student is really getting the full explanation. כמו שכולל בדין הקצר שבמשנה כל האריכות והפלפול שבגמרא, just like how in the short דין in the משנה is included the whole פלפול in the גמרא.

Extracting Gemara from Mishnah Through Concise Analysis 11:51

And so if you'll analyze the the משנה, you'll be able to extract the גמרא from it. Because really when רבי יהודה הנשיא wrote down the משנה, he really knew the גמרא. He knew the whole פלפול of why we say it.

That's the main thing of the גמרא. It wasn't exactly like our גמרא with those different אמוראים and stuff, but the point that is brought up by the גמרא of why the הלכה is this way, why the הלכה is that way, רבי יהודה הנשיא knew that.

And when he wrote the משנה, he picked the cases very carefully, and he put, chose the wording carefully and put them in a certain order.

And if you study the the different דינים that he chose, each דין, it's not just telling you דינים, each דין tells you a general case or a certain rule, teaches you a principle. And if you analyze them and compare them and contrast them and look at the order and the example that he chose, it all teaches you different חידושים.

And then based on that, you're able to see what's the common denominator, what's the difference, and based on that you're able to extract, extrapolate the reasoning, and you can reconstruct the whole גמרא. And that's what the the אמוראים did. They took the משנה and they were taught by their teachers how to learn the משנה, and they extracted the whole גמרא from it again, and they wrote it down.