Part 3 · Chapter 22

Hidden opposites in sweetness and bitterness 0:01

ואם לאו, and if it wasn't so, if it didn't have the opposite in it, לא היה בטל בו, then it would not be able to be nullified and included within it.

כמו במתיקות יש מרירות בהעלם. For example, in something that's sweet, there is a hidden bitterness. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to be made bitter. ובמרירות יש מתיקות בהעלם, and in the bitterness there is a hidden sweetness. כמשל ודמיון מבישול המרקחת מדבש וצנון שנעשה טעם עריבות כולל, כולל מחריפות ומתיקות יחד כידוע. Like we see in a משל and a דמיון where you make a a sauce, where you cook a sauce from honey and radishes, make a sweet and sour sauce.

So, there you taste it's a delicious mixture of sharpness and sweetness together, and what happens is that it brings out like the sharpness in the sweetness, and it brings out the sweetness in the sharpness, and so you're able to taste like how each one has both, and that's like a now, it's a good a good flavor.

But if you'll add on more of one or the other, then it will tip it the other way, and then it will be you'll only taste one.

And so even like the radish has a certain sweetness in it, and if you put in enough sugar, you'll only taste the sweetness. And the same thing the other way: if you add enough radish, you'll only taste the bitterness, and even the sugar has a certain bitterness, especially the aftertaste of sugar is bitter. If something is very sweet, has a bitter bitter taste to it. כידוע, as is known.

Fire within water and water within fire 1:55

וכן, similarly, יש מטבע האש במים ומים באש. There is something of the nature, the characteristics of fire within water, and something of the characteristics of water within fire. Now, this is talking about like actual physical fire and water, and once you have like a something physical fire and water, then you never have like a pure יסוד. There's not, you never have like the pure thing of fire.

Even what we call fire and water and everything are not the ד' יסודות themselves, cuz the the real thing of like the יסוד of אש doesn't have any water in it, but everything in the physical world is a combination.

So, here we're saying that in the physical fire and water, there's always a combination. It's like you see from water you can have fire, like you see like like, for example, lightning that comes out from clouds of water, that in the water itself there's there's really hidden a thing of fire. And that's like, you know, cuz there's like electrons, and it can become ionized, and it can bring out fire, like a flint can bring out fire.

Physical examples of fire-water interaction 3:13

And also fire can bring out water. First of all, a flame is kind of like liquidy, it it it sticks to itself, and it has a certain and it does have a certain like moisture to it. Also, a lot of times a fire will, like if you burn oxygen and hydrogen, it makes water, like when the spaceship, which one, was it Challenger, exploded on its way up, so there it made a cloud of water, because the rocket fuel is hydrogen and oxygen, and when it explodes it makes it turns into H2O, it makes water.

And there's other ways that they're similar. In other words, like fire is not totally The idea of water is that it's wet and and cold, so fire has a certain thing of wetness to it, that it sticks together, and and even physical fire is not totally hot, you know, like the flame of a candle is only so hot, but it's a relative heat, it's not like totally hot.

And the same thing with like water: the whole thing of water is that it's cold and wet, but there is still a certain warmth in the water, and you know, it's not like frozen, and it's also a certain thing of dryness that it doesn't, even though like it it generally sticks together, but there's a certain thing that like it's not doesn't totally stick together, that it in a certain it maintains a certain like distance from each The the molecules, you know, keep they stay apart from each other a certain amount, and different things like

that. על כן יתכלל אש במים ומים באש. Therefore, you can have a mixture where fire and water water, or water from fire, will combine with each other.

Scriptural integration of fire and water 5:04

כמו שכתוב, like it says in ספר יצירה, הוציא מים מאש ואש ממים, וכולו. Take out water from fire and fire from water, וכולו. That's like what we talked about, that you can take out water from fire, that when you burn something, it sometimes will produce water. And you can take out fire from water, that you can have like lightning and stuff coming from water. Because there's an inclusion of one in the other, and so in the fire there's water, and in the water there's fire.

וכך במידות חסד וגבורה, so too with the emotions of חסד and גבורה. That within the חסד there's גבורה, and within the גבורה there's a חסד. מפני שיש דין בחסד וחסד בדין כנ״ל, because there's always included a certain דין within חסד and a certain חסד within דין.

How is this? This is like like we explained before, but also like we see

that there's two things. One thing is that the חסד is not always has some limit to it also, that

and the fact that it's and they're really connected. So the fact that like you're going to be nice to this person, but only to a certain amount, or only to a in a certain way, that means that there's a certain limit to it, there's a certain דין to it. And that means that like if they if the person would be different or whatever, then you wouldn't have the חסד.

So you're being kind to them because let's say they did this for you, that for you, but if they would be if they would start being really bad or whatever, then you wouldn't have the חסד for them. Or even if you would say that it's an unconditional חסד, but it's only because let's say it's like your child. So no matter what they do, you're still going to have חסד for them, let's say.

But it's still only because it's your child, so that means that for somebody else, it would be דין. And that's the other thing, is that a חסד for one person a lot of times is a דין for somebody else.

That means you're going to be nice to this person, and you'll defend them against somebody else, that means you have a דין for the other person, for their enemy.

In the same way, there's חסד in דין, that the whole premise of דין is that this thing is bad. Why is it bad? Because you want to be good to some for something else.

The whole idea of like justice is that you're going to

punish, the main thing of justice is to punish. I mean, there's also a thing of reward, but you don't need like in a regular government, the main point of the justice system is not to reward people for doing good things, it's mainly to punish people, to stop people from doing bad things. The whole premise of that, though, is that you want to uphold society and do for the betterment of the people.

So in a way, the main thing of the justice is a חסד. You're trying to help people. And on the other hand, if you have a חסד and you want to help people, then automatically you have a certain thing of דין, that you want to stop bad things that will destroy that thing that you love. על כן יבוטל הדין בחסד או להיפך החסד בדין.

Nullifying דין with חסד and vice versa 8:14

And therefore you can nullify the דין in חסד, or the opposite, you can nullify the חסד within דין. So therefore,

let's say you have a דין, and really something, let's say by the law, the letter of the law, is bad, but if you're going to go and fight it, you're going to destroy the whole thing that you love, so then the דין is going to go away in the חסד, because the חסד is more powerful than the דין. Or the opposite, the חסד can go into the דין, that if being nice is going to destroy the thing that you love, then you're going to want to go to דין.

Or let's say just this thing is like you have a certain thing that you like about it, but the bad things totally overweigh it, so then it will go to דין. So let's say somebody does something nice to you, but then they do so many bad things, then it gets overpowered in דין, so that the merit gets totally outweighed.

Types of התכללות and transformation in חכמה 9:17

ואם לאו, and if it was not so, that there is the חסד in the דין, and the דין in the חסד, לא היו מתכלל דבר בהיפוכו לעולם. Then it would never, one thing would never include within the other thing, they would never be able to unite and come together.

אמנם, however, so that's the one type of התכללות, is where one thing gets totally transformed by the other thing, gets totally בטל in the other thing.

This type of התכללות is התכללות in the thing itself, in like the light itself, it's called. So like within the light of חכמה, you can have חסד and you can have גבורה, And within you can have חסד of חסד and גבורה of חסד.

And you can have two types of ביטול, you can have a ביטול where it totally gets transformed to the opposite, where the חסד becomes like a גבורה and the גבורה becomes a חסד. And then you can have a type of התכללות where

where it it doesn't become like totally like the opposite, but rather it like tempers it. Like we spoke about that you can have like, well, the person's innocent, but not a totally not a total צדיק.

And that's like within the חסד it's a גבורה of חסד. So the regular type of התכללות within like the is like that, that the גבורה doesn't totally become a חסד, but it becomes like a little it's within the חסד it's a little bit to the side of גבורה. But it's still like mainly on the side of חסד.

And in the עצם מידה, it's like the difference between נקודה, ספירה, פרצוף. That in the עצם מידה, which is like a נקודה, everything is totally on one side. So in in that level, even the גבורה gets turned turned over to a חסד, and it's totally a חסד, there's only חסד there. That's like where the the argument that the person is innocent gets totally turned over to be a זכות and there's no room for the other side.

Which is like the idea of like a bias, that will just twist everything to its side. Then there's already a thing where it spreads out like a ספירה, and it already has differentiation, that there's a חסד and a גבורה, and you can have different shades, but it's all within the realm of חסד.

That's like a person that will acknowledge to you like, okay, it's not totally good, but it's still better than anything else. So the the the final point is not being compromised that it's good, but they're willing to acknowledge that there's differences and they're willing to like, you know, acknowledge another side, but then they're מבטל it. And they say, but it's like בטל ברוב or it's בטל ב-, you know, אלף or ששים or whatever.

And now we're going to explain a third type of התכללות. Those first two types fall under the same general category. And now we explain a third type, which is the idea of like פרצוף, which is when the אורות come into כלים.

And that's where you can have like the light of חסד in the כלי of גבורה.