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Farbrengen: Bar Mitzvah of Shiloh Adani - 9 Tevet 5769 - Jerusalem

Bar Mitzvah and Consciousness

1. Children are likened to the Mashiach in the verse: “Do not touch my Messiahs.”
1. The Mashiach is the fifth and highest level of the soul of the entire Jewish people, the general yechidah. This is the self-sacrifice and simple faith in the Torah and in the mitzvot. With this, the Mashiach attains the highest spiritual levels.
2. Likewise, every child should feel that he can attain the highest levels, all the way to infinity.
3. Shiloh, the name of our bar mitzvah boy, is equal to Moshe (345). But, “[Until] he comes to Shiloh,” the source of this name (יבא שילה ) is equal to “Mashiach” (358).
2. When a boy becomes bar mitzvah he receives knowledge (consciousness), specifically the consciousness to “And you shall know today.”¹
1. Bar Mitzvah (בר מצוה ) equals 343 or 7³, alluding to the verse “[the sun’s light] will be seven times the light of the seven days [of creation]” and to the verse “and the might of the sun as it rises.”
2. Before the boy was nice and smart, but now he has knowledge? Whose knowledge/consciousness? Moshe’s! “Moshe’s consciousness” (דעת משה ) = simple unity (אחדות פשוטה ), etc.
3. Moshe is the general knowledge/consciousness of the entire Jewish people.
4. the word we added to Shiloh to arrive at Mashich is “he comes” (יבא ), which equals 13, 13 years, so now Shiloh is “he comes” years old, and this is what the verse is alluding to.
3. The word “he comes” (יבא ) alludes to the stages involved in becoming a bar-mitzvah.
1. the first letter, י , equals 10. The sages say that when a boy is 10 he should start learning Mishnah.
1. Mishnah, the main part of the Oral Torah, represents the shining of the soul. (Mishnah, משנה , has the same letters as “soul, נשמה ).
2. The letters of Mishnah and soul spell “Moshe” with the letter nun, משה נ , alluding to the 50th gate of understanding that Moshe attained, and which we also attain by studying the oral Torah.
2. Adding the next letter, ב , we get 12. At age 12, a boy becomes responsible for his vows, even though he is not 13 yet. This is called מופלא (הסמוך לאיש) .² The word מופלא , stems from “wonder” (פלא ), which has the same letters as alef (אלף ), the final letter of יבא .
3. Adding this final א , we get 13. At age 13 the child receives consciousness and the power of unification (the inner motivation of knowledge, da’at), which is alluded to in the alef, whose form represents the unification of the higher and lower waters.
4. Unification begins with unifying the two types of knowledge/consciousness/da’at, higher and lower knowledge.
1. The name of the sefirah of knowledge itself, דעת , is an acronym for the two types of knowledge: דעת עליון תחתון .
2. Higher consciousness/knowledge is seeing reality from God’s perspective. It is hinted to in the ending of the Torah, “All that Moshe performed before the eyes of all of Israel.” Moshe taught our eyes to see from God’s perspective.
3. Lower consciousness/knowledge is seeing reality from a human perspective. It is hinted to in the beginning of the Torah, in the account of creation.
4. When we add the first and last words of the Torah, בראשית and ישראל , we get the same value as the unification of the two types of consciousness דעת עליון תחתון !
5. From a human perspective, God is nothingness and reality is somethingness. But, from the God’s perspective, it is the opposite.
5. When a bar mitzvah receives Divine consciousness, it does not imply that he no longer sees reality from a human perspective.
1. Chassidut teaches that our goal is that things turn out good, in a way that we understand and define good.
2. Higher consciousness means that we accept that in God’s eyes everything is indeed good, even now. Lower consciousness means that we (as yet) do not understand that things are indeed good.
3. Unifying the two is what we refer to when we say, בטוב הנראה והנגלה , “In the revealed and seen good.” Unifying the two means that God wants us to have our perspective on reality, and both perspectives, ours and His, are true and he wants both perspectives to agree, to become one.
4. Unifying them depends on our prayers, our Torah, and our performance of the mitzvot. The ability to do this (to pray, to learn, to do mitzvot) is the power of unification, the consciousness, that a bar mitzvah receives.
1. Younger children can also pray, and God loves their prayers, but their prayer is void of mature consciousness.
5. It is our duty now to pray for the well-being of our soldiers, that they fight and return triumphant and that God protect them.
1.  Indeed, we learn that a 13 year old becomes a bar mitzvah from Shimon and Levi who each took his sword and went out to fight the enemies of the Jewish people. Levi was 13 on that day!

The Haftarah for Parshat Vayigash: King, Shepherd, and President

Let us see how this all connects with last Shabbat’s Torah reading, parshat Vayigash.

1. The haftarah reading from the prophet Ezekiel (chapter 36) is about unification, the unification of the branch of Judah with the branch of Joseph (יחזקאל = יוסף ).
1. this reading represents the epitome of the ability to carry opposites.
2. this is what our people need today, especially in these difficult times as we approach the redemption.
3. the tribes today are the different political camps and the power of unification is needed to unite everyone.
4. Judah (the southern kingdom) represents the right side of the political map, Joseph (the northern kingdom) the left side, and there are other sides as well.
5. Ezekiel prophesizes that they will be united and never be split again.
2. Once the prophet unites the two branches, he describes with four phrases the leader that will rule over the united people:
1. “They will have one king as their king” (verse 22)
2. “And my servant David will be a king over them” (verse 24)
3. “They will all have one shepherd” (ibid.)
4. “And my servant David will be their Nasi forever” (verse 25)
5. The commentaries explain this as a four stage progression. At first it is not known who this king is who has brought unity, then he is identified.
3. At the end of the Guide, in the section on the rationale of various mitzvot, Maimonides, with his keen insight, explains that we are commanded to appoint a king because this is the only way to unify our people.
1. If you see that the Jewish people are dispersed around the world, and even once they have come to the Land of Israel, they continue to be divided, then know that this means we are lacking a king. We are lacking the power of unification, to unite the people.
4. There are three titles here given to the king:
1. King
2. Shepherd
3. Nasi (נשיא ), which in modern Hebrew is the translation for “president,” but literally stems from the word meaning both “high” and “carrying,” and therefore means that the king is one who because he is higher than everyone else is able to carry opposites—the conflicting opinions among his people.
4. It is easy to remember these 3 titles by their acronym: Maran (מרן ).
5. In the first phrase, “They will have one king as their king,” we have to understand why the word “king” seems to be repeated unnecessarily.
1. In Hebrew, the words are לכלם למלך , note that they have the same letters.
2. Teaching us that only someone who is good for everyone is worthy of being the king.
3. the word “king” מלך in Hebrew is an acronym for mind, heart, and liver (מח לב כבד ) and alludes to the proper order of controllers in the king’s psyche.
4. Likewise, by everyone else (כלם ), the order is reversed, alluding to the description of the pre-monarchic times in the Book of Judges, “And in those days, there was no king in Israel.”
5. The duty of the king is to transform “everyone” (כלם ) into a “king” (מלך ), to help each and every Jew become a king over himself.
6. This starts when the people are willing to appoint a king and to accept their role as his servants. Because, as the sages say, “The servant of a king is a king himself!”
6. The next phrase describes that the king is “over them” (verse 24), over the people
1. Over them means surrounding light.
2. This corresponds to Maimonides’ second stage in the Laws of Kings, when the king coerces everyone to follow the Torah, meaning he coerces everyone to do teshuvah.
3. In Chassidut it is explained that this is done not by force, but out of love, coercion in a pleasant way (כפיה בדרכי נעם ).
4. The initials of these words spell “like a son” (כבן ), for even though each Jew should see himself as the king’s servant, the king himself sees every Jew as his son.
5. These words “coercion in a pleasant way,” כפיה בדרכי נעם equal 7 times “wisdom” (חכמה ) and is the counterpart of “love of Israel” (אהבת ישראל ), which equals 13 times “wisdom.”
6. If one tries to coerce without first unifying it backfires. Unification means that everyone identifies with the king.
7. There is a similar relationship between the king and God.
1. The first time that David is mentioned he is called “my servant, David.” The second time he is called “David, my servant.”
2. Indicating, that in order to coerce others to do teshuvah, the king himself has to completely nullify to God’s will. His main characteristic is that he is nullified to God.
7. In the third stage, the king becomes the people’s shepherd
1. A shepherd is someone who provides.
2. The shepherd’s goal is to provide his people with faith.
3. The shepherd first provides materially and then spiritually.
1. The Ba’al Shem Tov taught us that first you should do a material favor for a fellow Jew, only then can you offer him/her spiritual sustenance.
2. Likewise, Moshe Rabbeinu first gave us manna, then he gave us the Torah. As the sages say, “The Torah was given only to those who eat manna.”
4. By providing economically, the shepherd can attain his ultimate goal, providing the people with faith, with knowledge of God.
1. Maimonides too stipulates that once there is no material need or lack, the only thing the Jewish people will want to do is know God.
5. The Zohar states that being a shepherd, the shepherd of faith (רעיא מהימנא ), is the Mashiach’s ultimate goal. So what does the fourth stage represent?
8. As noted, Nasi means carrying.
1. The king is able to not only carry (that is unite) opposites, people with opposite and opposing opinions, but to carry them higher and higher.
2. The ultimate purpose of shepherding is to become a Nasi, to carry the souls of the Jewish people all the way to infinity, as the verse states, “They shall go from strength to strength, God will be seen in Zion.”
3. It also means to carry opposites in the sense of those who are currently in a state that is the opposite of what God intended, even these individuals he can elevate to infinity.

Unification in World-Year-Psyche

1. The four levels, which, when quoted directly from the verses in Ezekiel are: “One tree, one king, one shepherd, Nasi” equal World-Year-Psyche.
1. עץ אחד מלך אחד רועה אחד נשיא  = עולם שנה נפש !
2. World, year, and psyche are the three dimensions of reality according to Sefer Yetzirah.
1. Or, space, time, and consciousness.
2. The knowledge/consciousness (da’at) that the bar mitzvah receives contains all 3 intellectual sefirot (i.e., wisdom of knowledge, understanding of knowledge, and knowledge of knowledge).
1. The intellectual sefirot correspond to world, year, and psyche:
1. world – knowledge
2. year – understanding
3. psyche – wisdom (the most important property of the psyche is its ability to nullify before the true One, i.e., God, this property is explained in the Tanya as appearing in the power of nullification of wisdom)
3. Yom Kipur is the one day of the year in which we can unify all three aspects. YK is called “once a year” (אחת בשנה ).
1. The holiest place in the world is the holy of holies in the Temple.
2. The holiest day of the year is Yom Kipur.
3. The holiest psyche is that of the high priest.
4. On Yom Kipur, the high priest enters the holy of holies.
5. This is the ultimate state of unification of the three dimensions, world, year, and psyche, or space, time, and consciousness.
4. The 3 dimensions are unified every day of the year in another manner. Every day is like a microcosm of the entire year, whatever can be found on the higher and larger level (the entire world, all year long, and all people) can be found at the lower and smaller level of the individual:
1. Just as the holy of holies is the holiest part of the Temple, the land of Israel is the holiest part of the world, every day.
1. Even someone who does not live in the Land of Israel can imbue his surrounding with the holiness of the land. This is in preparation of what the sages describe as, “The Land of Israel is destined to spread around the world.”
2. The place where a tzadik resides, even outside the Land of Israel, is holy with the same holiness.
2. Just as Yom Kipur is the holiest day of the year, Shabbat is the holiest day of the week.
1. Yom Kipur is called “Shabbat shabbaton.”
2. Just as the holiness of the Land of Israel can be found with a tzadik, regardless of where he is, a talmid chacham (Torah scholar) is always called Shabbat.
3. Just as the high priest is the holiest of all people, so in the Jewish soul there is an aspect of holiness that senses God’s unity at all times.
1. This aspect of our soul is eternal and ever-present but is most expressed when we say the Shema.
2. Psyche in Hebrew literally means consciousness.
3. Being conscious of God’s oneness and unity is one of the six continuous mitzvot.
4. Bringing all three together:
1. The Land of Israel, ארץ ישראל = 32 times Havayah, God’s essential Name.
2. Shabbat, שבת = 27 times Havayah
3. the holiness in the psyche is represented by one more Havayah
4. Altogether, they equal 60 times Havayah, or “vessel” (כלי ) times Havayah. In other words, this unification is a vessel for Havayah.
5.  Wisdom of knowledge is thus saying the Shema, שמע ישראל ה' אלקיך ה' אחד .
6. Understanding of knowledge is the verse, “Remember the day of the Shabbat in order to sanctify it,” זכור את יום השבת לקדשו .
1. The sages say that Shabbat is sanctified in and of itself (שבת מקדשא וקיימא ). It does not need our act of sanctification to be holy.
2. Our sanctification (and remembering the Shabbat all week long) serves to draw the mind energy of the father principle to the mother principle (from wisdom to understanding).
3. In the Ten Commandments, the first and second commandments correspond to Atik and Arich (the two partzufim of the crown). The third commandment corresponds to the father principle (wisdom) and the fourth commandment, remembering (and keeping) the Shabbat, corresponds to the mother principle (understanding). That it begins with remember (father principle) implies that we are to draw the father principle’s energy into the mother principle.
7. Knowledge of knowledge is the verse that relates knowledge with the Land of Israel, “To know Your way in the Land, amongst the nations Your salvation,”³ לדעת בארץ דרכך בכל גוים ישועתך .
1. It means that if we know God’s way in our land, the Land of Israel, then we will be saved from all the nations.
8. Thus, God’s unity, Shabbat, and the Land of Israel are three eternal principles that when they unite in the individual it is like the high priest entering the holy of holies on Yom Kipur—a complete unification of all three dimensions, space, time, and consciousness.
9. Another way of explaining these three principles is how they appear in our behavior and conceptual scheme:
1. Land of Israel – All my possessions belong to God.
2. Shabbat – All my pleasures and joy, even material pleasures, should be dedicated to God.
3. Shema – There is nothing but God.
10. When becoming a bar mitzvah, a child can understand these three principles. This is his power of unification.
5. If we add these three verses together we get
1.  שמע ישראל י־הוה א־להינו י־הוה אחד, זכור את יום השבת לקדשו, לדעת בארץ דרכך בכל גוים ישועתך equals 17³, where 17 is the gematria of “good.”
2. The verse states, “For without consciousness, the soul is not good,” and this is the ultimate unification of goodness in the soul.
3. the holy name of knowledge is אהוה which exhibits the power of unification.
1. These are the initials of the words, “the heavens and the earth,” in the first verse of the Torah, signifying their unification.
2. knowledge is thus the power to unite the heavens and the earth, to carry all opposites, material and spiritual, and to attain all spiritual levels.
6. The four stages described above correspond to the four letters of Havayah
1. Yud – Nasi
2. Hei – “my servant, David, a king over them”
3. vav – shepherd, the shepherd provides in the sense of draws down, the form of the letter vav.
4. Hei – “a king of them all” (generic king, no name known).
7. So the order, if we follow the verses, is one of ההוי , which is the permutation of Havayah that corresponds to either the month of Elul or the month of Adar.
8. We find that the first appearance of a Nasi in the Torah is in the verse, “Hear us sir, you are the Nasi of God in our midst,”⁴ שמענו אדני נשיא א־להים אתה בתוכנו .
1. the words “Sir, you are a Nasi of God” אדני נשיא א־להים is equal to “carrier of opposites” נושא הפכים !
2. This verse was said about Abraham, the one who converts and transforms all people to God.

The Sanhedrin Appointing A King

1. The mishnah in the first chapter of tractate Sanhedrin enumerates seven issues (in five categories) that require the judiciary power of the great court of 71 judges.
1. When Maimonides brings this topic in the beginning of chapter 5 of the laws of Sanhedrin, he enumerates a few more issues not mentioned in the mishnah.
2. The Tosafot in Sotah also ask why the mishnah did not include all the issues that require the great court.
3. The Kesef Mishneh on Maimonides questions the first issue he mentions, appointing a king. This is not enumerated in the mishnah. The Kesef Mishneh writes that he does not know where Maimonides’ source is. This is something of a wonder itself, because other achronim (latter day sages) know that this law comes from a tosefta.
2. In our verses, there is a beautiful hint for this law, that appointing a king requires a Sanhedrin of 71 judges.
1. The first of the phrases we saw above, “They will have one king as their king,” ומלך אחד יהיה לכלם למלך , is exactly equal to Sanhedrin סנהדרין .
2. Next, if we count the total number of letters in all four phrases that we quoted, we find that they contain exactly 71 letters!
3. Even the Mashiach will be a “first king,” in the language of the sages.⁵ Even though he is from the offspring of King David, who are continuous—there is no interruption in this lineage—he is a new beginning.
1. This is learnt from the verse, “And a shoot will emerge from the trunk of Yishai (Jesse) and a pedigree from his roots will grow.”⁶
1. The first half of the verse describes a continuation from the trunk, which is above ground and can be seen.
2. The second half describes a continuation that comes out of the roots, which are hidden from view. Therefore, the Mashiach’s beginning as a king seems to be unrelated to what until now has been known to be King David’s direct lineage. Still, he is indeed from that same lineage.
4. There is another important difference between what Maimonides writes and what the sages write in tractate Sanhedrin.
1. In Sanhedrin the sages do not write that the king needs to be appointed by a prophet (together with the Sanhedrin). Maimonides does write this.
2. The Sanhedrin is needed in order to objectively testify that this man is indeed capable of unifying the entire people.
1. Today we might call the power that unifies: charisma.
2. A person cannot know this about himself, because a person is biased when it comes to himself.
3. If the king-to-be is the son of a king, the Sanhedrin is not needed. Only if he is a “first king.”
3. To prove that a king needs to be appointed by both the great court of 71 judges and a prophet, Maimonides gives two examples:
1. Joshua who was appointed king by Moshe and his great court.
2. Saul was appointed by Samuel and his great court.
4. But, Samuel appointed Saul in confidence; we do not find that his court took part.
1. Samuel (like Moshe) is called the special one of the Sanhedrin (המופלא שבסנהדרין ).
2. So in both examples that Maimonides gives, the prophet (Moshe and Samuel) is part of the Sanhedrin, and is considered equal to the entire Sanhedrin. In any case, we learn from the two examples that the power of prophecy is somehow inherent within the Sanhedrin and the prophet does not have to be some separate figure.⁷
5. These issues that require the great court of 71 to be tried including the three “missing” issues from the mishnah in Sanhedrin—an unruly sage, the adulteress, and appointing a king (bringing the total to 10 such issues)—warrants a class in itself.

Chabad, Breslov, Polisher Rebbes, and the Revealed Torah

1. There is a particular topic that the students in the Yeshivah (Od Yosef Chai in Yitzhar) wanted us to speak about, all about the various types of Chassidut, and particularly why we define ourselves as Chabadniks?
1. They asked, What’s the connection (in other words, why should we see ourselves as Chabad)?
2. Because it would be a long topic in the Yeshivah, we will take this opportunity to discuss it.
2. The king, the Mashiach, the shepherd, the Nasi, they are all the same person and it says about this person that he will reveal the inner rationale of the Torah.
1. The inner rationale of the Torah is also the rationale of the mitzvot.
2. This is described by the sages with the words, “A new Torah will come out of Me.”
3. Specifically, this means that the king will teach the meaning of the cantillation marks in the Torah (טעמים ).
1. The written Torah comprises four levels: cantillation marks, vowel signs, tags on the letters, and the letters themselves (טעמים נקודות תגין אותיות , or טנת"א , for short).
2. These correspond to the four letters of Havayah.
3. The highest level, corresponding to the yud (י ) are the cantillation marks, which in Hebrew literally mean “rationale” (טעם ) or “reason.”
4. Apart from a handful of places in the Rishonim and in the Tikunei Zohar, there are no teachings on the cantillation marks. It’s almost as if they do not exist.
3. What is the purpose of the cantillation marks: 1) to provide punctuation, 2) to document the melody of the verse.
1. The second is far more important than the first.
2. Indeed, we find commentaries that make use of the cantillation marks to understand the meaning of a verse based on its punctuation, because this is relatively easy. But, hearing the melody with which God is giving the Torah, this is far more difficult and only the Mashiach will reveal this.
4. Every tzadik has his own stories and every tzadik has his own melody.
1. The melody of every tzadik is the rationale and taste behind his method of spiritual ascent.
2. From the Ba’al Shem Tov and on the Torah of the Mashiach is more and more revealed, so it is incumbent upon us to try and hear the melody behind the teachings of each particular tzadik.
5. So after this introduction, I am Chabad because Chabad has by far the deepest, best, and most beautiful melody. This I say without feeling any glimmer of embarrassment, the Chabad melody is absolutely on a different scale than the melody of any other branch of Chassidut.
1. You might be inclined to think of the actual Chabad melodies, the nigunim that are sung in Chabad as compared with the nigunim sung elsewhere. It is true in that context as well.
1. Unfortunately, most people, even Lubavitchers, are not familiar with all the Chabad nigunim, which is why we state that our Rabbinical ordination begins with the requirement of knowing at least 100 deep Chabad nigunim. Only after fulfilling this requirement can someone take the first exam.
2. But, if you merit, you can hear this melody in the teachings. You can hear it in the Tanya or any other deep work (like Kuntres Hahitpa’alut from the Mittler Rebbe, or Hemshech Ayin Beit from the Rebbe Rashab, etc.).
3. When learning the teachings of the Rebbe the same applies.
1. If you learn it without hearing the melody, you are missing something very important. You are learning externally and on the surface. It will leave you with less of a delicious taste.
6. Now for Breslov. Breslov has its own melody.
1. If you want to hear Rebbe Nachman’s melody the main thing to read and study is his stories. This is his essence.
2. Rebbe Nachman said that he wrote three books
1. Stories from Ancient Days
2. Likutei Moharan, and
3. Sefer Hamidot
3. He himself said that the stories, even as teachings, are infinitely deeper than Likutei Moharan, his collected Torah teachings. For this reason, I personally am also most connected to this aspect of Rebbe Nachman’s Torah.
4. You should always search for the unique contribution of each Rebbe and the stories are unique to Rebbe Nachman.
5. Just as the melodies and the teachings are the unique aspect of Chabad, the stories are the unique aspect of Breslov.
6. Every candle of the 36 Chanukah candles is like one of the 36 tzadikim in each generation, and every candle has both a story to tell and a melody to sing.
1. Candle, in Hebrew, is an acronym for melody and dance (ניגון ריקוד ). The flame dances to the tune of the melody being played.
7. There are stories in which a person was asked to choose between being told a story or hearing a teaching. Clearly, the wise man knew that he should choose a story over a teaching.
8. But, what if you are asked to choose between hearing a story and hearing a melody? I don’t recall such a story, but again, clearly, a person with his senses about him will choose the melody.
1. So much so, that Rebbe Hillel of Paritsch once said that all of reality is simply a search for a forgotten melody. My whole life I am searching for a melody that I have forgotten.
9. You can hear Rebbe Nachman’s nigun in Likutei Moharan, but without a doubt, it is clearest in his stories.
7. Motza’ei Shabbat was the yahrzeit of the Mei Hashilo’ach. Even though the dilemma in our yeshivah is between Chabad and Breslov, there is a unique melody to the P’shischa-Kotzk-Izhbitz dynasty
1. Mei Hashilo’ach, the Izhbitzer Rebbe, was initially a disciple in Kotzk before he set out on his own.
2. The tone of melody that started in P’shischa and passed in particular to Izhbitz is boldness (נועזות ).
1. Boldness means that a person is always extending, always pushing outward, doing whatever he feels like doing. This boldness is entirely spontaneous and this is the special melody in Izhbitz.
2. For this reason, the Sochatchover was too much for the Divrei Chayim (Rebbe Chaim of Sanz) and he did not take him as his son-in-law.
3. Our young men in Shechem should be sent to Kotzk and not to Sanz.
4. This is a uniquely Polisher melody and includes a lot of marches and a lot of style. It is a very beautiful melody—different from Chabad and from Breslov, but very beautiful.
8. There is one more melody that we want to discuss. I admire all three that we have mentioned so far, but I also admire Torah scholars (something we have discussed in the past in the yeshivah).
1. We have been forced to use quite a bit of generalization here, noting Chabad, Breslov, and the rest of the world of Chassidut. Of course there are many many others, but we are trying to address the concerns of a particular group of students.
2. There are Jews who simply sit and learn Torah day and night.
3. Sometimes, I envy them more than all the others because they know so much more than I do. Envy that leads to greater knowledge is very important.
4. Here I find it hard to point to one particular figure, perhaps the Gaon of Vilna, perhaps Rebbe Chaim (of Brisk)—the Rebbe Rashab held him in high esteem too. There are many giants of the revealed Torah.
5. Scholars of the revealed Torah have their own melody, the melody of the yeshivahs. This is a very special melody with a lot of taste in it.
6. People sit and learn Torah all day, simply, no Chassidut, just Gemara, Rishonim and Achronim with the melody of the yeshivah, and this is heaven on earth.
9. Now, let’s take all four of these melodies and organize them based on their correspondence to the four Worlds:
1. Rebbe Nachman’s three books can be corresponded to Creation, Formation, and Action. The stories are in the World of Creation.
1. In the stories there is no distinction made between Jews and non-Jews, just plain people. As you go down to Formation (Likutei Moharan) and Action (Sefer Hamidot) there is more and more definition.
2. The Seer of Lublin (the Choizeh) once complained that there are books that light up his eyes (like the Zohar, the holy Or Hachayim, the Ma’or Einayim), but the Tanya dims his eyes. He said this in a letter to Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, the Alter Rebbe’s in-law. Rebbe Levi Yitzchak responded that in fact the Tanya is higher than all the books that light your eyes, but this book is like very concentrated oil, and therefore it is like “creates darkness.” The World of Creation is pure intellect.
3. How can both Rebbe Nachman’s stories and the Tanya be in the World of Creation? After all, they are so different.
4. The answer is that Maimonides explains that in the World of Creation there are two types of beings: Intellects⁸ and Seraphim. The intellects clearly connect with the Tanya, the Seraphim with Rebbe Nachman’s stories.
5. More specifically, the Tanya corresponds to the intellectual sefirot of Creation, which in Kabbalah are called the Chamber of the Holy of Holies (היכל קדש קדשים ).
6. In the Chamber of the Holy of Holies there is an illumination from the kingdom of Emanation, and this is what gives it the Chabad melody (as we will see Chabad in general is in Emanation).
7. But, the stories are the actual melody of the World of Creation. So the Breslov nigun can be found specifically there.
2. Likutei Moharan is in Formation. Since Formation corresponds to the six sefirot from loving-kindness to foundation called the vak (ו"ק ), Formation contains the most diversity.
1. In Formation we find many varied books such as Likutei Moharan, Kedushat Levi, No’am Elimelech.
2. Formation is about the rectification of character.
3. When once asked about the difference between Chabad and other Chassidic books, the Rebbe replied that Chabad is like learning Gemara, the other Chassidic books like learning Mishnah. Indeed, in Kabbalah, Gemara is in Creation and Mishnah is in Formation.
3. The scholars of the revealed Torah, they reside in the World of Action.
1. In the verse in Isaiah describing the four Worlds, the world of Action is separated from the others with the word “also” (אף ), which also means anger. For this reason, sometimes those dwelling in this World oppose Chassidut. But, we should sweeten this אף .
2. People who understand the workings of the World of Action, like great scientists (e.g., Einstein) have the greatest intellects, the highest IQ.
3. The World of Emanation in particular influences the World of Action and so even though the understandings here are very external in many ways they are the deepest.