On the Essence of Chasidus (chs. 2-3)

welcome to class number two of country on the shelter or what we call in english on the essence of siddhis again this is a project we're doing in partnership with hayeno every week in hyena they have an excerpt of the mimer and we're going to be learning the excerpt that is that is there in that week's issue so if you remember last week we discussed four possible definitions or descriptions of what sid this is what's it is what's it all about and just to review um the first one was the more of the historical right that was so this came along during a critical juncture uh in history for the jewish people uh and and roused them from their from their faint-like state second one was uh siddhis is an ethical system to teach us to go beyond the letter of the law like the one who burns his nails like it talks about in the talmud um even though he's not required to do so but he takes the extra step to do so um then we spoke about siddhis as a a system for the transformation of character traits to actually not only change natural tendencies but the nature of tendencies themselves and we explain the the what the novelty of that statement is uh and then the fourth possible description of see this we said it's a language for um making the esoteric namely the kabbalistic relatable even for people who are not very spiritually lofty or or sensitive and those were the four suggested uh definitions and if you want to review that again you can watch uh class 1 over again but this is just to you know get us up to speed all right now let's look in chapter 2 as the rebel now rejects all four of those definitions not because any any of them are incorrect or untrue but for another reason entirely so let's let's let's take a look here move a new porsche cadillac it is understood and obvious for reasons that we will get into later the teachings of siddhis are one point that is not a composite or conglomerate of other details we're going to explain this later at length but for now let's just take it as an axiom that teresa the statistician of teachings of siddhis has to be distilled down to one essential idea and not a conglomeration of of uh okay um you know there's the old uh i guess uh metaphor parable it's not of jewish origin but it's from it's a worldly parable about the blind men and the elephant right so one blind man said an elephant is very much like a uh boa constrictor and one blind man said an elephant's very much like a tree trunk and one blind man said an elephant's very much like the flap of a tent one blind man said an elephant's very much like a wall and the the the the fifth blind man said an elephant is very much like a rope so which one was correct well the the blind man that said the elephant's like a boa constrictor was touching the trunk and the blind man who said the elephant is like a tree trunk was touching the the foot and the blind man said in elephants like a wall was touching the body and the blind man said the elephants like the flap of a tent was touching the ear and the blind man said in the elephants like a rope was touching the tail so they were all describing aspects of the elephant but none of those aspects are the elephant so we're we're trying to understand what is siddhis and and what is saying here for reasons that we will explain later see this must be distilled to one essential point not the conglomeration of details and therefore let's continue um cave and shikola milo shinem since all of the explanations that we just gave as well as many other explanations that are given that habit said four of them there there are more than four and they're all legitimate these legitimate explanations and and as well as many other legitimate explanations of what sid this is all about they are milo's chinese hain they're all different virtues different specific qualities so being so harem we are forced to conclude we must say magidires none of those virtues or qualities capture the essence of the teachings of siddhis in other words they're all true aspects they're true uh features or properties of teres accidents but none of them are it the essence the single idea the core which is as we will see is is as a theme in this in this discourse the idea of distilling siddhis and truly you know just truthfully to to distill everything down to a core essential idea is one idea one essential idea that is stripped from any details allah however from that essential point are derived or or maybe a way to say mistah faces they branch out all of these different uh features but these features are symptoms not the cause in other words there's one underlying idea what siddis really is which we haven't yet put our finger on and all the different definitions are correct descriptions of some aspect of siddhis or some outcome of siddhis but none of them are the essence the essential point of sid this is now we're going to sum it all up we're going to make it very easy for you i'm saying that with tongue in cheek guys it's very simple you know what's it is the essence of this really is it's like it says in the rabbit shabs mimer which was referred to earlier actually it's a mimer from tafreshain bass which actually isn't tougher shine but tougher shine base is 1912 but it's actually a whole hamshik it's a series of discourses which lasted many years so actually this particular discourse i believe is from tafresh [Music] yeah i think it's from 1915. it's actually part of a shalom it's a you test kisl of mimer remember this discourse that i said any test kislev and uh so that i was referring to a utes kislev discourse of the rebel shock the fifth rabbit from the year 1915. so over there it says what's the essence of this it's the elicitation of a new light from the inner dimension of kasir the crown the proto-sphero the sphere above spheroids you know from from kohma down to malchus you have 10 and then casa is sort of the all-encompassing the crown literally the crown that goes on top of the anthropomorphic model so kesser is you know transcendent so let's see this it is the elicitation of a new light from the inner dimension of casserole well a mylar yeah sir and even higher than that hamshachis berginis panemias atik mamesh it is literally an elicitation of light from the inner dimension of atik attic is the inner dimension of kasir as opposed to arak there's attic and there's are different dimensions of casser itself behinds which is actually if you trace it even higher it is the reisha de la isado the beginning or the head which is unknown or more aptly unknowable the unknowable origin of all reality so sid this is a manifestation of a light from that source okay great thank you aha now why didn't you say so should have said in the first place okay i'm joking around because obviously you know words like that are very very lofty uh but that's why you know we have a whole discourse here to unpack that what does that really mean and by the end with hashem's help we'll we'll be able to relate to it okay let's continue the indians this concept which is spoken of in the miami that we're referring all of the different aspects are the different qualities virtues of siddhis that are described in different sources they're all just various manifestations or outgrowths of the essential point of siddhis so these qualities that we enumerated as well as many others they are true descriptions of some aspect of siddhis and all of those aspects are a manifestation of the essence of siddhis but that's precisely the point they're just manifestations of the essence of siddhis they are not the essence of siddhis since after all like we just said see this is a manifestation of the infinite harimovin who pash it it's readily understandable that when you talk about a manifestation of the infinite asha ainsof who arts me infinity is an essence infinity that's interesting because there's different ways of looking at infinity mathematically speaking is infinity simply just a sum of finite parts when you have all the finite parts then you have infinity or is infinity actually a completely different concept which is not a sum of finite parts meaning something which is essentially infinite therefore it is indivisible it's an essence an atsumi to use the hebrew the hoshore um therefore all the different qualities that emerge from it are just that they're just qualities that emerge from it so if we're talking about a manifestation of the inner light of kessler and even higher than that the anemia that comes from rad law the unknowable origin of all which is after all synonymous with the infinite itself therefore whatever we're talking about has to be something that doesn't lend itself to any specific quality now how we're going to do that i mean just there's a language problem here how we're going to describe the indescribable how we're going to put our finger on something that by definition once you put your finger on it so now you're talking about a you know like the blind man saying it's the trunk and not the tail or the body not the foot so that's our challenge that's the challenge we have laid before us here but we know what sid this is not or i should i let let me take back those words because the evidence says this is not those things so this is those things but those things are not citizens you understand what i'm saying see this manifests itself as all of those things but all of those things even put them all together and add them into one beautiful conglomeration that's still not consider this because there's an essence which is which is indivisible which is uh true infinity and we have yet to uh we have yet to put that into words and we're gonna that's what we're gonna endeavor to do during uh throughout this discourse okay so that brings us to the end of chapter two let's continue chapter three now a little disclaimer here what we just said about this actually applies to all areas of tita we said terror success isn't a specific thing it's it's infinite it's everything the truth is you could say that about all of tata any area of tater any field within toyota it's infinite it's everything all things whatever proceeds to explain is called hamine schleimer toyota contains within it every type of virtue that exists in the world anything that's good anything that's useful you can find it in thaira and and in general what kind of virtues exist in the world intellectual and emotional and we say this based on the microcosm the oilum cotton the microcosm of a person a person generally has two kinds of capacities intellectual capacities and emotional capacities so if there are intellectual virtues and emotional virtues meaning great ideologies those would be intellectual virtues and um let's call it uh refined character traits good midos that would be you know emotional qualities so whatever you can find in good ideas and good ways of being all of that whatever you can find in the world you can trace it to toyota van hoggis musa in regard to the latter which are good conduct and good character traits so the laws meaning the ethical laws civil law that kind of stuff what we call mishpatim and and and the ethics of muslim means the ethics i mean roughly translated like what you would find in tractate obvis in the ethics of our fathers all of those ethical teachings and legal teachings they are the ultimate in goodness and truth any ethical system that human beings have devised on their own meaning that has come from human intelligence they all are unavoidably mixed with good and bad amish vishakker truth and falsehood there's no perfect system that man has ever devised any good that can be found in any of these ethical systems can be traced to twitter so you read a self-help book and you're like oh wow that sounds so jewish that sounds like it's you know that sounds like toyota well have though yeah that's kind of true because anything that you like about you know seven habits of whatever you know whatever it's called i remember was it seven habits or how to win friends and influence people whatever the you know the uh that exists in whatever generation so you're reading oh that's a good point that's a good point yeah okay it is a good point uh and it exists within theater the only difference is within toyota it's all a hundred percent glacier everything is true and everything is good and every other system you gotta you know you gotta be more selective and it's not all uh true and it's not all good and to make it even more difficult not only is it not all true and not all good sometimes you can't tell which parts are true and good and which parts are false and bad right so then probably it's just easier to not get your world view from those sources and just have they'll just go to toyota where you know it's going to be all kosher all compatible with your with your soul okay and anyway let's continue the rabbit tells a very very interesting story here and rabbit tells it the kitser but actually it's it's from a letter that the fiduciary wrote the philipper but it happened to three decades himself and he tells the story in first person in his letter and it's printed it's actually printed in the fit of his igras let's read it here and i'll fill in some more of the details as is well known the story mcquaid produces made more from the video my father-in-law on one of his travels so the videographer explains that he was once on a train from paterberg it was called peterburg at that time this was right before the revolution i believe well the letter was written before the revolution so the story obviously happened before the revolution from the story it's evident that revolutionary ideas were already fomenting and that's kind of what the discussion was about so defeated gerber says he was on the train and uh he mentions he was sitting in second class he said i was surrounded by uh government people i guess it means a certain like level people are not like the the aristocracy but you know also they're not they're not schleppers right so he says they were like government people and they were like some uh clergy i'm assuming you know russian orthodox would be the religion um and uh they were getting this intellectual conversation and the discussion was what is the ideal form of government is it monarchy oh and the videographer mentions that they had just celebrated the 300th anniversary of the romanov family's rule the romanov family is the family that until uh i mean the last the roman of ruler was the last monarch of of russia and what nikolai ii who was executed he and his family were executed uh in 1917. i was like on the smirnoff bottle when it says purveyors to the tsar through 1917. what happened in 1917 that smirnoff stopped serving vodka to the tsar well the czar stopped drinking vodka in 1970 he stopped a lot of things in 1917 at any rate okay so it was the 300th anniversary of the romanov family's rule and so they were getting this discussion i guess communism was already sort of like in the air and they were discussing what is the ideal form of government is it monarchy the philippine government says or socialism and then some people even said communism i'm just telling you the words that are that defeated governor uses in the latter okay and uh and democracy wasn't even one of them by the way and i don't know where they would have fit those people in their discussion where they would have fit democracy but uh the point is you know winston churchill said democracy is the absolutely worst form of government devised by man until you'll compare it with all the others and that's sort of what we're saying here it's the worst form of government devised by man so they were discussing all these man-made political systems and as you'll see the punch line is precisely that that these are all man-made systems all right i'm sort of this is a spoiler alert i'm giving away the punch line already so they were discussing all these different man-made political systems happened to be the ones they were talking about was monarchy communism socialism at least though that's how the federal government describes it okay so he's many people were debating the biodegas they were giving biblical proofs because remember there were christians there so i guess they were familiar with with scripture they were trying to give like biblical proofs which of these governmental systems are more in line with with terror which one does tata agree with the mayhem had a mocker battery and they were all giving proofs from torah for their opinion when they asked the federal's opinion regarding this honor he answered so they want to know what is the debit say what which one of these man-made systems is in line with tata okay so i already gave away the punchline being the ultimate in truth and goodness yes it has within it all the good that's found in all the other approaches they don't have all the good even if you put them all together they don't have all the good the tata has but if you put together all of their good you can find all of that in tata so this is a side story but the point is we're saying that there are there are virtues in the world emotional and intellectual and and but any virtue you find be it emotional or or intellectual you can find the same thing in torah so whatever virtue you find in this ism or that ism you can find in theta but conversely it doesn't work the other way around toyota is not aligned lahav deal with any particular ism so i know there's a debate tonight presidential debate and by saying this i'm dating this class because someone's going to be watching this in the future and they're like oh yeah talking about that that crazy time yeah so you know witch-ism conservatism or liberalism those are the big isms today right by the way it changes so fast i mean jews have been around for 3 300 years so we've we've been through a lot of isms so which one conservativism or liberalism which one is aligned with neither they're isms and yeah they both have good ideas and by the way the frida kader could say communism has some good ideas in it you know the videographer was arrested by the communists he was tormented by the communists his sister were murdered by communists and yet he was able to recognize has some good ideas right the people always say communism is good on paper but well no even on paper communism as a whole isn't good even on paper it's not good it has some good ideas but everything has good ideas yeah everything has a good idea every ism has some good how much how bad you know some some isms are 99 rotten and one percent true and some are 90s and maybe i don't know i'm just guessing that there might be something that's 99 true but there's a one percent that's not that's not ms it's not true the point is they're all man-made so they're all going to have a certain limit being created by finite minds they're going to be finite and only toyota toyota as a reflection of the infinite is going to have everything in it so what we're saying before see this is infinity and therefore it can't be described by any particular description and then we said well the truth is all is infinity and therefore that's why you find all good mylice whether they be emotional or intellectual in terror let's continue we just said regarding emotional traits regarding intellectual traits is the ultimate put them all together whatever truth you can find in all the different allergies i guess there's the isms and theologies right so all the truth all the wisdom that you can find in all the ologies you can find those same truths in toyota kamehameha because it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations even the nations recognize ultimately that the jewish people are very lucky we have access to this wisdom this wisdom which is incomparable and uh is categorically different than any la havdal and any other wisdom because it is a perfect uh system of wisdom and it's perfect because it is a an expression of the infinite therefore it has everything continue now we're going to get a little mystical and not only are all good ideas and all good character traits in the world found in tata but the ongoing existence of reality is dependent upon tera in fact dependent even on on the preservation of a tiny little detail of a tighter law it's referring to here to something that the the altar says in tanya the the last portion of tanya kuntur counter-saccharin but we're not going to get into it here because we have to finish up but the idea that whether a halacha like for instance in a corbin in an offering and a sacrifice is followed to the t to the letter that tiny little detail of torah law can determine whether or not a certain elicitation of divine energy will enter the world or not so the point is that the ongoing uh existence of the world receiving its its creative energy from from hashem is dependent upon tiny little details of torah law so everything everything that you can find in the world the point is this is what we're saying everything you can find in the world ultimately um it pals in comparison to the perfection that is omnim however laizuhi mahusa shalatera but that's not the essence of theta here we just said every smart idea it's in tata every fine character trait it's in tata every detail of reality is dependent on torah those are really amazing statements and yet none of those statements reflect the essence of tata you know why because the essence of that it is united with the infinite which is enclosed within it in a complete perfect unity therefore since all of the worlds which are finite are therefore nothing compared to the infinite what proportion is the finite to the infinite no proportion so it's as if it's non-existent kane haim gom yatero so same thing about theta since the world is nothing compared to the infinite well the infinite is enclosed within terra therefore the world is nothing compared to toyota so therefore to praise tata by saying you know what all the good ideas in the world are in title all the good character traits you can find in the world are in total all the existence of the world is dependent upon torah yeah that's not praising title you know why because you're praising toyota by comparing it to something that is categorically beneath it you're comparing it to the world creation which is finite while toyota is infinite so it's not a it's not a praise and that's why that's why you don't praise tata by comparing it to all of the vitality of the world because the vitality of the world is comparatively insignificant allah rather than smith but rather because of the essential point of toyota games it automatically contains within it all the virtues all the good points that are found in the world val yoda and then through that is also the vivifying flow the source of life for all those things but those things are finite things those are features those are outcomes those are expressions but none of them uh point to the essence now how are we going to point to the essence of infinity okay that like i said we have our work cut out for us we're only at the very beginning of this discourse we're on a journey okay so we just said that this applies to all parts of toyota not just siddhis okay however all areas what what can you say about all of them equally they are united with the infinite light nevertheless the zoo is you see that more in this you know like that expression the jews are like everybody else only more so so sid this is like all of tata only more so so if tata is infinity which cannot be limited to being described only by one feature or another feature and that's true of al-qaeda so that's even more true of siddhis or maybe i shouldn't say more true more evident that's why you know the muhammad says that this is this is expression of this unknowable beginning because what we're talking about is really something it's not a level it's not a particular level within uh divinity it is the essence of of all that's what all toyota is but you see it more in siddhas because all the different areas of tata and by areas of toyota here we're going to for convenience refer to four general categories and site and i'm not going to get into it right now what each one is we mentioned it actually last week as well but we're going to talk about it at length so i'm not going to get into the particulars now of defining each one but you have the shot which is the very literal you have the remes which is allusion illusion which is the esoteric all these four levels have a particular form in other words and i don't mean this to use this word disrespectfully at all but there are genre a genre has certain tropes has certain signatures of it of that style so each of these have their tropes they have their format which they take on okay a certain hallmark feature that really expresses that area of terror but that trope or that style or that signature covers up the simple infinite essence of the of the of the ain't soft that's in it it is the concealment that is described as a garment that cannot be removed in other words you know it's like you know you have an element which is it is so um inextricable from the features of the genre that if you were to remove it you know it would no longer be that thing so you know if shot has certain features let's say by definition but that it talks about the literal level so if you would take that feature out then it's not shot anymore you know it's like you know what what's a milkshake without the milk you know i don't know but it's not a milkshake okay so each of these levels they have their features and these forms or or or formula or um styles again i don't mean the these terms disrespectful at conservation we're talking about toyota which is which is infinity but they have their different styles and the styles sort of conceal the the infinity which is chitos which is simplicity and and not limited to a particular style or another now you're going to say why does that apply to the other hellcat they are not limited they're not contained to a particular format any stylism that's in this is like a garment that can be removed in other words the stylistic uh tropes within this not to say that they're there there aren't certain uh formulaic um signatures within siddhis but they can all be removed they're all dispensable therefore what's the obvious uh example of this kalel is he as called see this contains within it all the levels shot remastered and and actually enlivens all of those four levels so sid this is sort of like um this undefinable area of toyota you know you look you learn sid this and and you learn one line of it you think you're learning kabbalah you learn another line of it you think you're learning a pasek in hamish you learn another line you think you're learning madrish you learn another line and you know it's talking about gematria and roshitavis and you know so which is how do you nail it down and the truth is you can't because the point of siddhis is it's not uh defined by its form therefore the form whatever form it has doesn't truly conceal the simplicity of the infinite which is within it right so that's the end of chapter three and uh we're going to have to end here for tonight