Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #33

welcome to a new uh location those who are watching on video are wondering why there's a choo choo train behind me well probably they weren't wondering that but now that i pointed it out they probably are wondering what's that choo-choo train behind you we're in uh a children's library we're in the olivia tuck library because hashem things are so uh happening at kabata the five towns so for the summer we are relocated here to the library on central avenue but we're going to continue with our regular learning just with a slight venue change okay and this all of this is meaningless to the people who watch on youtube or listen on spotify or an apple podcast they're like i don't even know what you're talking about okay yes you're in the right place this is weekly text based tanya and we are on chapter 22 22 cuff bass as we we said when we started pedigress we're on a journey that takes many practice these are the most confusing prakim now i've been misunderstood before and someone said rabbi you said these are the most confusing program there are there are problems that are more confusing that's not what i said i said not that the most confusing ideas are in this procurement but that taken as a whole it is very hard to keep track of the thread of ideas that's going from yotkas until hoffa so there may be more difficult ideas in tanya um but to keep track of the conversation from jude has to do that for that you need uh need a good memory so i just want to recap your cass we started off we said we're going to get access to some high powered love and awe of hashem without having to generate it through meditation which is the normal tried and true ways you you create emotions through meditation that we know and we haven't given up on that we just we're using this as a temporary measure and we said that this love is already installed in us because it's a yerusha it's an inheritance we get from the ovas it's called an ava mesut teresa latent love which also implies that it's hidden which it is until it's triggered how is it triggered by intense circumstances usually a test of faith do or die moment of truth in good tests who spoke about the nature of the soul is not unlike the nature of a flame which which you know matsushabus i was uh we were lighting the dollar candle and i was showing the kids how to get the dollar candle going you just have to turn it upside down and i explained to them you know why because it's the nature of flame to want to rise aloft and rejoin its source underneath the lunar sphere they looked at me like you're looking at me but that's what it says in tanya and you don't have to know what that means and i did it purposely i said something purposely that i knew was um was uh cryptic because he says right there in that chapter that that's what teva means teva is nature nature is any phenomenon that we know it occurs we just don't know why it occurs like we could describe the mechanics we could describe how it happens but ultimately why is it that way i say that's the way that it is so the nature of the flame but the point is we're not talking about flames that's a muscle it's just a metaphor just a metaphor we're talking about the nature of the jewish soul to want to lose its own entity or its own identity and to become subsumed within the oneness that's its nature it's sort of counter to self-perpetuation which is um an anomaly within all of reality everything is sort of built with an ammo to preserve itself and the jewish soul just wants to lose itself in hashem and then in hof we said okay how's this information going to be useful to us like how we're gonna use this um this information to align ourselves emotionally with perfect mitzvah observance so we said well first of all we're gonna do a reduction here and we're gonna say yes i said the disclaimer i'll say it again that this is an oversimplification for the purposes the sole purposes of this tool do not infer from this a general world view in fact specifically infer not infer hear me very explicitly saying this is not the general world view that we adopt however in the context of this tool chapter 20 we say one must view all all behaviors as binary do they connect you to god or do they separate you from god are they worship of god or are they worship of idols why are we doing that why are we trying to reduce everything in such a intense extreme black and white way because we know you have a trigger that will get triggered if you're threatened with the worship of idols if we can reduce all prohibitions to idol worship then we figure maybe you'll uh you'll get that adrenaline rush going even in situations that you normally would have discounted as minor infractions okay so then to understand properly how we can really assert that all mitzvahs are either the worship of god or god forbid the worship of idols we started in chapter one to talk about that the all of reality is nothing more than speech and just like speech has no real existence unto itself so to the worlds have no real existence unto themselves then in chapter 21 we said oh by the way you know that metaphor about the world being like hashem speech it's not even a good metaphor really because hashem is so categorically unique and uh really it's not even like that but it's even more so and whatever it was it was worth a shot okay it was an approximation anyways you know what that thing it's like that but but but it's not so that was uh where we left off with 21. the the point of 21 basically is not to like erase the point of 20. it's more to say look ultimately this is just a metaphor we're getting as close as we can get but we're never going to really understand divine oneness and again the point of these chapters is not a treatise on divine unity divine unity is a side point that's necessary in furthering the argument that one could view all sins as completely a complete radical disconnect god forbid from god uh as as severe as worshiping idols okay so there's either affirming god's unity or denying it those are the only two choices all right so now we're on chapter you're following this okay we're on chapter 22. we're again apologizing for the limitations of a metaphor toyota assumes the way of human speech and it refers to hashem's creative acts as speech he de buddhism just like human speech why leftish the truth is it is a pretty good metaphor for describing the descent and the drawing down of vitality to the lower realms through many and powerful contractions of the energy minimum sheinham various different kinds of contractions lee boris mayhem which ultimately yield all diverse different creations all the different varieties the whole cache has to upon now these concealments were so powerful these concealments these uh compressions of godly revelation were so powerful until it could actually yield impure things and what we call clipa remember we learned about clipper before in sitra remember these terms clippers clipper means the husk means the other side we're talking about evil that the concealment of god's light is so severe that not only hashem can create otherness which that itself is a feat or not real otherness but the appearance of otherness the hashem can create the phenomenon at least from our perspective that there is something other than him there's creation but even more so hashem can actually create the phenomenon of what we call evil which is a real trick because now he's creating something that appears to oppose him why would he do that i don't know and that is not the subject here why do bad things happen to good people and i told you last week after the class when no one was around now you're gonna get outed what chapter we're gonna talk about about things happen to good people yes say a number i bet you get it right 20 20 why what'd you say 26. pretty good should go to atlantic city with that okay you make more money at roulette what get the prize so remember lower lower lower right you're questioning this whole this whole the whole this whole manner of mapping higher and lower like if it's all hashem what's higher and what's lower so obviously it's not spatial right what well we are tomorrow tsum tsum yeah okay so here's the deal what if i would tell you you know i'm pretty impressed you guys are dealing with such a high level class and what if someone would say i don't know i thought it was street level in fact last week used to go upstairs at khabad this week you walked right in from central avenue maybe the class went down is that good yeah you like that i got that from the rambam rambam says that higher angels don't mean that they're standing there's higher like because there's no space but rather they have a greater understanding of hashem so what we're talking about higher and lower we're talking about degrees of revelation and concealment so the less concealed is the higher the more concealed is the lower is that something and the lowest concealment is that god would create something that appears to oppose him go ahead right and is that our doing or his doing do we create that we're at a lower level of concealment or does hashem make himself at a lower level of concealment so you're asking a question which is not the topic but i will answer you clearly hashem is the one who created physicality who took our souls and embodied them and all of the concealment that that entails however clearly through our moral choices we can exacerbate that situation but that's not the point here it's not the point here okay no concealment just the essence of god as it was prior to any contraction that that's no concealment and that's where your soul wants to be your soul doesn't even want to be in heaven because heaven is already a degree of concealment because it's already a a form it's a level it wants to go pre-level your soul wants to go before there's any levels even gonaden is a concealment angels are on different levels everything's on different levels levels means a level of concealment so an angel could be shorter than another angel height wise but have greater understanding of hashem and be a higher level you're spiritually shorter yeah not physically yeah yeah it's like saying a heavy idea well how much does it weigh okay anyway so hashem creates with with these tsimsumum he he goes as far as to create that which appears to oppose the military and they received their life force from him where else do they get it from you think there's a separate source of life for evil is similar to another word in the holy tongue back so these are the back the back entities what does it mean there are from the back computer i am from the back of the menace and devil is saying like somebody gives something to his enemy begrudgingly he throws it over his shoulder to him because he doesn't want to face him because he hates him how do we attract the evil what what don't worry about it it'll happen ok so to above here talk about spatial metaphors forward facing what does it mean forward facing when we say hashem is forward-facing that means puni means the face it also has ponemias which means inwardness it means when he's giving to whatever he's giving to he's doing it from an inner will to do so allah but impurity and the other side hashem hates it it's an abomination it's like somebody tosses something behind his shoulder over the back to someone who he hates rocky de la honda by contrast reward the righteous who subjugate the evil so what are we describing we're describing two levels of will does hashem want there to be evil i guess so i guess so you know what the biggest proof is that there is however there are degrees of desire do you really really really want to pay your electric bill no no but you have to do it so you do it what can you do do you really want to feed the meter but that's for the good i will get it that's for an apparent good well this is also he says for an apparent good that this creates reward and punishment which is integral to the system so it has a purpose but that's the point but that's but that's the po we're not going to get to do we're not going to get sidetracked into a philosophical discussion about why evil is necessary in hashem system what we're understanding here what's important to understand is that nothing's happening without his will however there are degrees of will so there's that which he really wants and that which technically if we could figure out a way to avoid this whole thing i would rather just skip it so evil only exists in order to reach something that he really wants and by the way it's not even just one two like that sometimes there are multiple steps so it's not that i want this thing that i'm about to do i'm not setting the alarm because that's my deepest desire setting my alarm so i can wake up but even waking up at a certain time isn't my deepest desire so i can be on time for work but even being on time for work is not my deepest desire so i can get my paycheck and even my paycheck's not my deepest desire so i can support my family and you go on and on and on and on until you get to that thing that you really want so if you ask does hashem want everything that he created yes or he wouldn't create it but there are degrees to which he wants it yeah he hates to it evil as lord does not mean real good then then why does it have to face it well he does hate it and if he could avoid it he would love to avoid it and ultimately when meshiach comes and the the goal will be finished the process will have culminated it will be gone the evil will be gone because it was never the point all along was only there to serve a purpose now it's served its purpose it's word gone hate in the in the time is it like he hates yeah yeah i have a hard time well this is an opportunity to expand your cognitive vistas that yes there is a concept and it's no paradox whatsoever we're explaining it pretty clearly that hashem can want to create something which he hates but we do things that we hate all the time and so to speak by choosing the particular project that he has chosen which he was not forced to choose he completely chose it on his own but he did decide that he wants a project called create a world that is the ultimate concealment not only is it physical but it's physical and potentially immoral and in that world i want there to ultimately be more godliness than in the highest heavens so no one forced him to pick that project but once he picked that project there are certain limitations of how that project will actually take place he created those limitations yes he did create those limitations he's not you're correct he's not bound by anything outside of him god forbid you're correct but this is what he chose he chose the ultimate the ultimate pleasure which is the transformation of darkness into light and bitterness into sweet that's what he chose to be the ultimate pleasure so part of that process necessitates the existence of evil but this is not the place in tanya for a discussion of what are we supposed to do how can we live in a world how can we live happily in a world where there is apparent evil the point here remember is to help us grasp the idea of all mitzvahs either being an affirmation of god's oneness or a denial thereof god forbid so he's explaining to us hashem created various degrees of concealment and he went so far as to conceal himself so much that he could even create that which appears antithetical to him or in opposition to him that is called the back of hashem's will that's called the back again metaphorically like a person who i'll give it to you but i'm not even going to look you in the eye because i hate you i'm going to throw it over my shoulder there take it i hope you choke on it okay now really hashem's innermost will is the real vitality that enlivens all of the worlds the the bad guys do not have access to that real energy even the back stuff that they get it doesn't invest itself in them meaning it's not a match it's not a fit it's not compatible energy for hamila they they sort of they get it in a it's called makif even even the the back door black market stuff that they get even when they get it they can't they can't internalize it so to speak because it's holy and they're unholy it's not it's not compatible with them so what do they do and again these are spatial metaphors please please think abstractly here but we're using a spatial metaphor of rather than taking the energy in they sort of just allow themselves to like bathe in the energy and that's how they get enough vitality to live it's like a frankenstein's monster it's not really alive it's being take it enlivened in we're talking about the evil stuff itself it's not alive it's being enlivened in fact because of its evil it's incompatible with life it's all frankenstein's monster the evil is all frankenstein's monster it's not alive only holiness is life and therefore living but it's being enlivened and even the vitality that it's getting is incompatible with it to the extent that it cannot become one with its vitality you following what we're saying my brain hurts right now on the other side um electronic having a battery inside as opposed to the one you have to plot it's not inside of it it has to plug into something like the robots that can talk and you think it's human and it uses those words but it's not really a human rights oh wow okay so i'll give you a definitely uh give you a credit for that in chapter two very good in chapter two it mentioned that we receive a certain connection with hashem through our relationship with the tsadik and it said even those who rebel against the tsaddik they're gonna still receive the vitality they'll just receive it from from behind the back very good very good you're connecting that to that yeah but that's the that's the metaphoric language that tanya uses that sid this uses to describe the transmission of vitality to that which ostensibly is undeserving or or it's a way of of visualizing this this uh perceived contradiction like hashem wants it then it's not bad no no it's bad oh so then why would he want it and the answer is well it serves a purpose for now and as long as it serves a purpose it's going to be around but ultimately when it will have served its entire purpose it'll be gone so even now when it's being enlivened it's just being propped up it's not compatible with life itself it'll never become truly living and it's being propped up for for a for a very specific agenda that that's all we're saying please don't try to grapple with your emotional struggles about the problem of evil in the world because this is not the place in tiny that deals with that as we mentioned earlier chapter 26 we'll deal with that right now we're only talking about this to help us visualize divine unity which we're trying to understand what is the opposite what is the op opposite perspective from divine unity so we're we're on our way to understanding that okay let's keep talking kahi that's why the bad stuff is called the place of death because it's it doesn't really have vitality is the evil is is leeching is siphoning from the back as we said before energy from holiness and the energy that's getting is called exiled it's exiled it's not the holy energy is not at home within this evil stuff it's being hijacked it's being hijacked it's being misappropriated that's why these negative energies are called other gods or the gods of the they constitute denial of the oneness of the king of all kings the holy one blessed be he that's why they have an idolatrous name alekhi mahadam is an idolatrous name other gods which obviously they're not real gods but that's the name there is to bring out that they are idolatrous since the energy that they're getting the holy energy what other kind of energy is there the holy energy that they're getting is uh is in gallus is exiled within them so they're not battled they're not surrendered to the holiness remember we learned about that in chapter six that holiness is surrendered to hashem they are not surrendered they are not surrendered to the country not only are they not surrendered they lift themselves aloft like an eagle saying i exist and nothing else the river is mine and i made myself that's what pharaoh said he said i made myself i'm a self-made man that's why our sages said that arrogance is literally idol worship now here's the salient point the world view of negativity we're talking about spiritual negativity we're talking about the the spiritual source of negativity itself our entities which are completely dependent on god for their existence like everything is and yet and and and are arrogant enough to think that they are ontologically independent which is an absurdity they think they have their own existence when they're siphoning and leeching hijacked energy from hashem who is begrudgingly allowing this whole thing to happen for an ulterior motive of his own and they take that they misinterpret that i'm talking about these spiritual entities called al-aqimahirim they misinterpret that as if they have some type of existence unto themselves which is an absurdity and that's why we say arrogance is idolatry arrogance is the false notion that i have my own existence even if i admit that god is a greater existence than my existence but the very notion that i have some type of existence unto myself which is an absurdity as i have kept uh saying um that it's it's that's idol worship i mean if we don't have any thing but hashem where does the free will come in the the the you should be asking the opposite question okay that's good no because he's explaining here very well how free will exists because because of the uh this intense uh concealment obviously allows for an illusion of of independence he's not saying that it's a complete delusion that somebody would think that they are ontologically independent he explains very well where that impression comes from he just says that if you're at all intelligent and intellectually honest you will realize it's an impossibility so the the illusion we get just don't be deluded by it yeah i'm having a hard time reconciling this thing with the evil in the back because when i think of the back i think of the spine which holds up the front and the back so how can i tell me when you're finished yeah i'm always how did that feel did that feel like i was paying attention to you i'm used to it turning your back on someone turning your back on someone now i'm looking here though turning your back on someone is a sign that short of walking out of the room i'm giving you as the minimal amount of energy that i can give you go ahead keep talking keep talking go ahead keep talking let's unpack that so there are things hashem creates and he's like here have some energy have some energy that's what he likes then there are things he creates he's like yeah take it take it he turns his back on the evil not on you when you're being subjected to the evil look evil doesn't have life how can it exist it has to get its life from somewhere so it's basically hashem sets up the situation where he knows these guys have their rv parked in his backyard and they're running wires to his meter and yeah the main line and they're they're stealing electricity and he's letting it happen and he has to pretend he doesn't see it because really it's not supposed to be but it's part of the plan so he's begrudgingly allowing the whole thing okay vlog number we said the number this is this is the most important part of the chapter arrogance is idol worship ki ikeda what is idolatry at its root humashanesh of la david before is just a belief that one has existence separate from hashem nifrid magnus shall make him separate from the oneness separate from the holiness of hashem the like fear of about shameless it doesn't mean atheism is like it says in gemada that the idol worshipers refer to god as the god of the gods the head of the pantheon idol worship is not atheism and truth is atheism is not even atheism according to our definition because theism at least the very liberal definition of theism for the purposes of our argument here is the belief that anything has existence so if you believe that anything other than hashem is ontologically independent has some existence for itself even if you concede that hashem is the source of all other existences and is great and whose existence is greater than all other existences that is called idol worship idol worship doesn't mean the denial that that god exists it simply means the denial that god is the only existence and that's why arrogance is idolatrous because arrogance is the belief in one's own existence which is not true i don't have my own existence i am and everything else is an extension of hashem's one true existence how are we doing with this conceptually okay yeah arrogance here does not mean being a hot shot arrogance means that you think that you exist in some type of autonomous way so even if you say i'm a loser no one likes me i'm never good at anything but i do exist and i'm not dependent on another force for my continued existence that's called arrogance so it's like saying you know someone's at work and it says someone has mentioned he says this is what i know they can do right something like that he says what you know i remember having a conversation with someone about politics and i mentioned to some [Music] oh this has nothing to do with hashem this is politics right yeah yeah because to say anything has nothing to do with hashem oh really has nothing to do with hashem then how does it exist now most people today are materialists so that's not a question they can even handle it would take probably an hour for you to explain why that's even a question because the prevalent world view today is materialism which is that all reality can be reduced to matter so they'll just tell you it's just there and they won't understand the philosophical absurdity of that they'll say it's just there okay so what is it in truth what is the opposite of arrogance what is the truth what is the truth okay we're going to get to that but when someone asks for the truth i don't want to push them off the truth is ain't novada there's nothing but him that even when you perceive otherness meaning creation in addition to creator or even aspects of creation which appear antithetical or even oppositional to the will of the creator what we refer to as evil you must realize that that is an illusion that really there's only one existence now we're not god forbid implying moral ambiguity that it's all good no we said he hates it we said it's evil that he hates but but even the evil that he hates is ontologically dependent upon him it doesn't have its own existence nothing has its own existence or are we god it's an interesting question how to phrase it do you say we're all an extension we and everything else are extensions of god you say we and everything else are god well you know that's it's always tricky when you get into these simplifications you don't want to over simplify and of course there's this concept of symptom which we've been speaking about okay so remember the point though i like to keep everyone focused on the point the point here is not a deep treatise about the nature of divine unity that's not the point here the point is to get us to a clear place of approaching divine morality or the torah morality as either the affirmation all mitzvahs either being the affirmation of god's oneness or the denial thereof so what we've just said or what we're setting up the assertion for is that belief that you have independent existence is itself denial of god's oneness don't say oh no i believe that god exists of course god exists and he's a greater existence than all of ours and he's a categorically different existence than all of ours but i also have an existence that is idolatry because in our world view idolatry isn't just the belief that there are other gods like uh that uh can rival god or uh or or or even gods that are so or even even gods even deities our our threshold for idolatry is is very very low once you assert that any entity has some type of ontological independence that itself is antithetical to the true oneness or everythingness of god how can he be all existence and the only existence while you're attributing existence to something else okay let's let's finish off the chapter here elisha matsumila yeshvadav these idolatrous entities they see themselves as existing freedoms when they when they perceive themselves as separate from his holiness that's how um that that's what makes them idolatrous and and they perceive themselves as separate because they're not surrendered they're not surrendered to him as we mentioned earlier in chapter 6 holiness only rests on that which is surrendered to it that's why in the zayhar it refers to negative spiritual energies or these idolatrous entities it refers to them as toure de prude that's aramaic zohar is in aramaic toure is plural mountains pluto means separation mountains of separation peaks of separation imagine you go out and you look at a plane it's just flat land it's almost looks like the sea i heard when lewis and clark got to the other side of the mississippi and they saw the great plains they said it's like an ocean made out of grass so i don't know if any of us have ever seen untainted nature like that have you ever been standing in the middle of a plane where there's no obstruction as far as i can the eye can see no man-made structures you just look you ever seen this what the desert you can get that yeah yeah you can get a similar thing in the desert um if it's a flat desert yeah it's just flat flat flat flat uniform uniform homogeny so mountains represent like these breaks in the in the topography boom there's a peak and there's a peak and and they have like separate identities they have names each summit has its own name right this mountain and that mountain um so negativity is called turi de prudha there are these mountain peaks that poke up in other words it there they give this illusion of a disruption in the in the unity and you know what he says this is denial of hashem's true oneness because the truth is everything before him is insignificant everything is truly nullified before him and his will is his will which is that which enlivens and gives existence to all of them on a constant basis so what we've done here is we've established a very low threshold for idolatrous belief what we've said is idolatry doesn't even have to be serving idols it doesn't even have to be classical idols in the real you know polytheistic pagan sense idolatry can merely mean a worldview in which there are existences other than hashem and if you really want to go where i didn't want to go before about you know the problem of evil and uh you know the devil made me do it and all that kind of stuff if you say that evil exists separately from god precisely because it's so evil i don't want it to be part of god's system so i sort of brand it as being its own its own thing its own entity its own reality well what do you think that is available in such a bleak picture of reality what is wasn't it originally what was supposed to be separate and identifiable not mixed in yet and the sin of the tree of knowledge got it all mixed together so you broke the yolk i wanted a sunny side up and you made it scrambled you ever seen a toddler cry when you turn sunny side up into scramble that's what happened now go put it back i am fixated on free will why you fix that in free will it's not about free will don't worry about free will not because that's not the point here wrap your head around one concept this is all that matters in this chapter we have we have set forth a very radical definition of idol worship we all know that idol worship is a sin in fact we know it's a big sin in fact we probably all know it's the biggest sin but we assumed that idol worship looked one way and now we're finding out that it looks another way and that certain suppositions about the nature of reality that are easy to slip into that those are idolatrous now why are we why are we concerned with this right now again i want to remind you the point because we need to get ourselves to recoil from moral dilemmas that right now we're not recoiling from but once we identify what the stakes are this isn't a little sin this is idolatry mamish this is literal idol worship once we identify any break from god's will any diversion from god's will as literal idol worship oh what's gonna happen we're wired for this we're gonna have an intense reaction oh no get me away from the idol worship so again this is not the regular way we go about our lives looking at every deviation from the exact letter of the law as literal idol worship but for the purposes of this tool it's quite effective in triggering an intense reaction which is what we're trying to do here okay you're getting another question and and it's it's very interesting to me that in this generation people are really interested in the emotional implications of this discussion like okay what do we do now how do we how do we deal with this evil and it's interesting because and i keep on it's very tempting by the way to go into this discussion because i see how earnestly everyone's asking it and i and i see that it's something that everyone really wants to talk about and needs to talk about and i'm not allowing the conversation to go there because well two reasons one is i want you to have the satisfaction of getting through chapters 18 through 25 properly so i want you to have that accomplishment but also we are going to deal with this question we are going in the appropriate place but right now the alta dev is not expecting you to have an emotional reaction to the subject matter he's just expecting you to absorb it on a philosophical level so that you can reframe the way that you view moral dilemmas okay all righty