Chapter 18: The Hidden Love — and the Infinite in Every Jew’s Chochmah

Chapter 17 showed that anyone can reach love and fear of G‑d by thinking about His greatness, at least in the mind. That is “near”, but not “very near”. Contemplation needs knowledge, the ability to hold the mind on a subject, and a heart that responds, and some people have none of these through no fault of their own.

So the Alter Rebbe opens a different path. This person does not need to create a love. He already has one, hidden in his heart, inherited from the Avos, and he only has to remember it. Notice the strong words, “in his heart literally… in perfect truth”, which chapter 17 never used for the love the mind produces.

A simple picture shows the difference. You meet a friend you have not seen for twenty years, and your face lights up. That love was not made just now; it was there all along, hidden. Being asked to start loving a stranger is different: first you would have to get to know him and think about his good qualities. Chapter 17 is the stranger. Chapter 18 is the old friend.

Before using this love, the Alter Rebbe raises four questions: where it is rooted, what kind of love it is, how a love can be inherited, and how fear is part of it (the mitzvos include guarding against sin). This chapter explains its root and how it is inherited. Its nature and the place of fear come in the following chapters.

A chariot wants nothing for itself. It goes wherever its rider directs it. The Avos were like that toward G‑d. Every part of them did only what He wanted. Their love for G‑d was not one thing they did among others. It was what they were.

That is how it could be inherited. Children inherit traits, not their parents’ love for a particular person: a friendly father may have friendly children, but they will not automatically love his friends. Had the Avos only chosen to love G‑d, their children would at most inherit a good nature. But they had become a chariot, so their very identity was holy, and that passed to their children forever. We did not inherit a feeling. We inherited a soul, and loving G‑d is part of what that soul is.

Each soul comes from a particular sefirah (Divine attribute) in one of the four spiritual worlds. Which one depends on “his level”, the root of his soul, and on “his deeds”, his own work to refine himself, as the Zohar says: one who betters himself is given a higher soul.

Now the Alter Rebbe goes to the bottom. Asiyah is the lowest world and malchus the lowest sefirah in it. Malchus itself has a nefesh, ruach and neshamah, and nefesh is the lowest of them; and the soul drawn from there is itself only a nefesh. So this “nefesh of malchus of Asiyah’s nefesh” is the lowest soul there is. Yet even through the union of parents far from G‑d, at least this much is drawn down.

But in holiness nothing stands alone. Holiness is a domain of oneness, in which each level holds all the others within it. So even the lowest soul contains chochmah, and through a chain of levels it is joined to chochmah of Atzilus, where the Infinite light itself shines. The verses hint at this: “G‑d, with wisdom”, the Infinite is in chochmah; “founded the earth”, chochmah reaches malchus, called “earth”; “You made”, it reaches even Asiyah, the world of action.

The conclusion is the heart of the chapter. In every Jew, whoever he is, the Infinite light dwells in the chochmah of his soul, and from there it gives life to the whole soul, from its highest part to its lowest.

The Alter Rebbe himself set this short passage apart in parentheses. Sefer HaGilgulim, by Rabbi Chaim Vital, deals with the journeys of souls. The idea is explained this way. A soul held captive by the kelipos (the forces that hide G‑dliness) is released only when they let it go. With sinful parents they let it go willingly, hoping the child will follow them and sin, so that they can draw more life from his holy soul. But a lofty soul can overcome its upbringing and become a tzaddik. So, strangely, sinful parents can produce a tzaddik, and precisely because of their sins.

Why does the Infinite dwell in chochmah? Chochmah is the first flash of an idea, before it is worked out; binah develops it until it is understood in all its details. So this one faculty has two sides: it is above understanding, and it is also its source. Because it is above, it can receive the Infinite light. Because it is the source, it passes that light on to the whole soul.

Binah is the self at work: it grasps, holds and defines. Chochmah is the ability to set oneself aside and let in a truth beyond me. Its name says so: the power of “what is it?”, of what is not yet grasped.

G‑d cannot be grasped by any thought. This is not because our minds are too weak, as if a sharper mind could manage it. Understanding itself is not the kind of thing that can hold Him. So the Infinite cannot rest in the part of us that grasps. It rests in the part that receives: chochmah.

Since G‑d is reached through chochmah, a Jew’s faith does not depend on learning. The Alter Rebbe’s examples are the people who, in his day, were not given a formal Torah education; it is not a judgment of their ability. They believed as firmly as the scholars, because faith is not a weaker kind of knowing. It reaches what knowing cannot.

There is a faith below reason: believing something because one was told it, though reason could check it. That is what the verse calls simple-minded. Faith in G‑d is above reason. Before Him even the wisest are “simple”, because no mind can hold Him, so the only way to Him is faith.

The plain sense of the verse in Tehillim is “although I am like a beast, I am still with You”. The Alter Rebbe reads it “because”: precisely by not trying to hold G‑d with my mind, I am always with Him. “Always”, because mind and heart change from day to day, and a bond that does not rest on them does not change with them. So a question cannot shake it. Questions may come, and the mind and heart should come to understand and feel the truth too, but they are not the foundation.

Here is the proof that this love is real. One might expect people to give their lives only for what they lived for. Yet not only the pious chose torture and death rather than deny G‑d. Even those far from Torah and mitzvos did, people who had never thought much about G‑d.

They did not weigh the cost and the reward, and they did not reach a conclusion after thinking it through. Denying G‑d was simply impossible for them. It was not a philosophy they held. It was who they were.

The reason is the one this chapter has built: the One G‑d lives in the chochmah of every Jew’s soul and gives life to the whole of it. When that point is threatened, it comes out. The Alter Rebbe says “in most cases”: a person has free choice and can act even against his deepest nature.