Chapter 19: The Candle of G‑d: What the Hidden Love Really Wants

To explain further, we need to explain well the verse “The candle of G‑d is the soul of man” (Mishlei 20:27).

Put simply: Jewish souls, which are called “man” (Yevamos 61a), can be likened to a candle flame, whose nature is to keep straining upward. Fire’s light naturally seeks to break away from the wick and join its source above, the general element of fire under the lunar sphere, as Etz Chaim describes.

It would go out by doing so and shine nowhere down here, and even up in its source its light would cease to exist as anything separate; yet this is what its nature craves.

The same holds for the neshamah of “man”, and for the ruach and nefesh as well: by nature it yearns and pines to break free of the body and depart from it, and to fuse with its root and origin in G‑d, the Life of all that lives, blessed is He. It wants this even though, once there, it would be utterly nothing, its existence fully dissolved, with not a trace remaining of what it had been in itself. Even so, this is what its nature wants and craves.

“Nature” is used here loosely, for whatever lies outside reason and understanding.

Here too, the point is that this yearning of the soul does not belong to the domain of reasoned, knowable thought that the mind can take hold of. It lies higher than knowledge and than any intellect the mind can grasp. It belongs to chochmah, the soul’s faculty that houses the Infinite light, blessed is He.

Indeed, this holds as a rule for the entire side of holiness: only what flows from chochmah, called “the supreme holiness” (kodesh ha’elyon), is holy. Its existence dissolves within the Infinite light, blessed is He, that is vested in it, and it is no independent thing, as explained above [chapter 6]. Hence its name koach mah [“the power of ‘what?’”].

Kelipah and sitra achra are the very reverse. From them come the souls of the nations, who act for their own sake and say “Give, give!” (Mishlei 30:15) and “Let me gulp some down!” (Bereishis 25:30), so as to be a separate thing in their own right, as said above, which is the reverse of chochmah. That is why they are termed “dead” (Berachos 18b), since “Wisdom keeps alive” (Koheles 7:12), and Scripture says, “They perish, and without wisdom” (Iyov 4:21). The same applies to wicked and sinful Jews until the moment they face a test of sanctifying G‑d’s Name. For in their bodies the chochmah of the G‑dly soul, together with the spark of G‑dliness from the Infinite light, blessed is He, that resides in it, lives as an exile: inside the animal soul, which comes from kelipah and sits in the heart’s left chamber, ruling and governing their body. This is the inner meaning of the Shechinah in exile, discussed above [chapter 17].

So this love of the G‑dly soul, which wants and yearns to cling to G‑d, the Life of all that lives, blessed is He, gets the name “hidden love”. In sinful Jews it lies concealed, wrapped in kelipah’s coarse sackcloth, and out of that wrapping a foolish spirit gets into them and leads them into sin; in the words of our Sages, “No one commits a sin unless a spirit of folly has come into him” (Sotah 3a).

Yet chochmah is in exile only in the part of it that flows out into the entire soul to animate it. Its root and core in the G‑dly soul stays in the brain, and does not truly go into exile wrapped in kelipah’s sackcloth in the heart’s left chamber. In the wicked it merely slumbers, doing nothing for them so long as their mind and intellect are absorbed in worldly cravings.

But once they are tested on a question of faith, which transcends knowledge and touches the soul at its chochmah, it rouses itself from sleep and goes to work through the G‑dly power vested in it, as Scripture says, “Then the L‑rd stirred as from sleep” (Tehillim 78:65). [It enables him] to hold firm in faith in G‑d when tested, with no logic, knowledge or understanding he can lay hold of; to master the kelipos and the worldly pleasures, allowed and forbidden alike, that were his habit, and even to find them repulsive; and to take G‑d as his share and his destiny, surrendering his life to Him to sanctify His Name.

All his life the kelipos may have had the upper hand and he could not resist them; as our Sages put it, “The wicked are controlled by their hearts” (Bereishis Rabbah 34:11). Still, once he is tested over faith in the One G‑d, a faith rooted in “the heights of holiness”, that is, in the chochmah of the G‑dly soul where the Infinite light, blessed is He, is vested, every kelipah is cancelled and voided, truly as though it had never existed, in G‑d’s presence. So Scripture says: “Before Him all nations are like nothing” (Yeshayahu 40:17); “For see, Your foes, O L‑rd, see, Your foes will be destroyed, [all who do evil] will be dispersed” (Tehillim 92:10); “Like wax melting at the fire, [the wicked] will be destroyed” (Tehillim 68:3); and “Mountains dissolved like wax” (Tehillim 97:5).

Now the G‑dly light of the Ein Sof, blessed is He, that resides in the soul’s chochmah has such immense strength that it chases off and pushes back the sitra achra and the kelipos, until they cannot come near even its garments: thinking, speaking and acting in faith in the One G‑d. That is, [it gives a person the strength] to pass the test and surrender his life rather than perform even a single act that contradicts faith in the One G‑d, such as bowing down to an idol while not believing in it at all inwardly; and likewise to refuse to utter any lie, G‑d forbid, about G‑d’s oneness, even when his mouth would not be speaking for his heart and his heart stays fully faithful to G‑d.

This is called “fear contained in love” (dechilu hanichlal birechimu). It is the natural love in the G‑dly soul of every Jew, which wants and craves by nature to cling to its root and origin, the Infinite light, blessed is He. Out of this love and this desire it naturally dreads and shrinks from touching even the fringe of idolatry’s impurity, G‑d forbid, which denies faith in the One G‑d, even in its outer garments of speech or deed, with no belief in the heart whatever.