Chapter 33: The Joy of G‑d’s True Unity

Chapter 31 began to show how a person can rise above sadness to joy, through the soul’s joy in Torah and mitzvos. Chapter 33 adds another way. It is meant especially for “set times”, when a person sees that his soul has grown dull and needs to be cleaned and lit up again. One way to understand this: not a particular pain, but the tiredness that daily routine leaves behind.

The remedy is to picture G‑d’s true unity clearly. That means more than “one G‑d and not many”. It means He is the only true existence. Before creation, obviously, nothing existed but Him. The bold claim is that here and now, in the very space where heaven and earth stand, it is still the same, “without any change at all.”

Two pictures, reviewed briefly from chapters 20 and 21. The first is from our own soul. What a person understands and feels has no words: you think in a language, but you do not love in one. Words begin in thought. Before that they are present only as the feeling’s power to be expressed, with no identity of their own. A mashal: someone who loves you says “I love you”, and you stop to ask how to spell “love”. The spelling is there, but it is beside the point.

When we speak, our words leave us and take on a life of their own. G‑d’s words, which created the world, have nowhere to go, because there is no place without Him. So even after He “spoke”, His words are like ours before we speak: in their source, with no existence of their own.

The second picture is the sun. Inside the sun its light is strongest, yet there one sees only the sun. Compare the saying “What use is a candle in daylight?” The candle still shines, but beside the day it no longer counts as a light. So too the sun’s rays within the sun, and even more so, because there they are in their own source. None of this makes the world an illusion. G‑d truly created it. But before its Source, its existence counts as nothing.

Deep, unhurried contemplation turns into joy with the whole heart, soul and might. Earlier we were asked to understand G‑d’s unity; now it is called “this faith”. Why faith? A few answers are offered: the analogies only work once we accept that the world came from G‑d’s word; every Jew already believes this deep down; or G‑d’s unity lies beyond the mind, which can only point us toward it.

Why such joy? Because this awareness is itself closeness to G‑d. No one has to travel to heaven to reach Him. He is here.

This is also why the world was created: to be a “dwelling place below”. But if G‑d already fills everything, what is there left to build? A home is where someone is fully himself and on view. When G‑d’s oneness shows in a person’s mind and heart, the world becomes His home.

Every detail adds to the picture. The man is ordinary, even humble. A king draws him near. The king does not merely drop by; he stays over, and then makes his home there. And the commoner does not move into the palace. The king moves into the commoner’s house.

If that would set a person dancing, how much more when the King of kings dwells with us. The verse says no one would dare approach G‑d on his own. Yet through this awareness, and by setting himself aside before G‑d, a person does draw near, and G‑d makes His home with him and in him.

Every morning, before the Shema, we say “How beautiful is our heritage.” A fortune a person works for is a joy, but he feels he earned it. An inheritance arrives without effort. That is part of its sweetness.

Our heritage is exactly the truth of this chapter: even down here there is nothing besides Him, and this is His home below. No one could win this awareness by his own efforts alone. It was handed to us by our fathers. So the joy does not wait for a person’s spiritual achievements. It is his already, simply because he is an heir.

This does not make the other mitzvos less important. Faith is the foundation through which a person comes to keep all of them.

How? Imagine having just one mitzvah in the world. You would put your whole heart into it. When a person rejoices in his faith in G‑d’s oneness like that, the joy itself turns into strength. His soul rises past every obstacle: within, the animal soul, and without, his surroundings. And really, what can block G‑d’s will when nothing exists apart from Him?

“Will live” means more than staying alive. A tired soul is like one that has died, and this joy brings it back, fresh as if newly born.

Then the joy doubles. First, the soul’s own joy: G‑d is close and dwells with me. Second, joy in G‑d’s joy. The kelipos, the “shells” that hide G‑dliness, darken this world until the end of days, when G‑d will remove all impurity and all flesh, not only the mind, will see His glory. Until then, whenever a person truly lives with G‑d’s unity, the sitra achra, “the other side”, is subdued and a little darkness becomes light. That gives G‑d great gratification, and the person is happy because G‑d is happy, not only because of what he gains.

The Sages taught that the lands outside Israel are impure. The Alter Rebbe applies this to the thickness of the concealment there. And that is exactly why faith that shines there is so precious: light that breaks out of darkness has a quality that ordinary light lacks.

The same holds for a person’s own situation. The more lowly his position, the greater G‑d’s joy when he comes to an awareness of G‑d’s unity. No one is too far away for this.

The word for “Maker” shares its root with Asiyah, “action”, the lowest of the worlds. Every Jew should rejoice in G‑d’s joy over His home in this physical world.

Why the plural, “Makers”? Because ours is a world of many: countless separate beings, each living by G‑d’s power, each seeming to stand alone. It is a “public domain”, a domain of the many, and “mountains of separation”, things that stand apart and proud. Through faith in G‑d’s unity this very multiplicity becomes a “private domain”, the domain of the One. The more scattered the world was, the greater the joy when it comes together.