Chapter 38: A Body and a Soul for Every Mitzvah

Everything said so far makes plain the reason behind the law, set down in the Talmud and the codes, that “thought does not count as speech” (Berachos 20b). If a person said the Shema silently, in thought and feeling alone, however intensely he concentrated, has not discharged his duty and has to say it again. The same goes for Grace after Meals, a Torah obligation, for the other blessings, which are rabbinic, and for prayer. Whereas if his lips formed the words while his heart wandered, his duty is done after the fact and he need not say them over, apart from the opening verse of the Shema and the first blessing of the Amidah. So the second chapter of Berachos opens: “Concentration is required up to this point; beyond it, what is required is reciting” (Berachos 13b), and so on.

The reason: the neshamah, the G‑dly soul, has nothing of its own to repair through the mitzvos. Its only task is to bring down light that repairs the animating soul and the body. It does so through the letters it pronounces with the mouth’s five organs of speech, and equally through the practical mitzvos it carries out with the body’s other limbs.

Still, the Sages taught: “Prayer, or any blessing, said with no kavanah resembles a body that has no soul” (cf. Shelah, Shaar HaOsiyos). What this means: every creature in this world consists of a body and a soul, as in “in His hand is the soul of all that lives and the spirit of every human body” (Job 12:10), and “all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life” (Genesis 7:22). G‑d “sustains them all” (Nehemiah 9:6), calling them into existence from nothing without pause by the light and vitality He gives them. Even the physical body, even stones and soil that are entirely lifeless, carry light and vitality from Him that keep them from lapsing back into the nothingness they came from. All the same, the light and vitality glowing in the body cannot be likened or compared in any way to the light and vitality glowing in the soul, the soul of every living thing.

Granted, as far as concealment of the Face is concerned, the light in both is identical, and so are the coverings in which it is hidden, veiled and wrapped. Both belong to this world, where the light and vitality issuing from His breath are hidden to the same degree everywhere. This comes about through the hiding of the Face and the step-by-step descent of the worlds, level below level, by way of many intense contractions (tzimtzumim), until the light wraps itself in kelipas nogah in order to sustain this entire physical world, all the permitted and clean things in it. By way of nogah and from it the unclean things too are sustained, since nogah is the intermediate level, as said earlier (chapter 7).

All the same, the radiance, that is, the stream of vitality G‑d sheds through this covering to keep [the creatures] alive, does not reach all of them with the same degree of contraction or expansion.

In the physical body and in the purely lifeless, stones and soil, the radiance is contracted to an extreme beyond compare; the vitality there is so slight that it lacks even the capacity to grow. In vegetation the contraction is much less severe.

Broadly, [everything] falls into four tiers: mineral, vegetable, animal and human (“the speaker”). These match the four letters of G‑d’s Name Havayah, the source of their vitality.

Between the radiance and vitality in mineral and plant on one hand, and the radiance and vitality in animal and human on the other, there is no likeness or comparison, though in every one of them, as regards concealment of the Face, the light is the same, wearing the same covering, the covering of nogah. In the very same way there is no likeness or comparison at all between two things. The first is the radiance of the Infinite light, the innermost core of His will, without any hiding of the Face or any covering whatever, which shines into and is invested in the practical mitzvos themselves, and also in mitzvos of speech, words uttered by the lips without kavanah, since that counts as a real deed, as said earlier. The second is the radiance of the Infinite light that shines into and is invested in the kavanah of the practical mitzvos, when a person means, in doing them, to attach himself to G‑d by carrying out His will, since He and His will are one.

The same is true of kavanah in prayer, in the Shema with its blessings and in other blessings: by concentrating on them he binds his thought and mind to G‑d.

The reason is not that binding one’s thought and mind to G‑d ranks higher in itself than the bond formed by actually doing the practical mitzvos, as later chapters will show. It is that this too is His will: that a person attach himself to Him with his intellect and thought, through kavanah in the practical mitzvos and kavanah in the Shema, prayer and blessings. And the radiance of the Supreme Will that glows within this kavanah is endlessly greater and loftier than the radiance of the Supreme Will that glows within the bare performance of the mitzvos, in deed and in speech, without kavanah. It resembles the advantage of the soul’s light over the body that holds and clothes it: in the same way the mitzvah’s physical performance is the container and covering of its kavanah.

Though in both, the mitzvah and its kavanah, it is a single Will that is invested, utterly simple, free of any change or plurality, Heaven forbid, and wholly one with His essence and being, the radiance still differs in its degree of contraction and expansion,

Note: Etz Chaim likewise explains that the kavanah of the mitzvos and of Torah learning belongs to the order of “light,” while the mitzvos themselves belong to the order of “vessels,” which are light in contracted form. It was by contracting the light that the vessels came to be, a principle familiar to students of Kabbalah.

and this as well falls into four tiers. The mitzvos’ “body” has two tiers: mitzvos done by actual deed, and mitzvos of speech and thought, such as Torah learning, the Shema, prayer, Grace after Meals and other blessings. The mitzvos’ kavanah, the wish to attach oneself to G‑d, which is to them as a soul is to a body, likewise has two tiers, matching the two kinds of soul found in physical bodies, that of an animal and that of a human being.

Take someone with enough mind to know G‑d and contemplate His greatness, and to draw out of that understanding an exalted awe in his brain and a love for G‑d in the right chamber of his heart, until his soul thirsts for G‑d and longs to attach itself to Him by keeping the Torah and mitzvos, which bring down the Infinite light and let it shine onto his soul so that he can attach himself to Him. If with that kavanah he learns and keeps the mitzvos, and with it he prays and blesses, then his kavanah resembles, as a parable, a human soul, which possesses intellect and free choice and speaks out of understanding.

Then there is someone whose grasp is too narrow to know and contemplate the greatness of the Infinite to the point of drawing from his understanding an open love in the heart, with awe in the mind and fear of G‑d in the heart. He can still call to mind and stir up the inborn love concealed in his heart. He brings it out from the heart’s hiding place at least into his conscious mind, so that his mind’s will, and the depths of his heart too, consent and desire, wholeheartedly and in all honesty, actually to surrender his life for G‑d’s Oneness, in order to bind his G‑dly soul and its garments to Him and merge them with His unity, that is, the Supreme Will invested in Torah learning and the mitzvos, as explained above. Within this [love] awe is included too: taking on His sovereignty and never rebelling against Him, Heaven forbid. If with this kavanah he avoids wrongdoing and does what is right, learns, prays and blesses, understanding just the simple sense of the words, with no open awe or love felt in heart or mind, then this kavanah resembles, as a parable, an animal soul. An animal has neither intellect nor free choice; what it feels, its fear of what can hurt it and its liking for what is pleasant, comes from instinct, not from understanding or knowledge. The same holds, by way of illustration, for the inborn love and awe lying hidden in every Jewish heart: we inherited them from our forefathers, and they are a kind of second nature to our souls, as said earlier (chapters 18–19).