Chapter 39: Where a Mitzvah Goes: Love, Fear and the Worlds

For the same reason the angels are named chayot (living creatures) and behemot (beasts), as the verse says, “The face of a lion to the right… and the face of an ox to the left…” (Ezekiel 1:10). They cannot choose; their awe and love come to them by nature, as the Raaya Mehemna on Parashat Pinchas puts it. This is why tzaddikim stand above them: the souls of tzaddikim dwell in Beriah, whereas the angels dwell in Yetzirah.

Note: This speaks of the angels in general. There are, however, loftier angels in Beriah whose service flows from awe and love rooted in understanding. The Raaya Mehemna there distinguishes two sorts of holy chayot, those whose feeling is natural and those whose feeling is intellectual, and Etz Chaim says the same.

Here is what separates the two worlds. In Yetzirah, what shines of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is only His middot (emotional attributes): love for Him, awe and dread of Him, and the rest. So the Tikkunim (Tikkun 7) and Etz Chaim (Seder ABYA, ch. 3) teach: the six sefirot make their “nest” in Yetzirah.

That is why the angels, ceaselessly, by day and by night, occupy themselves with trembling and awe… this is the entire host of Gavriel, on the left side, while the host of Michael serves through love… (Zohar III:118b; Tikkunei Zohar 70). In Beriah, by contrast, what shines of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is His chochmah, binah and daat (wisdom, understanding and knowledge). These are where the middot spring from, their “mother” and root. As the Tikkunim say, the “higher mother” (binah) nests in the three sefirot of the Throne, and the Throne is the world of Beriah.

So Beriah is home to the souls of those tzaddikim whose awe and love of G‑d come from grasping and knowing how great the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is. Such love is termed re’uta d’liba, “the heart’s longing” (see chapter 17). Out of that longing a garment is woven for the soul in Beriah, which is the Upper Gan Eden, as will be explained further on and as the Zohar writes on Parashat Vayakhel.

This holds, though, only for true neshamot (the soul’s higher level), which correspond to mochin d’gadlut (“mature intellect”) of the Ein Sof, blessed be He. The ruach of the tzaddikim, and every other Jewish soul that served G‑d with the awe and love lying hidden in every Jewish heart, reach Beriah only on Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh. They climb by the column that joins the Lower Gan Eden to the Upper one, the world of Beriah, called the Upper Gan Eden, and there they take delight in G‑d and bask in the glow of the Shechinah. A created intellect can only delight in what it knows and comprehends: whatever its mind can take in of the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, by way of His wisdom and understanding, which shine in Beriah.

And why are these souls privileged to stand above the angels, when their own service drew only on inborn awe and love? Because that awe and love overpowered the sitra achra that was lodged in their bodies, both in “shunning evil”, by bending and crushing their cravings, and in “doing good”, as shown earlier (end of ch. 38; see ch. 16). Evil, G‑d forbid, was open to them, and they chose good instead, overpowering the sitra achra and thereby lifting up the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He… “as light has the edge [when it comes out of darkness]” (Ecclesiastes 2:13), as explained earlier (ch. 27).

All of this, though, describes only where the souls dwell and where they stand. Their Torah and service themselves are taken up into the ten sefirot, which are G‑dliness and with which the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is perfectly one. Awe and love born of understanding carry them into the ten sefirot of Beriah; inborn awe and love, into the ten sefirot of Yetzirah. Within these the ten sefirot of Atzilut are vested and wholly fused with them, and the ten sefirot of Atzilut are wholly fused with their Emanator, the Ein Sof, blessed be He.

The souls themselves are not taken up into the G‑dliness of the ten sefirot. They remain in the heichalot (chambers) and dwellings of Beriah or Yetzirah, basking in the glow of the Shechinah, which is the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, made one with the ten sefirot of Beriah or Yetzirah. And that glow is the shining of their very own Torah and service (see Zohar, Vayakhel, p. 210), since “a mitzvah’s reward is the mitzvah” (Avot 4:2).

Atzilut, on the other hand, lies beyond anything a created intellect can know, grasp or comprehend. There the chochmah, binah and daat of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, are one with Him in an absolute union, profound and wondrous, beyond all measure loftier, in degree and in nature, than in Beriah. In Beriah they have descended, by way of tzimtzum (contraction), to shine in a manner that created minds can take in chabad (chochmah, binah and daat) from them: knowing G‑d and comprehending and grasping something of the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, to the extent that a bounded, finite created intellect is able, without melting away and ceasing entirely to be a creature, swallowed back into its origin and root, which is G‑dliness itself.

It is this tzimtzum that brings about the glow of the chabad of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, shining upon the souls in Beriah.

Atzilut is otherwise: there they have not been narrowed down so far, and created minds therefore cannot reach them. Hence “no thought grasps” anything there whatsoever.

So Atzilut is where the greatest tzaddikim dwell, those whose service soared far beyond even awe and love drawn from understanding and knowing His greatness, just as Atzilut soars beyond what a created intellect can understand and know. Their service was in truth that of a merkavah (“chariot”) for the Ein Sof, blessed be He: their very being was cancelled before Him and dissolved in His light, they and all that was theirs, by way of fulfilling the Torah and its mitzvot. This is what was said of the Patriarchs, that they were the true “chariot”, since this was their service every day of their lives.

Someone whose soul has too narrow a root to sustain so total a service, to be cancelled and dissolved in His light without pause, reaches it only at certain moments, moments of Divine favor: in the Amidah, which corresponds to Atzilut, and above all in bowing, which is itself the level of Atzilut (so Pri Etz Chaim, on the prayer that welcomes Shabbat), because bowing means effacing oneself in His light and counting oneself as utterly nothing before Him. The real dwelling of such a soul is Beriah. [Only at certain moments, moments of favor, does it rise to Atzilut, by way of mayin nukvin (“feminine waters”), as Kabbalists know.]

“A mitzvah’s reward is the mitzvah” teaches that the reward tells us what the mitzvah is and how high it stands. Hidden matters, though, are not our affair; they belong to the great tzaddikim who are a “chariot”. Our concern is what is “revealed to us”, and this everyone ought to strive for: to understand plainly what service is, and where it stands, when it comes with awe and love open in the heart, born of grasping and knowing the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, which reaches the ten sefirot of Beriah; and when it comes with inborn awe and love held in the mind, which reaches the ten sefirot of Yetzirah.

But service that lacks awe and love even in the mind, where the inborn love concealed in the heart has not been stirred and drawn out of its hiding place into, at the very least, the mind’s thought and the heart’s inward recesses, so that it lies hidden exactly as it did from birth and exactly as it lay before the service began: such service remains below, in the world of separateness, which is called the exterior of the worlds. It lacks the strength to ascend and be taken into His unity in the ten holy sefirot. As the Tikkunim say (Tikkunei Zohar 10): “Without awe and love it cannot fly upward, ascend and stand before G‑d.”

This applies even when the service is not actually shelo lishmah (not for its own sake), done out of some self-interest, G‑d forbid. It applies even to service of the kind described in “Their fear of Me is a human precept, learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13): mere habit, ingrained since childhood because father and teacher trained him to fear and serve G‑d, but not genuinely done for G‑d’s sake. Genuinely for G‑d’s sake cannot happen unless at least the inborn awe and love are awakened and drawn out of the heart’s hiding place into the mind’s thought and the heart’s inward recesses, at the very least. A person does nothing for a friend, to do as the friend wishes, without either loving or fearing him; in the same way no one can truly act for His Name, to do His will, without calling to mind and awakening at least some love or awe of Him in mind and thought and in the heart’s inward recesses.

And love on its own, without at least the lower awe (yirah tata’ah) concealed in every Jewish heart, does not earn the name “service”, as chapter 41 will explain.

When, however, someone studies truly shelo lishmah, from self-interest, for the sake of his own prestige, say to be known as a scholar and so on, that motive, which stems from kelipat nogah, wraps itself around his Torah. His Torah is then exiled for a while within the kelipah, until he repents; for teshuvah “heals the world” (Yoma 86b). When he turns back to G‑d, his Torah turns back together with him.

This is why the Sages said, “One should always engage [in Torah and mitzvot, even shelo lishmah], since out of shelo lishmah comes lishmah” (Pesachim 50b; Nazir 23b). They stated it as a sure thing, because in the end he is certain to repent, in this gilgul (lifetime) or another, “for none who are cast away remain banished from Him” (II Samuel 14:14).

If, though, he studies with no intent at all, neither lishmah nor shelo lishmah, nothing hinges on teshuvah. The moment he goes over that same material again lishmah, even what he learned without intent joins and fuses with the new study and ascends on high, for it was never wrapped in kelipat nogah. Hence “one should always engage…”

Prayer without kavanah (focused intention) works the same way, as the Zohar explains.