Chapter 53: The Shechinah’s Home Today, and the Wick That Holds the Flame

Chapters 51 and 52 explained that the Shechinah is the side of G‑d that the worlds can perceive, the “revealed light” of the Ein Sof, called malchus of Atzilus. In every world it rests in that world’s “Holy of Holies,” its chochmah, binah and daas, which is the Torah of that world, and from there it gives life to the whole world. Now the Alter Rebbe comes down to our physical world.

His claim is surprising: in the First Temple, here on earth, the Shechinah shone more strongly than in the Holy of Holies of the higher spiritual worlds. The simple reading is that it was higher than the worlds of Yetzirah and Asiyah. The Rebbe’s note reads it more deeply: in the way it came down (explained in the next paragraph) it surpassed only Yetzirah, but the light itself was higher than in all the upper worlds, because the Ten Commandments were there.

How could stone tablets on earth carry more than the upper worlds? Because of what was written on them. The Ten Commandments contain the whole Torah: every one of the 613 mitzvos can be traced to one of them. And Torah comes from chochmah of Atzilus, which is higher than the Shechinah, malchus of Atzilus, called “the revealed world” because it reveals the Ein Sof to the worlds.

Everything else in our world gets its life through a long chain: down from world to world, ending in the Holy of Holies of Asiyah. That is why our world runs by fixed laws of nature. The Tablets did not come through that chain. The chochmah in them was clothed only in malchus of Atzilus and of Beriah, and from there went straight into stone. So they were physical, yet not bound by nature; the Sages say that the letters mem and samach, carved right through the stone, stood in place by a miracle. “The living G‑d” (Elokim Chaim), in the language of the Kabbalah, is binah of Atzilus, called “the hidden world,” which shines into the world of Beriah, a world still aware that it depends entirely on G‑d.

The Gemara says the Shechinah was missing from the Second Temple, yet its Holy of Holies was so holy that only the Kohen Gadol could enter, once a year. “This means,” says the Alter Rebbe: what was missing was the First Temple’s level. In the Second Temple the light came the ordinary way, down through every world to the Holy of Holies of Asiyah, and from there straight into the Holy of Holies below. It did not need to be clothed in malchus of Asiyah, the last veil, through which nature comes. That was still intense holiness.

And today? Wherever a Jew learns Torah, the Shechinah is with him. It comes through the whole chain, malchus of Asiyah included, so it is lower than in the Second Temple. But it is real, and it travels: the four cubits where a Jew learns halachah are now the Holy of Holies. Unlike the rest of the world, it does not pass through kelipas nogah on the way.

Why must the Shechinah in Torah come all the way down through malchus of Asiyah? Because the mitzvos themselves belong to the world of action. Almost all of them are deeds. Even the mitzvos that seem to live in the mind, learning, bentching, Shema and davening, are fulfilled only when the words are said aloud, and moving the lips counts as a deed. So the Torah as we keep it is Torah of action, and the Shechinah that rests in it has come all the way down to action.

Why the four cubits of halachah in particular, and not any part of Torah? Because halachah is G‑d’s will. Torah is His wisdom; in halachah and the mitzvos His will is clothed in that wisdom. The 613 mitzvos and the seven of the Rabbis come to 620, the value of keser, “crown.” Will is called a crown because, like a crown above the head, it stands above the intellect. So halachah carries both: wisdom, and the will above it, one with the Ein Sof.

The Oral Torah, too, comes from that supernal wisdom. It is the “earth” founded with wisdom, malchus, the “daughter” of chochmah, the “father.” It is through the Oral Torah that the halachah becomes clear.

Now the Alter Rebbe returns to the Yenuka, the child-sage of the Zohar quoted in chapter 35: the flame over the head of every Jew needs oil, “good deeds.” In Chassidus, oil means chochmah. There is no contradiction: the mitzvos come from G‑d’s wisdom, so they are the oil.

But a lamp needs a wick as well as oil. The oil does not burn by itself, and a flame with nothing to hold makes no steady light. The wick is the vital, animal soul in the body. Torah alone is not enough for this. The deeds of the mitzvos are done with the body and the animal soul, and only through them does the flame reach the wick. That is why the Yenuka speaks of good deeds.

The light shines only as the wick burns. In the tzaddik the animal soul itself is turned to good. In the beinoni its essence remains, but its garments, his thought, speech and action, are consumed and turned from the darkness of the kelipos to light, by being used for Torah and mitzvos. That too is a wick, and the Shechinah rests on it.

The “ascent of the feminine waters” is a stirring from below, by the one who receives, that brings a response from above. When the animal soul, or its thought, speech and action, rises from darkness to light, it draws down not only the “oil,” the vessel for the light, but the light of the Shechinah itself, onto the G‑dly soul in the brain.

Fire takes hold only where something is being consumed. So too G‑d becomes “your G‑d,” shining on your soul, when something in you is consumed in Him, when a person stops standing apart as his own and gives himself over to G‑d. With these words the first part of the Tanya, the Sefer shel Beinonim, comes to its end.