Chapter 6: The Other Side

Everything in holiness has its counterpart on the other side. Chapters 2 to 5 described the G‑dly soul. The animal soul is built the same way, with ten faculties and three garments, so that in every area a person has a real choice.

Its ten faculties, the “crowns of impurity,” are seven middos (emotions) and three of intellect. The child shows how they connect: a small mind loves small things and is angered by small things. As the mind grows, so do its wants and its angers.

Compare chapter 3. There the intellect was listed first, and the G‑dly soul’s love and awe are born from its contemplation. Here the middos come first, and the reason given for calling the intellect their source is only that they “follow the level of the intellect.” The animal soul is passionate by nature. It does not need to think about a pleasure in order to want it. Its mind shapes and channels the wanting, so that the level of what it desires matches the level of the mind, but the wanting comes first.

The same brain, mouth and hands can serve either soul. What makes them garments of impurity is what is expressing itself through them “at the time” of the thought, word or act.

Then the surprise. One might expect the animal soul’s garments to be a list of sins. Instead the Alter Rebbe names all the deeds done “under the sun,” and every word and thought not for G‑d. Eating, working, chatting, shopping: nothing forbidden, and still, if it is not for G‑d, it is a garment of the other side. On this map there is no neutral ground. (Chapter 7 takes up these permitted things: how they sink when used for oneself, and how they rise when used for G‑d.)

The name defines it by contrast: it is simply “the other side,” the side that is not holiness. So to understand it, we first need to know what holiness is.

Holiness is not greatness, beauty or brilliance. It is G‑d’s own holiness resting on something, and He rests only where there is bittul: where a thing does not stand in its own right but is surrendered to Him. One way to understand this: since G‑d is everywhere, “resting” means a presence that is revealed and received, and something full of its own “I” cannot receive the truth that “there is nothing else besides Him.”

The angels are batel in fact. Each is nothing but a messenger of G‑d’s will. A Jew is batel in potential. On the surface he may be busy with himself, but deep inside is the power to give up his life rather than be torn away from G‑d. So the holiness of a Jew does not depend on his achievements. It rests on that hidden capacity, which is always there.

This explains the two sayings. Learning Torah means setting aside one’s own ideas to take in G‑d’s wisdom, so the inner bittul comes to the surface and the Shechinah rests even on one person. And ten Jews together form a congregation of Israel, a fitting home for the Shechinah, so it rests on them “always.”

What is not batel still needs G‑d’s life, or it could not exist for a moment. But it gets that life only “from behind.” The image is about giving. A gift to someone you love is handed over face to face, gladly. Something you are forced to give an enemy is passed over your shoulder, face turned away. G‑d gives life to holiness because He wants it. He gives life to what stands apart from Him only because a world of free choice needs an alternative.

To reach so low, the light passes through countless levels and, more than that, through many contractions, until it is small enough to hide inside something that feels separate. There it is in exile. Like a captive mastered by his captors, the light does not rule the thing it gives life to. The thing masters it, and uses that life to feel independent instead of revealing its Creator.

Notice that such a thing need not be evil. All it has done is stand on its own. That alone is where the other side begins: not with wrongdoing, but with an “I” that feels separate from G‑d.

Look at the world: the stars, the oceans, ourselves. Nothing in it announces that it exists for G‑d. Everything seems to stand on its own, and that alone makes it a world of kelipos, “shells” that hide what is inside. And so, as the Etz Chaim teaches, the affairs of this world are hard and the wicked prevail in it.

A mashal: a plain piece of parchment draws attention to itself. It is just leather, taking up space. Write a mezuzah on it, and you look straight past the leather to the mitzvah. The world as we see it is like the plain leather: it seems to exist for itself.

The note guards against a mistake. G‑d is not absent from this world. His infinite light fills it, clothed in the sefiros of all four worlds. But the light is hidden, and hidden light does not make the world batel. To the eye the world still feels separate, so it is still the world of kelipos.

Until now “the other side” meant everything not for G‑d. Now the Alter Rebbe divides it. The higher level is kelipas nogah, the “glowing” shell, which has some good mixed in. Permitted things belong to it, so they can be used for good and raised to holiness. The lower level, the three impure kelipos, has no good at all, and what draws its life from them cannot become holy. (Food forbidden only to eat may still serve a holy purpose; what is forbidden for any benefit may not.)

The first line of the list needs careful, measured reading. Like the end of chapter 1, it speaks about the spiritual source of a soul, in this chapter’s terms of bittul. It is not a verdict on how good or kind a person is. And as a classic commentary notes on chapter 1, there are also those among the nations, the pious, whose souls come from kelipas nogah.

The last line is the key to what follows. A Jew’s animal soul comes from kelipas nogah. But every forbidden thought, word and deed draws its life from the three impure kelipos. So sin does not only express the animal soul. It drags its garments down below the animal soul’s own level, the exact opposite of the G‑dly soul’s garments of Torah and mitzvos, which are higher than the soul and lift it up.