One of the most difficult things to integrate into our consciousness is that life cannot be taken for granted. Life is given to us from above by God. This realization usually hits us when there is a serious disruption in our confidence in our life and unfortunately, most everyone faces this at one point or another.
So why is it that we usually don’t feel the flow of life from above? And how can that flow renew if it seems to stop?
In this excerpt from a class given on Simchat Torah 5786 in connection with the hopes that the hostages would be released, HaRav Ginsburgh discusses the levels of life in the soul as they were described by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe.
This class was first published in the Bereishit 5786 edition of Nifla’ot.
Drawing Life from the Source of All Life
In the annals of Chasidut, the event that is most similar to the release of our hostages on Hoshana Rabbah was the release of the Frierdiker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn from his imprisonment almost 100 years ago in 1927. Every year, on his day of redemption, he would teach a Chasidic essay and in 1934 it was based on the verse, “He places our soul in life and prevents our feet from slipping” (Psalms 66:9).
The question asked about this verse is why should the soul be placed “in life?” The soul is by definition life, and it gives life to the body. One of the levels of the soul is known as “essential life” and another is known as, “life that gives life.” The soul itself is life, even before it is enclothed in a body, and once it does so, it gives life to the body as a whole and to each individual part of the body. However, the point is that the soul is a creation, therefore it is by definition limited and must draw down life from the life of all life, the Creator. That is why, “He places our soul in life.”
To better understand this, we need to order the different levels of life-force in the soul and see how they relate to being placed in the life of the Creator. Chasidic writings are relativistic in nature. Depending on the subject matter, the same analysis may yield what seems like different structures and parallels. We are going to take a bird’s-eye view of the different levels of life over many of these teachings.
The level of “essential life” is at times associated with the sefirah of crown (keter) considered a dimensionless point while the level of “life that gives life” would then be associated with the sefirah of wisdom (chochmah), following the verse, “Wisdom gives life to its owner.” In other sources, we find that “essential life” is wisdom and “life that gives life” is in understanding (binah), since understanding is the mother principle that begets the (Divine) emotions in the heart. Still other sources correspond “essential life” with understanding and “life that gives life with Ze’er Anpin, i.e., the emotions in the heart, since they unite and give life to kingdom (malchut), the faculties of action (think: doing something with heart or half-heartedly). The final option also appears, which corresponds “essential life” with Ze’er Anpin and “life that gives life” with kingdom. Kingdom corresponds to the World of Action, the common ground for all our actions.
What is common to all these correspondences is that “essential life” is what fuels “life that gives life.” What changes is their placement depending on what is being given life, what is being energized: be it the point of wisdom upon which all consciousness exists, or the ability to beget Divine feelings, or the various actions we are commanded to perform, etc.
In summary, we have seen four distinct levels of life. The first is the Divine source of life, which is entirely above human nature. This is where God “places our soul” when He gives it life. Then there is the essential life of the soul, as created by God. Lower than that are the two levels of the soul known as “life that gives life”: the first refers to the overall, comprehensive life-force the soul gives the body. The second refers to the life-force instilled within each individual organ and power in the body. These four levels of life can now be drawn into a model that parallels the four letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah.
The point is that sometimes a person experiences a weakness (for instance when someone is held hostage or is incarcerated) that can reach all the way to his or her soul’s essential life. In such situations, the person requires an infusion of new life from the Divine source of all life and that is why “God places our soul in life,” i.e., in His Divine source of all life to strengthen the essential life of the soul and the two lower levels of “life that gives life.”
letterlevel of lifeHebrew termyudDivine source of lifeחיים בנו שׁפם נשׂהheisoul’s essential lifeחיים בעצםvavsoul giving overall life to bodyחיים לכל הגוףheisoul giving life to individual organsחיים לפרטThe relationship between the two aspects of “essential life” and “life that gives life” is in its most general sense a manifestation of the relationship between “surrounding light” and “inner light.” Surrounding light is always in the background, hovering above the inner light, which penetrates into the destination where the light will end up.
