An Essay about The Education of a Child –

The Gate for Understanding G-d's Unity and the Faith
Introducting Part Two of the Tanya

By His Holiness, Grand Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the Alter Rebbe *

Loving and Fearing G-d

Behind observing the Seven Noahide Commandments with the fullest satisfaction are love and fear of G-d.  When we fear G-d, our most immature feeling is that we are afraid of being punished.  But with wisdom, we come to realize that G-d is not interested in punishing us. He is interested in a civilized world.  The prophet Isaiah says, "He did not create it [the world] for [breaking down into] chaos.  He formed it [the world] to be civilized." (Isaiah 45:18,  my translation.  See my essay "What G-d Wants.")

This verse reads fully as:

For so said the L-rd, Who creates the heavens.  He is [the one and only] G-d, Who forms the Earth and makes it.  He establishes it.  He did not create it [the world] for [breaking down into] chaos.  He formed it [the world] to be civilized.  "I am the L-rd, and there is nothing else."  (again my translation of the full verse, Isaiah 45:18)

Notice how G-d says that there is nothing else. This part of the Tanya is dedicated to our education, explaining how the existence of the universe is compatible with with G-d's omnipresence. This part of the book teaches us how to believe that creation effects no change in G-d, a belief that transcends our capacity to understand. On the other hand, we have been created with inquisitive minds. This section of the Tanya also challenges us to understand this unity as well as we can.

To a certain extent, we will see how our understanding is "negative." At the least, we can reject false ideas about how the universe exists and how G-d relates to the universe.

Faith

G-d is the same from before creation until now, and also for the future. The essence of this belief, to know that creation effects no change in G-d, is expressed is the first four of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith:

Our Education in Faith and Deed

The introduction to this part of the Tanya – titled The Education of the Child – is the education for all of us with the immaturity of a child, regardless of our chronological age. In fact, this part of the Tanya can be studied from time to time. And each time we study it, compared to the degree that we understood its concepts previously, we are like a child learning the subjects for the first time.

In the text of this part of the Tanya, The Education of a Child, the Alter Rebbe likens our increased sophistication in faith and deed as climbing a ladder of "seven rungs." He bases this metaphor on a verse in Proverbs: "When a righteous person falls seven times, he [still] rises . . ." (Proverbs 24:16). With these words, the Alter Rebbe completes the metaphor from the phrase in Psalms: "When he falls, he is not brought down [to the ground] . . ." (37:24). Together, the thesis of the introduction to Part Two of the Tanya, The Gate for Understanding G-d's Unity and the Faith) is that "a righteous person falls seven times, but he [or she *] is not brought down [to the ground]."

Seven rungs

Why a ladder of seven rungs? This verse in Proverbs seems to mean that if a righteous person falls, even seven times, he still rises. However, the idea of counting the number of times of falling in this verse is troubling. What if he falls eight times? Furthermore, the actual word order in this verse is, "Because seven times a righteous person falls, yet he rises." Each translation is valid since the first word in this verse has several meanings. This word is ki (KEE) which can mean "when," "because," and "if." This last understanding of the verse – "because" he falls seven times – is even more troubling. It implies that a righteous person (unlike others) will fall seven times – not less and not more.

(Freethinking interpreters prefer to consider that the Bible uses the number seven to mean "somewhat more than several." The preference of Biblical author(s) (according to them) is to use the number seven or multiples, especially decimal multiples such as seventy, as figures of speech rather than literal counts. However, these freethinking interpreters base their interpretations of Scripture on feelings which percolate up to the intellect. These interpreters rarely, if ever, consult traditional Jewish sources. The authors of these traditional sources are well aware of the dilemma of a corpus of literature, the Hebrew Bible, being "fixated" on the number seven. Here in this part of the Tanya, the author, the Alter Rebbe, is well aware of the dilemma. However, he has a body of tradition that explains the use of this number seven although the Hebrew language is well capable of expressing "several," "somewhat more than seven," etc., without resorting to the actual number 'seven'. In English we often use the word 'dozen' to mean "about twelve." In retelling an event or story, 'dozens' usually means "less than one hundred but more than a vague number such as twelve." In English, if we say or write 'twelve', we mean exactly twelve – not eleven and not thirteen. We specifically say "dozens" when we mean a somewhat large number which we have failed to count or are unable to count. This subject could be elaborated, but this is not the place.)

Kabbala – the mystical tradition

In the mystical tradition, Kabbala,* when metaphysical issues are expressed using the number seven, the number is precise. In the functionality of the human soul there are seven dimensions, not six and not eight. The Alter Rebbe is well aware of this fact. In writing The Education of a Child, (the introduction to Part Two of the Tanya, The Gate for Understanding G-d's Unity and the Faith), the Alter Rebbe addresses the functions of the human soul and their perfection. We understand, to the best of our ability, G-d's Unity and full faith in this unity from seven vantage points. Because of this sevenfold structure of a part of our souls, we find seven rungs of achievement. Each "falling' is a relative failing, relative to our previous appreciation of G-d's unity in our world of multiplicity.

The seven dimensions

Human behavior can be kind or severe, for example. Kindness is called chesed * in Hebrew. Severity is called gevurah.* Gevurah is sometimes reflected in pushing away. If we have trouble living with or around a person, we use our gevurah to establish distance between us and them. To a certain extent, divorce is an act of gevurah. Chesed, on the other hand, is a move toward another person. In some way, it is doing a kind deed or facilitating any sort of kindness. In this sense, divorce is a form of chesed, kindness.  After a divorce (mutually arrived at), each one of the couple should find relief from an unpleasant or even unsafe relationship. This is mutual benevolence. On the other hand divorce retains its obvious aspect of gevurah. The couple distant themselves from each other. They live apart. They can avoid contact, and so on.

"Entanglement"

Although the human soul behaves with seven faculties – the seven dimensions that I mentioned above – each one of these faculties is entangled with the other six.

 Work in Progress

Notes:

he [or she] - One cannot avoid the way of the Hebrew language to subsume females into the masculine third person singular pronoun.  We find this feature in many languages.  English speakers and writers, though, are now careful to be clear if a subject relates no less to a woman than to a man.

Please return to this page in Autumn 2016.

An English Translation with Explanations:

Lessons in Tanya
The Tanya of His Holiness, Grand Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi
The Gate to Understanding G-d's Unity and the Faith
(Sha'ar HaYichud VeHa'emunah), with Iggeret HaTeshuvah
Elucidated by Rabbi Yosef Wineberg
Translated into English by Rabbi Sholom B. Wineberg
Edited by Uri Kaploun
This edition provides a lucid running commentary to lead the student by the hand through the text, map out difficult terrain which lies ahead, anticipate each conceptual obstacle, and brief the student on the background knowledge that Rabbi Shneur Zalman credited to his reader's presumed erudition.
Lessons in Tanya series, volume III
(Brooklyn, New York: Kehot Publishing Society, 1989)
BM198.S483S5213 1989
296.8'33
ISBN 0-8266-0543-5
ISBN 0-8266-0540-0 – the entire set of 5 volumes
CIP 88-6155

More than two hundred years ago, in the year 1796 (5557), Tanya was published for the first time — and 5,000 printings since have repeatedly invigorated the Jewish world with a message of informed inspiration.  In this brief classic, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, (1745-1812) articulated the Chabad-Lubavitch school of Chassidic thought, filtering the mystical teachings of the Baal Shem Tov through the intellectual framework of traditional Jewish scholarship.

Lessons in Tanya began as a course of weekly lectures delivered over New York radio by noted Chassidic lecturer, Rabbi Yosef Wineberg.

The Tanya's successor in our days, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, critically examined the prepared Yiddish text of each lecture before it was broadcast, correcting, adding and amending, so that many of the Rebbe's insights and explanatory comments highlight this commentary.

This is no detached armchair study.  Throughout, the commentary pulsates with life, as the student is nudged out of the acemician's complacency, and is swept in the quest G-dliness and self-perfection that comprises the Tanya.

Lessons in Tanya is thus not only a well-lit and accessible gateway to one of Judaism's most cherished treasure-houses, but also the authoritative guide to its riches.

— from the book's back jacket