Chapter twenty-one of the Tanya makes a metaphysical claim about Torah study that goes beyond anything said before: when you study Torah, God wraps Himself around your mind.
The logic runs like this. God's speech is not like human speech. When a person speaks, the words leave the speaker and become separate entities—sounds in the air, marks on paper, independent of their source. But God's speech never separates from God. There is nothing outside of God. There is no place devoid of God. Therefore the words through which God created the universe—"Let there be light," the ten utterances of creation—remain forever embedded in their source, which is God Himself.
These divine utterances include the Torah. When God said the words of the Torah—at Sinai, through the prophets, through the entire chain of revelation—those words did not leave God. They are still God's speech, still fused with God's essence, even as they appear in the form of laws about property disputes, dietary restrictions, and ritual observance.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman draws the analogy. In a human being, speech and thought, before they are articulated, exist as undifferentiated potential within the intellect. At that stage, they are inseparable from the mind that conceives them. God's speech works the same way—except it never leaves that stage. Even after creation, even after the words have produced a physical universe, they remain in absolute union with their source.
The implication for Torah study is staggering. The laws you are studying are not representations of God's will. They are God's will, still alive, still united with the divine essence. When your mind wraps around a halachah (Jewish religious law), it is wrapping around God. When God's Torah enters your consciousness, God is wrapping around you.
This is not poetry. The Tanya means it as a statement about reality. Torah study is the one human activity that achieves total reciprocal union between the finite mind and the Infinite. Everything else—prayer, charity, meditation—approaches from one direction. Torah study is the embrace from both sides simultaneously.
However, “The nature of the Divine order is not like that of a creature of flesh and blood.”1 Berachot 40a. When a man utters a word, the breath emitted in speaking is something that can be sensed and perceived as a thing apart, separated from its source, namely, the ten faculties of the soul itself. But with the Holy One, blessed is He, His speech is not, Heaven forfend, separated from Him, blessed be He, for there is nothing outside of Him, and there is no place devoid of Him.2 Tikkunei Zohar 57. Therefore, His speech, blessed be He, is not like our speech, G–d forbid [just as His thought is not like our thought, as is written, “For My thoughts are not like your thoughts,”3 Isaiah 55:8. and “So My ways are higher than your ways…”4 Ibid., v. 9.]. His speech, blessed be He, is called “speech” only by way of an anthropomorphic illustration, in the sense that, as in the case of man below, whose speech reveals to his audience what was hidden and concealed in his thoughts, so, too, is it on high with the En Sof, blessed is He, Whose emitted light and life-force—as it emerges from Him, from concealment into revelation, to create worlds and to sustain them—is called “speech.” These [emanations] are indeed the ten fiats by which the world was created;5 Avot 5:1. likewise also the remainder of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, which the Prophets conceived in their prophetic vision. Yet His so-called speech and thought are united with Him in absolute union as, for example, a person’s speech and thought while they are still in potentia in his wisdom and intellect, or in a desire and craving that are still in the heart prior to rising from the heart to the brain, where by cogitation they are formulated into the so-called “letters,”6 See previous chapter. for at that time the “letters” of thought and speech which evolve from that longing or desire were still in potentia in the heart, where they were absolutely fused with their root, namely, the wisdom and intellect in the brain, and the longing and desire in the heart. Verily so, by way of example, are the “speech” and “thought” of the Holy One, blessed is He, absolutely united with His essence and being, blessed be He, even after His “speech,” blessed be He, has already become materialized in the creation of the worlds, just as it was united with Him before the worlds were created. There is thus no manner of change before Him, blessed be He, but only for the created beings which receive their life-force from His “word,” blessed be He, as it were, in its revealed state at the creation of the worlds, in which it is clothed, giving them life through a process of gradual descent from cause to effect and a downward gradation, by means of numerous and various contractions,7 The process of tzimtzum. until the created beings can receive their life and existence from it without losing their entity. These “contractions” are all in the nature of “veiling of the Countenance,” to obscure and conceal the light and life-force that are derived from His “word,” blessed be He, so that it shall not reveal itself in a greater radiance than the lower worlds are capable of receiving. Hence it seems to them as if the light and life-force of the word of the Omnipresent, blessed is He, which is clothed in them, were something apart from His essence and being, blessed be He, and it only issues from Him, just as the speech of a human being [issues] from his soul. Yet, in regard to the Holy One, blessed is He, no concealment or veil hides or obscures anything from Him, to Whom darkness is like light, as is written, “Even the darkness obscures nothing from You….”8 Psalms 139:12. For all the “contractions” and “garments” are not things distinct from Him, Heaven forfend, but “like the snail, whose garment is part of his body”9 Bereishit Rabbah 21:5. and as is written, “The L–rd, He is G–d,”10 Deuteronomy 4:35. as is explained elsewhere.11 The Ineffable Name—the Name of four letters, Y-H-V-H—is pronounced in conversation Havaya. The prescribed traditional reading in Scripture and prayer is Ad-nay. However, the name Havaya refers to G–d the Infinite, the transcendent creative Divine force, beyond creation and nature, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. The name Elokim, the immanent Divine force concealed in nature, emphasizes G–d’s justice and rulership (see Rashi’s commentary, Genesis 2:5, 6:2). See below, Likkutei Amarim, Part II, ch. 6. The equation emphasizes the absolute Unity of the Creator. Therefore, in His Presence, all else is of no account whatsoever.
