The second chapter of the Tanya makes a claim so audacious it takes your breath away: the soul of every Jew is "truly a part of God above."
Rabbi Schneur Zalman does not mean this metaphorically. He cites (Job 31:2) and the morning liturgy—"the soul which You breathed into me is pure"—and then invokes the Zohar's principle: "He who blows, blows from within himself." When God breathed the neshamah (נשמה), the divine soul, into the first human being (Genesis 2:7), that breath came from God's own innermost essence. Not from God's power, not from God's creativity, but from the deepest interiority of the Infinite.
The analogy is precise. A parent's child comes from the parent's brain, the Tanya says. So the soul comes from God's own wisdom. And since God's wisdom is not separate from God—"He is wise, but not through a knowable wisdom," as the Tikkunei (spiritual repair) Zohar states—the soul is not separate from God either. It is God, experiencing existence from inside a human body.
The Tanya then grounds this in Lurianic Kabbalah. The soul descends through a process of tzimtzum (צמצום), divine contraction—countless stages of concealment within the sefirot (ספירות), the divine attributes, passing through the four worlds of Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation), and Asiyah (Action). Each stage dims the soul's light further, like sunlight passing through increasingly thick glass. But the source remains unchanged. The soul in your body right now is made of the same substance as the Ein Sof (אין סוף), the Infinite—only hidden behind layers of concealment.
This idea has radical implications. If the soul is literally part of God, then every act of sin is a form of self-exile. And every act of return—teshuvah (repentance)—is not about earning God's favor. It is about remembering what you already are.
The second soul of a Jew is truly a part of G–d above,1 Job 31:2; cf. also Psalms 16:5; 73:26; Jeremiah 10:16. as it is written, “He breathed into his nostrils a soul of life,”2 Genesis 2:7; comp. Nachmanides’ Commentary, ad loc. and “You have breathed it [the soul] into me.”3 Liturgy, Morning Prayer. Berachot 60b. And it is written in the Zohar, “He who blows, blows from within him,” that is to say, from his inwardness and his innermost, for it is something of his internal and innermost vitality that man emits through exhaling with force. So, allegorically speaking, have the souls of Jews risen in the [Divine] thought,4 Cf. Bereishit Rabbah 1:4. as it is written, “My firstborn son is Israel,”5 Exodus 4:22. and “You are the children of the L–rd your G–d.”6 Deuteronomy 14:1. That is to say, just as a child is derived from his father’s brain, so—to use an anthropomorphism—the soul of each Israelite is derived from His thought and wisdom, blessed be He. For He is wise—but not through a knowable wisdom,7 Tikkunei Zohar, Introduction 12b. because He and His wisdom are one; and as Maimonides says NOTE: And the Sages of the Kabbalah have agreed with him as is stated in Pardes8 Shaar Mehut VeHanhagah, ch. 13. of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero. Also according to the Kabbalah of the Arizal9 Rabbi Yitzchak Luria Ashkenazi, of blessed memory (1534-1572). this is substantiated in the mystic principle of the “clothing of the light” of the En Sof,10 En Sof: The Endless, or Infinite. A term frequently used in the Zohar and later Kabbalistic works to indicate the Unknowable G–d. blessed is He, through numerous contractions within the vessels of chabad11 ChaBaD is an acronym formed of the initial letters of the Hebrew words chochmah (“wisdom”), binah (“understanding”), and daat (“knowledge”), the first three of the ten sefirot. The corresponding faculties of the soul are defined in ch. 3. of [the world of] Atzilut (Emanation), but no higher than that.12 Above the World of Atzilut, the Unknowable G–d cannot be defined. For, as is explained elsewhere, the En Sof, blessed is He, is infinitely exalted over, and transcends, the essence and level of chabad, which in relation to Him are regarded as a material action,13 Accordingly, in terms of the Kabbalistic scale, Maimonides had nothing to say about G–d except from the World of Atzilut and “down.” It is in the world of Atzilut where Kabbalah and Maimonides first meet, so to speak. as is written, “You have made them all with wisdom.”14 Psalms 104:24. that “He is the Knowledge and Knower…and this is not within the power of any man to comprehend clearly…,”15 Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:10. as it is written, “Can you find G–d by searching?”16 Job 11:7. And it is also written, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts….”17 Isaiah 55:8. And though there are myriads of different gradations of souls (neshamot), rank upon rank, ad infinitum, as with the superiority of the souls of the Patriarchs and of Moses our Teacher above the souls of our own generations who live in the period preceding the coming of the Messiah, which are as the very soles18 A play on the word עקבתא, “soles.” of the feet compared with the brain and head, so in every generation there are the leaders of the Jews, whose souls are in the category of “head” and “brain” in comparison with those of the masses and the ignorant. Likewise [are there distinctions between] nefashot and nefashot, for every soul consists of nefesh, ruach, and neshamah.19 Cf. Zohar I:206a; II:141b, etc.; also Shnei Luchot HaBrit I, 9b. Nevertheless, the root of every nefesh, ruach, and neshamah, from the highest of all ranks to the lowest that is embodied within the illiterate and the most worthless, all derive, as it were, from the supreme mind which is chochmah ilaah (supernal wisdom).20 The doctrine that all souls are related in that they all come from the same source was given much emphasis by the founder of Chasidut, the Baal Shem Tov, and was a major issue of contention between the protagonists and antagonists of Chasidut. The author elaborates on it in ch. 32 (לב). [The manner of this descent is] analogous to that of a son who is derived from his father’s brain, in that [even] the nails of his feet come into existence from the very same drop of semen, by being in the mother’s womb for nine months, descending degree by degree, changing continually, until even the nails are formed from it. Yet [after all this process] it is still bound and united with a wonderful and essential unity with its original essence and being, which was the drop [as it came] from the father’s brain. And even now, in the son, the nails receive their nourishment and life from the brain that is in the head. As is written in the Gemara [Niddah, ibid.],21 Niddah 31a. “from the white of the father’s drop of semen are formed the veins, the bones, and the nails.” [And in Etz Chaim, Shaar HaChashmal, it is likewise stated, in connection with the esoteric principle of Adam’s garments in the Garden of Eden, that they [the garments] were the “nails” [derived] from the cognitive faculty of the brain]. So, as it were, is it actually true of the root of every nefesh, ruach and neshamah in the community of Israel on high: in descending degree by degree, through the descent of the worlds of Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation) and Asiyah (Action) from His wisdom, blessed be He, as it is written, “You have made them all with wisdom,”22 Psalms 104:24. the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah of the ignorant and unworthy come into being. Nevertheless they remain bound and united with a wonderful and essential unity with their original essence and entity; namely, the extension of chochmah ilaah (supernal wisdom), inasmuch as the nurture and life of the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah of the ignorant are drawn from the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah of the saints and sages, the heads of Israel in their generation. This explains the comment of our Sages on the verse, “And to cleave to Him”23 Deuteronomy 30:20.—“He who cleaves to a scholar [of the Torah] is deemed by the Torah as if he had become attached to the very Shechinah (Divine Presence).”24 Ketuvot 111b. For, through attachment to the scholars, the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah of the ignorant are bound up and united with their original essence and their root in the supernal wisdom, He and His wisdom being one, and “He is the Knowledge….”25 See above, note 15. [As for those who willfully sin and rebel against the Sages, the nurture of their nefesh, ruach, and neshamah comes from behind the back,26 I.e., ungraciously, or unwittingly. The concept is more fully explained in ch. 22. as it were, of the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah of the scholars]. As for what is written in the Zohar27 Cf. Zohar II:204b ff.; III:80-82. and in Zohar Chadash,28 Bereishit, p. 11. to the effect that the essential factor is to conduct oneself in a holy manner during sexual union, which is not the case with the children of the ignorant, and so on, it is to be understood as meaning that since there is not a nefesh, ruach, and neshamah which has not a garment of the nefesh of its father’s and mother’s essence, and all the commandments that it fulfills are all influenced by that garment…, and even the benevolence that flows to one from heaven is all given through that garment—hence, through self-sanctification, one will cause to descend for the neshamah of one’s child a holy garment; and however great a soul it may be, it still needs the father’s sanctification…. But as for the soul itself, it sometimes happens that the soul of an infinitely lofty person comes to be the son of a despised and lowly man…. All this has been explained by the Arizal9 in Likkutei Torah on Parashat Vayera and in Taamei Hamitzvot on Parashat Bereishit.
