Giving sounds like an uncomplicated good. If someone has light, wisdom or strength to offer, why should he hold any of it back?
Because giving has to reach someone. What the recipient cannot receive may overwhelm him. A teacher who says everything he knows can leave a beginner understanding nothing. The teacher has to choose an explanation, slow down and find an example. His restraint is part of how the teaching reaches the student.
This gives us a way into the next lines of Likutey Moharan 205. The repair of the bris involves chesed and gevurah together: the power to give, and the power to give within the right boundaries.
Seeing what is within
The three forms of song we have learned prepare the way. Ashrei was connected with seeing beyond the surface. Maskil brought us to Targum and the mixed area of life that can be drawn toward holiness. Hallelukah answered the wailing and dejection that leave a person feeling unable to return. Words of praise can help him regain the strength for another good choice.
Chanukah brings the first point into view again. Bereishis Rabbah 2:4 interprets the darkness in the opening of the Torah as the exile of Yavan:
וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אלוקים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּֽיִם׃
The earth was unformed and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of Hashem hovered over the surface of the water. (Bereishis 1:2)
The Midrash describes Yavan as darkening the eyes of Israel through its decrees. We are developing the inward meaning of that image: a person can appreciate the body and overlook the neshamah, or appreciate the wisdom of Torah while overlooking its holiness. He sees a surface while missing what gives it life.
The Bnei Yissaschar, Kislev-Tevet 2:8 and 2:13, connects the thirty-six Chanukah lights with the thirty-six hours of the original hidden light. That light is associated with a deeper ability to see, and with what is hidden within Torah. The rav encourages sitting by the Chanukah lights and looking at them quietly. He stresses that this is an avodah even beyond saying Tehillim or other prayers there: simply sitting and attending to the lights can be part of repairing the way a person sees. This looking practice is the rav's guidance; the Bnei Yissaschar passages establish the thirty-six-lights and hidden-light connection, without verifying every detail of that practice. The repair of sight meant here is spiritual; the discussion does not promise a change in eyesight.
The other two expressions remain important alongside it. The mixed area requires understanding and choice. After a failure, praise and gratitude help a person emerge from the thought that there is no point in trying again. Those are the foundations on which we can now understand the place of daas.
Daas joins giving and receiving
Daas is often translated as knowledge. Here it also means connection: bringing two sides together in a way that creates a relationship. The Torah uses this language at the beginning of human family life:
וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה אִשְׁתּוֹ וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד אֶת־קַיִן וַתֹּאמֶר קָנִיתִי אִישׁ אֶת־ה׳׃
Adam knew Chavah his wife, and she conceived and bore Kayin. She said, “I have acquired a man with Hashem.” (Bereishis 4:1)
In the language of the sefiros, Chochmah stands on the right and Binah on the left; daas joins the sides of chesed and gevurah. Chesed is the outward movement of giving. Gevurah gives the gift a boundary and a vessel in which it can be received.
The tipah, the seed through which a new life can begin, contains these two aspects. Likutey Moharan 205 describes warmth and moisture, fire and water, as expressions of gevurah and chesed. In the proper relationship, giving reaches a recipient and can become something. In wasting the seed, the power of giving is released without the proper recipient.
This is why the language of chesed alone does not settle whether a desire is good. We saw the striking use of that word in the verse about a forbidden relationship:
וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר־יִקַּח אֶת־אֲחֹתוֹ בַּת־אָבִיו אוֹ בַת־אִמּוֹ וְרָאָה אֶת־עֶרְוָתָהּ וְהִֽיא־תִרְאֶה אֶת־עֶרְוָתוֹ חֶסֶד הוּא וְנִכְרְתוּ לְעֵינֵי בְּנֵי עַמָּם עֶרְוַת אֲחֹתוֹ גִּלָּה עֲוֺנוֹ יִשָּֽׂא׃
If a man takes his sister, his father's daughter or his mother's daughter, and he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; they shall be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his guilt. (Vayikra 20:17)
The plain meaning of chesed in this verse is disgrace. The Chassidic reading we learned earlier hears the familiar meaning of kindness as well: the impulse to connect can descend into a forbidden place when it has lost its proper limits. The wish to give does not authorize giving to anyone, in any way, at any time.
The language of Chazal connecting bodily arousal with daas is brought into this discussion as another link between the mind and the power of relationship. The Gemara's phrase, ein kishui ela ledaas, connects arousal with awareness within a particular halachic discussion in Yevamos 53b; it is not a method for deciding what someone intended or consented to from an involuntary bodily response. Our subject here is the avodah of bringing one's conscious choices and creative power into a proper relationship.
The loss of daas
Reish Lakish says in Sotah 3a that a person does not transgress unless a ruach shtus, a spirit of foolishness, enters him. At the moment of the choice, something obscures what he knows. The appetite or impulse takes over, and he loses hold of the wider truth of his life.
Sleep gives a different picture of the absence of conscious daas. A person is not exercising the same awareness and control while asleep. This helps explain the connection being drawn between the language of daas and mikreh laylah, an emission during sleep.
There is an essential distinction in the application. The case being discussed here is one in which a person has deliberately entertained inappropriate sights or thoughts during the day, with consequences that come later. The discussion does not establish that every involuntary event at night proves prior wrongdoing. The earlier distinction between a wholly unintentional occurrence and a result connected with conscious daytime conduct must remain in place.
The return to daas therefore begins with the choices in our hands. A person learns to direct his attention and desire, and to join the impulse to give with the awareness of where, how and when it belongs.
Why ten chapters?
We already learned that the ten chapters correspond to ten forms of song. Likutey Moharan 205 gives another connection: daas contains five chasadim and five gevuros. The ten chapters address the two sides together.
The five fingers of the right hand provide an image for the five chasadim, and the five fingers of the left for the five gevuros. Within the explanation given here, each side contains aspects of Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach and Hod. These are not two unrelated lists. They are the giving and restraining sides of a joined spiritual structure.
The five final Hebrew letters, ם ן ץ ף ך, help explain the restraining side. A final letter marks the end of a word. It says that this expression has reached its boundary. The ordinary forms of those letters are used here as an image of the chasadim, while the final forms picture the gevuros. This is the particular symbolic correspondence being used; a full explanation of the five chasadim and five gevuros requires more than this brief introduction.
The rav points ahead to the hands and ten fingers in the story of the Seven Beggars, and their connection with the ten forms of song. For now, the point needed for our learning is that tikkun joins giving with limits. The ten chapters correspond to recovering that union within daas.