The Secret of Tanning the Hide: Throwing Away the Intellect and Meriting the Divine Intellect

Class No. 278 | Thursday, Parashas Vayigash, Eve of 10 Teves 5769 - Yahrtzeit (anniversary of passing) of Moharnat (Reb Noson) zy"a (may his merit protect us) - Part 1

The ultimate purpose of all Torah study is the simple recognition that there is a Creator of the world, an attainment that can only be reached by nullifying one's own intellect and desires. The article explains how the true tzaddik refines his body and soul just as one tans a hide, until achieving absolute purification, and how drawing close to him brings about the tikkun (rectification) of all the worlds.

He does not sleep, says the Kotzker Rebbe. Sometimes it is good for a person to go to sleep, to calm down a bit. But simply to know what the Rebbe is, what Breslov is – it is to know that there is Hashem in the world. That is all. The entire Talmud and the entire Torah, the entire Shulchan Aruch and the entire Yoreh Deah, we learn everything only to know that there is Hashem in the world.

A person generally does not know that there is Hashem in the world. Until the age of sixty or seventy, he does not know at all. At age seventy, he begins to gather a hint here, a hint there, and with great difficulty, he understands the hints. The tzaddik comes to show us, Rebbe Nachman and Reb Noson came to show us that there is Hashem in the world. Specifically when we are healthy and robust, when we are at the peak of our strength and feel "my power and the might of my hand," we must know that this strength comes from Hashem, that it is a gift from Hashem. One is strong, one is not strong – Hashem made this one like this, and that one like that. The main thing is to attain a broken heart. The main thing is that the strong one should also have a broken heart, and the weak one certainly must have a broken heart.

Nullifying the Personal Intellect

Only this tzaddik can show that there is Hashem in the world, and he can only show this through Reb Noson. Only Reb Noson grasped the essence of Rebbe Nachman's point. No other student grasped the point in its entirety; this one grasped a point here, and that one grasped a point there, but the very essence of the point was absorbed only by Reb Noson.

And why did only Reb Noson grasp this? Because Reb Noson said: "I set my intellect completely aside" (Oich hab avek geleigt mein seichel ingantzen). I remained without any intellect. This is what Reb Noson says:

"For only one who throws away his own intellect completely... because the purification of the body is the tanning of the hide" (Likutey Halachos, Laws of Tefillin 5, Paragraph 35).

Only someone who can break free from all desires can reach this nullification and throw away his own intellect, because our intellect is bound up with desires. The human intellect is an intellect of desires – it is a mind that thinks about how to grab and make money here, how to fulfill a desire there, and how to "have fun." We must know that until we break free from our desires, we do not possess the Divine intellect, and it remains concealed.

The Secret of Tanning the Hide

The purification of the body is compared to tanning a hide, and this is the secret of Tefillin – that they take the hide and tan it. Only Rebbe Nachman knows how to tan our hide, how to extract us from all the desires and from all the four elements from which all types of desires stem.

Man, by his nature, is a lump of desires; he lives only with them. They let him run – until age thirty, forty, fifty they let him run, until one day, boom, he collapses and falls. It is better for a person to catch himself from today, from this very moment. Because only one who has broken free from all desires will merit the Divine intellect, the true intellect. Through this, one merits complete consciousness and perfect Emunah (faith) in the ultimate perfection. Fortunate are they.

However, the masses do not merit to purify the body to such an extent. Even completely righteous tzaddikim find it difficult to reach such absolute purification.

"I am a clean piece of hide"

Regarding himself, Rebbe Nachman said: "I am a clean piece of hide" (Ich bin a rein fellachel). Meaning, wherever they press – no bad odor will emerge. Like a hide that is tanned for an expensive fur, which must not have any bad odor. They must tan and tan; no corner of the hide is left untanned.

Just as billionaires take the most expensive fur, where the hide is tanned again and again. They clean it, purify it, boil it – again and again, until no odor and no blemish remains. In the end, you don't even know it's a hide; you think it's smooth paper. This is how the tzaddik refines himself, until not a single point of blemish remains within him, and only Rebbe Nachman merited this in perfection.

Since even completely righteous tzaddikim do not always merit such purification, therefore their main tikkun (rectification) is through drawing close to the tzaddikim. Therefore, all the tzaddikim, even the greatest ones, need this tzaddik, this Rav and this student, to whom all creations and all the worlds look forward and yearn, for only through them will the tikkun (rectification) of all the worlds come about.

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