Tanya with Rochel Schmukler - podcast cover

Tanya with Rochel Schmukler

Rochel Schmukler•www.buzzsprout.com
Religion & Spirituality
Judaism
Education
Society & Culture
Philosophy

This Women's Tanya Class is our interactive spiritual journey where we investigate, discuss and apply the revolutionary ideas presented in the Tanya, a foremost work of Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism by the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.

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Episodes

Tanya Chapter 41 part 8

Your soul can tap into the Garden of Eden still while in a body, and it yearns to experience this.

Jan 19, 2023•44 min•Season 25Ep. 8

Tanya Chapter 41 part 7

You might not mean it with your whole heart, but there's a reason to get into the habit.

Jan 15, 2023•43 min•Season 25Ep. 7

Tanya Chapter 41 part 6

Can you see yourself as a manifestation of the Shechina?

Jan 07, 2023•50 min•Season 25Ep. 6

Tanya Chapter 41 part 5

Maybe your meditation doesn't leave its impression all day – but is it effective in the moment?

Dec 29, 2022•44 min•Season 25Ep. 5

Tanya Chapter 41 part 3

A mitzvah is an incredible opportunity to surrender within our Source, both on a meta-level and as well as on a micro-level.

Dec 15, 2022•51 min•Season 25Ep. 3

Tanya Chapter 40 part 4

A tiny being can initiate vast positive change. When a person learns and prays out of love and fear, the letters he utters are “alive” with spiritual infusion and they rise to the ten sefirot. There, their true identity as the completely unbounded light of Hashem is exposed. In this world below, the radiance of Torah and mitzvot cannot shine, but in the coming future when the world rises out of its materiality, all of that will change. Now, something amazing happens when Torah and mitzvot –– whi...

Oct 28, 2022•47 min•Season 24Ep. 4

Tanya Chapter 40 part 3

The secret of intention? The power to send things up from the material world into infinitely higher realities. Man’s animating, speaking soul is subject to the condition which affects the totality of this world –– kelipat nogah. When speaking worthless things, the vivifying soul constitutes a concealing veil, obscuring the Divine life energy within it. However, when the vivifying soul enunciates and powers words of Torah and prayer, it cannot conceal the Divine. In fact, it becomes transformed i...

Sep 16, 2022•47 min•Season 24Ep. 3

Tanya Chapter 40: Love and fear are "wings" that transport our acts of holiness to worlds beyond this one. part 1

Acts of holiness naturally rise beyond this world. When someone studies Torah without the intention to connect to Hashem, then the study does not rise to become incorporated with the ten sefirot. But it does rise! Torah is essentially holy and so its natural place is in a place of holiness, in the spiritual worlds above ours. In fact, angels are created from these acts of holiness either in our world of Asiya, or in the world of Yetzirah. All this is true so long as there were no contrary intent...

Aug 23, 2022•48 min•Season 24Ep. 1

Tanya Chapter 39 part 9

Keep doing good things, no matter your intention. When someone studies Torah with self-serving interests, that holy act becomes trapped within the kelipah. But this is only a temporary situation. Once a person returns to Hashem in teshuva, their previous acts of holiness are released and return with them. This is not just a possible outcome. It is a definite outcome! Every person will ultimately do teshuva, whether in this incarnation or another. And once that happens, all acts of holiness from ...

Jul 22, 2022•44 min•Season 23Ep. 9

Tanya Chapter 39 part 8

Is a good habit good enough? We are looking at someone whose Torah study and mitzvah performance is not done out of a space of love and fear of Hashem. He acts this way out of habit, having been trained to fear and serve Hashem from youth. This kind of service is not considered truly for the sake of Hashem, because in order to do something for the sake of another, there has to be a motivating emotion of either love or fear. Next we look at someone who has self-serving interests when studying Tor...

Jul 15, 2022•44 min•Season 23Ep. 8

Tanya Chapter 39 part 7

Knowing the difference can make all of the difference. By analyzing the reward for a mitzvah and being aware of its destination in the spiritual worlds, we can understand something of the essential make-up of a mitzvah. Knowing that a mitzvah powered by love and fear ascends to the higher worlds and becomes incorporated within the ten holy sefirot motivates us to serve Hashem out of a space of awareness and connection. On the other hand, while every act of Torah and mitzvah is inherently holy, a...

Jul 08, 2022•42 min•Season 23Ep. 7

Tanya Chapter 39 part 6

The world of Atzilus is beyond the intellect of a created being, therefore it is the abode of the sublime souls who served Hashem in a way that completely transcends the intellect. As a chariot is nullified to the rider, these great tzadikim are completely surrendered to the Divine will–– and they, as well as everything that they own, expresses nothing other than the will of Hashem. People who are not capable of this level of surrender because their soul’s root lacks this capacity, have the oppo...

Jun 10, 2022•48 min•Season 23Ep. 6

Tanya Chapter 39 part 5

The world of Atzilus is a world of oneness, and it is completely beyond the grasp of a created being. In that sublime world, the ten sefirot are completely unified with their Emanator, and so utterly and infinitely transcend the mind of a limited creature, no matter how great. A created being does indeed possess the ability to grasp chochmah bina and da’at in the lower world of Beriah and still retain existence due to the tzitzum – the constriction – in that world.

May 27, 2022•46 min•Season 23Ep. 5

Tanya Chapter 39 part 4

There’s a distinction between the soul that serves and the service that it performs. Depending on the level of intention, the soul’s service of Torah and mitzvot rise to be incorporated within the ten sefirot, the Divine life force, in the higher worlds of either Beriah or Yetzirah. But ultimately, the ten sefirot of the world of Atzilus, which are one with their Emanator, the blessed Infinite One, are within the ten sefirot of every world. The soul, on the other hand, remains in abodes and cham...

May 13, 2022•50 min•Season 23Ep. 4

Tanya Chapter 39 part 3

Normally, a soul who served Hashem with instinctive love and fear abides in the world of Yetzirah, as does the “ruach” of a righteous person’s soul. However, on special occasions the soul gets to rise to a world beyond its normal self, a privilege not available to angels. Why this special treatment? Because an angel doesn’t have to fight a dark side in order to implement its natural emotions. But a soul clothed in a physical body must resist evil in order to access its natural holiness, and that...

May 06, 2022•47 min•Season 23Ep. 3

Tanya Chapter 39 part 2

In order to “inhabit” a world, there must be a common bond between the “self” and the “world.” The world of Yetzirah is a world of holy emotion and the angels who serve Hashem with their emotional instinct abide there. Emotions are their mode and so that is their world. The world of Beriah is a world where the Divine intellect, the source of the holy emotions, radiates. Righteous people who served Hashem with intellectually generated emotions abide in this higher world, where the setting is one ...

Apr 29, 2022•48 min•Season 23Ep. 2

Tanya Chapter 39: We can move beyond our natural holy instincts, but if not, angels operate by holy instinct too. part 1

Animals are instinctive beings of our physical world. But there are instinctive beings in the higher worlds too – these are the angels. Their powerful instincts of love or fear of Hashem are sublime and magnificent. However, it is a nature which they did not create by choice, by which they simply operate. From this we can appreciate the power of our own service, even if we cannot produce any new emotions, serving Hashem by tapping into the instincts of our soul. Our service then is at least as p...

Apr 01, 2022•50 min•Season 23Ep. 1

Tanya Chapter 38 part 6. You may lack the human power to generate new emotions. But that shouldn't stop you from acting on holy instinct

When a person lacks the capacity to generate new emotions of awe and love for Hashem, he has another path. He can awaken his instinctive love, which is embedded deep within his soul. This powerful love is innate to the Jew and includes within it an element of fear. Being mindful of his deep desire to attach to Hashem, a Jew can then use his awareness to perform a mitzvah. This intention then becomes the soul of the mitzvah, and is analogous to the soul of the animal whose love and fear are not a...

Mar 24, 2022•37 min•Season 22Ep. 6

Tanya Chapter 38 part 5. Your Divine instinct drives you to remain connected to your Source at any cost. Let that be the soul of your mitzvah

A human being is characterized by his power of intellect and freedom of choice. A person with the ability to meditate upon Hashem’s greatness and to generate love and awe based on that awareness, when he uses that intention to power a mitzvah, his intention becomes like the soul of a human for the body of the mitzvah. But what if you do not have the capacity to create love through meditation? How will you infuse soul –– the intention to attach to Hashem –– into your mitzvah? All you have to do i...

Mar 04, 2022•51 min•Season 22Ep. 5

Tanya Chapter 38 part 4. Can you see how the mitzvah and its intention reflects the lights and vessels of the Supernal world of Atzilut?

The correlation between the mitzvah and its intention is sourced in the supernal world of Atzilus: the intention to cleave to Hashem is sourced in the lights of Atzilus while the act or speech of the mitzvah is sourced in the vessels. Lights are about uncontained, unlimited manifestation of the Divine. Vessels are about expressing Hashem’s infinity in defined, structured ways. The attachment of the light with Hashem is total, the attachment of the vessels with Hashem is total. But the way this t...

Feb 18, 2022•46 min•Season 22Ep. 4

Tanya Chapter 38 part 3. The soul of the mitzvah. How intention radiates Divine attachment more than action alone

The intention of attaching to Hashem while performing a mitzvah is like the soul of the mitzvah. It is not that the attachment that is forged by intention is greater than the attachment forged by the act or speech of the mitzvah. Both action and intention are equal in this regard, since they are both the will of Hashem. The difference between them lies in how manifestly this connection is sensed. In just a dry act of the mitzvah, there is minimal radiance of the Divine will. In the intention of ...

Feb 11, 2022•47 min•Season 22Ep. 3

Tanya Chapter 38 part 2. The physical act of the mitzvah and its intention both manifest the Divine will. But there's a difference

While everything of this world is equal in that all are subject to utter and total Divine concealment, the difference between one thing and another becomes vast when we consider the contraction or expansion of the Divine light which flows into each. Generally, this world is divided into four categories, each class corresponding to a different letter of the Divine name Havaya –– one below the other in terms of contraction. We can apply this idea to the speech or act of a mitzvah and its intent. T...

Feb 04, 2022•46 min•Season 22Ep. 2

Tanya Chapter 38: The power of intention. part 1

Drawing upon what we’ve learned until now, we can now understand the halacha –– that meditation is not valid in lieu of verbal articulation. Because the soul itself requires no perfecting; it came down here only to draw light upon the vital soul as well as the body. This is accomplished by actual articulation or action via the body. On the other hand, our Sages said that prayer or any other blessing said without kavanah is like a body without a soul. Let’s understand what this means: Both body a...

Jan 21, 2022•48 min•Season 22Ep. 1
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