It was in this sense that Hillel the Elder would say to his disciples when he went to eat that he was going to do a favor to the [6] "lowly and poor creature," meaning his body.

He regarded his body as a foreign thing, and therefore used this expression - that he was doing it a favor by giving it food.

For he himself was nothing other than the divine soul.

It alone animated his body and flesh, inasmuch as, in tzaddikim the evil that was in the vital soul pervading their blood and flesh has been transformed into good and completely absorbed into the holiness of the divine soul, [and thus, the divine soul is the man himself].

With a Beinoni, however, since the substance and essence of the vitalizing, animal soul (stemming from the sitra achra) which pervades his blood and flesh has not been transformed into good, it indeed constitutes the man himself, [and therefore, by crushing his own spirit (at those special times) the Beinoni actually crushes the sitra achra.

The Alter Rebbe now proceeds to suggest various lines of reasoning that the Beinoni may use in order to humble and crush his spirit - and thereby the sitra achra of his animal soul.

The first of these follows from the point just concluded, that the personality of the Beinoni is, in fact, an expression of the sitra achra - the animal soul].

   

Notes:

6. (Back to text) Vayikra Rabbah 34:3.