Likkutei Amarim Chapter 3 · 5781

00:00 Speaker 1 Tanya—we’ve spoken about this several times, and I said I would emphasize it again and again—is a guidebook. What do we need to do? How can I become a complete Jew? To do that, I need to know where I came from and where I’m going. If we study every letter—if we walk through a forest and start examining each leaf on its own—we lose our way. So let’s look at the tree that these chapters belong to. We’ll see where we came from and where we’re going, and then we’ll look inside the chapter. What’s pictured here is the first part of Tanya. Broadly speaking, Tanya has six branches. Tanya explains how to be a complete Jew, dividing the subject into six topics. The first is: Who is a beinoni? In other words, the first thing the Alter Rebbe teaches us is, “Wait. You want to learn how to be a Jew? First, know what a Jew is.” A soldier who doesn’t know whom he’s fighting, what strengths he has, or what weapons he has cannot function as a soldier. You’re about to fight the yetzer hara, so first get to know yourself and understand your objectives. The Alter Rebbe devotes the first twelve chapters not to teaching us how to be complete Jews, but to helping us know ourselves: who I am, what forces operate within me, and what I should be striving for. So let’s take a moment to look at the diagram of the chapters and see how it shows this. We see that the nature of the beinoni is covered in chapters 1 through 12. That’s the first part of Tanya. Beneath it are two smaller branches. The branch on the right, chapters 1 through 8, discusses the soul and its garments. The soul and its garments are really the part

02:06 Speaker 1 that defines who I am and what forces operate within me. The second part, chapters 9 through 12, I’ve called “the battle of the souls.” That’s the part that discusses the goal. So there are two parts to chapters 1 through 12: the first is “Who am I?” and the second is “What is the goal?” We’re still in the first part, so let’s take the branch on the right, go down one more row, and see that it too is divided into two smaller branches: one for the G-dly soul and one for the animal soul. The Alter Rebbe lays it out very systematically. At the beginning of Tanya, in chapters 1 through 5, he explains what the G-dly soul is, where it comes from, what faculties it has, what its garments are, and how it operates. Then, in the following chapters, 6 through 8, he explains the same things about the animal soul. It’s very clear. We’re now at chapter 3, which continues chapter 2. In chapter 2, which we studied last week, he discussed what the G-dly soul is. And what did he explain there? You remember how strongly we emphasized that the essential point of chapter 2 is to tell us that the Rebbe is central to everything. The nasi of the generation is central to everything; all our strengths are drawn from the nasi of the generation. That’s what chapter 2 says. But he explained what it is that is drawn to us from the nasi of the generation: the G-dly soul. He said very briefly that it is a soul comprising nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. He repeats several times that each of our souls comprises nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. What’s the difference between them? He didn’t discuss that there. It’s explained elsewhere in Chassidus, and it won’t be explained here either. Broadly speaking, neshamah is

04:15 Speaker 1 the higher level of the soul, the level chiefly expressed in a person’s intellect. Ruach is a lower level of the soul, expressed chiefly in a person’s emotions. And nefesh is the lower part, the lower level, expressed in the power of action. I want to say one more thing about this. A common mistake—I hear it often—is that the soul has separate parts: a part called nefesh, a part called neshamah, and a part called ruach. That’s a mistake. The soul doesn’t have separate parts. It is one soul with one simple essence. It isn’t Lego. Nobody took a neshamah, a ruach, and a nefesh and glued them together. No. The soul is one entity, just as my body is one human body. True, I have a head, a torso, and a leg, but they aren’t separate pieces; they’re one body. So too, the soul is one soul. More than that: the parts of the body don’t merely belong to one body; they also receive from one another and are interconnected. Chassidus gives an example: when someone had a headache, they would draw blood from his leg. That was a form of medicine in the past. Today they do something like that with reflexology. Right? His hand hurts—why are you touching his foot? Because they’re connected. And it works the other way too. For the head to function in the world, it needs the feet and the hands, and so on. The heart pumps blood throughout the body. So while the body does have different organs, those organs aren’t merely joined together. They affect one another and draw sustenance from one another. Every organ affects all the others, and every organ also receives from all the others. The same is true of the soul. And that is how he begins chapter 3: “Now, each aspect and level of these three”—

06:35 Speaker 1 nefesh, ruach, and neshamah, which we discussed in the previous chapter. Every Jew, even the most lowly, has nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. Each one comprises ten aspects. Perhaps we should mention one more thing we discussed in the previous chapter. He said that great tzaddikim have the level of neshamah revealed in them; in more ordinary people, the level of ruach shines; and in still more ordinary people, only their nefesh is apparent. So broadly speaking, it is chiefly the neshamah that shines in tzaddikim, and so on. But when it comes to an individual tzaddik, it isn’t that he has only neshamah; he also has nefesh and ruach. The same applies even to the most lowly person. True, you don’t see his neshamah; you see only his nefesh. But his soul, too, comprises ruach and neshamah. Every Jew has all three, because they are really one thing. “And each aspect and level of these three—nefesh, ruach, and neshamah—comprises ten aspects, corresponding to the ten supernal sefiros from which they evolved.” So there are nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. Nefesh comprises ten faculties, ruach comprises ten faculties, and neshamah also comprises ten faculties. Why specifically ten? Because nefesh, ruach, and neshamah all correspond to the ten sefiros. Above, there are ten G-dly faculties, and corresponding to them, every soul has ten faculties. That’s what he said at first. Then he added another word: our nefesh, ruach, and neshamah don’t merely correspond to them—as if there are ten there, so there are ten here. It’s much more than that: they evolved from them. You’re all surely familiar with the verse, “He made man in the image of G-d.” What does “image” mean? In ordinary Hebrew, not in the Torah.

08:42 Speaker 2 In the likeness.

08:42 Speaker 1 Hm?

08:43 Speaker 2 It means in the likeness of G-d.

08:45 Speaker 1 A picture, a photograph.

08:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:47 Speaker 1 A picture. The Jewish person—the G-dly soul—has an image, a form, of G-d. What does that mean? Our soul doesn’t just correspond to the G-dly sefiros; it evolved from the G-dly sefiros. That is, the world of Atzilus, which has been explained and will be explained further. The world of Atzilus is G-dliness; it is Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. The worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah—you’ve heard of those, right? Am I talking into thin air? Hm? Has everyone heard those terms? The worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah contain created beings. The world of Atzilus does not. There isn’t an angel in Atzilus. There are no created worlds there. Atzilus is G-dliness; it is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, His faculties—it is He Himself. The Alter Rebbe says that our soul was not created; it evolved from the ten sefiros. What’s the difference between evolving and being created? Creation is something from nothing. It has no prior source. Now it exists; before, it didn’t. It’s something else, something separate. When something evolves from a source, it becomes smaller. There was sunlight outside. Someone built a house and put in a window, and now the light enters only through the window. It isn’t as bright as it is outside, but it’s the same light. There’s less of it, but it’s the very same light. Every Jew’s soul is literally a part of G-d above. Or, as our Sages said, it’s like sunlight shining through many windows. Every Jew’s body is a window through which sunlight shines into the world. Every Jew’s soul is... How do you say it in Yiddish? A shtikel Elokus—a piece of G-dliness. That’s what is here. It has evolved, meaning it has become smaller and more limited, but it is actual G-dliness. Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself is within each one of us. So the first thing we learned in the chapter is that the essence of every Jew is G-dliness. Now, just as G-dliness itself

11:19 Speaker 1 Above, it has ten different powers, and likewise our soul has ten different powers. These ten powers are divided into two groups: three mothers and seven doubles. He immediately explains what the mothers and doubles are in our soul. Chochmah, Binah, and Daas are the mothers, the ones that give birth. And the seven middos—Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, and so on—are the doubles. So the human soul is divided into two: intellect and middos. Chochmah, Binah, and Daas, the powers of the intellect, are the mothers, and... He says it right away: the intellect includes Chochmah, Binah, and Daas, and the middos are love of Hashem, fear and awe of Him, praising Him, and so on—all seven middos. Why are Chochmah, Binah, and Daas called mothers? The intellect is a mother to whom? Do you know or not?

12:31 Speaker 4 To the middos.

12:32 Speaker 1 Hmm?

12:33 Speaker 4 To the middos.

12:35 Speaker 1 Right, the intellect is the mother of the middos. Why? How does the intellect give birth to the middos?

12:40 Speaker 4 Isn’t that also what the Zohar says... that the mind rules over the heart? I mean, that too, of course...

12:44 Speaker 1 Ruling isn’t giving birth.

12:46 Speaker 4 But when you live with something, it really has a strong hold on you...

12:53 Speaker 1 That’s true, but... but that isn’t because it rules over the heart.

12:57 Speaker 4 Okay, so that confused me. Right, but...

13:00 Speaker 1 It’s also true that it rules over the heart, but here he’s talking about giving birth. Our emotions are aroused—that’s how we’re made. A person has the capacity for love, a certain feeling; he’s capable of loving. When he contemplates something, he’ll begin to love it. If he’s thinking about something else, that feeling isn’t active right now. Right? So what gave birth to the feeling? That’s why the word used is “give birth.” In other words, the intellect doesn’t merely reveal an emotion that already exists; it actually gives birth to it. Before, it wasn’t there, and now it is. Before, it existed in potential, and now it exists in actuality. Let’s look at the text: “The middos are love of Hashem, fear and awe of Him, and so on. Chochmah, Binah, and Daas are called ‘mothers’ and the source of the middos, because the middos are the offspring of Chochmah, Binah, and Daas.” Maybe I’ll add something else, just because it’s interesting. We talked about why the intellect is called “mothers.” But why are the middos, the emotions, called “doubles”? Any ideas?

14:09 Speaker 4 Maybe because they come with greater, uh, intensity?

14:12 Speaker 1 That’s one explanation; there are several. You could say the main explanation is what you said: an emotion can be weak or it can be strong. And since the way our soul comes down from above into the body is through letters, Chassidus explains that the letters, too, are divided into those same two—or three—types. Sefer Yetzirah, which goes back to Avraham Avinu, who wrote it, says that three letters are the mothers of all the other letters: alef, mem, and shin—Emesh. And then there are the letters that form the main body of the alphabet: beged kefares. What’s special about those letters? Beged kefares—because today we don’t distinguish between a regular reish and a reish with a dagesh, but in the vowel-pointing, a reish can have a dagesh. The letters of beged kefares are the only seven letters that can appear with or without a dagesh. They’re the double letters. And then there are the remaining letters... We said there are three, Emesh, the letters that are the mochin, the head of all the letters. There are the seven letters of beged kefares, the double letters; each can appear in a soft form or an emphasized form. And there are another twelve letters left, which are the extension of the letters. This also exists in the human soul and in the higher sefiros, but it isn’t explained in this chapter. So we said that the intellect gives birth to the middos. Now he’s going to explain how: “The explanation is as follows: The intellect of the intellectual soul, which comprehends any subject, is called Chochmah—koach mah. And when it brings its power into actuality, contemplating with the intellect to understand a matter properly and in depth from a concept of Chochmah grasped in the mind, it is called Binah.” The Alter Rebbe says this very briefly here. We’ll do the same. We’ll explain it in a few more

16:27 Speaker 1 words, but still briefly, because it isn’t the main point of the chapter. He explains what the power of Chochmah is and what the power of Binah is. He stops there; he doesn’t discuss the power of Daas. We’ll see why later. When we try to understand something—anything at all, any new thing—the process of understanding has three stages. Always. It has to; otherwise you can’t understand. The first stage is that we don’t understand. That’s actually before the first stage. We’re learning. Now, if it’s something easy and as soon as someone tells us, we understand it, then all three stages come together. So let’s not use that example, because it’s very hard to see them there. Let’s take a case where a teacher is explaining something deep in class, some calculation or something that’s genuinely hard to understand. I rack my brain, keep at it and keep at it, trying and trying and trying, and at some point it clicks. I’ve understood. Sooner or later, I’ve understood. Now the teacher says, “Oh, very good, you’ve understood. Come explain it to everyone.” No, no, no, no, no, no, I can’t. And if we’re honest with ourselves, at that stage—even though I really have understood—not only can I not explain it to others, I can’t even explain it to myself. So what does it mean that I’ve understood? If I can’t explain it, even to myself, and if it’s a problem, I try to solve it and can’t—what did I understand? Well, I understood the idea. That’s the stage of Chochmah. Chochmah is koach mah. I’ve grasped the point of the matter, but without any details. It’s just the matter as a whole, its essential point. I can see it from the outside. I don’t

18:29 Speaker 1 have a detailed understanding of it. That requires another power of the soul, an entirely different power whose root in the soul is different—even opposite. The second power is Binah. As long as Chochmah hasn’t grasped the point, Binah has nothing to do, nothing to work with. It has nothing. Binah has the power to take that point and break it down into details. How does it play out in this situation? What example can I find for it in that situation? How does it fit with something I already understood in the past? And how can I use it to understand a third matter? That’s the power of Binah: finding the details within a subject. What does Binah work with? It works with a point. It can’t arrive at the point itself. That’s a different power of the soul. Chassidus discusses at length how Binah and Chochmah aren’t merely different; they’re opposites. The power of Chochmah is directed upward, and the power of Binah is directed downward. Chochmah is cool, and Binah is warm. There are a number of other differences and opposites between Chochmah and Binah. They’re two completely different powers of the soul. Just as Binah has no existence without Chochmah, nothing to work with, Chochmah without Binah is also worth nothing. That’s why our Sages said—I think it’s in the holy Zohar—that Chochmah and Binah are father and mother. A father can’t have children without a mother, but a mother can’t have children without a father either. They work together. There’s much more to say about it, but that’s enough for our purposes. So the first two powers of the soul are Chochmah and Binah. When a person brings his intellectual power into actuality, he uses his Chochmah and Binah. And what does he con—what does he

20:42 Speaker 1 [unclear] to understand. “When he uses his intellect to contemplate and understand a matter accurately and in depth, drawing on an idea of chochmah grasped by his mind, this is called binah. These are the father and mother that give birth to love of Hashem and awe and fear of Him.” Why does this give birth to those feelings? Because when a person contemplates, the intellect of his thinking soul delves deeply into the greatness of Hashem. After a person has learned, he begins to contemplate how Hashem fills all worlds, encompasses all worlds, and how all is as naught before Him. So there are three ideas here. A person who wants to give rise to love and awe of Hashem needs to contemplate three things—but first of all, he needs to learn. As long as a person hasn’t learned and doesn’t know, he has nothing to contemplate. We’re talking about after he’s learned and knows these ideas. Now he contemplates them: he holds them in his mind and thinks about them. There are three general ideas that awaken love and awe: the Divine light that fills all worlds, the Divine light that encompasses all worlds, and the idea that all is as naught before Him. Are you familiar with these three concepts? “Fills” means an inner life-force—the life within me—while “encompasses” means something beyond me. What did we mention earlier? Chayah and yechidah. Right? In the world, there is Divine light revealed through Torah and mitzvos, through what I learn, understand and feel. And sometimes there is Divine revelation; there are miracles. That is outside the bounds of nature, something higher. But there is something else: all is as naught before Him. Both the encompassing light and the light that fills all worlds are light, a revelation. They are not Him Himself. They are a revelation from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a revelation from His Essence—one kind of light or another, whether we can feel it or cannot feel it. Fine, but it is only light. Compared with His Essence and Being, it is not even anything. Even the light that encompasses all worlds is nothing compared with the Essence and Being of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Later in Tanya, he

23:02 Speaker 1 gives an analogy—several analogies for this. One is the light of the sun within the body of the sun. The sun weighs millions, billions—I don’t know how many—tons, and it shines. The light that comes from it is tremendous. If there weren’t some kind of shield here, an atmosphere that protects us, and a few other things we don’t need to mention now—this isn’t a physics class—the light reaching us from the sun would burn up all life and all plants here in a second. And what the Earth receives of the sun’s light isn’t even a tiny fraction, not even a tiny fraction of what the sun emits at every moment. The amount of energy the sun emits in a second, in a fraction of a second, is beyond the grasp of the human mind. Yet the sun keeps shining and shining and shining and shining, and it loses none of its weight. All that tremendous light is only an emanation from it; it isn’t the sun itself at all. And before the sun’s light emerged from the sun, where was it? It wasn’t there as a separate thing. It was contained within its source; it had no existence of its own. The analogy the Alter Rebbe gives there in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, in two places—and it also appears elsewhere in Tanya—is that the existence of our world is like the sun’s light in relation to the sun before it leaves the sun: absolutely nothing. That is the analogy for “all is as naught before Him.” Everything compared with Him—not just the light that fills all worlds, but even the light that encompasses all worlds—is absolutely nothing. It isn’t merely insignificant; it has no existence of its own. In Tanya, chapters 20 and 21, he discusses these analogies at greater length. So when a person contemplates these three ideas—what does “fills all worlds” mean? All the life-force he sees in the world. What

25:24 Speaker 1 is life-force? I’m alive, animals are alive, plants grow, there are endless, endless living creatures, the world turns, the wind blows, and the sun warms us. All of that is only the light that fills all worlds. Beyond that is Divine light that encompasses all worlds, which we cannot feel because it is so far above the worlds altogether. And even the light that encompasses all worlds is absolutely nothing compared with Him, blessed be He. A person contemplates these three ideas at length, and awe and fear come over him. Or he begins to yearn for G-dliness. So contemplation of Hashem’s greatness through these three ideas awakens love and awe in a person; it gives birth to the feeling. Let’s look at it inside. When he contemplates the three ideas, “awe of His exaltedness is born and awakened in his mind and thoughts.” What is awe of His exaltedness? You haven’t—haven’t had the privilege. Maybe I haven’t had the privilege. I don’t know what to call it. In any case, when people approached the Rebbe, apart from a handful of people who... I don’t know what kind of skin they had—elephant skin—approaching the Rebbe was frightening. Simply frightening. And the Rebbe was a kind person; he always smiled. He never got angry at anyone, and whatever you did, it was all right, and he always encouraged you. But approaching the Rebbe was frightening. There was one time—I went up to the Rebbe to receive a dollar many times. Not once, and not ten times. Not even thirty, I think. Many times. And every time it was frightening. I remember one of those times in Tammuz 5748, after the passing of the Rebbetzin. It was inside the Rebbe’s home, where they davened. And afterward, on Sunday, right after davening, the Rebbe turned around inside his home and people began to pass by. They entered from one side and went out through the kitchen

27:53 Speaker 1 at the back, and I had davened inside. So I stood a little to the side to see how people went through. I didn’t stand there for more than two minutes before I joined the line and went through. It happened several times like that; I was there for about two weeks. And one of those times, when I reached the Rebbe, took the dollar and went outside, I got as far as the kitchen and fainted. Literally, onto the floor. The Rebbe hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t threatened me, either.

28:32 Speaker 5 Wow.

28:34 Speaker 1 That is awe of His exaltedness. Awe of His exaltedness—it isn’t fear. I don’t know what to call it; it isn’t fear. It’s awe, but awe that you feel in your heart. Real awe. And what is asked of you is to contemplate the greatness of Hashem—how He fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and how all is as naught before Him—until awe of His exaltedness comes over you, until you feel it in your heart. Until you begin to feel fear—to feel awe in your heart, really feel it. And if the Alter Rebbe asks this of us, it means we can do it. If we couldn’t, he wouldn’t ask for it; he wouldn’t mention it or tell us such a thing exists. And the proof that it’s possible is that everyone knows perfectly well that when something matters to them and they start thinking about it, their heart starts pounding. Whether it’s something joyful, or someone has made me angry, or it’s something distressing, G-d forbid. Everyone knows very well that when something occupies their thoughts and they think about it, it affects their heart. They have no trouble with that at all. So what’s our problem? We’re a little lazy about thinking about G-dliness. But the Alter Rebbe says it works the same way. Just as thinking about material matters of this world affects your heart, thinking about G-dliness works the same way. It’s the same mind and the same heart; it works. There’s no getting around it. There’s a joke—or what do you call it, a witty saying—that people often tell and repeat: there are three things that inevitably have an effect. Have you heard it? Do you know it? There are three things that inevitably affect a person.

30:43 Speaker 5 Money, mashke, and Chassidus.

30:46 Speaker 1 Money, mashke, and Chassidus. So let’s go over it for anyone who doesn’t know it—or does everyone know it? Huh?

30:53 Speaker 5 We need to hear more.

30:55 Speaker 1 Money. There’s no such thing as a person who is rich, has a lot of money, and behaves normally. If he has a lot of money, he starts feeling important. He needs to be the one in charge, the one who decides what happens. “But I know quite a few people who have a lot of money and aren’t like that.” Give them a little more. It will change. It inevitably has an effect. The same goes for mashke. A person takes a drink of mashke; he can’t say, “I don’t want to be...” It affects his head. What can you do? It has an effect; it isn’t up to him. He drinks mashke, and it works. “But there’s someone who can drink an entire bottle of vodka and nothing happens.” Give him two bottles. It’ll work. And it’s the same with Chassidus. “But I know a professor who has learned a great deal of Chassidus and is still a brute.” Let him learn a little more; it’ll work on him too. There’s no such thing as a Jew learning Chassidus without it affecting him. It’s one of the things that inevitably has an effect. If you contemplate, the feeling will be born. The mind rules the heart; that’s human nature.

32:11 Speaker 5 But what if someone studies a lot and doesn’t contemplate?

32:13 Speaker 6 Right.

32:15 Speaker 1 If you learn a lot but don’t contemplate it, it will affect you in a way that remains external, not in an internal way.

32:20 Speaker 5 We often see people learning maamarim and the Rebbe’s sichos, but they don’t behave... It’s as though it doesn’t affect them.

32:29 Speaker 1 So we’ll get to that in a moment. That’s the subject of the chapter.

32:33 Speaker 5 The effect needs to show.

32:35 Speaker 6 In behavior, in proper conduct.

32:36 Speaker 1 In this chapter there are three—

32:40 Speaker 6 For every person.

32:41 Speaker 1 Wait, wait, we haven’t gotten there yet. This chapter has three parts. We’re now in the second part. The first part introduced the soul and its ten faculties, which are divided into three categories. Right? The intellect and the emotions. We’re not talking about the three categories yet. And... in the second part he explains how the intellect gives rise to emotions, and the third part is the main point of the chapter. We’ll get to it in a moment. “The emotion of awe of His exaltedness is born and awakened in his mind and thought: to fear and feel ashamed before His infinite greatness, and to feel fear of Hashem in his heart. Then his heart will blaze with an intense love, like flames of fire, with longing, desire and yearning, and a soul thirsting for the greatness of the Infinite One, blessed be He. This is the soul’s yearning to expire, as it is written, ‘My soul yearns, indeed it pines,’ and so on; and it is written, ‘My soul thirsts for G-d,’ and so on; and it is written, ‘My soul thirsts for You,’ and so on.” So you see that he says here that contemplating three things—memalei, sovev, and “everything is as nothing before Him”—gives rise to three things in the heart: longing, desire and yearning. And that is expressed, as it says, in three verses. “My soul yearns, indeed it pines”—the verse ends, “for the courtyards of Hashem.” A courtyard is external; this is the G-dly light that fills all worlds, descending into the courtyard, outside, in a revealed way. And the second verse, “My soul thirsts”—no longer “for the courtyards of Hashem,” but “for G-d.” This is already speaking of the light that encompasses all worlds. And the third verse is no longer “My soul thirsts for G-d,” but “My soul thirsts for You”—for You, for Your very Essence. This is the thirst awakened by contemplating how everything is as nothing before Him. And it’s interesting that he said this same contemplation brings about awe of His exaltedness, and then immediately afterward it brings about love. How can the same contemplation produce two opposite movements in the soul? Awe involves fear and distance, right? And love is a movement of attraction. When someone contemplates Hashem’s greatness, how does it relate to me? It’s... I

35:29 Speaker 1 Compared with Him, I feel small. But when I contemplate Him in His own right—not how I stand in relation to Him, but Him in His own right—I want to be there too. I want to draw close to Him. So with the same contemplation, the question is whether it’s about me or about Him. The first kind of contemplation will bring a person to awe, and contemplating Him in His own right will bring him to love. These ideas are explained at great length in Chassidus and elsewhere. Here he only mentions them briefly, really just as a hint. “And this thirst comes from the element of fire in the G-dly soul, as the natural philosophers wrote. So too it says in Eitz Chaim that the element of fire is in the heart, while the source of water and moisture is in the brain.” So all emotions, both love and awe, involve running: a person runs outward, either running toward something in love or running away from it. But emotion is something warm. It’s in motion. It wants to go outward—either toward someone else or away from them. Emotion relates to someone else. That’s why emotion is compared to fire, and it is located in the heart. The brain is the opposite. If a person is too emotionally stirred up, he can’t understand anything. The brain needs quiet, coolness; it needs to attach itself to the subject. It says of the sages of the Sanhedrin that in capital cases, if a person’s verdict was, G-d forbid, going to be the opposite of life, they would not issue the verdict then. If they saw it was heading toward acquittal, meaning he would remain alive, they would conclude the case, deliver the verdict and release him. But if they saw that opinion was leaning the other way, they would say, “Wait, wait, wait.” They would stop and break up the Sanhedrin’s assembly. Throughout the night, all seventy members of the Sanhedrin would disperse, either in pairs or individually, and spend the whole night contemplating and thinking

38:05 Speaker 1 alone. Why alone? Before that, there were seventy of them brainstorming, all thinking together. Yes, but when you want to delve deeply into something, you need quiet. You need to be alone. The brain is cool and moist, the opposite of emotion, which is hot and dry. The brain’s whole purpose is to attach itself to what is above it, while emotion’s whole purpose is to reach out to someone outside oneself. Emotion and intellect are two opposite worlds.

38:37 Speaker 7 What do you mean, reach out to someone outside oneself?

38:40 Speaker 1 To another person. To someone else. He loves the other person, fears the other person, honors the other person, praises the other person.

38:51 Speaker 7 And the brain is entirely...

38:51 Speaker 1 The brain turns inward, toward itself, upward.

38:56 Speaker 7 It’s all within oneself.

38:58 Speaker 1 Hm?

38:58 Speaker 7 It’s all within oneself.

38:59 Speaker 1 Yes. They really are opposites. And so it says in Eitz Chaim, the book of the Arizal’s teachings by Rabbi Chaim Vital, that the element of fire is in the heart, while the source of water and moisture is in the brain, as it says in Eitz Chaim, Gate 50. This is the aspect of chochmah, which is called water in the G-dly soul. “And all the other emotions...” So he has spoken only about love and awe. What are the other emotions? They are branches and offshoots of awe and love, as explained elsewhere. I explain that later too, but it isn’t relevant here. Here he only wanted to say that the emotions are born from the intellect. Why do we call the intellectual faculties “mothers”? Because chochmah and binah give birth to feelings, to the emotions. All right, so we’ve spoken about chochmah and binah and about the emotions. What about daas? Now we come to the third part of the chapter, which is the main point and the purpose of the whole of chapter 3. “And daas: daas is related to the phrase ‘Adam knew Eve,’ and means attachment and connection.” Spiritual attachment and connection: “He binds his mind with a very firm and strong bond and fixes his thought firmly on the greatness of the Infinite One, blessed be He, without diverting his attention.” Daas... But I’ve already understood it. I’ve learned it already. I already know it. Why are you going on about it, repeating it to me again and again and again? What do we do at a farbrengen? A farbrengen isn’t a Torah class, right? We speak words of Torah, but everyone knows them. A farbrengen isn’t the time to present novel insights. A farbrengen is a time to talk about what everyone knows, to go over it again, tell a story connected to it, think about it and contemplate it. The goal is for that understanding to descend into feeling. Daas is the faculty of the soul that connects the intellect with emotion. Have you ever heard—surely you have—in crossword puzzles there’s a clue: what’s the word for someone who lacks daas? How do you say “lacking daas” in Hebrew?

41:52 Speaker 8 A fool.

41:53 Speaker 1 No. A fool is someone who lacks binah. He doesn’t understand anything, so he’s a fool.

41:59 Speaker 8 Wants to, wants to?

42:01 Speaker 1 No, no. What does “lacking daas” mean? Come on, we’ve got a crossword puzzle now. What does “lacking daas” mean?

42:06 Speaker 8 A simpleton.

42:10 Speaker 1 A simpleton is someone who isn’t... wise. It says of Moshe Rabbeinu that he was a simpleton. “A simpleton believes everything”—that’s Moshe Rabbeinu. Well, someone who lacks daas is a madman. Isn’t that right? Hm? Isn’t it?

42:32 Speaker 8 Right.

42:34 Speaker 1 He understands perfectly well. He has no intellectual problem. He understands, but it has nothing to do with him personally. The example given is that a madman can stand at the edge of a precipice with his back to it, lean farther backward, and explain why it’s dangerous. He has no problem understanding. He understands. But it doesn’t connect to him. Daas is the faculty that connects what I’ve understood to me personally. I think we’ve spoken about this here already. I bring this up—I talk about it often, mention it. When a person wants to indicate himself, to say, “That’s me.” Right? Someone accuses him. We’ve spoken about this, haven’t we? Someone comes over and says to him, “You’re this and that.” “Me?!” Right? That’s what people do, isn’t it? Hm?

43:32 Speaker 8 Yes.

43:32 Speaker 1 Is there such a thing, that kind of gesture? Have you ever seen someone say “me” like this? Nobody does that. Why? Why? Why do we do this when we say “me”? Why not—what is the essence of a person? What’s central: the heart, the emotions, or the intellect?

43:53 Speaker 8 The brain.

43:54 Speaker 1 The brain? Then why do I gesture like this? Because the heart is central to a person. The brain isn’t part of the person. In a certain sense, the brain is a little, a little above him. That isn’t me. I am what I feel, what I want, what occupies me, what matters to me. There are things I’m drawn to. The heart pulls me, and then I think about how to get them.

44:32 Speaker 9 But there’s the idea that the brain rules over the heart, so what about that?

44:34 Speaker 1 Hm?

44:35 Speaker 9 There’s the idea that the brain rules over the heart.

44:37 Speaker 1 That’s another point. In a moment. A person’s essence is what he feels. It’s true that the soul begins to express itself through the intellect. True, that’s the first and loftiest faculty, but it isn’t a person’s essence. A person’s essence is the heart, the emotions. So even when he understands something, if that understanding doesn’t reach his emotions... There’s a true story. A true story. What I said before was just an example, but there’s a true story about a shadar. Do you know what a shadar is? Shadar is an acronym for shlucha derabbanan, an emissary of the rabbis. In the past, here in the Holy Land, especially since the chassidim came here with... What was the rabbi’s name?

45:30 Speaker 9 History.

45:31 Speaker 1 What was the name of the Alter Rebbe’s rabbi?

45:33 Speaker 9 From Mezritch.

45:35 Speaker 1 From Vitebsk, from Horodok, yes. So the chassidim’s move here—he was the one who... He led the chassidim here. He left—he left the Alter Rebbe, left Russia and came to the Land of Israel. I don’t remember the exact year. I don’t want to give a date without knowing. It was quite a few years before the Alter Rebbe’s passing. And the Alter Rebbe kept in touch with him. There was no way to earn a living here. The whole country was desolate, swamps and desert, and there were hardly any people here, but they had to live. So they would simply bring in money from the Diaspora, and Jews in the Diaspora supported them. A number of great tzaddikim lived here, known and respected throughout the world, and from time to time the Jewish community here would send out what were called shadarim, shlucha derabbanan. In today’s language, they’d send out fundraisers. But to raise a substantial amount, they sent distinguished people, people who were truly G-d-fearing. What?

46:50 Speaker 9 The Rebbe also sent a fundraiser there for [unclear].

46:52 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s right. For example, Rabbi Weinberg, who wrote the explanations of Tanya—he was one of the Rebbe’s shadarim, one of the best-known. To raise a substantial amount, they would go to important communities, where people would ask, “Who are you, anyway?” So they sent people who knew how to learn, serious people. In short, there was a man here who desperately wanted to be a shadar. He wanted that recognition, but he wasn’t suited to it. So—

47:25 Speaker 9 It’s a privilege to be a fundraiser. “Suited” isn’t—

47:30 Speaker 1 To obtain a livelihood for the tzaddikim living in the Land of Israel, who fulfill the obligation on behalf of the entire Jewish people throughout the world. To give all of the Jewish people the merit of giving tzedakah.

47:45 Speaker 9 He’s still a fundraiser, even the ones who later, as it were—

47:47 Speaker 1 Being a fundraiser is a great mitzvah.

47:50 Speaker 9 But it’s still not such a—

47:51 Speaker 1 Almost, almost every—

47:53 Speaker 9 For the sake of Heaven.

47:54 Speaker 1 Almost every— Even if he isn’t doing it for the sake of Heaven, the tzedakah is still tzedakah. Almost all the Igros Kodesh—

47:59 Speaker 9 He’s bringing everyone merit, but it isn’t an honor.

48:02 Speaker 1 Today it’s a privilege but not an honor. In those days, though, it was a very great honor. They didn’t choose just anyone. There was competition for it, and one man very much wanted to be sent. He approached the rabbi of Jerusalem, I think. I don’t remember who the rabbi was, and... the rabbi brushed him off. But it mattered a great deal to him, so he came back again and again, pestering him, until the rabbi had no choice. He agreed to send him. But he had to write a letter saying, “I, the rabbi, am sending him. He comes on my behalf, on behalf of the Jewish community of the Land of Israel.” So he wrote him a long letter full of praise, a whole page or so, and at the end he signed off by saying that this Jew—I don’t remember his name—was truly a tzana malei sifra, a basket full of books. A Jew of the highest caliber.

48:57 Speaker 9 Yes, you can go there.

48:59 Speaker 1 So the man saw the letter. He hadn’t expected anything like it and was delighted. He set off, reached Europe, arrived in the first town and went to the town’s rabbi to introduce himself. He wanted to give a talk and raise money. Well, the rabbi began a Torah discussion with him, as he normally would with shluchim who arrived from the Land of Israel. They started talking, and the rabbi quickly realized that this wasn’t quite... no, this wasn’t quite what he had expected. So he asked to see the letter. “If you really are an emissary, let’s see your letter.” He began reading it. Wow. Then he reached the end. What was this title, “tzana malei sifra”? Where had that come from? He’d never heard such a strange description of a person. Suddenly the rabbi grasped it, put his hand to his head and burst out laughing. What does “tzana malei sifra” mean? What does “a cabinet full of books” mean? What was the hint in that phrase?

49:59 Speaker 9 What does it mean?

50:00 Speaker 1 Just as a cabinet knows what’s in the books it holds, that’s how much he knows the books. It’s like saying a computer can learn Torah. There are a hundred thousand sefarim in the computer. Yes, true, but it doesn’t understand what’s written in them. That’s a madman, someone lacking daas. He understands perfectly well, but it doesn’t reach his heart. When a Jew learns Chassidus and understands everything said in the class—he understands it perfectly—but doesn’t bring it into his heart, doesn’t feel it and doesn’t put it into practice, that’s a madman. He lacks daas.

50:50 Speaker 9 So what about someone who’s crazy about Moshiach?

50:53 Speaker 1 If he’s crazy about Moshiach, then he has very strong daas. Yes.

50:58 Speaker 9 Right, but the feeling. He has a very, very strong conviction about something he really believes in.

51:08 Speaker 1 And how do you do that? So now the importance is clear.

51:13 Speaker 9 What does...?

51:14 Speaker 1 How, in practice, do I make it important to me? I understand it, okay, but how do I activate this faculty of daas that connects the—

51:25 Speaker 9 How do I put these things into practice?

51:27 Speaker 1 How? First I mean reaching the emotions, before action. How do I make what I understand intellectually something I also feel in my heart, so that it connects with my essence? The faculty in the soul responsible for that is daas. In other words, chochmah and binah without daas to bring them into the heart are worth nothing. Simply put, nothing. And if daas doesn’t guide the heart according to what the intellect has understood, the heart will go its own way. Those are the examples we mentioned earlier: he understands. I know he understands a great deal, but he doesn’t act accordingly. Why doesn’t he act on what he learned? Because he hasn’t activated his faculty of daas. How do you activate daas? That’s what the Alter Rebbe says here: “Daas is an expression of attachment and connection: one binds his mind with a very strong and firm bond and fixes his thoughts firmly on the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof, without diverting his attention.” So daas involves a decision. I’ve decided that this is what matters to me in life. I’ve decided that right now I’m going to think about Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Now, I don’t know if we can expect what the Alter Rebbe asks for here: “He does not divert his attention all day.”

53:08 Speaker 10 Does that exist today? Is it possible?

53:10 Speaker 1 It exists. If the Rebbe asks it of us, it exists. But you don’t get there in a day or an hour. It takes years, and later on, from chapter 13 onward, we’ll see the path to getting there—

53:23 Speaker 10 When will we get there?

53:25 Speaker 1 From chapter 13 onward, we’ll see how to activate daas. But what matters right now is to grasp, to internalize, that it depends on my decision. I need to decide what matters to me in life. If I decide that I want to be a complete Jew, I need to know that it’s within my power. Why is it within my power? Because I have the faculty of daas, I have a G-dly soul, I have chochmah and binah, and I also have love and awe of Hashem.

54:01 Speaker 10 How do I know it won’t just happen on its own?

54:04 Speaker 1 It won’t just happen on its own. It comes through effort, and the effort is to fix my thoughts firmly on the ideas I’ve understood. What I learned just now before davening—to stop for at least thirty seconds and think about Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That’s a chossid’s moment of silence. Thirty seconds. After practicing thirty seconds for a week, anyone who can should go up to a minute, and eventually even two minutes. Two minutes a day, no more than two minutes a day—from half a minute to two minutes before davening. After learning Tanya or a maamar of Chassidus, or whatever it may be, stop and think it through. That’s what it means to fix your daas firmly and consistently.

55:03 Speaker 10 So should we think about what we learned about Hakadosh Boruch Hu? What we learned about—

55:07 Speaker 1 An idea we learned in Chassidus. Anything in Chassidus.

55:10 Speaker 10 Then I definitely want to go over that again.

55:12 Speaker 1 Those two minutes a day, or one minute—that short time each day, those seconds devoted to thinking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Not studying, but contemplating, trying to picture in my mind the things I’ve learned. That affects the soul, the heart, more than a thousand hours of study. This is called daas. That’s what all of Chassidus is about: internalizing. And internalizing comes through thought, through thinking. It doesn’t mean learning something new, but contemplating, picturing for myself, with my eyes closed, things I already know. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates that when he was seven or nine years old, I don’t remember—it’s in Likkutei Dibburim. The story appears elsewhere too. He was a child, and he was on his way to cheder one morning. That week, guests had come to visit his father, the Rebbe Rashab. They were important guests, chassidim who were important to him as a child. They would tell him stories, and he was very fond of them. I think Reb Pesach of Maltovsk [?] had come. There were several very important guests, and his father had promised him that if he behaved and studied well, he would let him come in and hear the chassidim tell stories. So he was in high spirits. When he set out for cheder that morning, at seven or six, I don’t remember, he saw this chossid go into the garden behind their house. There was a courtyard there where they liked to play, and there was a bench. The chossid sat down on the bench, lit his pipe, and closed his eyes. The boy went to cheder. Later, at midday, he came home from cheder. In the afternoon he had about half an hour to play or something, so he went into the courtyard to play with his brother, I think, and a friend. He says he saw the chossid still sitting there. In the same place, in the same position, with the same pipe,

57:27 Speaker 1 completely still. He hadn’t moved his nose, hadn’t moved anything, hadn’t moved a limb. The boy was stunned. He went in to his father, the Rebbe, and asked, “What is this?”

57:42 Speaker 11 Which Rebbe was that?

57:42 Speaker 1 The Frierdiker Rebbe.

57:43 Speaker 11 Oh, so it wasn’t his brother, because—

57:46 Speaker 1 One of the older chassidim.

57:47 Speaker 11 No, wait, I—

57:50 Speaker 1 So his father, the Rebbe Rashab, explained to him—the Frierdiker Rebbe was a young child. He told him that the chossid was simply thinking Chassidus. He was thinking Chassidus, completely absorbed in it. There are several stories like that. There’s a story about two chassidim, back in the time of the Mitteler Rebbe—I’ve forgotten their names too. They were in Lubavitch, I think, and went into a shop to buy something. Each one had been sent by his wife to buy something, and they met inside the shop. One asked the other whether he had been with the Rebbe on Shabbos, whether he’d heard the maamar. “Yes, of course. I even wrote myself a summary.” He pulled the summary he’d written out of his pocket, and they started discussing the maamar. Hours went by, and they noticed nothing. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper wanted to close the shop and go home. People tried to shake them out of it, but they didn’t register what was happening. So they simply got a few strong fellows to carry them out of the shop. They didn’t notice. They didn’t notice. They were absorbed: right now we’re learning Chassidus, right now we’re inside it. Nothing else. That’s called the power of daas. A Jew can do that; he has the ability to be so absorbed in a subject that he doesn’t notice what’s happening around him. And that’s what’s asked of us. Now, we aren’t that practiced. We have distractions. Boruch Hashem, in their day they didn’t have computers and all that, and they didn’t have electricity to keep them awake all night either. The sun went down, and they went to sleep. So yes, life today isn’t what it was then. But half a minute, a minute, two minutes—every one of us can demand of ourselves that before davening we think Chassidus: to fix one’s daas firmly on the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof, without letting one’s mind wander. For even someone

1:00:12 Speaker 1 who is wise and understanding about the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof—he’s studied a great deal, he knows how to explain it, he’s a genius—if he does not bind his daas to it and firmly fix his thoughts on it, and not only firmly but persistently, another day, yesterday too, tomorrow too, today too, every day, even when he doesn’t feel anything changing within him, he will not give rise in his soul to genuine awe and love, but only to empty imaginings. Plain and simple. There can be no love of Hashem without thinking Chassidus. And if someone thinks and feels that suddenly he has some holy emotion, the Alter Rebbe says in chapter 3 of Tanya that these are empty imaginings.

1:01:10 Speaker 3 What about the hidden love that Jews have?

1:01:12 Speaker 1 We’ll get to the hidden love, with Hashem’s help, in chapter 25. From chapter 18 through chapter 25, we’ll deal with it at great length. Because it’s true that the hidden love is central to a Jew’s service of Hashem, but even the hidden love requires a certain kind of contemplation, as we’ll see there. But an inner love and awe, an emotion—the hidden love is not, is not, is not an emotion. “Therefore daas sustains the middos and gives them life, and it encompasses chessed and gevurah—that is, love and its branches, and awe and its branches.” So we have chochmah and binah. Let’s sum up what we’ve covered in chapter 3. In chapter 1, he said we have two souls, an animal soul and a G-dly soul. He explained very briefly what the animal soul is; we’ll return to that in chapter 6. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 discuss the G-dly soul: what its faculties are, and how we use those faculties to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In chapter 2, he explained the essence of the soul: it is truly a part of G-d above. Every one of us has that. And in our chapter, he explained what the soul’s faculties are. What are they? Ten faculties, which, broadly speaking, are intellect and emotion. But intellect on its own, for all its virtues, isn’t me. For what I understand to become something I feel, I need the power of daas. The power of daas is the key to serving Hashem. So that’s chapter 3: the power of daas, the key to serving Hashem. In the next chapter we’ll see that besides its faculties, our soul has something else we can use to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. They’re called garments. Faculties and garments. Here we discussed how to use the faculties of the soul; in the next two chapters he’ll explain how to use the soul’s garments. That’s it for today.

1:03:32 Speaker 3 Thank you very much, challah on the...